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joint distraction devices according to the invention are intended to arthroscopically distract a joint by applying opposing forces to a proximal and distal bone segment crossing the joint . specific examples herein relate to the hip joint , but the invention is not limited as such since these devices can be used for distraction of other joints as well , such the knee joint for meniscus or osteochondral grafting . it could also be used for the elbow joint for osteochondral grafting or soft tissue resurfacing . further , the ankle joint is a candidate for the use of the device for open ankle surgery . in the example of the hip joint , the device distracts the hip joint by applying opposing force to non - cartilagenous areas such as the anterior inferior iliac spine ( aiis ) and the piriformis fossa . more generally speaking , the forces could be applied to areas on the pelvis and the proximal femur . for example , the device could be applied within the joint capsule or exterior to it . the device is inserted through a cannula under arthroscopic and fluoroscopic visualization starting in the peripheral compartment of the joint space . fluoroscopic visualization is useful to ensure proper insertion and placement of the device . fluoroscopy is especially useful for the placement to the piriformis fossa . arthroscopy could be sufficient for the placement to the aiis . the device is inserted in a shortened position and expanded inside the patient . removal of the device is the reverse order of the insertion procedure meaning that the expansion is reversed and the device is removed from the cannula in the shortened position . during the procedure , the cannula could be free for other instruments needed during surgery . the expansion and shortening of the joint distraction device could either be done with a helical worm gear drive mechanism , a pneumatic cylindrical mechanism or a combination thereof . once the device is inside the peripheral compartment ( e . g ., under muscle and can be in or outside the capsule ), a proximal portion of the device goes on to the aiis and a distal portion of the device goes into the piriformis fossa . once this happens , distraction occurs as the device continues to be expanded and apply opposing forces to the aiis and piriformis fossa . fig1 shows an exemplary joint distraction device 100 with a proximal fixation surface 110 and a distal fixation surface 120 , both preventing migration into bone . a joint distraction mechanism 130 is situated in between both fixation surfaces , 110 , 120 . the proximal end of joint distraction mechanism 130 is affixed to proximal fixation surface 110 , and the distal end of joint distraction mechanism 130 is affixed to distal fixation surface 120 . proximal fixation surface 110 has an outer facing surface facing away from joint distraction device 100 . outer facing surface of proximal fixation surface 110 has two or more bone spikes for engagement with a proximal bone segment ( e . g ., aiis ) proximally located to a joint . distal fixation surface 120 has an outer facing surface facing away from joint distraction device 100 . outer facing surface of distal fixation surface 120 has one or more bone spikes for engagement with a distal bone segment ( e . g ., piriformis ) distally located from the joint . joint distraction mechanism 130 has a force driving mechanism for changing the relative distance between proximal fixation surface 110 and distal fixation surface 120 , and therewith the relative distance of proximal bone segment and distal bone segment , thus changing the space within the joint ( e . g ., hip ). it is noted that joint distraction mechanism 130 is also used for changing the length of device 100 for insertion into and retraction from the patient &# 39 ; s body . in one example , joint distraction mechanism 130 has a worm gear drive mechanism . worm gear 132 is a special type of helical gear whose helix angle is close to perpendicular with the axis of the gear &# 39 ; s drive shaft . resembling a corkscrew , worm gears 132 are usually produced by wrapping a single tooth around the gear &# 39 ; s central axis at a given helix angle . as worm gear 132 is turned , the tooth is advanced in a direction parallel to the gear &# 39 ; s central axis . worm gears could be meshed with either spur gears or helical gears with a complimentary helix angle to create a drive mechanism . using this arrangement of gears , rotation about a horizontal axis is translated into rotation about a vertical axis , while using minimal space . in one example , in place of an ordinary helical gear to mesh with the worm gear , gear teeth with a complimentary helix angle could be formed onto about a 72 mm ( about 3 inch ) long cylinder 134 . a tap hole could be drilled through the length of cylinder 134 and threaded to allow distal fixation surface ( or stud ) 120 and a threaded rod 136 to be screwed into its opposing ends . the exposed end of threaded rod 136 could then be fixed to an articulating joint or head 140 used to attach to the aiis . this allows cylinder 134 to unscrew from threaded rod 136 when articulating joint 140 is held fixed . when worm gear 132 is turned along a horizontal axis , it meshes with cylinder 134 and causes it to rotate about its vertical axis . with articulating joint 140 at one end of device 100 held in a fixed position ( i . e ., simulating attachment to the aiis ), rotation causes cylinder 134 to unscrew from threaded rod 136 . as cylinder 134 is unscrewed , the displacement that this creates presses against a distal fixation surface 120 and creates a force in the vertical direction . when this force is applied across the aiis and the piriformis , distraction will be produced at the hip joint . since cylinder 134 can be driven by worm gear 132 , but not vice - versa , the worm gear drive mechanism in device 100 is self - locking and will hold the generated distraction until worm gear 132 is turned in reverse to release distraction . it is noted that worm gear 132 could be driven by something outside the patient &# 39 ; s body and stays fairly fixed in space other than rotating to generate the force and therefore separation between proximal and distal points . the mechanism of attachment to the proximal bone segment ( e . g ., aiis ) has two features . the first feature is proximal fixation plate 110 with two or more bone spikes 112 , similar to bones screws or nails , on the outer facing surface that will engage the proximal bone segment . the second feature is the articulating head 140 . when device 100 is inserted through the cannula and proximal fixation plate 110 is pressed against the aiis , spikes 112 on the plate &# 39 ; s surface will insert a short distance into the aiis and fix it to the bone . as long as two or more spikes are used on the fixation plate surface , a rigid attachment to the surface of the bone is provided which will help stabilize device 100 during joint distraction . once proximal fixation plate 110 has been fixed to the aiis , articulating joint 140 can be maneuvered to direct device 100 toward the piriformis fossa and then locked in a fixed position for hip distraction by a friction or set screw mechanism . articulating joint 140 can also be loosened and adjusted during distraction to change the orientation of the patient &# 39 ; s leg and give the surgeon access to different surfaces within the hip during the procedure . it is noted that articulating joint 140 is shown with an exemplary two ball mechanisms that can be clamped together with e . g ., a screw or similar fastening mechanism . as a person skilled in the art would appreciate articulating joint 140 could be established with various ( joint ) mechanisms like a single ball mechanism and is not limited to these examples . in general , the intent of using articulating joint 140 is to align proximal fixation surface 110 against the proximal bone segment ( e . g ., aiis ) and / or to allow maneuvering of device 100 to point to the opposing bone surfaces . articulating joint 140 is preferably a three - dimensional articulating joint . however , articulating joint 140 could also have fewer degrees of rotation freedom or even have just a fixed angle ( 142 in fig2 ) for aligning the relative position of proximal fixation surface 110 with a proximal bone segment , depending on the type of surgical procedure and / or joint to be distracted . the mechanism of attachment to the distal bone segment ( e . g ., piriformis fossa ) features a distal fixation plate 120 with one or more bone spikes 122 , similar to bones screws or nails , on the outer facing surface that will engage the distal bone segment ( i . e ., piriformis fossa ). as cylinder 134 unscrews from threaded rod 136 to create distraction , bone spike 122 is pressed into the distal bone segment and holds device 100 in place . since the attachment mechanism at the distal end of device 100 is made up of a single point 122 , device 100 will be free to rotate with respect to the distal bone segment after bone spike 122 has been pressed into the bone . this will allow device 100 to continue producing a distraction force after both proximal and distal ends have been fixed securely to the bone . since a larger surface of the distal fixation surface / stud will press against the piriformis fossa once the bone spike has been inserted , the force required to produce distraction will be spread over a larger area and decrease the contact pressure at the proximal femur or piriformis fossa . in another embodiment , joint distraction mechanism 130 could have a pneumatic cylindrical force driving mechanism shown in fig3 . pneumatic cylinder 300 is powered through a connection to a pressurized air tank or line . the two air inlets 310 , 312 are connected to two isolated chambers within the cylinder . when pressurized air is channeled to air inlet 310 via an external switch valve , a piston 320 is extended . when air is channeled to inlet 312 , the piston is retracted . this extension of the piston by pressurized air is the mechanism that generates the force applied across the piriformis fossa and the aiis to generate distraction at the hip . the mechanism to attach pneumatic cylinder driving mechanism 300 to the aiis is the same as the one described above in the worm gear device description . here , the articulating head is instead bonded to the back of the pneumatic cylinder and can be maneuvered to point the piston in the direction of the piriformis fossa . the mechanism to attach pneumatic cylinder 300 mechanism to the piriformis fossa is also similar to the one detailed in the worm gear device description . here , a bone spike similar to a bone screw or nail is attached to the piston of the pneumatic cylinder . as air pressure pushes the piston toward the piriformis fossa , this spike will embed in the piriformis fossa and fix that end of the device to the bone during distraction . devices according to the invention could display various physical measurements depending on the type of surgical procedure , patient size , morphology of the patient &# 39 ; s hip ( e . g ., gender variations ), joint or even species . the following is merely an example of measurements for use of the device in hip arthroscopy procedures . it is noted that the invention should not be limited to these exemplary details . the cannula for insertion and removal of the device could be about 8 . 25 mm ( about 0 . 32 inches ). the size of the device in shortened position is about 70 mm ( about 2 . 75 inches ) and extended position about 102 mm ( about 4 . 0 inches ). these sizes could vary about 20 % and are based on anatomical differences and device design . the device attaches to bone using small bone spikes on each end . the force generated through the joint distraction mechanism is sufficient to insert these spikes into bone , which for an exemplary and common cross - section area of screw / pin is about or less than 267 n ( 60 lbs .). the one ( or more ) bone spikes or pins for the piriformis fossa could be about 2 - 4 mm long and about 1 - 2 mm in diameter . the two or more bone spikes or pins on the aiis side could be about 1 mm long and about 1 mm in diameter . the proximal and distal joint facing fixation surfaces for the aiis and proximal femur could each be about 50 mm 2 . in one variation , the number of bone spikes at the proximal fixation surface could be one or more provided sufficient fixation ( where the articulating mechanism could play a role ) to hold the proximal end of the device in place during expansion / distraction . the force distraction vector generated by the device onto the bone surfaces is preferably as close as possible and as close to be parallel to the joint axis that is being distracted . this would reduce the amount of force required to distract the hip as well as further improve safe distraction . | 0 |
a detailed description of one preferred embodiment of a stereoscopic retinal camera embodying the present invention will now be given referring to the accompanying drawings . in fig1 there is shown a stereoscopic retinal camera in a first embodiment according to the present invention , which comprises an illuminating optical system , a photographing optical system and an observation optical system . the illuminating optical system comprises a halogen lamp 1 , i . e ., a light source of illumination for observation , condenser lenses 2 , a xenon flash lamp 3 , i . e ., a light source of illumination for photographing , a beam splitter 4 , a relay lens 5 , an aperture diaphragm 6 , a mirror 7 for deflecting an light path , an illuminating relay lens 8 , an index plate 9 provided with a central black point 10 for eliminating detrimental light , an illuminating lens 11 , a perforated mirror 12 and an objective lens 13 . the halogen lamp 1 and the xenon flash lamp 3 are in a conjugate relation with respect to the condenser lenses 2 . the aperture diaphragm 6 is provided with a circular slit . an intermediate image of the slit is formed near the opening of the perforated mirror 12 , the intermediate image of the slit is reflected by the perforated mirror 12 and the objective lens 13 focuses the image of the slit near the cornea to illuminate the fundus of the eye 14 . a two - hole diaphragm 15 is in a conjugate relation with the pupil of the eye 14 with respect to the objective lens 13 . the two - hole diaphragm 15 splits the light beam into two light beams as shown in fig2 . indicated at 16 and 17 ( 17a and 17b ) are light beam splitting prisms . the light beam splitting prism 16 interchanges a right light beam and a left light beam with each other , and the light beam splitting prisms 17 ( 17a and 17b ) collimate the two light beams so that the collimated light beams pass along two parallel paths separated from each other by a predetermined distance . the light beam reflected by the fundus of the eye 14 is focused at a point a in an inverted image by the objective lens 13 , passes through the opening of the perforated mirror 12 , the two - hole diaphragm 15 , the light beam splitting prisms 16 and 17 ( 17a and 17b ), relay lenses 18 ( 18a and 18b ), focusing lenses 19 ( 19a and 19b ) and image forming lenses 20 ( 20a and 20b ). the image forming lenses 20 ( 20a and 20b ) form the image of the fundus on the film 21 . the focusing lenses 19a and 19b are movable along the optical axis of the photographing optical system . the positions of the focusing lenses 19a and 19b are adjusted according to the refracting power of the eye 14 to focus the image of the fundus on the film 21 . a swing mirror 22 can be turned between a position to reflect the light beam toward the observation optical system and a position to allow the light beam to pass along the optical axis of the photographing optical system to the film 21 . in photographing the picture of the fundus , the swing mirror 22 is turned up in the direction of the arrow in synchronism with the flashing action of the xenon flash lamp 3 to allow the light beam reflected by the fundus to fall on the film 21 . auxiliary lenses 30 ( 30a and 30b ) are disposed in the photographing optical path insertably to change the focusing area from the fundus to the front portion of the eye . in the embodiment of the apparatus , the focus adjusting area formed by the focusing lenses 19a and 19b are provided for photographing the fundus as a center on od ( zero diopter ), and the area is not enough for photographing the front portion of the eye , which requires strong diopter + d . accordingly , it is covered by inserting an auxiliary lens which have powers determined based on the position of the above mentioned standard point a &# 39 ;. a thin wedge - shaped deflection - angle prism 31 ( 31a and 31b ) is disposed in the photographing optical path with the auxiliary lenses 30 ( 30a and 30b ) to correct the angle of the optical axis . as shown in fig2 in case of photographing the front portion of the eye , the working distance is extended to d &# 39 ; from d which is the working distance for photographing the fundus . therefore the intermediate image is moved to a &# 39 ; from a by the objective lens 13 , the inter - image pitch p &# 39 ; becomes narrow against the inter - image pitch p for photographing the fundus . the deflection - angle prisms 31a and 31b are inserted into the optical path , the inter - image pitch p is extended ( shown in fig3 ). the degree of the deflection - angle prism 31 ( 31a and 31b ) are selected so that the pitch p between two scenes on the film 21 in case of photographing the fundus ( defective sight ametropy od , working distance d ) and the pitch p &# 39 ; in case of photographing the front portion of the eye by inserting the deflection - angle prisms 31 ( 31a and 31b ) correspond with each other . p &# 39 ; is an inter - image pitch whence the focusing is corresponded to the front portion of the average examinee &# 39 ; s eye under the highly useful working distance d &# 39 ; the observation optical system and the photographing optical system use the objective lens 13 , the swing mirror 22 and the components between the objective lens 13 and the swing mirror 22 in common . when observing the fundus , the swing mirror 22 is set on the light path of the photographing optical system to reflect the observation light beam reflected by the fundus and passed through the components from the objective lens 13 through the focusing lenses 19a and 19b toward mirrors 23a and 23b . the observation light beam reflected by the mirrors 23a and 23b passes through observation image forming lenses 24a and 24b , focusing glasses 27a and 27b , and oculars 25a and 25b , and fall on the right eye 26a and the left eye 26b of the observer . the operation of the stereoscopic retinal camera thus constructed will be described hereinafter . the stereoscopic retinal camera is mounted on a movable table , not shown , which is moved relative to a fixed table by a sliding mechanism . the examinee &# 39 ; s head is held on a head support fixed to the fixed table , and the halogen lamp 1 is turned on to illuminate the eye 14 . in case of photographing the fundus of the eye , the observer operates the sliding mechanism to align the image of the aperture diaphragm 6 on the cornea with the pupil of the eye 14 so that the fundus is illuminated properly in proper working distance d . in case of photographing the front portion of the eye , the operator extends the working distance to d &# 39 ; from d . the illumination light is expanded wholly and the front portion of the eye is illuminated properly . in case of photographing the fundus of the eye , the light beam reflected by the fundus is focused to form an inverted image of the fundus at the point a . the light beam passed the perforated mirror 12 is split into a right light beam and a left light beam by the two - hole diaphragm 15 . the light beam splitting prism 16 disposed directly behind the two - hole diaphragm 15 interchanges the right light beam and the left light beam . then , the light beams are deflected by the prisms 17a and 17b , and the deflected light beams are focused in erect images of the fundus at each point b and ba on the film 21 by the pair of image forming lens systems including the relay lenses 18a and 18b , the focusing lenses 19a and 19b , and the image forming lenses 20a and 20b . the observer views the erect images for the stereoscopic observation of the fundus . the observer turns the focusing knob during the binocular observation of the images to focus the focusing lenses 19a and 19b and makes the fine adjustment of the alignment of the image of the aperture diaphragm 6 with the pupil of the eye 14 so that flares of the illuminating light will not appear around the right and left images . after the operations for aligning the image of the aperture diaphragm 6 with the pupil of the eye 14 and for focusing the focusing lenses 19a and 19b have been completed , a shutter release button is depressed . then , the swing mirror 22 is lifted up and the xenon flash lamp 3 flashes synchronously to form the image of the fundus on the film 22 . as shown in fig2 in case of photographing the front portion of the eye , the operator extend the working distance to d &# 39 ; from d which is the working distance when the fundus is photographed , the photographing area of the front portion of the eye is maintained properly . at that time the intermediate image is moved to plus side position a &# 39 ; from position a by the objective lens 13 . then the auxiliary lenses 30a and 30b are inserted into the optical path to compensate for lack of focus adjusting area of the image forming optical system by the focusing lenses 19a and 19b . by inserting the auxiliary lenses 30a and 30b , the front portion images b &# 39 ; and ba &# 39 ; of the eye are formed on the film 21 , as the inter - image pitch p &# 39 ; becomes narrower than the inter - image pitch p which is the pitch when the fundus is photographed , the operator may insert the deflection - angle prisms 31a and 31b into the optical path , whereby the inter - image pitch is extended to p ( shown in fig3 ). the operation being continued is almost same as the operation of photographing the eye &# 39 ; s fundus , therefore the detail explanation of the operation is omitted . the automatic operations of the stereoscopic retinal camera are controlled by the microcomputer mounted in the apparatus . the present invention may be embodied in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or essential characteristics thereof . for instance , if the image forming optical system having the focus adjusting area sufficiently , the auxiliary lenses 30a and 30b are not necessary to be provided , and a concave lens is inserted into the optical path when the eye &# 39 ; s fundus is photographed . further , the deflection - angle prism is employed in this embodiment to accomplish the angle - correction of the optical axis with simple constitution , variety of constitutions well known for angle - correction , are able to be adopted . in fig4 there is shown the arrangement of the optical system in a second embodiment , and fig5 shows a partial view in perspective of the optical system . the character of the second embodiment consists in the constitution of the two - hole diaphragm . the explanation of other part of the constitution is omitted , as it is already explained in the first embodiment . the two - hole diaphragms 15 ( 15a and 15b ) are disposed in a conjugate relation with the pupil of the examinee &# 39 ; s eye with respect to the objective lens 13 . further , the right and left apertures of the respective two - hole diaphragms 15a and 15b is constituted as to be moved in synchronizing with the focusing lenses 19a and 19b . fig5 shows the mechanism being synchronized mechanically , as one example . that is to say , the two - hole diaphragm 15 consists of a couple of aperture plates 15a and 15b , having pins 33 , 33 thereon respectively . the aperture plates 15a and 15b are pulled toward each other by a spring 36 which is connected to the pins 33 , 33 . when the focusing lenses 19a , 19b are moved toward front and rear direction by operating a diopter adjusting knob 34 , the pins 33 , 33 are moved to be away or come near along a guide groove ( not shown in fig5 ) which is formed on a side of a guide plate 35 , the aperture plates 15a , 15b are moved to an arrow direction shown in fig5 whereby the distance between center points of both apertures of the aperture plates 15a , 15b is changed . the quantity of movement is determined according to the moving distance of the first intermediate image formed by refracting power of the examinee &# 39 ; s eye . the shape of the guide groove is formed in relation to the moving quantity of the focusing lenses 19a , 19b , so that the ratio of distance between the two - hole diaphragms 15a , 15b and the distance from the two - hole diaphragms 15a , 15b to the intermediate image is fixed . in that case , it is not necessary to connect the movement of the focusing lenses 19a , 19b and the center distance of the apertures of the aperture plates 15a , 15b , it is proper to provide the moving mechanism of the aperture plates 15a , 15b by detecting the moving quantity of the focusing lenses 19a , 19b by using a shaft encoder or the like . the mechanism of controlling two movements such as mentioned above is known variously , therefore the explanation of the mechanism is omitted , but the present invention is not intended to be limited . in case of the above second embodiment , the two - hole diaphragms 15a , 15b are moved to separate each other synchronizing to the movement of the focusing lenses 19a , 19b , the same effect is obtained by the mechanism that the two - hole diaphragms 15a , 15b move to the same direction and same distance of the movement of the first intermediate image a along the optical axis . this embodiment is shown in fig6 . in this fig6 the above mentioned two - hole diaphragms 15a , 15b are moved to the front and rear direction ( i . e . optical direction ) along the optical path by synchronizing with the movement of the focusing lenses 19a , 19b for focusing the lens according to the refracting power of the examinee &# 39 ; s eye . that is to say , the two - hole diaphragms 15a , 15b are moved to the objective lens 13 when the refracting power is on near sightedness side and are moved to the light beam splitting prism 16 , 17a , 17b side respectively , and the quantity of the movement of the two - hole diaphragms are determined to be equal to the quantity of the movement of the first intermediate image which is moved according to the refracting power of the examinee &# 39 ; s eye , whereby the stereoscopic angle faced to the first intermediate image against the optical axis a and b , is always hold constant . and because the stereoscopic angle is held constant , the change of the pitch between two images on the film 21 is also able to stay small . further , according to each of the above mentioned embodiments , the change of the stereoscopic visual angle is amended against the defective sight ametropy perfectly , but it is able to add the modification , for example , to amend the angle by degrees in a certain permission range , without departing from the spirit and the scope of the invention . and also it is purposeful to combine the mechanism of the above mentioned second embodiment with the mechanism of the above mentioned first embodiment . the foregoing description of the preferred embodiment of the invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description . it is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed , and modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of the invention . the embodiment chosen and described in order to explain the principles of the invention and its practical application to enable one skilled in the art to utilize the invention in various embodiments and with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated . it is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the claims appended hereto , and their equivalents . | 0 |
the papermaking sludge used in connection with this invention can be obtained from any commercially available source . it may be recovered from the papermaking process by the paper mill itself or obtained from a paper mill for use with this process . the papermaking sludge which can be treated in accordance with this invention may have a water content of up to 80 %, with approximately 50 % being preferred . the solid content of the papermaking sludge will vary with the source of the paper and the particular paper being manufactured . the solid component of the sludge generally comprises clay , cellulosic fibers , calcium carbonate and small quantities of casein , proteins , starch , latex dyes , defoamers and titanium dioxide . one example of a sludge contains about 40 % clay , 30 % cellulosic fibers , 19 % calcium carbonate , 5 % casein , protein and starch , 5 % latex dye and defoamers , and 1 % titanium dioxide . the waste paper sludge is fed into a wet product feeder 10 by means of a mechanical conveyor ( not shown ). the wet product feeder 10 contains a leveling drum 12 which levels off the material to provide an even flow of material into the dryer 14 . the wet product feeder 10 is commercially available and the unit used with this process is available from veroff machine welding under the product designation fe - 12 . after being pressed into a mat , the paper is fed to a dryer 14 by means of an auger conveyor ( not shown ). the wet product moves through the dryer 14 by means of an air current created by a first conveyance air fan 26 , which will be discussed later . the dryer 14 is preferably a 12 foot triple - pass dryer . one triple - pass dryer useful in the invention includes three coaxial drying chambers through which the wet sludge sequentially passes as it is dried . the first chamber 16 is located at the center of the dryer . the second chamber 18 is coaxial with the first chamber 16 and the third chamber 20 is coaxial with the second chamber 18 . the product is drawn into the dryer 14 by the air flow produced by a conveyance air fan 26 and travels the length of the dryer 14 in the main drying drum , the first chamber 16 . when it reaches the end of the first chamber 16 , it is drawn through the second chamber 18 , back toward the first end of the dryer 14 and then through the third chamber 20 which surrounds the second chamber 18 and from which the dried particles exit the dryer 14 . the heat for the dryer 14 is provided by the burner 70 , which will be discussed below . the dryer 14 is available from productization under the commercial product designation 130 - 600 - 3phv . the air flow from the conveyance air fan 26 draws the dried sludge into the cyclone separator 22 , which is commercially available from fisher - klosterman under the product designation xq - 170 - 60 . the cyclone separator 22 is designed to remove the dried sludge . from the air stream . this generates approximately 40 pounds per hour of particulate waste , e . g ., particles less than 8 microns , which is siphoned off by the conveyance air fan 26 and removed in an air scrubber 72 . in the preferred embodiment , the separator 22 has a 3 - 12 foot diameter , with a 6 foot diameter being preferred . in the preferred embodiment , the cyclone separator 22 can handle up to 12 wet tons per hour and demonstrates an efficiency of greater than approximately 99 %. at its bottom , the separator 22 has an air lock 24 which allows the solids to exit the separator 22 and which prevents an infeed of air into the separator 22 . the air lock 24 also prevents the solid material from being drawn up into the air stream of the conveyance air fan 26 . the air lock 24 used in the preferred embodiment has 24 × 24 inch dimensions and is available from kice industries under the commercial product designation vwo series . the conveyance air fan 26 used first in this process provides air flow for the triple - pass dryer 14 and the cyclone 22 . the fan 26 pulls air through the system at a rate of approximately 60 , 000 cubic feet per minute in the preferred embodiment this provides an air flow strong enough to pull the wet sludge solids through the dryer 14 and into the cyclone 22 . the conveyance air fan 26 has a 200 - 350 hp motor , with 250 hp motor being preferred , and is available from cincinnati fan zern . air flows through the fan 26 and into an air scrubber 72 which removes particulate from the air before it is released into the environment . once the solid matter exits the cyclone 22 , through the airlock 24 , it is deposited into a hammer mill 28 where it is ground to a size which allows it to exit the hammer mill 28 through the hammer mill screen 30 . the size of this screen 30 is important . it is found that the hammer mill screen 30 should have a mesh size of about 1 / 16 to 7 / 64 inch , with a 5 / 64 inch screen being preferred . a larger screen may permit clay particles to become mixed in with the cellulose fibers after separation . a smaller screen may cause the cellulose fibers to be ground so finely that the dried sludge cannot be separated into its component parts , i . e ., the cellulose fibers fall through the screen 30 of the mechanical screen separator 38 with the clay particles . the sorting step of this process is described below . the hammer mill 28 can have a 200 - 350 hp motor , with a 250 hp being preferred . a suitable hammer mill is commercially available from champion under the commercial product designation hm4400 - 42 . because of the small size of the screen 30 , the solid matter must be drawn through the hammer mill 28 by another conveyance air fan 32 . this fan 32 draws air through the hammer mill 28 and a second cyclone 34 at a rate of about 15 , 000 cubic feet per minute . this second fan 32 is also exhausted to the air scrubber 72 . upon passing through the hammer mill screen 30 , the solid matter is drawn into a second cyclone separator 34 . in the preferred embodiment , the separator 34 is smaller than the first . this smaller size , however , is not essential . the cyclone separator 34 can have a 3 - 12 foot diameter , with a 4 foot diameter being preferred . the cyclone separator 34 acts to remove the solids from the air stream . again , any particulate matter less than about 8 microns in size would be siphoned off with the air stream and disposed of in the air scrubber 72 . like the first cyclone separator 22 , this second separator 34 also contains an air lock 36 which prevents the solid matter from being pulled into the second conveyance air fan 32 . the cyclone separator 34 is also available commercially from fisher - klosterman under the product designation xq - 340 - 51 . the recovered solid material exits the cyclone 34 through the air lock 36 and is deposited into a mechanical screen sorter 38 . the screen 40 on the sorter 38 can have a mesh of approximately 150 to 200 , with 170 being preferred . suitable mechanical screen sorters are available from minox under the product designation mts 2000 . the sorter 38 sorts the fibrous material from the clay by a combination of tossing and oscillation action . the clay passes through the screen 40 to the base 42 and the fibrous material remains on the screen 40 as the solids are sorted . the resulting material left on the screen 40 consists mostly of cellulose fibers . once the clay particles exit the mechanical screen separator 38 through the base 42 , they are pulled by a third conveyance air fan 44 into a third cyclone separator 46 . the conveyance air fan 44 used in this stage can range from 10 - 30 hp with a 20 hp fan available from cincinnati fan being preferred . at this stage of the process , the cyclone separator 46 acts to remove the clay from the air . the air removed by the cyclone separator 46 is exhausted to the air scrubber 72 for emission into the environment . the cyclone separator 46 can have a diameter of 3 - 12 feet . in the preferred embodiment , it has a 32 inch diameter and is available from fisher - klosterman under the commercial product designation xq - 120 - 25 . the clay passes through an air lock 48 and into the clay storage bin 50 . the air lock 48 has an inlet measurement of 15 in × 15 in . in the preferred embodiment . the air lock 48 is available from kice industries under the commercial product designation vwo series . as the clay particles are being moved to the storage bin 50 , the cellulose fibers are drawn off the screen 40 of the mechanical screen sorter 38 by the air stream from a fourth conveyance air fan 52 . this fan 52 has the same specifications as the third fan 44 . the fan 52 feeds the cellulose fibers into a fourth cyclone separator 54 . this cyclone separator 54 acts to remove the remaining fibers from the air . this fourth cyclone separator 54 has the same parameters as the third cyclone separator 46 , described above . once the fibers are separated , they are fed through an air lock 56 in the bottom of the cyclone separator 54 into the fiber storage bin 58 . the fourth air lock 58 also has the same parameters as the third air lock 48 , described above . depending upon the quality of the fibers which are recovered up to this point in the process , the fibers are either used as an alternative fuel source or recycled into the papermaking process . if the fibers are of sufficient quality , then they can be recycled back into a papermaking process . if the fibers are not capable of being recycled into the papermaking process , then they are used as an alternative fuel source which can be used to fire the burner 70 . if the fibers are used as a fuel source , they are fed from the fiber storage bin 58 into a pellet mill 60 . the pellet mill 60 acts to compress the loose cellulosic fibers into pellets . the fibers are compressed into pellets because pellets are easier to store and easier to transport than loose fibers . the pellet mill 60 employed in the preferred embodiment of this invention is available from california pellet mills under the commercial product designation 7932 - 9 . the pellets are then fed into the fuel storage bin 62 . in the fuel storage bin 62 , the pellets may be mixed with sawdust . the sawdust can be obtained from commercial sources or recovered from a different step in the papermaking process . the pellets may be combined with the sawdust in any quantity which will provide a mixture yielding enough heat to supply the dryer 14 . to ensure efficient operation of the dryer 14 , the mixture must have a btu rating of at least approximately 7 , 500 btu / lb . thus , if the btu value of the recovered fiber sufficiently supplies a btu value greater than or equal to 7 , 500 btu / lb ., then little or no sawdust would be required . sawdust may also be added in sufficient quantity to ensure that the mixture would comply with environmental emission standards . if the pellets are used as an alternative fuel source to fire the burner 70 to provide heat for the dryer 14 , they must be in a ground pellet form . the pellets and the sawdust , if necessary , are fed from the fuel bin 62 into a second hammer mill 66 by the fuel feed auger 64 . this hammer mill 66 has a 50 to 100 hp motor , with a 50 hp motor being preferred . in the preferred embodiment , the hammer mill 66 is manufactured by champion and has the commercial product designation hm4400 - 12 . the hammer mill 66 acts to grind the pellets to a 0 . 25 in size . as the pellets are ground , they become intimately mixed with the sawdust , thus forming a fuel mixture . the ground pellet - sawdust mixture is then fed into the burner 70 to be used as a fuel source . the fiber - sawdust mixture is fed from the second hammer mill 66 and into the burner 70 by the fifth conveyance air fan 68 . the mixture is fed into the burner 70 at a 30 ° angle which creates a vortex effect in the burner 70 . this vortex effect , caused by the fan 68 which feeds the mixture into the burner 70 and five other fans ( not shown ), provides for almost complete combustion of the mixture . the fiber - sawdust mixture , when combusted in this manner , produces an ash content of approximately 0 . 5 to 2 . 0 %. the burner 70 has a heat value rating of 40 - 100 million btu . the burner 70 used in the preferred practice of this process is a 60 million btu burner available from onix corporation under the product designation wb 60 . as stated above , the preferred embodiment of this invention is a closed loop system . the burner 70 provides the heat used by the triple - pass dryer 14 to dry the waste paper sludge so that the fiber can be separated out and used as fuel for the burner 70 . heated air is drawn off the top of the burner 70 by the air stream created by the first conveyance air fan 26 . the heated air from the burner 70 flows directly from the burner 70 into the dryer 14 . thus , the air fan 26 pulls the heated air through the dryer 14 along with the wet sludge . the burner 70 provides enough heat to remove water from the sludge at the rate of approximately 16 , 750 pounds per hour at a temperature of about 117 ° f . to comply with environmental emission regulations , air exhausted from conveyance air fan 26 and cyclone separators , 34 , 46 and 54 , respectively , is fed into an air scrubber 72 . for example , air exiting the conveyance air fan 20 contains approximately 40 pounds of particulate matter per hour and the scrubber reduces the plant emission to approximately 5 pounds per hour . the air scrubber 42 is available from the onix corporation under the commercial product designation se - 60m . while particular embodiments of the present invention have been illustrated and described , one skilled in the art will appreciate that change and modifications can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention . | 8 |
[ 0010 ] fig1 shows lift equipment with a lift cage 2 movable in a lift shaft and connected with a counterweight 4 by way of a cable 3 . the cable 3 is driven in the operational case by means of a drive pulley of a drive unit 6 . lift cage 2 and counterweight 4 are guided by means of guide rails 7 extending over the shaft height . the lift equipment comprises a top story with a top story door 8 , a second - to - top story with a second - to - top story door 10 , further stories with further story doors 10 and a bottom story with a bottom story door 11 . the drive unit 6 and a speed limiter 13 , which monitors the speed of the lift cage 2 and stops the lift cage 2 if excess speed occurs , are arranged in a shaft head 12 . a respective double lever 14 , which is pivotably mounted at a fulcrum 15 of the lift cage 2 , is provided at each side of the lift cage 2 . a safety brake 16 for stopping the lift cage 2 is connected by means of a linkage 17 with one side 14 . 1 of the double lever 14 , which side 14 . 1 is also connected to limiter cable 19 of the speed limiter 13 . the other side 14 . 2 of one double lever 14 is connected by means of a linkage 18 with the other double lever . if one side 14 . 1 of the double lever 14 is moved upwardly , then the safety brake 16 engaged , whereby braking elements wedging with the guide rails 7 stop the lift cage in the case of emergency . in the operational case , the lift cage 2 drives the limiter cable 19 by means of the one side 14 . 1 of the double lever 14 . in the case of excess speed of the lift cage 2 , the speed limiter 13 blocks the limiter cable 19 . the one side 14 . 1 of the double lever 14 is thereby deflected upwardly and the safety brake engaged at both sides of the lift cage 2 . the endless limiter cable 19 is tensioned by means of a deflecting roller 21 arranged in a shaft pit 20 , wherein a roller support 22 is pivotably mounted at one end at a fulcrum 23 and carries a tensioning weight 24 at the other end . a blocking lever 25 is connected at the fulcrum 15 with one double lever 14 . in the event of tripping as mentioned above , side 14 . 1 of one double lever 14 is deflected upwardly . at the same time , the blocking lever 25 is deflected in the anticlockwise sense . [ 0013 ] fig1 shows the lift cage 2 , which has set off at the top story , on the way down , wherein a stop at the second - from - bottom story and subsequently at the bottom story is provided . if , for example , the travel from the second - to - bottom story to the bottom story runs at less than excess speed and the lift cage 2 does not halt at the bottom story , the lift cage 2 on its further travel downwardly is caught by buffers 26 . in that case , the safety brake 16 can , due to the inertia of the speed limiter 13 and the limiter cable 19 , be tripped , whereby the braking elements of the safety brake 16 wedge with the guide rails 7 . in order to avoid undesired tripping of the safety brake 16 in the case of buffer travel of the lift cage 2 or the counterweight 4 , there is provided in the lift shaft 1 at the top and bottom a blocking element 27 which blocks the movement of the blocking lever 25 as soon as the lift cage 2 or the counterweight 4 has travelled downwardly past the bottom story . when the counterweight 4 impinges on the buffer ( not illustrated ), the lift cage 2 hangs in the cable 3 . the lower blocking element 27 prevents tripping of the safety brake 16 at the lower shaft end . the blocked blocking lever 25 blocks one double lever 14 and , by way of the linkage 18 , the other double lever 14 . tripping of the safety brake 16 is thus precluded . if the counterweight is monitored by means of a safety brake , a blocking lever and a blocking element with the above - illustrated effect are similarly provided . at least one blocking element 27 is also provided at the upper shaft end if the upper shaft end also has buffers . [ 0016 ] fig1 shows lift equipment without a machine room . the equipment according to the invention for evacuation of lift passengers can also be used on lift equipment with a machine room . [ 0017 ] fig2 shows details of the blocking device , which is formed from the blocking lever 25 on the lift cage and blocking element 27 , for blocking the safety brake 16 in the case of buffer travel . the blocking lever 25 illustrated by solid lines is shown in the position in which the lift cage stands normally at the bottom story . the blocking lever 25 illustrated by dot - dashed lines is shown in the position in which the safety brake 16 is engaged . normally , the movement of the blocking lever 25 is not blocked by the first end of blocking element 27 which may be in the form of a curved or angled track . the blocking lever 25 illustrated by dashed lines is shown in the position in which the lift cage 2 has travelled down past the bottom story . the movement of the blocking lever 25 is blocked by the second end of the blocking element 27 . the movement of the double lever 14 connected with the blocking lever 25 at the fulcrum 15 is thus also blocked . tripping of the safety brake 16 is thus prevented . | 1 |
details of the present invention will now be described , including exemplary aspects and embodiments thereof . referring to the drawings and the following description , like reference numbers are used to identify like or functionally similar elements , and are intended to illustrate major features of exemplary embodiments in a highly simplified diagrammatic manner . moreover , the drawings are not intended to depict every feature of actual embodiments or the relative dimensions of the depicted elements , and are not drawn to scale . fig1 a and fig1 b are perspective views of an optical transceiver module 100 in which an exemplary embodiment in accordance with aspects of the present invention may be implemented . in particular , fig1 a depicts the 300 - pin msa form factor , and fig1 b depicts the xenpak form factor . referring now to fig2 , there is shown an exploded view of an exemplary pluggable optical transceiver module 100 according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention . in this particular embodiment , the module 100 is similar to the ieee 802 . 3ae 10gbase - lx4 physical media dependent sub - layer ( pmd ) by having the same laser frequency and is implemented in the xenpak form factor . it is to be noted , however , that in other embodiments the transceiver module 100 may be configured to operate under various other standard protocols ( such as fibre channel or sonet ) and be manufactured in various alternate form factors . the module 100 is preferably a 100 gigabit wide wavelength division multiplexed ( wwdm ) transceiver having four 10 gbps distributed feedback lasers that enable transmission of an optical signal at least 300 meters over a single legacy installed multimode fiber or a distance from 10 to 40 km over a single standard single mode fiber . the transceiver module 100 includes a two - piece housing 102 including a base 104 and a cover 106 . in addition , contact strips ( not shown ) may be provided to ground the module to an external chassis ground as well . the housing 102 is constructed of die - case or milled metal , preferably die - cast zinc , although other materials also may be used , such as specialty plastics and the like . preferably , the particular material used in the housing construction assists in reducing emi . the front end of the housing 102 includes a faceplate 131 for securing a pair of receptacles 124 , 126 . the receptacles , 124 , 126 are configured to receive fiber optic connectors ( not shown ) which mate with optical plugs 128 , 130 respectively . in the preferred embodiment , the connector receptacles 124 , 126 are configured to receive industry standard lc duplex connectors . as such , keying channels 132 , 134 are provided to ensure that the lc connectors are inserted into the receptacles 124 , 126 in their correct orientation . further , as shown in the exemplary embodiment and discussed further herein , the connector receptacle 124 is intended for an lc transmitter connector , and the connector receptacle 126 receives an lc receiver connector . in one embodiment , the housing 102 holds three subassemblies or circuit boards , including a transmit board 108 , a receive board 110 , and a physical coding sublayer ( pcs )/ physical medium attachment ( pma ) board 112 , which is used to provide an electrical interface to external computer or communications units ( not shown ). the transmit subassembly includes four distributed feedback ( dfb ) semiconductor lasers mounted which may be mounted in a single , hermetically sealed enclosure 415 , which interfaces to a fiber coupling subassembly 416 . the transmit board 108 is secured in place at the bottom of the housing using a brace 418 attached to the coupling subassembly 416 . the brace also functions as a heat sink for dissipating heat from the metallic fiber coupling subassembly 416 . in addition , the transmit board 108 and receive board 110 are connected to the pcs / pma board 112 by respective flex interconnects 120 , or other board - to - board electrical connectors or cables . thermally conductive gap pads may be provided to transmit the heat generated by the lasers or other components in the transmitter subassembly to the base 104 or cover 106 of the housing , which acts as a heat sink . the receiver subassembly 110 is directly mounted on the housing base 104 using a thermally conductive adhesive to achieve heat dissipation . different subassemblies therefore dissipate heat to different portions of the housing for a more uniform heat dissipation . the output optical signal from the four lasers is multiplexed and input into a single optical fiber 420 which coils and reverses direction , and is preferably attached or mounted on a flexible substrate 140 . the flexible material may be an optical flexible planar material such as flexplane ™ available from molex , inc . of lisle , ill ., although other flexible substrate may be used as well . the optical fiber 420 originating from the transmitter subassembly is thereby routed to the transmit optical connector plug 130 , which is attached to the housing 102 . the fiber is routed and attached in such a manner as to minimize sharp bends in the optical fiber to avoid optical loss and mechanical failure . the flexible substrate 140 may include an opening 142 or hole in a portion of the material that is located directly above the retimer ic or other heat generating components mounted on the pcs / pma board 112 . the opening 142 , which is substantially an area the size of the unused portion of the substrate 140 , enables the heat sink on the cover 106 to contact a heat transmission gap pad 160 , so as to provide access and a heat conductive path to the mounted components on the board 112 . this area on the board 112 normally would be inaccessible if not for the opening 142 . for example , a heat sink may be installed without interfering with the routing of the optical fibers on the substrate 140 and without removing the mounted substrate 140 to allow access to the pcs / pma board 112 . fig3 is a highly simplified block diagram of the optical transceiver 500 according to the present invention . in particular , there is depicted the electrical interface board 501 , the transmitter subassembly 502 , and the receiver subassembly 503 . the left side of the figure depicts the electrical input and output which is represented by a plurality of serial data signal lines txdata and rxdata , and various clock and control lines . a variety of different serial data formats are used in fiber optic systems . the optical internetworking forum ( oif ) has defined a 40 gb / s interface known as serdes framer interface level 5 ( sfi - 5 ) with sixteen ( 16 ) data lanes and one lane , each lane running at a data rate between 2 . 5 and 3 . 125 gbps . the term “ serdes ” is an acronym that refers to serialization and deserialization . the sfi - 5 standard defines the interface between a serdes component , a forward error correction unit , and a framer , as would be used in a communications unit in an optical network . the motivation for the standard relates to the fact that data signals may encounter different delays in transit from the sfi - 5 source device to the sfi - 5 sink device . the earliest arriving signal may lead the latest arriving one by n bits where n is some integer . relative to the earliest , each of the remaining signals is coincident , or is up to n unit intervals late . the search space for determining the relative delays of all 17 signals on sfi - 5 is ( n + 1 ), sup . 17 combinations . the deskew lane in the sfi - 5 interface serves as a signal reference lane to allow each of the 16 data lanes to independently measure its own delay relative to the reference signal . the electrical interface board 501 includes an nvr 504 , a microprocessor 505 , and the sfi - 5 signal processing circuit 506 . the circuit 506 consists of the sfi - 5 i / o circuitry , a clock data recovery ( cdr ) circuit , lane alignment circuits , a 40g framer , and a forward error correction ( fec ) processor . the next circuit component 507 on the interface board 501 converts the sfi - 5 signals to four 10g signals , and vice versa , which are transferred to and from the transmitter subassembly 502 , and the receiver subassembly 503 . a reference oscillator 508 is also present on the interface board 501 . the transmitter subassembly 502 includes a sequence of laser drivers 509 which function to drive a sequence of lasers 510 , each laser having a different wavelength . the output of the lasers 510 is then fed into an optical multiplexer 511 , which combines the optical signals into a single composite optical signal or beam which is input into the optical fiber 515 . the receiver subassembly 503 is connected to an incoming fiber 516 . the optical input is applied to an optical demultiplexer 512 which separates the multifrequency incoming beam into separate optical signals at different frequencies , in this case , four frequencies . the optical signals are then applied to four ingaas pin photodiodes 513 . the photodiodes 513 are connected to an amplifier / limiter circuit 514 , including an transimpedance amplifier ( tia ). the output of circuit 514 is then connected to circuit component 507 on interface board 501 . various modifications and improvements of the present invention may also be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art . thus , the particular combination of sensors and data storage elements described and illustrated herein is intended to represent only certain embodiments of the present invention , and is not intended to serve as limitations of alternate devices within the spirit and scope of the invention . various aspects of the techniques and apparatus associated with the sensing , processing , storing and reporting aspects of the invention may be implemented in a digital circuitry , or in computer hardware , firmware , software , or in combinations of them . apparatus of the invention may be implemented in dedicated digital logic circuitry tangibly embodied in the module , or in a machine - readable storage device for use by a programmable processor , or in software located in memory along with communications processing software used in operation of the module . the foregoing techniques may be performed , for example , single central processor , a multiprocessor , on one or more digital signal processors , gate arrays of logic gates , or hardwired logic circuits for executing a sequence of signals or program of instructions to perform functions of the invention by operating on input data and generating output . the methods may be advantageously implements in one or more computer programs that are executable on a programmable system including at least one programmable processor coupled to receive data and instructions from , and to transmit data and instructions to , a data storage system , at least on in / out device , and at least one output device . each computer program may be implemented in a high - level procedural or object - oriented programming language , or in assembly or machine language if desired ; and in any case , the language may be compiled or interpreted language . suitable processors include by way of example , both general and special purpose microprocessors . generally , a processor will receive instructions and date from read - only memory and / or random access memory . storage devices suitable for tangibly embodying computer program instruction and date include all forms of non - volatile memory , including by way of example , semiconductor devices , such as eprom , eeprom , and flash memory devices ; magnetic disks such as internal hard disks and removable disks ; magneto - optical disks ; and cd - rom disks . any of the foregoing may be supplemented by or incorporated in , specifically designed application - specific integrated circuits ( asics ). it will be understood that each of the elements described above , or two or more together , also may find a useful application in other types of constructions differing from the types described above . while the invention has been illustrated and described as embodied in a transceiver for an optical communications network , it is not intended to be limited to the details shown , since various modifications and structural changes may be made without departing in any way from the spirit of the present invention . without further analysis , the foregoing will so fully reveal the gist of the present invention that others can , by applying current knowledge , readily adapt it for various applications without omitting features that , from the standpoint of prior art , fairly constitute essential characteristics of the generic or specific aspects of this invention and , therefore , such adaptations should and are intended to be comprehended within the meaning and range of equivalence of the following claims . | 7 |
embodiments of the invention will now be described below with reference to the drawings . fig1 a through 3b are cross sections illustrating a method for manufacturing a semiconductor device according to the present embodiment . as shown in fig1 a , to begin with , a si substrate 1 , which is a bulk silicon wafer , is to be prepared . next , as shown in fig1 b , a sige layer 3 is to be formed on the si substrate 1 , and then a first si layer 5 is to be formed on the above . the sige layer 3 and the si layer 5 are formed by an epitaxial growth method ( or a selective epitaxial growth method ), respectively . meanwhile , in the case that a dry etching process was carried out towards the si substrate 1 before forming the sige layer 3 , there is a possibility that damage may have occurred to the si substrate 1 by the dry etching process . therefore , in order to remove the damage , a surface of the si substrate 1 may be thinly oxidized , followed by removing the oxide film by a wet etching , before forming the sige layer 3 . next , as shown in fig1 c , by using a photolithography technology and an etching technique , a trench ( groove portion ) 7 is to be formed in a laminated body made of the sige layer 3 and the si layer 5 so as to expose the surface of the si substrate 1 . the trench 7 is to be formed in an area sandwiched between a source forming region and a drain forming region in a transistor forming region ( hereinafter to be called a ‘ channel region ’). next , as shown in fig2 a , a second si layer 9 is to be formed on the si substrate 1 , so as the trench is to be embedded and the si layer 1 is to be coated thereon . the second si layer 9 is to be formed by the epitaxial growth method ( or the selective epitaxial growth method ). further , in order to remove the damage occurred to the si substrate 1 by the dry etching process while forming the trench , surfaces of the si substrate 1 and the si layer 5 may be thinly oxidized , followed by the process of removing the oxide layer by the wet etching , before forming the si layer 9 . hereinafter , a combination of the first si layer 5 and the second si layer 9 is to be called a si layer 10 . further , in order to use as an etching stopper during a cmp process which is to be performed later , a si 3 n 4 film may be deposited by a cvd method and the like , after oxidizing the surface of the si layer 10 . next , as shown in fig2 b , by using the photolithography technology and the etching technique , the si layer 10 and the sige layer 3 which are located outside of the transistor forming region are to be removed sequentially by etching ( in other words , by isolating devices ). accordingly , side surfaces ( end portions ) of the si layer 10 and the sige layer 3 are to be exposed along a periphery of the transistor forming region . next , as shown in fig2 c , by using an etching liquid such as fluoronitric acid , the etching of the sige layer 3 is to be performed from its exposed side surface ( in other words , from the sides ). in the wet etching using fluoronitric acid , an etching selectivity between sige and si , for example is about 100 : 1 , thereby enabling to selectively remove only the sige layer 3 without etching too much of the si layer 10 . by this selective etching , a hollow portion 15 is to be formed under the si layer 10 in the transistor forming region . the si layer 10 on the hollow portion 15 is the source forming region or the drain forming region . next , as shown in fig3 a , with leaving the hollow portion 15 and only blocking an aperture plane of the hollow portion 15 , sio 2 is to be deposited on the si substrate 1 by the cvd method and the like , and planarize the device surface as well as isolating devices by the cmp method and the like ( in other words , forming an inter - device isolation insulating film 28 ). at this point , in the case that a thermal oxide film is formed on the si layer 10 and the si 3 n 4 film is formed on the thermal oxide film as the etching stopper for the cmp , the si 3 n 4 film is to be removed by phosphoric acid and the thermal oxide film is to be removed by fluorinated acid thereafter . next , an ion implantation for adjusting a threshold value ( in other words , a channel ion implantation ) is to be performed on the surface of the si layer 10 . then , by thermal oxidizing the si layer 10 , a gate oxide film 21 is to be formed on the surface . further , a gate electrode 23 is to be formed on the gate oxide film 21 on the channel region . next , as shown in fig3 b , after using the gate electrode 23 as a mask to perform a lightly doped drain ( ldd ) implantation , a sidewall 25 is to be formed at the side surface of the gate electrode 23 . then , by using the gate electrode 23 and the sidewall 25 as masks , a source layer 27 a and a drain layer 27 b are to be formed by ion implanting impurities , such as as , p , b and the like , to the si layer in the source forming region and the drain forming region . next , as shown in fig3 b , an interlayer insulating film 29 is to be formed on the si substrate 1 . the interlayer insulating film , for example , is sio 2 , which is formed by a plasma cvd , for example . accordingly , an sdon transistor 100 with the parasitic capacitance of the source layer 27 a and the drain layer 27 b reduced to the minimum is to be completed . after completing the sdon transistor 100 , the interlayer insulating film 29 on the source layer 27 a and the drain layer 27 b is to be removed by etching , to form contact holes 31 a and 31 b . then , a plug electrode ( not shown ) is to be formed in the contact holes 31 a and 31 b , respectively , and connects the sdon transistor 100 to other devices and the like on the si substrate 1 . thus , according to the method for manufacturing the semiconductor device of the present embodiment , as only the source layer 27 a and the drain layer 27 b have an son structure , the si layer 10 under the gate electrode 23 can form the sdon transistor 100 which is connected to the si substrate 1 . the sdon structure , more particularly , is a structure that the hollow portion 15 exists between the source layer 27 a and the si substrate 1 , and between the drain layer 27 b and the si substrate 1 , respectively , and the hollow portion does not exist between the si layer 10 under the gate electrode 23 and the si substrate 1 . in the sdon transistor 100 , the si layer 10 under the gate electrode 23 is connected to the si substrate 1 , thereby enabling to reduce a self - heat generation effect compared to an son transistor . also , a potential of the si layer 10 under the gate electrode 23 ( in other words , a body potential ) is to be fixed to the si substrate 1 , thereby enabling to suppress a substrate floating effect . further , as the hollow portion 15 exists under the source layer 27 a and the drain layer 27 b , the parasitic capacitance of the source layer 27 a and the drain layer 27 b is to be reduced to the minimum . also , according to the method for manufacturing the semiconductor device , a structure may be formed so as a part , which the source layer 27 a and the drain layer 27 b of the si layer 10 is to be formed , is only thick , and the surface is to be placed above the si layer 10 surface under the gate electrode 23 ( in other words , an elevated source / drain structure ). for example , by forming the si layer 5 thick , it is possible to selectively thicken only the si layer 10 of the source forming region and the drain forming region . therefore , it can prevent problems such as the plug electrode , which is not shown , reaching to the hollow portion 15 and the like . further , according to the method for manufacturing the semiconductor device , a hot implantation equipment such as to be used for a simox method , and special manufacturing equipments such as a high temperature annealing furnace and the like are not to be used , thereby enabling to cut manufacturing cost and restrict generation of crystal defect during manufacturing . according to the embodiment , the si substrate 1 corresponds to a ‘ semiconductor substrate ’ of the invention , and the sige layer 3 corresponds to a ‘ first semiconductor layer ’ of the invention . also , the first si layer 5 corresponds to a ‘ semiconductor layer a ’ of the invention , the second si layer 9 corresponds to a ‘ semiconductor layer b ’ of the invention , and the si layer 10 , which is formed by these , corresponds to a ‘ second semiconductor layer ( or a semiconductor layer )’ of the invention . further , the trench 7 corresponds to a ‘( groove portion ’ of the invention , and the gate oxide film 21 corresponds to a ‘ gate insulating film ’ of the invention . furthermore , the inter - device isolation insulating film 28 corresponds to a ‘ predetermined member ’ of the invention . furthermore , in the embodiment , as shown in fig1 b , a case was described in which the sige layer 3 , the first si layer 10 and the second si layer 10 are to be formed on the entire surface of the si substrate 1 , respectively . however , these layers may not be formed on the entire surface of the si substrate 1 but may only be formed in the transistor forming region and not in the region other than the transistor forming region ( for example , the device isolation region ). for example , the sige layer 3 , the si layer 10 and the like , may be formed by the selective epitaxial growth method , in a state that the surface of the si substrate 1 in the device isolation region is coated with sio 2 . although in such a method , as in the case of the above embodiment , only the source layer 27 a and the drain layer 27 b have the son structure , thereby enabling the si layer 10 under the gate electrode 23 to form the sdon transistor 100 which is connected to the si substrate 1 . also , in the embodiment , the case was described in which a material for the ‘ semiconductor substrate ’ is si , the material for the ‘ first semiconductor layer ’ is sige , and the material for the ‘ second semiconductor layer ’ is si . however , these materials are not limited to the above . for example , as the material for the ‘ semiconductor substrate ’, si , ge , sige , sic , sisn , pbs , gaas , inp , gap , gan , znse and the like may be used . further , as the material for the ‘ first semiconductor layer ’, the material which has the higher etching selectivity than the si substrate 1 and the second semiconductor layer may be used . for example , as the materials for the ‘ first semiconductor layer ’ and the ‘ second semiconductor layer ’, a selected combination of si , ge , sige , sic , sisn , pbs , gaas , inp , gap , gan , znse and the like may be used . the entire disclosure of japanese patent application no . 2005 - 203918 , field jul . 13 , 2005 is expressly incorporated by reference herein . | 7 |
exemplary embodiments now will be described more fully herein with reference to the accompanying drawings , in which exemplary embodiments are shown . this invention may , however , be modified in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the exemplary embodiments set forth herein . rather , these exemplary embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete and will fully convey the scope of this invention to those skilled in the art . in the description , details of well - known features and techniques may be omitted to avoid unnecessary obscuring the presented embodiments . one method of wafer - to - wafer alignment is described in detail below by referring to the accompanying drawings in fig1 - 4 , in accordance with an illustrative embodiment of the present disclosure . fig1 is a cross - sectional view of two semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 positioned within a wafer bonding tool 300 , each wafer having an alignment circuit , according to an embodiment of the present disclosure . more specifically , fig1 depicts a cross - sectional view of a first semiconductor wafer 100 located within a first bonding chuck 130 of the wafer bonding tool 300 and a second semiconductor wafer 200 positioned within a second bonding chuck 230 of the same wafer bonding tool 300 . the second bonding chuck 230 containing the second semiconductor wafer 200 may be located on top of the first bonding chuck 130 containing the first semiconductor wafer 100 . it should be noted that a top surface of the semiconductor wafer 200 is positioned such that it is directly opposite from a top surface of the semiconductor wafer 100 . with continued reference to fig1 , the first semiconductor wafer 100 may include a first alignment circuit 302 . the first alignment circuit 302 may include a first antenna 110 formed within a back - end - of - the - line ( beol ) region of the first semiconductor wafer 100 for receiving a first activation signal . the first antenna 110 may be electrically connected to a first discriminator circuit 106 . the first discriminator circuit 106 may be formed within a front - end - of - the - line ( feol ) region of the first semiconductor wafer 100 . the first antenna 110 may communicate the first activation signal to the first discriminator circuit 106 to activate a first optical device 102 located within the first alignment circuit 302 . the first optical device 102 may be electrically connected to the first discriminator circuit 106 and the first antenna 110 . in an embodiment of the present disclosure , the first optical device 102 may include a light emitting diode ( led ) device . according to the configuration of the first alignment circuit 302 described above , the first optical device 102 ( hereafter referred to as “ led device ”) may be remotely activated to begin emitting the optical signal from the first semiconductor wafer 100 . the activation process including : the first antenna 110 detecting the first activation signal originated in the wafer bonding tool 300 , and then communicating the first activation signal to the first discriminator circuit 106 which in turn may activate the led device 102 . in another embodiment of the present disclosure , the led device 102 may be activated by connecting the alignment circuit 302 to a wired circuit formed within the semiconductor wafer 100 . the led device 102 may be positioned within the same area as the first antenna 110 to preserve area within the first semiconductor wafer 100 . with continued reference to fig1 , the second semiconductor wafer 200 may include a second alignment circuit 304 . the second alignment circuit 304 may include a second antenna 210 located within a back - end - of - the - line ( beol ) region of the second semiconductor wafer 200 for transmitting a second activation signal . the second antenna 210 may be electrically connected to a second discriminator circuit 206 . the second discriminator circuit 206 may be formed within a front - end - of - the - line ( feol ) region of the second semiconductor wafer 200 . a second optical device 202 may be formed within the second alignment circuit 304 . the second optical device 202 may be electrically connected to the second discriminator circuit 206 and the second antenna 210 . in an embodiment of the present disclosure , the second optical device 202 may include a light sensing diode ( lsd ) device . the second discriminator circuit 206 may detect a second activation signal , also referred to as a current signal , sent from the second optical device 202 ( hereafter referred to as “ lsd device ”) and transmit the second activation signal through the second antenna 210 to an external structure ( not shown ) located in the wafer bonding tool 300 . the lsd device 202 may also be positioned within the same area as the second antenna 210 to preserve area within the second semiconductor wafer 200 . it should be noted that the semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 may have multiple alignment circuits 302 and 304 used to achieve varying degrees of accuracy as will be described in detail below . in an embodiment of the present disclosure , the configuration of the first alignment circuit 302 and the second alignment circuit 304 , may allow for the functioning of either optical device as an led device or an lsd device by assigning the desired function through the discriminator circuits 106 and 206 . this feature may allow redundancy within the alignment circuits which may be functional in the case of having defective optical devices . in this embodiment , the alignment circuits 302 and 304 may include substantially similar alignment circuits including optical devices configured as led devices 102 or lsd devices 202 within the first semiconductor wafer 100 and the second semiconductor wafer 200 . the first alignment circuit 302 and the second alignment circuit 304 may be positioned in a kerf area of the first semiconductor wafer 100 and the second semiconductor wafer 200 , respectively . the kerf area , also referred to as a dicing channel , is an area between chip structures located on a semiconductor wafer as described below in fig2 . with continued reference to fig1 , according to an embodiment of the present disclosure , the semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 may include first pinhole 112 and second pinhole 212 , respectively . the first pinhole 112 may be formed above the first alignment circuit 302 while the second pinhole 212 may be formed above the second alignment circuit 304 . in an embodiment of the present disclosure , the first and second pinholes 112 , 212 may be formed by selective patterning and metallization . the patterning and metallization of pinholes 112 , 212 may be conducted simultaneously with the formation of ordinary metal levels for an integrated circuit structure . it should be noted that pinholes of different diameter may be positioned above a single alignment circuit . depending on the diameter of the pinholes 112 , 212 , a course or a fine alignment may be achieved . multiple alignment circuits per wafer may have different pinhole diameter to achieve different levels of accuracy . further , alignment circuits with different pinhole diameter may be used during an alignment procedure to identify misalignment direction and applying the corresponding corrections . the diameter of the pinholes 112 , 212 may be calibrated to form pinholes with gradated diameter ( hereafter referred to as “ gradated pinholes ”). the optical signal may be transmitted from the first alignment circuit 302 in the first semiconductor wafer 100 to the second alignment circuit 304 to the second semiconductor wafer 200 through the first and second gradated pinholes 112 and 212 . the diameter of the gradated pinholes 112 , 212 may correspond to the accuracy or tolerance of the desired alignment between wafers . with continued reference to fig1 , the second semiconductor wafer 200 is shown in a state of complete alignment with the first semiconductor wafer 100 . in 3d integration processes , if two wafers are substantially aligned then they may be bonded together . in one embodiment , when the two semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 may be substantially aligned , the optical signal received by the lsd device 202 may be maximum . next a second activation signal containing an alignment information may be transmitted from the lsd device 202 through the second discriminator circuit 206 to the second antenna 210 . the second antenna 210 may communicate the alignment information to the wafer bonding tool 300 to start a wafer bonding process . it should be noted that although only one alignment circuit per wafer is depicted in fig1 , several alignment circuits may be positioned within the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 , 200 as shown in fig2 - 3 below . fig2 depicts top views of the first semiconductor wafer 100 and the second semiconductor wafer 200 . in this embodiment , the first semiconductor wafer 100 may include a plurality of chip structures 120 distributed within a surface of the first semiconductor wafer 100 according to a specific design . a section view of an area 122 of the first semiconductor wafer 100 depicts a possible location of the first alignment circuit 302 . the first alignment circuit 302 may be located in the kerf area 124 of the semiconductor wafer 100 around each of the chip structures 120 . however , the alignment circuit 302 may be located in the kerf area between any of the chip structures 120 . similarly , the second semiconductor wafer 200 may include a plurality of chip structures 220 distributed within the surface of the second semiconductor wafer 200 . a section view of an area 222 of the second semiconductor wafer 200 depicts a possible location of the second alignment circuit 304 . the second alignment circuit 304 may be located in the kerf area 224 of the second semiconductor wafer 200 around each of the chip structures 220 . as shown in fig2 , the distribution of the second alignment circuit 304 within the second semiconductor wafer 200 may be performed in a way such that for every first alignment circuit 302 within the first semiconductor wafer 100 there is a corresponding second alignment circuit 304 within the second semiconductor wafer 200 . in one embodiment of the present disclosure , the alignment circuit distribution shown in fig2 includes positioning a first alignment circuit 302 in the kerf area between the chip structures 120 within the first semiconductor wafer 100 and positioning a second alignment circuit 304 in the kerf area between the chip structures 220 within the second semiconductor wafer 200 . this distribution may minimize global wafer - to - wafer misalignment on a chip - to - chip alignment level . alternatively , in another embodiment of the present disclosure , the first and second alignment circuits 302 and 304 may be formed in the kerf area of a predetermined region of the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 . in another embodiment , the alignment circuits 302 , 304 may be located within a chip structure or in an edge area of each semiconductor wafer . fig3 shows an alternate configuration for positioning the alignment circuits 302 and 304 within the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 . in an embodiment of the present disclosure , a hybrid distribution may be considered . the hybrid distribution may include uniformly distributing both types of alignment circuits containing led emitters and lsd receivers within the first semiconductor wafer 100 and the second semiconductor wafer 200 . a detailed view of area 122 illustrates a possible hybrid distribution within the first semiconductor wafer 100 . similarly , a detailed view of area 222 illustrates a possible hybrid distribution within the second semiconductor wafer 200 . in an embodiment of the present disclosure , for every first alignment circuit 302 there is a corresponding second alignment circuit 304 within the opposite semiconductor wafer . each semiconductor wafer may have a combination of led and lsd devices assigned to each chip structure uniquely . in one embodiment , not all the kerf areas 124 , 224 around the chip structures 122 , 222 may include an alignment circuit as shown in fig3 . an example of hybrid configurations where only a portion of the chip structures may have alignment circuits include : a cross , a spiral and other geometric shapes ( not shown ). in another embodiment , the alignment circuits 302 and 304 may be positioned within the chip structures or in an edge area of each semiconductor wafer . in some embodiments , conventional alignment marks ( not shown ) may exist in the first semiconductor wafer 100 and the second semiconductor wafer 200 . the presence of the alignment marks typically used in wafer alignment may facilitate an initial coarse alignment of the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 , 200 . fig4 depicts a misalignment state between the first semiconductor wafer 100 and the second semiconductor wafer 200 . more particularly , fig4 shows the first and the second semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 after the second semiconductor wafer 200 moves with respect to the first semiconductor wafer 100 in the direction of arrow 400 . alternatively , the second semiconductor wafer 200 may also be moved in the opposite direction of arrow 400 . the direction of arrow 400 may be essentially parallel to the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 . in the misalignment state , the optical signal , represented by arrows in fig4 , may be deviated from a pathway provided by the second gradated pinhole 212 . in this case , a weakened optical signal may be detected by the lsd device 202 indicating that further adjustments may be needed to improve alignment between the first semiconductor wafer 100 and the second semiconductor wafer 200 . in consequence , the lsd device 202 may transmit the second activation signal through the second antenna 210 to an external structure ( not shown ) positioned in the wafer bonding tool 300 to initiate an alignment technique between the first and second semiconductor wafers . the second activation signal may contain information regarding a current alignment state between the first semiconductor wafer 100 and the second semiconductor wafer 200 . once the second activation signal is transmitted to the alignment tool , the alignment information is analyzed and the position of the first and the second bonding chucks containing the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 is adjusted until the optical signal detected by the lsd device 202 is maximized . according to the diameter of the second gradated pinhole 212 , a fine alignment or a coarse alignment may be performed . the course alignment may include gradated pinholes with a bigger diameter while the fine alignment may include gradated pinholes with a smaller diameter . in the coarse alignment case , second gradated pinholes 212 having a bigger diameter may provide a wider pathway for the optical signal to pass and be detected by the lsd device 202 . in this embodiment , the lsd device 202 may detect a stronger optical signal with less position adjustments between the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 . however , the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 may not be completely aligned . in the fine alignment case , second gradated pinhole 212 having a smaller diameter may provide a narrower pathway for the optical signal to pass and be detected by the lsd device 202 , hence further position adjustments between the first and second semiconductors wafers 100 and 200 may be needed to obtain a stronger optical signal , this in turn may present better accuracy for aligning the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 and 200 . it should be noted that although only one alignment circuit per semiconductor wafer is depicted in fig4 , several alignment circuits may be positioned within the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 , 200 as shown in fig2 - 3 above . fig5 is a flowchart indicating process steps for an embodiment of the present disclosure . in process step 502 , the first and second semiconductor wafers 100 , 200 may be inserted within the corresponding bonding chuck of the wafer bonding tool 300 ( as shown in fig1 ). in process step 504 the bonding tool 300 may send an activation signal detected by the first antenna 110 to activate the led device 102 and begin emitting an optical signal . in process step 506 the lsd device may receive the optical signal and transmit an electrical signal with the alignment information through the second antenna 210 to an external structure located in the wafer bonding tool 300 . in processing step 508 , the wafer bonding tool 300 may analyze the received alignment information and then adjust the position of the bonding chucks containing the semiconductor wafers accordingly . in process step 510 a check may be performed to determine if the alignment specifications are met . if the alignment may be considered correct , then the process may end and the wafers may be bonded . if the alignment may not be considered correct , then another signal containing new alignment correction data may be transmitted to the first antenna 110 to repeat the alignment process from process step 504 . depending on the embodiment , the first semiconductor wafer 100 , the second semiconductor wafer 200 or both may be adjusted in response to the alignment correction data determined in process step 508 . process steps 504 - 510 may be repeated numerous times in an iterative manner until the semiconductor wafers are determined to be aligned . the method described above may provide an alternate approach to traditional wafer alignment techniques . according to embodiments of the present disclosure , the need for external infrared alignment and alignment markers may be eliminated by using alignment circuits containing led and lsd devices . the use of active and passive devices such as led devices and lsd devices may enable self - alignment of the semiconductor wafers with respect to each other . this in turn may eliminate the need for bonding chuck calibrations . additionally , the unique use of led and lsd devices on a chip - level may minimize measurement error and may enable an advanced and more accurate alignment during wafer - to - wafer - bonding . it may be noted that not all advantages of the present invention are include above . the descriptions of the various embodiments of the present invention have been presented for purposes of illustration , but are not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the embodiments disclosed . many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the described embodiments . the terminology used herein was chosen to best explain the principles of the embodiment , the practical application or technical improvement over technologies found in the marketplace , or to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the embodiments disclosed herein . | 7 |
fig1 illustrates a first step in assembling an electrical winding structure using a prior art technique . in fig1 , an electrical winding structure 10 is oriented substantially symmetrically about an axis 12 . for ease of reference a plane is illustrated substantially perpendicular with axis 12 having directions “ north ”, “ east ”, “ south ” and “ west ”. electrical winding structure 10 includes a central structure or member 14 substantially symmetrically oriented about axis 12 . as may be recognized by those skilled in the art of electrical winding structures and as representatively illustrated in fig1 , central member 14 may be a non - ferrous form for establishing an air core for electrical winding structure 10 . alternatively , central member 14 may be a solid ferrous core member ( not shown in fig1 ) or a thin - walled ferrous member configured substantially as illustrated in fig1 . another alternative embodiment of central member 14 may be a mandrel upon which electrical winding structure 10 is constructed , which mandrel is removed after completion of fabrication of electrical winding structure 10 . in fig1 , a first step has been effected in constructing electrical winding structure 10 by installing a first winding 16 on central member 14 . first winding 16 may be configured using a strip of electrically conductive material , such as copper , gold , silver or another electrically conductive material . preferably , the strip is electrically insulated over most or all of its surface area in order to avoid shorting between layers if more than one turn of first winding 16 is installed about central member 14 . in order to simplify this description , only one turn of first winding 16 is installed about central member 14 in fig1 . first winding 16 is arranged to substantially surround central member 14 so that the north , east and south sides of central member 14 are covered by first winding 16 and substantially all of the west side of central member 14 is covered by first winding 16 . a gap 18 is provided between ends of first winding 16 to avoid electrical shorting of winding 16 . electrical leads 20 , 22 are provided for electrical connection with first winding 16 from without electrical winding structure 10 after assembly is completed . fig2 illustrates a second step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig1 using a prior art technique . in fig2 , a second step has been effected in constructing electrical winding structure 10 by installing a second winding 24 on top of first winding 16 about central member 14 . second winding 24 may be configured similar to first winding 16 employing a strip of electrically conductive material preferably electrically insulated over most or all of its surface area in order to avoid shorting between layers if more than one turn of second winding 24 is installed . in order to simplify this description , only one turn of second winding 24 is installed on top of first winding 16 about central member 14 in fig2 . second winding 24 is arranged to substantially surround first winding 16 and central member 14 so that the north , east , south and west sides of first winding 16 and central member 14 are covered by second winding 24 . second winding 24 is illustrated with a remainder portion 26 poised in fig2 for applying or installing a second turn . electrical lead 28 is provided for electrical connection with second winding 24 from without electrical winding structure 10 after assembly is completed . as will be understood by those skilled in the art of electrical winding assemblies , another electrical lead ( not shown in fig2 ) would be provided at the end of second winding 24 when second winding 24 is terminated . other windings ( not shown in fig2 ) may be applied to surround first winding 16 , second winding 24 and central member 14 as desired . for purposes of phase balance , ac ( alternating current ) loss reduction and other design parameter optimization , several alternating layers may be employed in electrical winding structure 10 to establish a primary and a secondary winding arrangement about central member 14 . in such a structure , each respective discrete winding layer must be provided it own discrete electrical leads for effecting electrical connection with the respective winding layer . such a structure may present a large number of leads for termination with a printed wiring board or other substrate in a host device ( not shown in fig1 - 2 ). the provision of leads and their termination for connection within a host device can be problematic and reduce efficiency in manufacture and installation of electrical winding structure 10 . a result may be an increase in cost of any device employing electrical winding structure 10 . fig3 is a plan view of a structure used in assembling an electrical winding structure according to a first embodiment of the present invention . in fig3 , an electrical winding component or structure 30 is embodied in a unitary segmented strip 32 of electrically conductive material such as copper , gold , silver or another electrically conductive material . portions 60 , 70 , 100 of strip 32 include segments that are delimited by fold structures . portion 60 of strip 32 has a first edge 61 and a second edge 63 and includes a first segment 34 extending generally symmetrically with respect to an axis 33 a length l 1 from an end 35 to a fold structure 50 . fold structure 50 has a length δ 1 . a segment 36 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 33 a length l 2 from fold structure 50 to a fold structure 52 . fold structure 52 has a length δ 2 . a segment 38 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 33 a length l 3 from fold structure 52 to a fold structure 54 . fold structure 54 has a length δ 3 . a segment 40 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 33 a length l 4 from fold structure 54 to a fold structure 56 . fold structure 56 has a length δ 4 . a segment 42 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 33 a length l 5 from fold structure 56 to an end 37 . lengths l 1 , l 2 , l 3 , l 4 , l 5 , δ 1 , δ 2 , δ 3 , δ 4 are established appropriately for providing a smooth transition as strip 32 is wound around a central member ( not shown in fig3 ; see fig4 - 13 ). portion 70 of strip 32 has a first edge 71 and a second edge 73 and includes a first segment 82 extending generally symmetrically with respect to an axis 43 a length l 10 from an end 81 to a fold structure 92 . fold structure 92 has a length δ 10 . a segment 84 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 43 a length l 11 from fold structure 92 to a fold structure 94 . fold structure 94 has a length δ 11 . a segment 86 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 43 a length l 12 from fold structure 94 to a fold structure 96 . fold structure 96 has a length δ 12 . a segment 88 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 43 a length l 13 from fold structure 96 to a fold structure 98 . fold structure 98 has a length δ 13 . a segment 89 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 43 a length l 14 from fold structure 98 to an end 83 . lengths l 10 , l 11 , l 12 , l 13 , l 14 , δ 10 , δ 11 , δ 12 , δ 13 are established appropriately for providing a smooth transition as strip 32 is wound around a central member ( not shown in fig3 ; see fig4 - 13 ). portion 100 of strip 32 has a first edge 101 and a second edge 103 and includes a first segment 110 extending generally symmetrically with respect to an axis 53 a length l 20 from an end 109 to a fold structure 120 . fold structure 120 has a length δ 20 . a segment 112 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 53 a length l 22 from fold structure 120 to a fold structure 122 . fold structure 122 has a length δ 22 . a segment 114 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 53 a length l 24 from fold structure 122 to a fold structure 124 . fold structure 124 has a length δ 24 . a segment 126 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 53 a length l 26 from fold structure 124 to a fold structure 126 . fold structure 126 has a length δ 26 . a segment 118 extends generally symmetrically with respect to axis 53 a length l 28 from fold structure 126 to an end 111 . lengths l 20 , l 22 , l 24 , l 26 , l 28 , δ 20 , δ 22 , δ 24 , δ 26 are established appropriately for providing a smooth transition as strip 32 is wound around a central member ( not shown in fig3 ; see fig4 - 13 ). a transition structure 44 joins segments 42 , 82 . transition structure 44 includes fold structures 58 , 59 . fold structure 58 has a length δ 5 . fold structure 59 has a length δ 5 . fold structures 58 , 59 and lengths δ 5 , δ 6 are positioned and proportioned within transition structure 44 to accommodate a folding - straddle relationship with another wrap - layer applied in a substantially abutting relation with strip 32 in an installed orientation about a central member ( not shown in fig3 ; see fig4 - 13 ). a transition structure 99 joins segments 89 , 110 . transition structure 99 includes fold structures 95 , 105 . fold structure 95 has a length δ 14 . fold structure 105 has a length δ 15 . fold structures 95 , 105 and lengths δ 14 , δ 15 are positioned and proportioned within transition structure 99 to accommodate a folding - straddle relationship with another wrap - layer applied in a substantially abutting relation with strip 32 in an installed orientation about a central member ( not shown in fig3 ; see fig4 - 13 ). electrical connection leads 130 , 132 are coupled with strip 32 at segments 34 , 118 . multiple leads are indicated in fig3 in recognition that such multiple leads are sometimes required in order to meet current carrying requirements for an electrical winding device . connection between leads 130 , 132 and strip 32 may be established by soldering , conductive adhesive , sonic welding or another connection process or technique that preserves electrical connectivity between strip 32 and leads 103 , 132 . fig3 a is a plan view of detail of an alternate structure for terminating a winding configured using the structure described in connection with fig3 . in fig3 a , an integral uninsulated tab is formed in an end segment of strip 32 ( fig3 ). in order to avoid prolixity , only one end segment 34 will be described . one skilled in the art of electrical winding structures will recognize how one may apply the illustrated alternate embodiment in either of end segments 34 , 118 . in fig3 a , end segment 34 of strip 32 is separated from segment 36 by fold structure 50 . a connection tab 131 is integrally formed in end segment 34 . connection tab 131 may be dimensioned and configured for connecting insertion with a slot in a printed wiring board or other receiving structure or substrate in a host device ( not shown on fig3 a ). a serrated edge or sawtooth edge 133 or another structure ( not shown in fig3 a ) may be provided for easing or enhancing connection of strip 32 with a host device using integral connection tab 131 . fig4 illustrates a first step in assembling an electrical winding structure using the structure illustrated in fig3 . in fig4 , an electrical winding structure 140 is oriented substantially symmetrically about an axis 142 . for ease of reference a plane is illustrated substantially perpendicular with axis 142 having directions “ north ”, “ east ”, “ south ” and “ west ”. electrical winding structure 140 includes a central structure or member 144 substantially symmetrically oriented about axis 142 . as may be recognized by those skilled in the art of electrical winding structures and as representatively illustrated in fig4 , central member 144 may be a non - ferrous form for establishing an air core for electrical winding structure 140 . alternatively , central member 144 may be a solid ferrous core member ( not shown in fig4 ) or a thin - walled ferrous member configured substantially as illustrated in fig4 . another alternative embodiment of central member 144 may be a mandrel upon which electrical winding structure 140 is constructed , which mandrel is removed after completion of fabrication of electrical winding structure 140 . in fig4 , a winding strip 146 is applied around a central member 144 along a winding path 182 for establishing windings about central member 144 . strip 146 is substantially similar with strip 32 ( fig3 ). strip 146 has a segment 150 extending from an end 148 to a fold structure 152 . segment 150 has a length appropriate to span eastern face 180 of central member 144 . electrical lead 151 is affixed or connected with strip 146 at segment 150 . fold structure 152 is configured to have an appropriate length to accommodate curving about central member 144 at a southeast corner 181 . strip 146 has a segment 154 extending from fold structure 152 to a fold structure 156 . segment 154 has a length appropriate to span a southern face of central member 144 ( obscured in fig4 by strip 146 ). fold structure 156 is configured to have an appropriate length to accommodate curving about central member 144 at a southwest corner 183 . strip 146 has a segment 158 extending from fold structure 156 to a fold structure 160 . segment 158 has a length appropriate to span a western face of central member 144 ( obscured in fig4 by strip 146 ). fold structure 160 is configured to have an appropriate length to accommodate curving about central member 144 at a northwest corner 184 . strip 146 has a segment 162 extending from fold structure 160 to a fold structure obscured by electrical lead 151 . segment 162 has a length appropriate to span a northern face of central member 144 ( not visible in fig4 ). strip 146 has a segment 164 extending to span eastern face 180 . segment 164 extends beyond central member 144 to clear strip 146 from winding path 182 so that another layer may be applied over top of strip 146 . segment 164 is illustrated in fig4 as departing upward to clear winding path 182 . segment 164 could just as well depart downward . comparing electrical winding structure 140 with strip 146 installed with portion 100 of strip 32 ( fig3 ) one may observe a correspondence between strips 32 , 146 . segment 150 substantially corresponds with segment 118 of strip 32 . similarly , there is substantial correspondence between folding structures 126 , 152 , segments 116 , 154 , folding structures 124 , 156 , segments 114 , 158 , folding structures 122 , 160 , segments 112 , 162 , and segments 110 , 164 . correspondence also is substantial between folding structure 120 and the folding structure obscured by electrical lead 151 ( fig4 ). fig5 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig4 . the arrangement of central member 144 , axis 142 and directions north , east , south and west ( abbreviated n , e , s and w in fig5 - 13 ) is similar in fig4 - 13 . in order to avoid prolixity description of that arrangement will not be repeated in connection with fig5 - 13 ). in fig5 , a winding strip 246 is applied around winding strip 146 wound about central member 144 along a winding path 182 for establishing windings about winding strip 146 wound about central member 144 . strip 246 is substantially similar with portion 100 of strip 32 ( fig3 ) and strip 146 . strip 246 has a first segment 250 ( obscured in fig5 ; partially visible in fig8 - 13 ) in substantially abutting relation with segment 158 of strip 146 ( fig4 ). segment 250 has a length appropriate to span segment 158 ( fig4 ). an electrical lead 251 ( obscured in fig5 ; visible in fig8 - 13 ) is affixed or connected with strip 246 at segment 250 . a fold structure 252 ( obscured in fig5 ; visible in fig8 - 13 ) is configured to have an appropriate length to accommodate curving about winding strip 146 wound about central member 144 at northwest corner 184 . strip 246 has a segment 254 extending from fold structure 252 to a fold structure ( obscured in fig5 - 13 ). segment 254 has a length appropriate to span the northern face of winding strip 146 wound about central member 144 . strip 246 has a segment 258 extending from the fold structure obscured at northeast corner 185 to a fold structure 260 . segment 258 has a length appropriate to span the eastern face of winding strip 146 wound about central member 144 . fold structure 260 is configured to have an appropriate length to accommodate curving about winding strip 146 wound about central member 144 at a southeast corner 181 . strip 246 has a segment 262 extending from fold structure 260 to a fold structure 264 . segment 262 has a length appropriate to span the southern face of winding strip 146 wound about central member 144 . strip 246 has a segment 266 extending to span the western face of winding strip 146 wound about central member 144 . segment 266 extends beyond strip 146 and central member 144 to clear strip 246 from winding path 182 so that another layer may be applied over top of strip 246 . segment 266 is illustrated in fig5 as departing upward to clear winding path 182 . segment 266 could just as well depart downward . comparing strip 246 with strip 32 ( fig3 ) one may observe a correspondence between strips 32 , 246 substantially similar with the correspondence between strip 146 and portion 100 of strip 32 . one may observe that each succeeding winding about previous windings about central member 144 will require greater - length segments and greater - length folding structures to accommodate ever increasing widths presented for covering with each succeeding winding layer . this is manifested in strip 32 ( fig3 ) where portions 100 , 70 , 60 have increasingly longer lengths for corresponding segments . that is , segment length l 5 & gt ;( is greater than ) length l 14 & gt ; length l 28 . similarly , l 4 & gt ; l 13 & gt ; l 26 ; l 3 & gt ; l 12 & gt ; l 24 ; l 2 & gt ; l 11 & gt ; l 22 ; l 1 & gt ; l 10 & gt ; l 20 . folding structure lengths are also varied in size to accommodate greater circumferential dimensions with increasing winding layers . while not as obvious as differences n segment lengths in fig3 , folding structure lengths vary also so that δ 4 & gt ; δ 13 & gt ; δ 26 ; δ 3 & gt ; δ 12 & gt ; δ 24 ; δ 2 & gt ; δ 11 & gt ; δ 22 δ 1 & gt ; δ 10 & gt ; δ 20 . fig6 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig5 . in fig6 , a transition structure 170 of winding strip 146 includes folding structures 171 , 173 separated by a distance d 1 . folding structures 171 , 173 are flexed or folded to return strip 146 to winding path 182 for applying further winding using strip 146 . distance d 1 is of sufficient length to span one or more layers of strip 246 ( one layer is illustrated in fig6 ) and permit proper positioning of strip 146 with respect to winding path 182 for applying new windings in substantially abutting relationship with strip 246 using a new portion of strip 146 ( see , e . g ., portions 100 , 70 , 60 ; strip 32 ; fig3 ). winding of strip 146 about strip 246 is effected in a manner substantially as described in connection with fig4 - 5 . one skilled in the art of electrical winding structures will recognize the similarities among fig4 - 6 and understand their applicability to establishing additional winding by strip 146 about strip 246 . in order to avoid prolixity a detailed description will not be repeated here . fig7 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig6 . in fig7 , winding strip 146 proceeds along winding path 182 from transition structure 170 substantially around electrical winding structure 140 to return to a position adjacent to transition structure 170 . more than one layer of strip 146 may be applied , but only one layer is illustrated here . layers 146 , 246 and central member 144 are preferably oriented in substantially abutting relation when electrical winding structure 140 is in its assembled or installed orientation . loose windings with gaps between layers are illustrated here to aid in understanding the invention . in its winding about strip 246 , strip 146 proceeds along winding path 182 past southeast corner 181 , southwest corner 183 , northwest corner 185 and northeast corner 187 to return to the position illustrated in fig7 . one may notice that strip 146 has now ( fig7 ) established two turns about electrical winding structure 140 and electrical lead 151 is electrically coupled with the entire length of strip 146 . strip 146 is configured with a segment 172 extending beyond central member 144 to clear strip 146 from winding path 182 so that another layer may be applied over top of strip 146 . segment 172 is illustrated in fig7 as departing downward to clear winding path 182 . segment 172 could just as well depart upward . fig8 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig7 . in fig8 , a transition structure 270 of winding strip 246 includes folding structures 271 , 273 separated by a distance d 2 . folding structures 271 , 273 are flexed or folded to return strip 246 to winding path 182 for applying further winding using strip 246 . distance d 2 is of sufficient length to span one or more layers of strip 146 ( one layer is illustrated in fig8 ) and permit proper positioning of strip 246 with respect to winding path 182 for applying new windings in substantially abutting relationship with strip 146 using a new portion of strip 246 ( see , e . g ., portions 100 , 70 , 60 ; strip 32 ; fig3 ). winding of strip 246 about strip 146 is effected in a manner substantially as described in connection with fig4 - 7 . one skilled in the art of electrical winding structures will recognize the similarities among fig4 - 7 and understand their applicability to establishing additional winding by strip 246 about strip 146 . in order to avoid prolixity a detailed description will not be repeated here . fig9 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig8 . in fig9 , winding strip 246 proceeds along winding path 182 from transition structure 270 substantially around electrical winding structure 140 to return to a position adjacent to transition structure 270 . more than one layer of strip 246 may be applied , but only one layer is illustrated here . layers 146 , 246 and central member 144 are preferably oriented in substantially abutting relation when electrical winding structure 140 is in its assembled or installed orientation . loose windings with gaps between layers are illustrated here to aid in understanding the invention . in its winding about strip 146 , strip 246 proceeds along winding path 182 past northwest corner 185 , northeast corner 187 , southeast corner 181 and southwest corner 183 to return to the position illustrated in fig9 . one may notice that strip 246 has now ( fig9 ) established two turns about electrical winding structure 140 and electrical lead 251 is electrically coupled with the entire length of strip 246 . strip 246 is configured with a segment 272 extending beyond central member 144 to clear strip 246 from winding path 182 so that another layer may be applied over top of strip 246 . segment 272 is illustrated in fig9 as departing downward to clear winding path 182 . segment 272 could just as well depart upward . fig1 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig9 . in fig1 , a transition structure ( not visible in fig1 ) of winding strip 246 is configured and flexed in a manner similar to configuration and flexing of transition structure 170 ( fig6 ) to return strip 146 to span one or more layers of strip 246 ( one layer is illustrated in fig1 ) and permit proper positioning of strip 146 with respect to winding path 182 for applying new windings in substantially abutting relationship with strip 246 using a new portion of strip 146 ( see , e . g ., portions 100 , 70 , 60 ; strip 32 ; fig3 ). winding of strip 146 about strip 246 is effected in a manner substantially as described in connection with fig4 - 9 . one skilled in the art of electrical winding structures will recognize the similarities among fig4 - 9 and understand their applicability to establishing additional winding by strip 146 about strip 246 . in order to avoid prolixity a detailed description will not be repeated here . fig1 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig1 . in fig1 , winding strip 146 proceeds along winding path 182 substantially around electrical winding structure 140 to return to a position between corners 181 , 187 . more than one layer of strip 146 may be applied , but only one layer is illustrated here . layers 146 , 246 and central member 144 are preferably oriented in substantially abutting relation when electrical winding structure 140 is in its assembled or installed orientation . loose windings with gaps between layers are illustrated here to aid in understanding the invention . in its winding about strip 246 , strip 146 proceeds along winding path 182 past southeast corner 181 , southwest corner 183 , northwest corner 185 and northeast corner 187 to return to the position illustrated in fig1 . strip 146 has now ( fig1 ) established three turns about electrical winding structure 140 . an electrical lead 191 is affixed with strip 146 to establish electrical contact with strip 146 . one may observe that strip 146 is electrically continuous along its entire length among various winding layers . electrical leads 151 , 191 electrically terminate each end of strip 146 . fig1 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig1 . in fig1 , a transition structure 275 of winding strip 246 includes folding structures 277 , 279 separated by a distance d 3 . folding structures 277 , 279 are flexed or folded to return strip 246 to winding path 182 for applying further winding using strip 246 . distance d 3 is of sufficient length to span one or more layers of strip 146 ( one layer is illustrated in fig1 ) and permit proper positioning of strip 246 with respect to winding path 182 for applying new windings in substantially abutting relationship with strip 146 using a new portion of strip 246 ( see , e . g ., portions 100 , 70 , 60 ; strip 32 ; fig3 ). winding of strip 246 about strip 146 is effected in a manner substantially as described in connection with fig4 - 11 . one skilled in the art of electrical winding structures will recognize the similarities among fig4 - 11 and understand their applicability to establishing additional winding by strip 246 about strip 146 . in order to avoid prolixity a detailed description will not be repeated here . fig1 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig1 . in fig1 , winding strip 246 proceeds along winding path 182 substantially around electrical winding structure 140 to return to a position between corners 183 , 185 . more than one layer of strip 246 may be applied , but only one layer is illustrated here . layers 146 , 246 and central member 144 are preferably oriented in substantially abutting relation when electrical winding structure 140 is in its assembled or installed orientation . loose windings with gaps between layers are illustrated here to aid in understanding the invention . in its winding about strip 146 , strip 246 proceeds along winding path 182 past northwest corner 185 , northeast corner 187 , southeast corner 181 and southwest corner 183 to return to the position illustrated in fig1 . strip 246 has now ( fig1 ) established three turns about electrical winding structure 140 . an electrical lead 291 is affixed with strip 246 to establish electrical contact with strip 246 . one may observe that strip 246 is electrically continuous along its entire length among various winding layers . electrical leads 251 , 291 electrically terminate each end of strip 246 . fig1 illustrates a first step in assembling an electrical winding structure according to a second embodiment of the present invention . in fig1 , a winding strip 300 is wound oriented substantially symmetrically about an axis 342 . for ease of reference a plane is illustrated substantially perpendicular with axis 342 having directions “ north ”, “ east ”, “ south ” and “ west ”. winding strip 300 is wound about a central area 344 . central area 344 may contain a central structure or member ( not shown in fig1 ) substantially symmetrically oriented about axis 342 and configured , by way of example and not by way of limitation , as described in connection with fig4 above . as may be recognized by those skilled in the art of electrical winding structures a central member may be a non - ferrous form for establishing an air core , may be a solid ferrous core member , may be a thin - walled ferrous member or may be a mandrel upon which winding strip 300 is wound , which mandrel may be removed after completion of winding . winding strip 300 is configured as a substantially linear strip having a thickness t , a width or breadth b greater than thickness t and a length greater than width b . length is not indicated in fig1 because length of strip 300 may be as great or as long as is desired to establish a desired number of turns about a central member ( not shown in fig1 ; see fig4 - 13 ). winding strip 300 is applied along a winding path 382 for establishing windings about central area 344 . strip 300 may be configured similar to one portion 60 , 70 , 100 of strip 32 ( fig3 ) with fold structures provided to accommodate southeast corner 381 , southwest corner 383 , northwest corner 385 and northeast corner 387 during winding . if strip 300 is sufficiently thin and flexible no fold structures are requires . by way of example and not by way of limitation , a sufficiently thin winding strip not to require fold structures may have a thickness t of approximately 0 . 010 inches . strip 300 is wound along winding path 382 beginning from about southwest corner 383 and windingly passing corners 381 , 387 , 385 , 383 . strip 300 may continue winding along winding path 382 past corner 381 if more than one turn about central area 344 is desired . fig1 illustrates a second step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig1 . the arrangement of central area 344 , axis 342 and directions north , east , south and west ( abbreviated n , e , s and w in fig1 - 19 ) is similar in fig1 - 19 . in order to avoid prolixity description of that arrangement will not be repeated in connection with fig1 - 19 ). in fig1 , winding strip 300 is arranged to clear winding path 382 so that another strip ( not shown in fig5 - 19 ) may be wound over top of winding strip 300 . when winding strip 300 is sufficiently thin , no transition structure is required as was described in connection with strip 32 ( fig3 ). by way of example and not by way of limitation , a sufficiently thin winding strip not to require fold structures may have a thickness of approximately 0 . 010 inches . strip 300 is foldingly arranged at a folding angle θ to clear winding path 382 for application of another winding strip ( not shown ). a preferred value for folding angle θ is approximately 45 degrees . however , any angle θ that clears winding path 382 for another strip to be wound over strip 300 is within the intended scope of this invention . fig1 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig1 . in fig1 , winding strip 300 is initially positioned for rearranging toward an orientation permitting continuation of winding along winding path 382 . strip 300 is oriented a first return angle α 1 to clear a second winding strip ( not shown in fig1 ). a preferred value for first return angle α 1 is approximately 90 degrees . however , any first return angle α 1 that positions strip 300 for rearranging toward an orientation permitting continuation of winding along winding path 382 is within the intended scope of this invention . fig1 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig1 . in fig1 , winding strip 300 is further positioned for rearranging toward an orientation permitting continuation of winding along winding path 382 . strip 300 is oriented a second return angle α 2 to further clear a second winding strip ( not shown in fig1 ). fig1 illustrates strip 300 as establishing a transition structure 400 having fold structures 402 , 404 separated by a distance d 5 . distance d 5 is intended to be sufficient to span another winding applied over strip 300 ( not shown in fig1 ). when strip 300 and a second - wound strip wound over top of strip 300 are sufficiently thin , no transition structure 400 need actually be formed in strip 300 for spanning a second - wound strip . by way of example and not by way of limitation , a sufficiently thin winding strip not to require fold structures may have a thickness of approximately 0 . 010 inches . a preferred value for second return angle α 2 is approximately 90 degrees . however , any second return angle α 2 that positions strip 300 for rearranging toward an orientation permitting continuation of winding along winding path 382 is within the intended scope of this invention . fig1 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig1 . in fig1 , winding strip 300 is finally positioned for rearranging toward an orientation permitting continuation of winding along winding path 382 . strip 300 is oriented a third return angle α 3 to further clear a second winding strip ( not shown in fig1 ). fig1 illustrates strip 300 as establishing a transition structure 406 configured similar to transition structure 400 ( fig1 ) to span another winding applied over strip 300 ( not shown in fig1 ). when strip 300 and a second - wound strip wound over top of strip 300 are sufficiently thin , no transition structure 406 need actually be formed in strip 300 for spanning a second - wound strip . by way of example and not by way of limitation , a sufficiently thin winding strip not to require fold structures may have a thickness of approximately 0 . 010 inches . a preferred value for third return angle α 3 is approximately 45 degrees . however , any third return angle α 3 that positions strip 300 for rearranging toward an orientation permitting continuation of winding along winding path 382 is within the intended scope of this invention . fig1 illustrates a next step in assembling the electrical winding structure illustrated in fig1 . in fig1 , winding strip 300 is wound along winding path 382 about central area 344 substantially symmetrically about axis 342 . strip 300 is wound along winding path 382 beginning from about southwest corner 383 and windingly passing corners 381 , 387 , 385 . strip 300 may continue winding along winding path 382 past corner 381 if more than one turn about central area 344 is desired . it is to be understood that , while the detailed drawings and specific examples given describe preferred embodiments of the invention , they are for the purpose of illustration only , that the apparatus and method of the invention are not limited to the precise details and conditions disclosed and that various changes may be made therein without departing from the spirit of the invention which is defined by the following claims : | 7 |
in the monorail shifting device 1 shown in fig1 to 3 the gearshift rail 2 is arranged centrally . the gearshift rail 2 is arranged inside a variable - speed transmission , mounted in a housing 10 and able to be displaced in the axial direction by a shift actuator ( not shown ) relative to the housing 10 . the housing 10 can be the transmission housing itself or a separate housing within the transmission housing . a shifting element 3 is arranged on the gearshift rail 2 and is connected to the gearshift rail 2 fixed in the axial direction . the shifting element 3 is designed as a shifting ring and is arranged on the gearshift rail 2 so that it can rotate freely about a central axis 11 . made integrally with the shifting element 3 is a shifting finger 4 that projects in the radial direction . axially displaceably on the gearshift rail 2 and also free to rotate relative to the gearshift rail 2 is arranged a selector element 5 . the selector element 5 comprises a selection finger 12 with which a selection actuator 13 ( shown in fig4 ) is functionally connected , so that when the selector element 5 is rotated about the central axis 11 the desired shifting gate is selected . the transmission has at least two shifting gates . when the selector element 5 is rotated , the shifting element 3 rotates with it . this happens due to an interlocked connection between the shifting element 3 and the selector element 5 , which is formed by the shifting finger 4 in combination with a slot 25 in the selector element 5 . the shifting finger 4 , made integrally with the shifting element 3 , projects in the radial direction through the slot 25 into the selector element 5 and can move in the axial direction along the slot 25 . the width of the shifting finger 4 is chosen such that on both sides it is in contact against the inner surfaces of the slot 25 , so that in the rotational direction a virtually play - free , interlocked connection is formed and when the selector element 5 is rotated , the shifting element 3 is rotated with it through the same angle due to the shifting finger 4 . in this example three shifting forks 26 , 27 and 28 are fitted on the gearshift rail 2 and able to move axially . embodiments with a different number of shifting forks are also possible . each of the shifting forks 26 , 27 and 28 has a respective shifting fork arm 6 , 7 and 8 connected solidly at one end to the associated shifting fork and having a carrier groove 29 in the area of the other end , into which the shifting element 3 projects with its shifting finger when the selection position is appropriate . to fix the selector element axially and support retaining forces , the selector element 5 comprises an extension 14 made integrally with the selector element 5 . in the assembled condition the extension 14 projects into a recess 15 in the transmission housing 10 , so that in the axial direction the selector element 5 is fixed on the housing but can rotate about the central axis 11 . for this purpose the recess 15 is shaped for example as a curved groove with a rectangular cross - section in the transmission housing 10 , such that the groove extends in the rotational direction of the extension 14 . in another version ( not shown ) of the axial fixing of the selector element 5 , the selector element 5 is guided axially by a pin . the pin is fixed into a bore in the housing and projects into a slot in the selector element 5 . the slot extends perpendicularly to the rotational axis in the circumferential direction , in order to enable the selector element 5 to rotate about the central axis 11 . in this embodiment the shifting element 3 can be rotated easily thanks to a clearance fit and a circlip 17 , but is mounted axially fixed on the gearshift rail 2 . however , it can for example also be mounted by means of a roller bearing . the shifting element 3 has a through - bore 19 in which is arranged part of the shift position detent 18 . the shift position detent 18 comprises a spiral compression spring 20 , the detent sleeves 21 and 22 and the retaining recesses 16 a and 16 b . in the through - bore 19 is located the spiral compression spring 20 at each end of which is arranged a respective detent sleeve 21 or 22 as a detent element . the outer diameter of the detent sleeves 21 and 22 is such that they are securely guided in the through - bore 19 but can be displaced easily , for example by the force of the spiral compression spring 20 itself . the selection movement is initiated by a selection actuator 13 which engages firmly on a selection finger 12 and thereby rotates the selector element together with the shifting element 3 about their common central axis 11 . in the assembled condition and in a central shift position , namely the neutral position shown in fig1 to 3 , the detent sleeves 21 and 22 are pushed by the spiral compression spring 20 into the retaining recesses 16 a and 16 b in the selector element 5 . fig3 shows a locking element 9 for locking the shifting fork arms 6 , 7 or 8 that have not been selected . close to the slot 25 through which the shifting finger 4 projects into the carrier groove 29 of whichever shifting fork arm 6 , 7 or 8 has been selected , the locking element 9 is arranged fixed firmly on the selector element 5 . in this example the locking element 9 is made integrally with the selector element 5 . fig4 and 5 show a second embodiment of the invention . components that perform the same function in the two embodiments are given the same indexes . on the centrally arranged gearshift rail 2 the shifting element 3 in the form of a shifting sleeve is mounted and can rotate freely . in the axial direction the shifting element 3 is held fixed on the gearshift rail 2 by the circlip 17 . concentrically to the sleeve - shaped shifting element 3 , the also sleeve - shaped selector element 5 is fitted on the shifting element 3 . in the axial direction the shifting element 3 can be displaced relative to the selector element 5 . by means of its integrally formed extension 14 the selector element 5 is fixed in the transmission housing 10 in the axial direction . however , the selector element 5 can be rotated relative to the gearshift rail 2 about a common central axis 11 . the shifting element 3 has a shifting finger 4 fixed solidly on the shifting element 3 , which projects through a slot 25 in the selector element 5 into a carrier groove 29 of whichever shifting fork arm 6 , 7 or 8 has been selected . in combination with the slot 25 the shifting finger 4 again forms an interlocked connection for transmitting the selection movement from the selector element 5 to the shifting element 3 , whereby the selector element 5 carries out any rotation movement for selecting a shifting gate together with the shifting element 3 . in this case too the selection movement is initiated by a selection actuator 13 which engages with a selection finger 12 arranged solidly on the selector element 5 and thus rotates the selector element 5 together with the shifting element 3 about their common central axis 11 . as shown in fig5 , this embodiment as well comprises a locking element 9 fixed solidly on the selector element 5 , which engages in the carrier grooves of the shifting fork arm 6 , 7 or 8 that have not been selected and locks them fast relative to the housing , so that when the gearshift rail 2 undergoes an axial shifting movement , only the shifting fork 6 , 7 or 8 that has been selected moves along with the gearshift rail 2 . in this second embodiment the shift position detent 18 is designed , in contrast to the shift position detent in the first example embodiment , such that a prestressed , springy detent element 21 is arranged on the selector element 5 and can engage in a retaining recess 16 arranged in the shifting element 3 . the detent element 21 is pushed into the retaining recess 16 by a spiral compression spring 23 , this spiral compression spring 23 being prestressed by a locking screw 24 . alternatively to the locking screw 24 , the spiral compression spring can be held by a holding plate or a closing plug . in fig4 the monorail shifting device 1 is detained in the central , neutral position . in addition , however , in the embodiment shown both of the shift positions can also be detained , as can be seen from the two retaining recesses arranged on either side of the retaining recess 16 . to influence the size of the retaining force and its variation , the retaining recesses can also have various depths and shapes , such as rounded flanks . in the two embodiments described , the function of the monorail shifting device 1 is essentially the same . to engage a new gear , the selection actuator 13 first rotates the selector element 5 and the shifting element 3 until the shifting finger 4 is in the desired carrier groove 29 of the shifting fork arm 6 , 7 or 8 to be selected . thereby , the desired shifting gate is selected . since the shift position detent 18 is arranged between the shifting element 3 and the selector element 5 and the shifting element 3 rotates together with the selector element , the force required for selecting the shifting gate remains relatively small and is completely uninfluenced by the shift position detent 18 . once the desired shifting gate has been selected , the gearshift rail 2 is moved in the axial direction by the shift actuator ( not shown ). during this the gearshift rail 2 carries along the components in axially fixed connection with it , namely the shifting element 3 with the shifting finger 4 , the shifting fork arm 6 , 7 or 8 selected with the corresponding shifting fork 26 , 27 or 28 , and finally the associated shifting sleeve , to the desired shift position . during this shifting movement the retaining force of the shift position detent 18 is overcome . when the desired shift position has been reached , the shift position detent 18 engages again in a retaining recess provided for this . to shift to another gear , the neutral position is first restored by the shift actuator and then the selection actuator selects the desired shifting gate , before the shift actuator then shifts to the desired target gear . in the context of this invention shift position detents are also conceivable , which retain a neutral position and / or one or more shift positions . clearly , the individual features of the embodiments described can be combined . for example , in the first embodiment the shifting element can also be of sleeve - shaped design and , conversely , in the second embodiment the shifting element can be made as a shifting ring . | 8 |
referring now to the figures , and in particular to fig1 and 2 , the preferred embodiment of the offset tape measure embodying the principles and concepts of the present invention and generally designated by the reference numeral 10 will be described . although the preferred embodiment will be described with respect to a retractable tape case , it will be appreciated that the present invention is applicable to any measuring device . for example , a folding rule , steel rule , wind - up flexible tape , wooden fixed rule , plastic fixed rule , markings on a level , or any other such markable device may be used . in any event , the offset tape measure of the preferred embodiment basically comprises a housing 12 , a measuring tape 14 rolled and enclosed therein and a hook or flange member 16 . more particularly , the housing 12 is formed in the conventional rectangular configuration with a front surface 18 , a rear surface 20 and essentially hollow interior . the housing 12 is divided into front 22 and rear 24 halves coupled together by a plurality of screws 26 . the front side wall 28 has an aperture 30 extending through it and into the hollow interior . the front side wall further has an upper extent which includes a slidable switch or lock 32 coupled to it . this lock is movable in an upward or downward direction along the plane of the upper portion of the front wall . the lock further includes a plurality of grooves 34 to provide a firm gripping surface for the users thumb , for example . the housing may additionally include a belt clip 34 and / or a rope aperture 38 . the measuring tape 14 is formed in elongated planner rectangular configuration and will preferably be in measures of conventional distance . the tape 14 has an outboard end which includes a flange 16 which is positioned around an object when utilizing the apparatus . the tape 14 is linearly extendable from the housing 12 in an operative orientation . as the housing 12 includes a tape rolling means , the tape 14 is rolled within the hollow interior of the outer housing and operatively coupled to the tape rolling means in a stored orientation . upon release of the tape 14 it retracts within the hollow interior of the housing . referring now to fig3 the tape 14 has an upper surface 40 with a top edge 42 and a bottom edge 44 . the top edge including numerical instrumental line markers 46 spaced preferably { fraction ( 1 / 16 )} of an inch from each other . the top edge further including inch demarcation numerals 48 positioned at each one inch interval . within the center portion of the upper surface 40 are spaced pre - marked offset indicia or symbols 50 along with a master symbol 52 with key or legend 54 . an enlarged indicia 56 and key 58 are shown in fig4 with reference thereto , the present invention provides for multiple offset depths and angles in determining the distance required between offset bends of the conduit , as well as the associated shrinkage for each combination thereof . more particularly , offset depth “ a ” 60 with an offset angle of “ x °” 62 requires the distance “ d ” 64 between bends , and a shrinkage of “ a ” 66 . while offset depth “ b ” 68 with an offset angle of “ y °” 70 and a shrinkage of “ b ” 72 also requires the distance “ d ” 64 between bends . it will be appreciated that the present invention may use a single depth and angle measurement per indicia to indicate distance between bends markers , or may use more than two depth and angle measurements per indicia . in practice , to cut down on labor and materials , the conduit installer desires to make straight runs from feed to feed , as the top run of conduit 74 of fig5 illustrates . however , when an obstacle 76 is in the path of the run and the run is into the obstruction , one of the best solutions is the offset bend illustrated in the bottom run of conduit 78 in fig5 . the present invention provides a quick determination scheme whereby the installer first decides what offset angle and offset depth combination are necessary for the conduit to clear the obstacle and where to place the first bend . the location of the first bend is obtained by simply adding the distance to the obstruction 80 to the associated shrinkage “ a ” as indicated on the tape for that particular offset depth and angle combination . after marking the first bend 82 the measure 14 is placed such that the end of the tape 16 is at the mark for the first bend 82 . the installer then finds the indicia on the tape to match up the specified offset depth with the offset angle as enlarged in fig4 . a mark can then be made at that point to delineate the second bend 84 . once properly marked using the principles of the present invention , the conduit can then be bent using conventional methods to produce the specified offset depth and offset angle . such methods include mechanical benders , hydraulic benders and most commonly field foot benders . fig6 illustrates a field foot bender 86 including a foot rest 88 , handle 90 , lip or hook 92 and bender arrow 94 . the bender arrow 94 is aligned with the mark 82 for the first bend after the conduit is placed on the floor . one foot is placed on the footrest 88 and with the handle 90 in both hands , pressure is applied to the footrest as the handle is pulled until the bender reads the correct angle x ° 62 . the same procedure is used to bend the other side of the offset after the conduit is inverted on the floor . once the bends are completed , the conduit can be installed around the obstacle 76 , see run 78 of fig5 . note that a certain distance of the run is lost when making the offset bends . this shrinkage or take - up distance 96 is dependant upon the angle used and depth of the offset . as discussed , this shrinkage must be taken into account when determining the total length of the conduit run . as a practical example , assume the installer ran into an obstruction that required an offset depth of 5 inches and an offset angle of 45 °. after the location of the first bend is determined , the tape measure strip 14 would be placed with the strip end 16 at the mark for the first bend . with the strip extended the installer would find the 5 inch offset mark 98 (“ a ”) and then the 45 ° offset angle mark 100 ( x °) as shown in fig3 . this point , 7 ″ ( 102 ), is exactly where the mark needs to be made for the second bend . note that in this example , the conduit will in effect shrink 1⅞ ″ ( 104 ). by utilizing the indicia of the present invention , the installer has bypassed having to look up a multiplier , make a calculation and then re - measure to mark the second bend . the most frequently used angles are shown in fig3 . while it is understood that other variations of this depiction are within the scope of this invention , color - coding or any other means may be used to distinguish different offset angles or different offset depths to allow the strip to be used faster . additionally , a second axis may be used on the bottom of the strip for an alternative scale such as metric . furthermore , a small table may be included with the offset multipliers for unique depth and angle combinations . while a particular embodiment of the invention has been shown and described , it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that changes and modifications may be made therein without departing from the invention in its broader aspects and , therefore , the aim in the appended claims is to cover all such changes and modifications as fall within the true spirit and scope of the invention . | 6 |
a common housing holds a first fluid waste receiving assembly 10 and a second fluid waste receiving assembly 10 &# 39 ;. fluid waste receiving assemblies 10 and 10 &# 39 ; are significantly analogous that a detailed description will be made to the parts of assembly 10 and the description will be understood as describing the assembly 10 &# 39 ; as well . like parts in assembly 10 &# 39 ; are denoted with the same reference numeral as in assembly 10 but followed by a prime (&# 39 ;). a pair of inlet fittings 12 , 14 are rigidly mounted to a housing and configured to be received frictionally in flexible tubing which is connected with the patient or other source of fluid waste . the fittings are connected through inlet tubes 16 , 18 with a fluid receiving vessel 20 . more specifically , the fluid receiving vessel 20 has multiple chambers including a first chamber 22 and a second chamber 24 which are interconnected by a fluid level equalization path 26 adjacent a lowermost end of each . a pressure equalization passage 28 allows the fluid level in the first and second chambers to equalize . the inlet tubes 16 , 19 have discharge ends disposed in an uppermost region of the first chamber 22 . the fluid discharged from the inlet tubes into the first chamber 22 tends to be turbulent and may have froth or foam on its upper surface . the fluid connection passage 26 allows the least turbulent portion of the fluid at the bottom of the first chamber 22 to flow into the second chamber 24 . when fluid is being received , a valve 30 interconnects a line 32 with the upper region of the second chamber 24 . line 32 is connected to a vacuum if the fluid wastes are to be drawn in under a vacuum or connects with atmosphere if the fluid wastes are to be drained by gravity flow . as the fluid level within the clambers rises , a level sensor such as a float switch 34 senses the level of the fluid in the vessel 20 . the level sensor 34 sends signals to an electronic control circuitry 40 indicative of the level of fluids in the vessel 20 . before the level of the fluid reaches the lowermost surface of the inlet tube 16 , 18 , the collection of fluid wastes is terminated . with continuing reference to fig1 and further reference to fig2 an electronic control 40 , among other operations , terminates venting / suction when the vessel 20 becomes filled . more specifically the output of the level sensor 34 is conveyed to an analog - to - digital converter 42 which digitizes the level signal . a digital display 44 provides the operator with a digital display of capacity remaining . alternately , the digital display 44 can provide an indication of the volume of fluid collected . the received fluid and level information is stored in a history memory 46 . a microprocessor controller 50 includes a comparator 52 which compares the digital fluid level signal with a capacity from a capacity memory 54 . when the full capacity is reached the comparator starts an off or termination sequence processor 56 . initially upon reaching capacity , the off sequence processor 56 actuates an audio alarm 58 and a visual alarm 60 . a predetermined time later , e . g ., 30 seconds , as determined by a timer 62 , or a predetermined fluid level increase later as determined from the digital level signal from the level sensor 34 , the off sequence processor closes valve 30 . if the system is connected with a vacuum source , this terminates the draw of the vacuum source . if connected to atmosphere for gravity drain , this closes the atmospheric vent to create backpressure terminating the ingress of fluid wastes . the off sequence processor communicates the level , time , and other termination sequence information to the history memory 46 . a manually operated valve 64 is selectively operated by the attendant after the inlet ends of the flexible tubing have been disconnected from the source of the fluid waste . opening valve 64 again vents the vessel 20 to atmosphere , allowing any residual pressure in the lines and the inlet tubes 16 , 18 to be safely relieved to atmosphere . the inlet fittings 22 and 12 , are physically positioned at a higher elevation than the top of the vessel 20 such that gravity causes any remaining fluids therein to flow into the vessel 20 . when the tubes are disconnected from the collection system 10 , they may be reconnected immediately to collection system 10 &# 39 ; for the collection of further fluids , unless system 10 &# 39 ; is already connected to other sources of fluid waste is at capacity . in a portable embodiment , the collection systems 10 , 10 &# 39 ; are housed in a common wheeled housing after the vessels are filled , the housing is wheeled to a drain into which the fluids in the vessels 20 and 20 &# 39 ; are drained . for most biological fluids the drain can be a standard sanitary or sewer drain the waste biological fluids present a biological load to the sewage treatment station which is analogous to the load traditionally sent into sewage treatment stations . once an outlet is positioned adjacent or in the receiving drain , an attendant connects a drain hose outlet 70 to a drain hose which direct effluent to a drain . a drain hose sensor switch 72 checks the presence of the drain hose to assure that a drain valve 74 will not be opened in its absence . the attendant further connects fittings 80 , 82 with the inlet fittings 12 , 14 . the fittings 80 , 82 are connected to flexible fluid supply tubing lengths which extend out of the housing . in the portable unit , a water inlet fitting 84 is interconnected with a source of water . in the built - in embodiment , the system is connected directly with the plumbing system of the building . during a clean cycle , a pressure regulator 86 limits the pressure of the incoming water . a flow monitor 88 monitors the flow rate of the received water . the flow monitor 88 produces a digital output signal indicative of the flow rate which output signal is conveyed to the history memory 46 and to a low flow rate warning circuit 90 . the flow rate warning circuit compares the flow rate with an appropriate flow rate for the current cycle as supplied by the history memory 46 . when an insufficient fluid flow rate is provided , the flow rate sensor triggers an alarm 92 to alert the attendant that there is insufficient water flow for proper operation . in a stationary embodiment , the housing is mounted to a wall in the medical facility and the outlet is permanently connected with sanitary plumbing of the building . in the stationary embodiment , a drain outlet 70 and a drain hose sensor switch 72 are not strictly necessary for operation but are preferably still retained for such times as when maintenance dictates removal of the entire assembly from the shall mounting in the stationary embodiment , the off sequence processor 56 automatically opens the drain valve 74 when the level sensor 34 senses that the fluid level in the vessel 20 is at or is approaching capacity . the operator depresses a button 100 to initiate draining of the vessel 20 and begin the clean cycle . when this occurs , a safety override circuit 102 queries the history memory 46 to determine whether the system is in an appropriate state to be drained . it the history memory 46 is in the appropriate state to be drained , then the safety override allows a drain - valve 74 to be opened . for safety , the drain hose presence switch 76 detects that a drain hose has been connected to the unit . that information is communicated to the history memory 46 . if the drain hose is not connected , the safety override 102 will prevent the valve 74 from - opening . analogously , if the drain hose 76 is connected , the safety override 102 will allow the drain valve 74 to open and vessel 20 drains . upon completion of draining the vessel 20 , and if everything is in the appropriate state for the cleaning cycle , a cleaning sequence processor 104 actuates a pump 106 , opens a fluid inlet valve 108 , and opens fluid inlet valves 110 , 112 concurrently or sequentially . depending on water pressure and flow rates , fittings 12 and 14 may be cleaned concurrently or sequentially . analogously , vessels 20 and 20 &# 39 ; may be cleaned either concurrently or sequentially . while the water is flowing through the inlet fittings 12 and 14 , the cleaning sequence processor maintains the drain valve 74 in an open state so that the rinse water can drain and opens a valve 114 or the valve 30 to vent the vessel to atmosphere . in order to disinfect the inlets 12 , 14 and other portions of the system , a back flush check / solenoid valve 116 , a disinfectant supply valve 118 , and a disinfectant supply vent valve 120 are opened . this enables a disinfectant to be drawn from a reservoir 122 and entrained into the incoming water received by the pump 106 . the disinfectant supply system includes a metering valve 130 which regulates the volume of disinfectant provided . the disinfectant chamber 122 , in the preferred embodiment , holds a sufficient volume of disinfectant for a disinfection cycle . a disinfectant source or supply 132 provides additional disinfectant to the chamber 122 as it is used . a disinfectant level sensor 134 monitors the level of disinfectant in the chamber 122 . in particular , when the disinfectant source 132 runs dry and can no longer maintain the disinfectant chamber 122 full , the level sensor 134 conveys this information to the history memory 46 and causes a low disinfectant level warning circuit 136 to actuate a low disinfectant alarm 138 . if the low disinfectant level is not corrected and the correction information conveyed to the history memory 46 by the low disinfectant sensor 134 , the safety override circuit 102 prevents further cleaning cycles from being initiated . after the inlet fittings 12 , 14 and associated tubing have been flushed and disinfected for a preselected duration as timed by a timer 140 , the cleaning sequence processor 104 closes valves 108 , 110 , 112 , and 114 , and opens valve 142 . the disinfectant supply valves 116 , 118 , and the vent valve 120 remain held open , as does the drain valve 74 . in this state , continued operation of pump 106 pumps the disinfecting solution through a metering chamber 144 and through a pair of spray nozzles 146 . the spray nozzles are configured to spray down the interior surfaces of the first chamber 22 and the second chamber 24 of the waste collection vessel 20 . in one embodiment , the spraying is relied upon to disinfect the interior surfaces of the waste collection vessels in an alternate embodiment , the valve 74 is closed after a preselected spraying duration and the first and second chambers 22 and 24 are allowed to fill . when the level sensor valve 34 senses that the first and second chambers have been fully filled , operation of the pump 106 is terminated and the solution is allowed to sit for a preselected disinfecting duration . thereafter , the drain valve 74 is opened allowing the first and second chambers to drain . preferably , the pump 106 is restarted to spray down the inside of first and second chambers during draining . in the next stage , the disinfectant supply valves 116 , 118 , 120 are closed , pump 106 is stopped , and valve 142 is closed . the drain valve 74 is also closed , but preferably with a sufficient delay to allow residual liquids to drain fully after pumping of disinfectant fluid has stopped . after the drain valve 74 has closed , the vent valve 114 and a valve 148 are opened , allowing the disinfectant solution trapped in the metering chamber 144 to be drained into the first and second chambers 22 , 24 . in this manner , a dose of disinfectant is charged into the vessel 20 prior to biological fluid collection . after the disinfectant solution has been charged into the collection vessel , the valves 114 and 148 are closed and another fluid collection cycle can be commenced . a pressure switch 150 is connected adjacent an output end of the pump 106 and with the memory history 46 . an overpressure sensor 152 compares the pressure from the pressure sensor 150 with acceptable operating pressures for the pump . in an overpressure situation , the pressure indicator switch through the memory history and the safety overrides terminates operation of the pump and alerts the attendant of a malfunction . with reference to fig1 a , in addition to the digital readout 44 , a mechanical indicator of fluid level in the vessel 20 is provided . more specifically , a float 160 is interconnected with a float rod 162 . the float rod 162 extends through an at least partially transparent sealed tube 166 at the top of the vessel 20 . the level of the float rod 162 in the tube 166 is indicative of the level to which the vessel 20 is filled . a gauge 168 is mounted behind the tube 166 . in order to permit easy calibration of the gauge 168 , the gauge is adjustably mounted . in the illustrated embodiment , the gauge includes two pair of spring clamps 170 which holds the gauge in position relative to the tube 166 . optionally , a screw clamp may be provided to lock the gauge more securely in the selected position . various other structures for adjusting and recalibrating the gauge 168 are contemplated . because recalibration is most commonly needed when changing between a vacuum source or gravity feed , there are two primary calibration positions . stops , interchangeable gauge markers , and the like may be provided for shifting the gauge quickly between vacuum and gravity feed positions . the vacuum / atmosphere connection line 32 is interconnected with a filter 172 . the filter is preferably a hydrophobic microporous filter with sufficiently small pore size that bacteria and microbes and aerosols will riot pass therethrough . in this manner , any potentially harmful microbes are trapped against exiting into the ambient atmosphere . with reference to fig3 each of the fittings 12 , 14 , include a male portion 180 over which the length of flexible hose is received . a stop 182 limits receipt of the flexible hose . some of the biological fluid waste may seep between the flexible tube and the male portion , leaving a residue of potentially contaminated fluids on the male portion of the fitting . the female decontamination fitting 80 , ( 82 ) is connected by a flexible hose 190 , ( 192 ) with the valve 110 , 112 . during the cleaning step , the female fitting is inserted over the male fitting and the stop , forming a fluid tight seal with the stop . the female fitting includes an outer flange or bell portion 194 . a fluid passage is defined between the male portion , the stop surface , and the bell such that the disinfectant fluid flows therebetween . a seal 196 retains the disinfectant solution within the chamber defined by the bell . a lock or latching mechanism 198 , such as a snap ring , latches the bell 194 to the male fitting to assure a tight , secure interconnection . the invention has been described with reference to the preferred embodiment . obviously , modifications and alterations will occur to others upon reading and understanding the preceding detailed description . it is intended that the invention be construed as including all such modifications and alterations insofar as they come within the scope of the appended claims or the equivalents thereof . | 0 |
examples of the polyoxyethylene ethers to be used as a surfactant in the present invention include polyethylene glycol mono - p - iso - octylphenyl ether , polyethylene glycol mono - p - tert - octylphenoxypolyethoxyethanol and polyethylene glycol mono ( nonylphenyl ) ether . examples of the n - alkylglucopyranosides include n -( octyl -, nonyl -, dodecyl -, decyl - or heptyl ) ( α - or β -)- d - glucopyranoside . examples of the polyoxyethylene sorbitans include polyoxyethylene sorbitan monolaurate , monopalmitate , monostearate , monooleate and trioleate . preferable surfactants are polyethylene glycol mono - p - iso - octylphenyl ether , polyoxyethylene sorbitan monolaurate , polyoxyethylene sorbitan monoleate , dodecylsulfate , and n - octylglucopyranoside . the present invention is characterized in that whole blood is treated with the above - mentioned surfactant and nitric acid . it is preferable to add the surfactant to the whole blood so as to give a final concentration of 0 . 08 to 0 . 33 % ( w / v ). on the other hand , nitric acid may be preferably added to the whole blood so as to give a final concentration of 0 . 28 to 0 . 83 mol / l . the treatment of the whole blood with the surfactant and nitric acid may be preferably effected at 4 ° to 80 ° c ., preferably 25 ° to 70 ° c ., more preferably 37 ° to 60 ° c . for 3 to 30 minutes , more preferably for 5 to 30 minutes . the whole blood may be treated with the surfactant and nitric acid as follows . namely , the whole blood may be treated with the surfactant and then with nitric acid . alternatively , it may be treated with the surfactant and nitric acid simultaneously . alternatively , it may be treated with a nitric acid solution containing the surfactant . according to the present invention , a specimen , which has been prepared by treating whole blood with a surfactant and nitric acid , is assayed with the limulus amebocyte lysate component . highly preferable assay results can be achieved by adjusting the ph value of the specimen within a range of from 5 to 9 . in the present invention , furthermore , an endotoxin contained in a protein solution can be accurately assayed by adding whole blood to the protein solution prior to the pretreatment with a surfactant and nitric acid and then treating it by the same method as the one described above . the whole blood sample or protein solution sample pretreated as described above can be applied to a known limulus test such as a method of determining a detection ratio of an endotoxin added to the sample ( j . lab . clin . med ., 104 , 321 , 1984 ), the turbidimetric method comprising measuring the increasing turbidity during the gelation reaction ( appl . environ . microbiol ., 41 , 1316 , 1981 ), the turbidimetric kinetic assay comprising measuring turbidity change in gel - clotting and determining the gelation time ( j . parent . sci . technol ., 39 , 194 , 1985 ), and the quartz chemical analysis comprising determining the change of the resonant frequency according to coagulation ( gelation ) ( proc . of mrs int &# 39 ; l . mtg . on adv . mats ., 14 , 221 , 1989 ). an endotoxin in the protein solution can be determined by subtracting the amount of the endotoxin in the whole blood from the total amount of the endotoxin detected . the &# 34 ; whole blood &# 34 ; to be used in the present invention generally means animal blood . examples thereof include human , bovine , equine , canine , sheep , goat , rabbit , rat , guinea pig and mouse bloods . the limulus amebocyte lysate component used in the present invention is obtained by collecting blood lympha from horseshoe crab such as t . tridentatus in japan , t . gigas in thailand and malaysia , l . polyphemus in u . s . a ., and c . rotundicauda in thailand and malaysia , then fracturing blood cells followed by separating a lysate component . a lysate component derived from t . tridentatus is preferably used . the present invention is characterized in that whole blood to be assayed for an endotoxin with the limulus amebocyte lysate component is pretreated with a specific surfactant and nitric acid to serve as a specimen . although the mechanism of the assay process of the present invention has never been clarified in detail hitherto , it is assumed that the assay proceeds as follows . namely , it is known that endotoxin receptors are present on the surface of erythrocytes , platelets , leukocytes and b - cells contained in the whole blood . it is considered that these endotoxin - binding receptors adsorbed on the surface of the above - mentioned cells are efficiently liberated by treating the whole blood with a specific surfactant and nitric acid . the present invention is described in detail below with reference to the following examples and comparative examples , which are not construed to limit the scope of the present invention . 0 . 5 ml of an anticoagulant [ 7 . 6 % ( w / v ) of sodium citrate ] was added to 10 ml of whole blood collected from a healthy subject . then the whole blood was frozen at - 80 ° c . for a short period and then completely hemolyzed to serve as a whole blood sample . to 0 . 1 ml of this whole blood sample was added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 30 pg of an endotoxin preparation from e . coli 0111 : b4 ( difco laboratories , inc .). then , 0 . 5 ml of an aqueous solution of nitric acid of a definite concentration containing 0 . 25 % by weight of a surfactant triton x - 100 ( polyethylene glycol mono - p - iso - octylphenyl ether , product of rohm & amp ; hass co .) was added thereto , followed by maintaining at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes . then the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 15 to 0 . 85m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the following manner . endospecy ® ( product of seikagaku corporation ), which is a preparation obtained by removing enzymes reacting with glucans from the limulus amebocyte lysate extract component , was dissolved in 2 . 2 ml of a 0 . 2m tris hydrochloride buffer solution ( ph 8 . 0 ). 0 . 1 ml of the specimen was added to 0 . 1 ml of the endospecy solution , and incubated at 37 ° c . for 30 minutes . then 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 04 % by weight of sodium nitrite in 0 . 48n hydrochloric acid solution , 0 . 5 ml of 0 . 3 % by weight of ammonium sulfamate and 0 . 5 ml of 0 . 07 % by weight of n - 1 - naphthylethylenediamine dihydrochloride were successively added thereto under stirring to perform a diazo coupling reaction . the absorbance of the reaction mixture was determined with an spectrophotometer at 545 nm . table 1 shows the results of the assay in this example , wherein the nitric acid concentration was varied , as well as the results of the comparative example wherein no endotoxin was added . in table 1 , the nitric acid concentration (%) means the final concentration . regarding the assay results , the data of the comparative example in which no endotoxin was added were expressed in the absorbance at 545 nm . on the other hand , the data of example 1 in which the endotoxin was added were expressed in the detection ratio (%) determined by referring the data of control example in which the whole blood sample was replaced by physiological saline for injection , and the nitric acid aqueous solution containing triton x - 100 and the aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide were replaced by distilled water for injection , as to 100 . table 1______________________________________ nitric acid absorbance detection ratio conc . ( adding no of addedspecimen ( w / v %) endotoxin ) endotoxin (%) ______________________________________example 1 0 . 64 unable to collect unable to collectand supernatant supernatantcomparative 0 . 86 0 . 050 108example 1 . 27 0 . 023 107 1 . 68 0 . 020 105 2 . 09 0 . 020 100 2 . 50 0 . 021 100 2 . 91 0 . 020 100 3 . 32 0 . 019 91 3 . 77 0 . 018 82 4 . 18 0 . 019 63control 0 . 00 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ as table 1 shows , when a concentration of nitric acid was low , no sample could be obtained since the denatured product was poorly precipitated and it was impossible to effect the separation by centrifugation . when the concentration of nitric acid exceeded 3 . 32 %, on the other hand , the detection ratio of the endotoxin was lowered . thus it has been clarified that limulus test false - positive factors and inhibition factors ( false - negative factors ) were completely removed from the whole blood sample when a nitric acid concentration ranged from about 0 . 86 to 2 . 91 % so that the true content of the endotoxin in the whole blood sample could be accurately determined at a high reliability and a high reproducibility . the fact that the absorbance of the comparative example in which no endotoxin was added agrees with that of the control example indicates that the limulus test false - positive factors in the whole blood have been completely denatured and removed . furthermore , the fact that the detection ratio of the endotoxin in the example in which the endotoxin was added is 100 % means that the limulus test inhibition factors in the whole blood have been completely denatured and removed . it is ideal to select such conditions as to make it possible to completely denature and remove these interfering factors simultaneously , which means that the data of the comparative example are almost the same as those of the control example and the data of the example are almost 100 % ( i . e ., the endotoxin added in the example are almost completely detected and recovered ). as table 1 shows , the aforesaid conditions can be achieved when the nitric acid was used at a concentration of from 2 . 09 to 2 . 91 %. 0 . 05 ml of an anticoagulant ( heparin ) was added to 10 ml of whole blood collected from a healthy subject . then the whole blood was frozen at - 80 ° c . for a short period and then completely hemolyzed to serve as a whole blood sample . to 0 . 1 ml of this whole blood sample was added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 10 pg of an endotoxin preparation from e . coli ukt - b ( national institute of hygienic sciences , osaka branch , osaka , japan ). subsequently , 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing triton x - 100 of a definite concentration ( from 0 to 0 . 83 % by weight ) was added thereto , followed by maintaining at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes . then the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 2 shows the results of the assay in example 2 , in which the concentration of triton x - 100 was varied , as well as the results of the comparative example , in which no endotoxin was added , and those of control example , in which the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline . similar to example 1 , the data of the comparative example in which no endotoxin as added were expressed in the absorbance at 545 nm . on the other hand , the data of example 2 in which the endotoxin was added were expressed in the detection ratio (%) determined by referring the data of control example as to 100 . table 2______________________________________ triton absorbance detection ratio x - 100 ( adding no of addedspecimen conc . ( w / v %) endotoxin ) endotoxin (%) ______________________________________example 2 0 0 . 032 57and 0 . 08 0 . 024 76comparative 0 . 13 0 . 021 92example 0 . 17 0 . 021 100 0 . 20 0 . 021 100 0 . 25 0 . 021 100 0 . 33 0 . 020 89 0 . 42 0 . 020 63 0 . 83 0 . 017 8control 0 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ table 2 shows that the supernatant obtained after centrifugation was contaminated with denatured insoluble matters and the detection ratio of the endotoxin was substantially low , when the concentration of triton x - 100 was 0 ( i . e ., no triton x - 100 was added ). in contrast , the supernatant obtained by centrifuging the whole blood sample treated with nitric acid containing , for example , 0 . 17 to 0 . 25 % of triton x - 100 , was a colorless and transparent liquid free from any decomposed and denatured matters . in this case , the added endotoxin was detected at a ratio of 100 %. thus it has been found that limulus test false - positive factors and inhibition factors were completely removed from the whole blood when the surfactant ( triton x - 100 ) was used in an appropriately predetermined concentration so that the true content of an endotoxin in the whole blood sample could be accurately determined at a high reliability . in this example , the case wherein no triton x - 100 was added ( i . e ., treated with nitric acid alone ) corresponds to the acid - treatment described in u . s . pat . no . 4 , 495 , 294 as mentioned above . thus it is indicated that the present invention has considerably improved the known assay method and thus enables the accurate assay of an endotoxin in whole blood . to 0 . 1 ml of a whole blood sample prepared in the same manner as in example 2 was added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 10 pg of an endotoxin preparation from e . coli ukt - b ( national institute of hygienic sciences , osaka branch , osaka , japan ). subsequently , 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing 0 . 25 % by weight of triton x - 100 was added thereto , followed by maintaining at 37 ° c . for a definite period of time . then the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 3 shows the results of the assay in example 3 , in which the heating period was varied , as well as the results of the comparative example , in which no endotoxin was added , and those of control example , in which the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline . table 3______________________________________ heating absorbance detection ratio time ( adding no of addedspecimen ( min .) endotoxin ) endotoxin (%) ______________________________________example 0 0 . 021 66and 3 0 . 021 90comparative 5 0 . 021 100example 10 0 . 021 100 20 0 . 022 96 30 0 . 022 93control untreated 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ as shown in table 3 , the detection ratio was low , when the sample was heated for 0 minute ( i . e ., centrifuged immediately after the treatment with nitric acid and triton x - 100 ). in contrast , it has been found that limulus test false positive factors and inhibition factors were completely removed from the whole blood sample when the sample was pretreated for 5 minutes or longer so that the true content of an endotoxin in the whole blood sample could be accurately determined at a high reliability . to 0 . 1 ml of a whole blood sample prepared in the same manner as in example 2 was added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 10 pg of an endotoxin preparation from e . coli ukt - b ( national institute of hygienic sciences , osaka branch , osaka , japan ). then , 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing 0 . 25 % by weight of triton x - 100 was added thereto , followed by maintaining at a definite temperature for 5 minutes . then the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 4 shows the results of the assay in example 4 , in which the heating temperature was varied , as well as the results of the comparative example , in which no endotoxin was added , and those of control example , in which the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline . table 4______________________________________ heating absorbance detection ratio temp . ( adding no of addedspecimen (° c .) endotoxin ) endotoxin (%) ______________________________________example 4 4 0 . 021 72and 25 0 . 021 89comparative 37 0 . 021 100example 45 0 . 021 100 56 0 . 021 100 70 0 . 021 87 80 0 . 021 82control untreated 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ as shown in table 4 , the detection ratio was low when the sample was treated at 4 ° c . in contrast , it has been found that limulus test false - positive factors and inhibition factors were completely removed from the whole blood sample when the sample was treated at 37 ° c . or above so that the true content of an endotoxin in the whole blood sample could be accurately determined at a high reliability . the whole blood collected from a healthy subject without adding any anticoagulant was completely hemolyzed by vigorously stirring to give a whole blood sample . to 0 . 1 ml of the whole blood sample thus prepared was added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 10 pg of a s . abortus equi endotoxin ( sigma chemical co .). subsequently , 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing tween 20 ® ( polyoxyethylene sorbitan monolaurate , product of wako pure chemical industries , ltd .) at a definite concentration selected within a range of from 0 to 1 . 0 % was added thereto , followed by maintaining at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes . then , the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 5 shows the results of the assay in example 5 , in which the concentration of tween 20 was varied , as well as the results of the comparative example , in which no endotoxin was added , and those of control example , in which the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline . table 5______________________________________ tween 20 absorbance detection ratio conc . ( adding no of addedspecimen ( w / v %) endotoxin ) endotoxin (%) ______________________________________example 5 0 0 . 034 54and 0 . 08 0 . 025 87comparative 0 . 17 0 . 021 98example 0 . 21 0 . 021 100 0 . 25 0 . 021 100 0 . 33 0 . 020 100 0 . 42 0 . 020 100 0 . 83 0 . 018 75control 0 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ from the results shown in table 5 , it was found that limulus test false - positive factors and inhibition factors were completely removed from the whole blood sample when the sample was treated with the surfactant ( tween 20 ) at an appropriately predetermined concentration so that the true content of an endotoxin in the whole blood sample could be accurately assayed at a high reliability . on the other hand , the sample treated with nitric acid alone without adding any tween 20 showed an obviously lower detection ratio of the endotoxin . to 0 . 1 ml of the whole blood sample prepared in the same manner as in example 5 were successively added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 10 pg of a s . abortus equi endotoxin ( sigma chemical co .) and 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing tween 80 ® ( polyoxyethylene sorbitan monooleate , product of wako pure chemical industries , ltd ) at a definite concentration selected within a range of from 0 to 1 . 0 %. after maintaining at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes , the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 6 shows the results of the assay in example 6 , in which the concentration of tween 80 was varied , as well as the results of the comparative example , in which no endotoxin was added , and those of control example , in which the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline . table 6______________________________________ tween 80 absorbance detection ratio conc . ( adding no of addedspecimen ( w / v %) endtoxin ) endotoxin (%) ______________________________________example 6 0 0 . 032 51and 0 . 08 0 . 031 67comparative 0 . 17 0 . 025 85example 0 . 25 0 . 021 94 0 . 33 0 . 021 100 0 . 42 0 . 021 100 0 . 83 0 . 020 83control 0 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ from the results shown in table 6 , it was found that limulus test false - positive factors and inhibition factors were completely removed from the whole blood sample when the sample was treated with the surfactant ( tween 80 ) at an appropriately predetermined concentration so that the true content of an endotoxin in the whole blood sample could be accurately assayed at a high reliability . on the other hand , the sample treated with nitric acid alone without adding any tween 80 showed an obviously lower detection ratio of the endotoxin . to 0 . 1 ml of a whole blood sample prepared in the same manner as in example 5 were successively added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 30 pg of an endotoxin preparation from e . coli 0111 : b4 ( difco laboratories , inc .) and 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing sodium dodecylsulfate ( sds ) at a definite concentration selected within a range of from 0 to 0 . 83 %. after maintaining at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes , the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 7 shows the results of the assay in example 7 , wherein the sds concentration was varied , as well as the results of the comparative example , wherein no endotoxin was added , and those of control example , wherein the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline , similar to example 1 . table 7______________________________________ sds absorbance detection ratio conc . ( adding no of addedspecimen ( w / v %) endtoxin ) endotoxin (%) ______________________________________example 7 0 0 . 035 57and 0 . 08 0 . 035 60comparative 0 . 17 0 . 022 95example 0 . 21 0 . 021 100 0 . 25 0 . 021 100 0 . 33 0 . 021 100 0 . 42 0 . 022 102 0 . 83 0 . 019 88control 0 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ as shown in table 7 , it was found that limulus test false - positive factors and inhibition factors were completely removed from the whole blood sample when the surfactant ( sds ) was used at an appropriately predetermined concentration so that the true content of an endotoxin in the whole blood sample could be accurately assayed at a high reliability . the whole blood collected from a healthy subject using sodium ethylenediamine tetraacetate ( anticoagulant ) was cooled to 4 ° c . without hemolyzing to thereby give a whole blood sample . to 0 . 1 ml of the whole blood sample thus prepared were successively added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 30 pg of an endotoxin preparation from e . coli 0111 : b4 ( difco laboratories ) and 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing n - octylglucopyranoside at a definite concentration selected within a range of from 0 to 1 . 0 %. the mixture was maintained at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes and then , it was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 8 shows the results of the assay in example 8 , in which the concentration of n - octylglucopyranoside was varied , as well as the results of the comparative example , in which no endotoxin was added , and those of control example , in which the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline . table 8______________________________________ n - octyl - absorbance detection ratio glucopyranoside ( adding no of addedspecimen conc . ( w / v %) endotoxin ) endotoxin (%) ______________________________________example 8 0 0 . 035 57and 0 . 08 0 . 030 58comparative 0 . 13 0 . 022 72example 0 . 17 0 . 021 85 0 . 20 0 . 021 96 0 . 25 0 . 021 100 0 . 33 0 . 021 100 0 . 42 0 . 020 91 0 . 83 0 . 015 2control 0 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ as shown in table 8 , it was found that limulus test false - positive factors and inhibition factors were completely removed from the whole blood sample when the sample was treated with the surfactant ( n - octylglucopyranoside ) at a concentration appropriately predetermined so that the true content of an endotoxin in the whole blood sample could be accurately determined at a high reliability . the whole bloods of various experimental animals including male icr mice , male wistar rats , male hartley guinea pigs , male jw rabbits and male beagle canines were collected with adding an anticoagulant ( heparin ). these whole bloods were frozen at - 80 ° c . within a short period and then completely hemolyzed to thereby give whole blood samples . to 0 . 1 ml of each whole blood sample thus prepared , were successively added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 10 pg of an endotoxin preparation from e . coli ukt - b ( national institute of hygienic sciences , osaka branch , osaka , japan ) and 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing 0 . 5 ml of triton x - 100 . the mixture is maintained at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes and then it was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 9 shows the results of the assay in example 9 as well as the results of the comparative example in which no endotoxin was added , and those of control example in which the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline . table 9______________________________________ absorbance detection ratio test ( adding no of addedspecimen animal endtoxin ) endotoxin (%) ______________________________________example 9 mouse 0 . 020 100and rat 0 . 021 100comparative guinea pig 0 . 021 99example rabbit 0 . 023 100 canine 0 . 020 99control 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ as shown in table 9 , the detection ratio was almost 100 % in each animal . thus , the assay method of the present invention can provide good results even in the case of using a limited amount of samples obtained from small experimental animals . this means that the method of the present invention is remarkably improved not only in the quickness and convenience but also in the specific treatment of specimens as compared with conventional ones . 0 . 5 ml of an anticoagulant [ 7 . 6 % ( w / v ) of sodium citrate ] was added to 10 ml of whole blood collected from a healthy subject . then the whole blood was frozen at - 80 ° c . within a short period and then completely hemolyzed to thereby give a whole blood sample . to 0 . 1 ml of the whole blood sample thus prepared were successively added 0 . 01 ml of an aqueous solution containing 30 pg of an endotoxin preparation from e . coli 0111 : b4 ( difco laboratories , inc .) and 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of nitric acid . after maintaining at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes , the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 4 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with 0 . 4 ml of a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . 0 . 1 ml of the resulting specimen was added to a mixture of limulus amebocyte lysate extract component , a synthetic chromogenic substrate ( boc - leu - gly - arg - pna ), tris hydrochloride buffer ( ph 8 . 0 ) and triton x - 100 at various concentrations . then the mixture was maintained at 37 ° c . for 30 minutes and then the endotoxin was assayed . separately , the endotoxin was added to whole blood in the same manner as described above and then 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m nitric acid aqueous solution containing triton x - 100 at various concentrations was added thereto . after maintaining at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes , the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with 0 . 4 ml of a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m solution of sodium hydroxide . thus another specimen was obtained . 0 . 1 ml of the resulting specimen was added to a mixture of the limulus amebocyte lysate extract component , a synthetic chromogenic substrate ( boc - leu - gly - arg - pna ) and tris hydrochloride buffer ( ph 8 . 0 ). then the mixture was incubated at 37 ° c . for 30 minutes and then the absorbance thereof at 545 nm was measured with a spectrophotometer in the same manner as in example 1 . in table 10 , the data of the comparative example , in which no endotoxin was added were expressed in the absorbance at 545 nm . on the other hand , the data of the reference example , in which the endotoxin was added , were expressed in the detection ratio (%) determined by referring the data of control example , in which the whole blood sample was replaced by physiological saline for injection , as to 100 . the triton x - 100 concentration ( w / v %) means the concentration in the assay system . table 10______________________________________ adding triton x - adding nitric acid 100 after treating containing triton with at nitric acid x - 100 absorb - absorb - triton ance endo - ance endo - x - 100 ( adding toxin ( adding toxin conc . no endo - detection no endo - detectionspecimen ( w / v %) toxin ) ratio (%) toxin ) ratio (%) ______________________________________reference 0 0 . 032 55 0 . 032 55and 0 . 001 0 . 032 55 0 . 032 55compara - 0 . 003 0 . 032 69 0 . 032 59tive 0 . 005 0 . 034 70 0 . 029 61examples 0 . 010 0 . 030 51 0 . 026 72 0 . 020 0 . 020 8 0 . 024 81 0 . 025 0 . 017 0 0 . 021 93 0 . 033 0 . 017 0 0 . 021 100 0 . 043 0 . 016 0 0 . 021 100 0 . 050 0 . 016 0 0 . 021 100 0 . 063 0 . 015 0 0 . 021 100 0 . 082 0 . 015 0 0 . 021 100 0 . 105 0 . 015 0 0 . 020 65 0 . 208 0 . 014 0 0 . 017 7control 0 0 . 020 100 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ from the results shown in table 10 , its was found that the endotoxin could not be determined when the specimen was treated with nitric acid and then a surfactant such as triton x - 100 was added to the limulus amebocyte lysate component at the enzyme reaction and that the addition of the surfactant at a definite concentration or above at the enzyme reaction caused serious inhibition . it has been furthermore found that the sample was considerably colored due to hemolysis and the assay - inhibition factors could not be removed at all , when a surfactant such as triton x - 100 was added without adding nitric acid followed by heating ( under the same conditions as those described above except that the sodium hydroxide employed for neutralization was replaced by water ). in this case , therefore , the blank value was extremely high and the added endotoxin was never recovered . on the other hand , according to the assay method of the present invention in which a whole blood sample is simultaneously treated with a surfactant such as triton x - 100 and nitric acid , the endotoxin can be accurately determined . 10 μl portions of a 40 ng / ml aqueous solution of e . coli 0111 : b4 endotoxin ( difco laboratories , inc .) were added to 90 μl portions of trypsin ( bovine pancreas , 1 mg / ml , sigma ), thrombin ( human plasma , 250 units / ml , mochida pharmaceutical co ., ltd .) and plasmin ( human plasma , 25 units / ml , sigma ) and well stirred . 90 μl of a human whole blood sample prepared in the same manner as in example 1 was added to 10 μl of each mixture as prepared above and further mixed . subsequently , 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing 0 . 25 % by weight of triton x - 100 was added thereto , followed by maintaining at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes . then the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 11 shows the results of the assay of example 10 , in which the concentration of the protease were varied , as well as the results of the comparative example , in which no endotoxin was added ( untreated and treated ), and those of control example , wherein the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline , similar to example 1 . as shown in table 11 , it was found that limulus test false - positive factors and inhibition factors contained in a protease solution were completely removed when the whole blood was added to a protease solution and then treated with nitric acid containing a surfactant at an appropriately predetermined concentration so that the true content of an endotoxin in the sample could be accurately determined at a high reliability . table 11______________________________________ treated absorb - untreated ance endo - protease absorbance ( adding toxin conc . ( adding no no endo - detectionspecimen kind (/ ml ) endotoxin ) toxin ) ratio (%) ______________________________________example trypsin 8 . 3 μg 1 . 500 0 . 035 10010 and thrombin 2 . 1 u 0 . 290 0 . 026 94compara - plasmin 0 . 2 u 0 . 205 0 . 020 95tiveexamplecontrol 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ 10 μl portions of a 40 ng / ml aqueous solution of e . coli 0111 : b4 endotoxin ( difco laboratories , inc .) were added to 90 μl portions of a protease inhibitor , foy ( gabexate mesylate , 1 mg / ml , ono pharmaceutical co ., ltd . ), antithrombin iii ( 4 mg / ml , sigma ) and α 1 - antitrypsin ( 5 mg / ml , sigma ) and well stirred . 90 μl of a rabbit whole blood sample prepared in the same manner as in example 9 was added to 10 μl of each mixture as prepared above , and further mixed . subsequently , 0 . 5 ml of a 0 . 66m aqueous solution of nitric acid containing 0 . 25 % by weight of triton x - 100 was added thereto , followed by maintaining at 37 ° c . for 5 minutes . then the mixture was centrifuged at 3 , 500 rpm for 5 minutes to thereby precipitate solid matters . 0 . 05 ml of the supernatant was collected and the ph value thereof was adjusted to 5 to 9 with a 0 . 45 to 0 . 55m aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide . thus a specimen was obtained . the endotoxin contained in the specimen was assayed in the same manner as in example 1 . table 12 shows the results of the assay of example 11 , in which the concentrations of the protease inhibitors were varied , as well as the results of the comparative example , in which no endotoxin was added ( untreated and treated ), and those of control example , in which the whole blood was replaced with physiological saline . as shown in table 12 , it was found that limulus test false - positive factors and inhibition factors contained in the protease inhibitors were completely removed when whole blood was added to protease inhibitors and then treated with nitric acid containing a surfactant at an appropriately predetermined concentration so that the true content of an endotoxin in the sample could be accurately determined at a high reliability . table 12______________________________________ un - treated treated absorb - absorb - protease ance ance endo - inhibitor ( adding ( adding toxin conc . no endo - no endo - detectionspecimen kind (/ ml ) toxin ) toxin ) ratio (%) ______________________________________example foy 8 . 3 u 0 . 020 0 . 019 9211 and anti - 33 . 3 μg 0 . 019 0 . 020 100compara - thrombintive iiiexample α . sup . 1 - anti - 41 . 6 μg 0 . 020 0 . 020 100 trypsincontrol 0 . 020 100example______________________________________ while the invention has been described in detail and with reference to specific examples thereof , it will be apparent to one skilled in the art that various changes and modifications can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope thereof . | 6 |
fig1 shows a block diagram of a lighting system in accordance with the present invention . the system includes a control system 40 and a plurality of control units 44 , each of which includes at least two light elements 48 . in the embodiment shown , each control unit 44 includes a light element 48r which emits red light , a light element 48g which emits green light and a light element 48b which emits blue light . control units 44 are connected in series fashion to control system 40 by two pairs of electrical connectors 52 and 56 . connectors 52 supply dc power to each control unit 44 to operate the control units and to power light elements 48 . as will be described in further detail below , connectors 56 supply clock and data command signals to control units 44 from control system 40 . control system 40 comprises a controller 60 and a transmitter 64 . in the embodiment shown , controller 60 is a microcomputer such as an ibm pc which is connected to transmitter 64 through a standard centronics parallel port 68 . as will be apparent to those of skill in the art , other controllers , such as dedicated microprocessor - based controllers , may be employed as desired . transmitter 64 is shown in block diagram form in fig2 and schematically in fig3 . transmitter 64 comprises six different functional blocks : parallel to serial converter 72 ; logic control 76 ; pulse generator 80 ; pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 ; power - up reset 88 ; and voltage converter 92 . in the embodiment shown , transmitter 64 is implemented from standard ttl components , such as those described in &# 34 ; the ttl logic data book &# 34 ; published by texas instruments incorporated . it will be apparent that other implementations are possible , including application specific integrated circuits ( asics ). pulse generator 80 comprises ic25 which is a 74ls123 retriggerable monostable multivibrator configured to provide a square wave timing signal to pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 at approximately 2 mhz . pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 comprises ic22 which is a 4 - bit binary counter such as a 74ls93 , ic23 and ic24 which are 74ls74 d - type flip - flops , one gate of ic27 which is a 74ls00 2 - input nand gate and one gate of ic28 which is a 74ls09 2 - input and gate . pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 receives the square wave timing signal from pulse generator 80 and divides the frequency by two to improve its stability . the divided signal is employed as a square wave clock signal further described below . pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 also operates to count the pulses on the clock signal to a count of 8 pulses and to a count of 10 pulses . the use of these two counts are described below . parallel to serial converter 72 includes a 74ls165 parallel load 8 bit shift register ic21 . ic21 is connected to the eight data lines of parallel port 68 and transforms the 8 bits of parallel data into a serial data stream of bits in response to 8 pulses received from pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 . the serial data bits are output on the data line to voltage converter 92 . voltage converter 92 comprises ic30 which is a mc1488 line driver , manufactured by motorola . ic30 converts the voltage levels on the data line from parallel to serial converter 72 and the voltage levels on the clock line from pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 from standard 0 and 5 volt ttl voltage levels to - 12 and + 12 volts . the conversion to the - 12 and + 12 voltage levels provides signals which are better suited for transmission over substantial distances to control units 44 . power - up reset 88 is an analog network comprising t4 which is a 2n4400 transistor , d6 which is a 1n4148 diode , c11 which is a 4 . 7 microfarad capacitor and r9 which is a 22 kohm resistor . as will be apparent to those of skill in the art , when transmitter 64 is powered up power - up reset 88 provides a reset pulse to place transmitter 64 into a predefined known state . logic control network 76 provides the ` handshaking ` required by parallel port 68 . logic control network 76 comprises ic23 and ic24 which are described above , gates from ic26 and ic27 which are 74ls00 2 - input nand gates , gates from ic28 which is described above , and gates from ic29 which is a 74ls32 2 - input or gate . on receipt of the strobe signal from parallel port 68 , logic control network 76 sets ic21 to load the 8 bits of parallel data from parallel port 68 into its internal shift register and sets pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 to commence counting . on each count of pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 , ic21 outputs one bit of data onto the data line and one bit of clock data onto the clock line to voltage converter 92 . when pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 has reached a count of 8 , further output from parallel to serial converter 72 to the data line is inhibited but two additional bits of clock data are output onto the clock line until pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 reaches a count of 10 . as will be described below , at control units 44 the ninth clock bit acts as a data latch bit and the tenth bit acts as a reset bit . once pulse counter & amp ; divider 84 has reached a count of ten , logic control 76 asserts the interrupt signal to parallel port 68 to indicate that transmitter 64 is ready to receive another 8 bits of data from parallel port 68 and the transmission cycle may start again . as will be further described below , in the illustrated embodiment control signals are transmitted to control units 44 in the form of one of three different 8 - bit ` words `. the first word is in the form &# 34 ; dddddd11 &# 34 ;, where ` dddddd ` represents 6 bits of address data and the trailing ` 11 ` identifies the data as being a group address id . the second word is in the form &# 34 ; dddddd01 &# 34 ;, where ` dddddd ` represents 6 bits of address data and the trailing ` 01 ` identifies the data as being a unit address id . the third word in the form &# 34 ; xxxdddd0 &# 34 ; where the three initial x &# 39 ; s indicate which light element the data relates to , the ` dddd ` represents the binary value for the light ( s ) and the trailing 0 indicates that the word is a light data word . in the embodiment shown , a one in the leading ` x ` selects light element 48r , a one in the second ` x ` selects light element 48b and a one in the trailing ` x ` selects light element 48g . of course , two or more light elements can be selected at the same time to receive the same binary data by setting more than one ` x ` to one . it is contemplated that this will be useful in many circumstances , such as extinguishing or illuminating all of the light elements of a particular module at the same time . control unit 44 will now be described with reference to fig4 which shows a block diagram of control unit 44 , and to fig5 and 6 which show schematic diagrams thereof . in fig5 and 6 , the interconnections between the two diagrams are indicated by the tabs labelled a through k . as can be seen in fig4 each control unit 44 comprises six main function blocks as well as a gate amplifier 90 and the three d / a converter and drivers 94r , 94b , 94g . a voltage conversion block 96 is also included for the control unit 44 which is closest electrically to control system 40 as will be further described below . the six main function blocks comprise data transmission logic control 100 , serial to parallel converter 104 , power - up reset 108 , data register control logic 112 , address decoder block 116 and data register block 120 . as can be seen , address decoder block 116 includes a group id decoder 124 and a unit id decoder 128 . further , data register block 120 includes three data registers 132r , 132b , 132g . in the embodiment shown in fig5 and 6 , control unit 44 is implemented from standard ttl components . it is contemplated that , in some uses of the present invention such as for decorative lighting , other implementations will be preferred for convenience and / or economy . such other implementations will be apparent to those of skill in the art and include , but are not limited to , application specific integrated circuits ( asics ) and / or gate arrays . as discussed above , control units 44 are connected in series fashion to control system 40 . the control unit 44a which is electrically closest to control system 40 includes voltage conversion block 96 which transforms the - 12 v and + 12 v voltage levels of the clock and data signals on electrical connectors 56 from control system 40 to standard ttl voltage levels of 0 and + 5 v respectively . as shown in fig5 voltage conversion block 96 comprises ic15 which is a mc1489ad voltage mode receiver , manufactured by motorola and two gates of ic19 which is a 74ls04 hex inverter . once converted to 0 and + 5 v levels , the clock and data signals are applied to data transmission logic control 100 and to serial / parallel conversion 104 respectively . the remaining control units 44 which are electrically further from control system 40 do not require a voltage conversion block 96 as they receive their clock and data signals on electrical connectors 56 via the electrically preceding control unit &# 39 ; s gate amplifier 90 which outputs 0 and 5 v level signals . each gate amplifier 90 regenerates the clock and data signals to minimize degradation of the signals for each following control unit 44 . gate amplifier 90 comprises two gates of ic8 which is a 74ls32 or gate . two 5 . 1 v zener diodes d2 and d3 are employed to remove over - voltage spikes on the data and clock lines . it will be apparent that the gate amplifier 90 may be omitted from the control unit 44 which is electrically most distant from control system 40 if desired . regardless of whether voltage converter block 96 or the gate amplifier 90 of an electrically preceding control unit supplies the 0 v and 5 v clock and data signals , the electrical circuitry of each control unit 44 is powered by the 5 v dc voltage supplied through electrical connecters 52 . to ensure correct voltage levels to each control unit 44 , each control unit includes ic14 which is a lm78m05 positive voltage regulator . data transmission logic control 100 comprises two more gates of ic8 , described above , three gates of ic9 which is a 74ls00 2 - input nand gate , ic10 which is a 74ls93 4 - bit binary counter and ic13 which is a 74ls74 d - type flip flop . data transmission logic control 100 controls the serial to parallel data conversion and , as will be further described below , provides a data latch pulse and a reset pulse . serial / parallel converter 104 comprises ic12 which is a 74ls164 8 - bit parallel - out shift register . data transmission logic control sets serial / parallel converter 104 to load one bit of serial data from the data line for each of eight clock pulses , whether the data and clock pulse are received from voltage conversion 96 or from the gate amplifier 90 of a preceding controller 44 . group id decoder 124 of address decoder block 116 comprises six gates of ic16 which is a 74ls04 inverter and ic17 which is a 74ls30 8 - input nand gate . as shown in fig5 the least two significant output bits of ic12 are directly connected to two of the inputs of ic17 ( labelled g and c in the figure ). as described above , a data word representing a group id has its two least significant bits set to ` 11 ` and these two bits are effectively tested by ic17 to determine whether of not the data word is a group id . the remaining inputs to ic17 may be connected by jumpers 100 either directly or through inverter gates of ic16 to the remaining output bits of ic12 which constitute the data bits . by setting jumpers 100 in a particular manner , any one of up to sixty four group id &# 39 ; s may be selected . in fig5 a group id of three ( binary &# 34 ; 000011 &# 34 ;) has been selected for control unit 44 by setting jumpers 100e and 100f to directly connect two inputs of ic17 to the two least significant data bits of ic12 while the remaining jumpers 100a through 100d have been placed to connect ic12 to ic17 through inverter gates of ic16 . unit id decoder 128 of address decoder block 116 comprises six gates of ic7 which is a 74ls04 inverter , one gate of ic19 which is also a 74ls04 inverter and ic11 which is a 74ls30 8 - input nand gate . the least significant output bit of ic12 ( labelled c ) is directly connected to one input of ic11 while the next least significant bit of ic12 ( labelled g ) is connected to another input of ic11 through an inverter gate of ic19 . as described above , a data word representing a unit id has its two least significant bits set to ` 01 ` and these two bits are effectively tested by ic11 to determine whether of not the data word is a unit id . the remaining inputs to ic11 may be connected by jumpers 104 either directly or through inverter gates of ic7 to the remaining output bits of ic12 which constitute the data bits . as with group id decoder 124 described above , by setting jumpers 104 in a particular manner , any one of up to sixty four unit id &# 39 ; s may be selected . in fig5 a group id of eight ( binary &# 34 ; 001000 &# 34 ;) has been selected for control unit 44 by setting jumper 104c to directly connect an input of ic11 to the third most significant data bit of ic12 while the remaining jumpers 104a , 104b , 104d , 104e and 104f have been placed to connect outputs of ic12 to inputs of ic11 through inverter gates of ic7 . the above - described address decoder block 116 is has been designed to allow for a plurality of light modules to be attached to a single control system 40 . in fact , with the capacity for sixty - four different group ids and sixty - four unit ids , the above - described address decoder block 116 provides for up to four thousand and ninety six uniquely addressed light modules to be connected to a single control system 40 . it will be apparent to those of skill in the art that in some circumstances , more or fewer numbers of unique addresses will be required and address decoder block 116 may be modified accordingly . for example , in a system requiring less than one hundred and twenty eight unique addresses , group id decoder 124 may be removed and unit id decoder 128 and data register control logic 112 modified accordingly . data register control logic 112 comprises both gates of ic4 and ic5 which are 74ls21 4 - input and gates , ic6 which is a 74ls04 inverter , ic13 and ic18 which are 74ls74 d - type flip - flops , one gate of ic9 described above and one gate of ic19 described above . power - up reset 108 comprises an analog network of t4 which is 2n4400 transistor , c1 which is a 2 . 2 microfarad capacitor , d1 which is a 1n4148 diode , and r1 which is a 2 . 4 kohm resistor . as will be apparent to those of skill in the art , power - up reset 108 operates to supply a reset pulse upon power - up of control unit 44 to place the control unit into a known state . as shown in fig6 each of d / a converter and drivers 94r , 94b , 94g comprises a 74ls75 4 - bit bi - stable latch ( ic1 , ic2 and ic3 respectively ). resistors r1 through r4 ( 2 . 4 kohms , 1 . 2 kohms , 560 ohms and 390 ohms respectively ) are connected to the outputs of the 74ls75 and with r6 ( 5 . 1 kohms ) and r5 ( 560 ohms ) act as a d / a converter to control a 2sc1096 driver transistor ( t1 , t2 and t3 respectively ) which drives its associated light element 48r , 48b , 48g . as will be understood by those of skill in the art , depending upon which and how many outputs of 74ls75 are set to + 5 v , the brightness of the associated light element 48 will be varied accordingly . operation of a control unit 44 will now be described by way of example . data transmission and logic control 100 receives clock signals from electrical connecter 56 and causes serial / parallel conversion unit 104 to load eight bits of data from electrical connecter 56 and convert it into a word of data . if the two least significant bits of the received word are ` 11 `, group id decoder 124 checks to see if the group id received matches that of the control unit 44 as set by jumpers 100 . if the group id does not match , the received word of data is ignored as it is intended for another control unit 44 . if the group id does match , on the ninth ( data latch ) clock pulse , data register control logic 112 is set to receive the unit id . the tenth ( reset ) clock pulse received clears ic10 and ic12 in preparation to receive the next eight data bits . the next eight data bits are received during the next eight clock pulses and are converted to an eight bit data word . provided that the two least significant bits of the received word are ` 01 `, unit id decoder 128 checks to see if the unit id received matches that of the control unit 44 as set by jumpers 104 . if the unit id does not match , the received word of data is ignored as it is intended for another control unit 44 . if the unit id does match , on the ninth ( data latch ) clock pulse , data register control logic 112 asserts the select line to data registers 132 and one the tenth ( reset ) clock pulse , ic10 and ic12 are cleared in preparation to receive the next eight data bits . the next eight data bits are received during the next eight clock pulses and are converted into an eight bit data word as before . provided that the least significant bit ( bit 8 ) of the word is set to ` 0 `, this received word comprises lamp control data . on the ninth ( data latch ) clock pulse the strobe pulse signal is asserted by data register control logic 112 and , if the most significant bit of the word ( bit 1 ) is set to ` 1 `, the four bits of data at bits 4 , 5 , 6 and 7 will be loaded into data register 120r . alternatively , if the second or third bits ( bit 2 or bit 3 ) of the data word are set to ` 1 ` bits 4 , 5 , 6 and 7 will be loaded into data register 120b or data register 120g respectively . further , as described above , two or all three of bits 1 , 2 and 3 may be set to ` 1 ` to simultaneously load bits 4 , 5 , 6 and 7 into more than one data register 120 . depending upon which data register ( s ) 120 are loaded , the brightness of the light element 48 associated therewith is varied according to the received data . finally , the tenth ( reset ) clock pulse is received and control unit 44 is ready to commence another transmission reception cycle . many uses are contemplated for the present invention . in particular , it is believed that the present invention will be suited for use in decorative lighting systems such as christmas lighting . fig7 and 9 show a decorative lighting module 200 which is currently contemplated for use in christmas and other decorative lighting systems . decorative lighting module 200 comprises a control unit 44 , a light element assembly 210 , a wire clamp 214 and a locking nut 218 . light assembly 210 further comprises three light elements 222r , 222b and 222g and a diffusion lens 226 . light element 222r emits red light , while light elements 222b and 222g emit blue and green light respectively . diffusion lens 226 operates to diffuse the light emitted by the light elements 222 such that , to an observer &# 39 ; s eye , the light elements 222 appear as a single light source . light assembly 210 is removably coupled to control unit 44 by locking nut 218 which allows replacement of light assembly 210 in the event of failure of one or more light elements 222 . further , four electrical connectors 230 electrically couple light elements 222 to control unit 44 in a removable fashion . connectors 230 are received in complementary sockets 232 in control unit 44 . control unit 44 is connected to a four conductor cable 238 , shown in ghosted line in fig7 which comprises electrical connectors 52 and 56 . as seen in the figure , cable 238 also includes a key portion 242 which is received in keyway 246 of wire clamp 214 to assure correct orientation of electrical connectors 52 and 56 with respect to complementary electrical connection points 252 and 256 on control unit 44 . the control unit 44 which is located nearest control system 40 would be unique within the system in that it also includes voltage conversion block 96 . as will be apparent , control unit 44 of decorative lighting module 200 does not include gate amplifiers 90 as it is contemplated that in many circumstances these will not be required . however , if gate amplifiers 90 are required due , for example to long runs of connectors 56 , control unit 44 may be modified to include gate amplifiers 90 in any suitable manner as would be apparent to those of skill in the art . for example , incoming connectors 56 would be joined to one side of control unit 44 and outgoing connectors 56 would be connected to the output of gate amplifier 90 at other side of control unit 44 in a ` make and break ` fashion . it is contemplated that for most decorative lighting requirements , control units 44 will be sold in sets and each control unit 44 in a set will have a unique preset unit id . a consumer can therefore initially purchase a set of ten modules , twenty modules , etc . as meets his current needs . to allow the consumer to subsequently buy additional modules without the risk of having non - unique unit ids , each control unit 44 includes six jumper sockets 280 with which the group id for the unit 44 may be set . thus , the consumer need only insert jumpers 100 into one or more of jumper sockets 280 to select a unique group id for his subsequently purchased modules . this will allow the sale and use of sets of modules with unit ids which are preset by allowing for unique group ids to be established as required by the user . another contemplated use of the present invention is to construct illuminated display signs for advertising or other purposes . fig1 shows a display sign 300 constructed of an array of twenty - two rows of twenty - eight light modules 200 . each light module 200 comprises one pixel in the desired illuminated display and , due to the different colored light elements in each module 200 , each pixel may assume any one of several thousand different colors . while the figure shows a simple ` happy face ` character , it will be understood by those of skill in the art that more complex and / or animated displays may be produced simply by providing control system 40 with an appropriate program of data words . in one contemplated embodiment of an illuminated display sign in accordance with the present invention , the signs will be installed in various public locations and their use will be leased to various advertisers . at the end of the lease term , the program of data words in control system 40 will be replaced with a new program . such programs may be conveniently contained in one or more semiconductor memory devices which are removably connected to control system 40 as required . another contemplated use of the present invention is in automotive lighting . for example , instead of running eight or more wires to an automotive tail light assembly , one or more light modules in accordance with the present invention may be installed in the tail light assembly requiring a maximum of four wires to be run . in this intended use , each light element 48 of a module may be placed in various portions of the tail light assembly as required . further , if required , light elements 48r , 48b , 48g may be different colors as described above , or may be the same color . for example , light element 48r may be a red brake light while light element 48b may be a white backup light and light element 48g may be a red turn signal . other uses and variations of the present invention will occur to those of skill in the art and should not be considered as departing from the scope of the present invention as defined in the claims as appended hereto . | 6 |
referring to fig1 and 2 , a preferred embodiment in accordance with the invention includes a container 1 , a spreading device 2 , a scraper 3 , and a wiping device 4 . the spreading device 2 , the scraper 3 , and the wiping device 4 are located within the container 1 . the container 1 is a bottom air - proof utensil . the container 1 includes a short wall , a tall wall , and two arched side walls . the side walls form a two - sided plank 5 on whose upper rim is an arched opening designed to fit matching arches on the bottom part of an armrest of an electric escalator near where an armrest belt conveyer 7 moves upwardly from an exit on a floor 8 . the opening of the two - sided plank 5 fits the arched part of the conveyer 7 very well . the container 1 is set on the two edges of the electric escalator . a spreading device 2 ( including a strong liquid absorbefacient material 9 and a cover 10 ) is connected to the opening of the two - sided plank , adjacent one side of the escalator . the upper end of the material 9 is fastened by the cover 10 which is , in turn , connected to the outer rim of the conveyer 7 . the lower end of the material 9 contacts the bottom of the container 1 . this makes it easier to absorb the mixture of cleanser and bactericide stored in the container 1 . when the conveyer 7 is running in the direction indicated by the arrow 12 , the mixture is spread onto the surface of the conveyer 7 . the scraper 3 and the wiping device 4 are structurally similar to the scraper d and the wiping device e of the conventional device illustrated in fig3 . the scraper 3 and the wiping device 4 follow the running direction of the conveyer 7 in turn . the difference is that excess mixture 11 on the surface of the conveyer 7 which is scraped off by the scraper 3 automatically falls by gravity into the container 1 for reuse , i . e ., to be reabsorbed by the lower absorbent end of the spreading device 2 . the mixture of cleanser and bactericide is thus saved . the cleaning device can be used without discontinuing use of the escalator since the cleaning device is fitted on the floor 8 where the conveyer 7 rises upwardly from the exit . further , the invention can be fastened on the armrest belt conveyer by only using a hanging device . the operation and usage of the electric escalator will not be obstructed . the excess mixture scraped off by the scraper automatically drops back into the container 1 . although the present invention has been described in connection with particular embodiments thereof , many other variations and modifications and other uses will become apparent to those skilled in the art . it is preferred , therefore , that the present invention be limited not by the specific disclosure herein , but only by the appended claims . | 1 |
fig2 illustrates a backlight control device 200 according to a first embodiment of the present invention . the backlight control device 200 comprises a plurality of pwm control units 202 each including a pwm register 212 and a control unit 214 , a plurality of current output units 204 coupled to the pwm control units 202 , and a shift register 206 coupled to the pwm registers 212 of the pwm control units 202 . the shift register 206 stores brightness control signals for the pwm control units 202 . each current output unit 204 comprises a current source 208 , and an nmos 210 . the current source 208 is coupled to a low voltage terminal such as ground . the source of nmos 210 is coupled to the current source 208 , and the gate is coupled to the pwm control unit 202 . each pwm control unit 202 comprises a pwm register 212 coupled to the shift register 206 for storing a brightness control signal . the control unit 214 outputs a corresponding pwm signal according to the brightness control signal stored in the pwm register 212 . the pwm signal is a periodic signal which in some periods is at a high voltage level and in other periods is at a low voltage level . the periodic signal is used to regulate the current by opening and closing the gate of the nmos 210 . when the pwm signal is at the high voltage level , the gate of the nmos 210 is opened . thus a higher percentage of high voltage in the pwm signal corresponds to a greater current output by the current output unit 204 , which corresponds to higher backlight brightness . on the other hand , a lower percentage of high voltage in the pwm signal corresponds to a lower current output by the current output unit 204 , which corresponds to lower backlight brightness . therefore the pwm signal outputted by the control unit 214 can dynamically regulate the backlight brightness according to the display signal . the input of the control unit 214 is coupled to the pwm register 212 . the output of the control unit 214 is coupled to the gate of the nmos 210 which is used to regulate the output current of the current output unit 204 through opening and closing the gate of the nmos 210 . in this embodiment , the shift register 206 is coupled to a plurality of pwm control units 202 , and the memory size of the shift register 206 is not greater than the total memory size of all pwm registers 212 . therefore , a brightness control signal of a first channel is stored in the shift register 206 , and then it is transferred to a pwm register 212 of the first channel . afterwards a brightness control signal of a second channel is stored in the shift register 206 , and then it is transferred to a pwm register 212 of the second channel . the shift register 206 transfers brightness control signals to pwm registers 212 of different channels sequentially so as to control the output currents of different current output units 204 . fig3 illustrates of a backlight control device 300 according to a second embodiment of the present invention . the difference between the backlight control device 300 and backlight control device 200 is that the current output unit 304 of the backlight control device 300 comprises a current source 308 and a pmos 310 . the current source 308 is coupled between a low voltage terminal such as ground and the drain of pmos 310 . like the backlight control device 200 , the backlight control device 300 regulates the output current of the current output unit 304 through opening and closing of the gate of pmos 310 . the pwm signal outputted from the control unit 314 is a periodic signal which in some periods is at a high voltage level and in other periods is at a low voltage level . the periodic signal is used to regulate the current by opening and closing the gate of the pmos 310 . when the pwm signal is at the low voltage level , the gate of the pmos 310 is opened . thus a higher percentage of low voltage in the pwm signal corresponds to a greater current output by the current output unit 304 , which corresponds to higher backlight brightness . on the other hand , a lower percentage of low voltage in the pwm signal corresponds to a lower current output by the current output unit 304 , which corresponds to lower backlight brightness . therefore the pwm signal outputted by the control unit 314 can dynamically regulate the backlight brightness according to the display signal . the input of the control unit 314 is coupled to the pwm register 312 . the output of the control unit 314 is coupled to the gate of the pmos 310 which is used to regulate the output current of the current output unit 304 through opening and closing the gate of the pmos 310 . fig4 illustrates a backlight control device 400 according to a third embodiment of the present invention . the difference between the backlight control device 400 and backlight control device 200 is that the backlight control device 400 comprises a plurality of shift registers 406 , and they are coupled to a plurality of pwm control unit 202 . the first shift register is coupled to the pwm control unit of the first channel . the second shift register is coupled to the pwm control unit of the second channel and so on . each shift register 406 is coupled to the pwm control unit 202 of a corresponding channel . compared to the first embodiment shown in fig2 , the one - to - one coupling in fig4 is a lot simpler than the one - to - many coupling in fig2 . fig5 illustrates a backlight control device 500 according to a fourth embodiment of the present invention . the backlight control device 500 comprises a plurality of pwm control units 503 , a plurality of current control units 504 , a plurality of current output units 505 , a selector 502 , and a shift register 501 for storing control signals of the pwm control units or control signals of the current control units 504 . each current output unit 505 comprises a current source 507 and an nmos 506 . the current source 507 is coupled between a low voltage terminal and the source of the nmos 506 . the gate of the nmos 506 is coupled to the pwm control unit 503 . each pwm control unit 503 comprises a pwm register 508 and a control unit 509 . the first input of the pwm register 508 is coupled to the selector 502 , the second input of the pwm register 508 is coupled to the shift register 501 , and the output of the pwm register 508 is coupled to the input of a corresponding control unit 509 . the output of the control unit 509 is coupled to the gate of the corresponding nmos 506 . therefore , the backlight control device 500 regulates the output current of the current output unit 505 through opening and closing the gate of nmos 506 . each current control unit 504 comprises a register 510 and a control unit 511 . the first input of the register 510 is coupled to the selector 502 , and the second input of the register 510 is coupled to the shift register 501 . the output of the register 510 is coupled to the input of a corresponding control unit 511 . the output of the control unit 511 is coupled to the source of the corresponding nmos 506 , and is used to regulate the voltage of the source so as to regulate the output current of output current unit 505 . further , due to the differences among electronic components of a backlight module , or due to a long time use of certain electronic components , the driving current of the backlight module may have unpredictable changes . the driving current in certain types of leds , such as organic leds ( oleds ), can change due to a change in the operating temperature of the current regulator . the current control unit 504 allows a user to adjust the luminance of leds inside the backlight module through the programmable interface . for instance , a microcontroller can use an i 2 c programmable interface to input a desired current or voltage value to the shift register 501 , and then the desired value will be transferred to the current control unit 504 . according to the value stored in the register 510 , the control unit 511 controls the current output unit 505 to regulate the current output by the current output unit 505 so as to regulate the brightness of leds . in this embodiment , the first output of the shift register 501 is coupled to a plurality of pwm control units 503 and the second output of the shift register 501 is coupled to a plurality of current control units 504 . whether the output of the shift register 510 is to be input to the pwm control units 503 or the current control units 504 depends on the mode of the selector 502 . therefore the shift register 501 will store the control signals for every channel and transfer those control signals to the pwm control units 503 or the current control units 504 in sequence . fig6 illustrates a backlight control device 600 according to a fifth embodiment of the present invention . the difference between the backlight control device 600 and backlight control device 500 is that the current output unit 605 of the backlight control device 600 comprises a current source 607 and a pmos 606 . the current source 607 is coupled between a low voltage terminal and the drain of pmos 606 . like the backlight control device 500 , the backlight control device 600 regulates the output current of the current output unit 605 through opening and closing the gate of pmos 606 . in the embodiment of fig5 , by regulating the currents of the current output units 505 from the current control units 504 through the programmable interface , a user can regulate the brightness of leds in the backlight module so that uniform brightness of backlight can be obtained when the grey levels of different channels are the same . the application can be used in a pc monitor because most of its frames are static , and the distance between a user &# 39 ; s eyes and the screen of monitor is relatively short . the user will feel unpleasant if the backlight is not uniform due to the characteristics of different led electronic components . the application can also be used in a monitor of the medical science field . if the leds cannot generate backlight of uniform brightness , the image displayed on the monitor may be distorted and result in misjudgments of physicians . the embodiments in fig2 , fig3 and fig4 do not have the current control units 504 shown in fig5 . the reason is that most frames displayed on tv are dynamic . thus the grey levels change from picture to picture . in ntsc system there are 24 frames per second showing on tv , so it is difficult for a human eye to identify if the backlight is uniform or not . instead the human eye is more sensitive to brightness contrast . therefore , when displaying a frame or a section with lower brightness , the brightness of backlight of the frame or section is reduced . and when displaying a frame or a section with higher brightness , the brightness of backlight of the frame or section is enhanced . this will result in a higher visual contrast . further when using lower brightness for displaying a dimmer image , power can be saved due to a lower current . besides , the tv can be installed with the current control unit 504 to more accurately reflect the image to be displayed . in this case , the tv can be switched between the dynamic pwm mode or current mode according to the user &# 39 ; s need to improve the quality of image display . in the related art , a desired brightness value is input by a user . it can not dynamically regulate the brightness of backlight according the grey levels of frames to be displayed causing a low quality of image contrast . in the present invention , the backlight of uniform brightness can be provided and power can be saved by dynamically adjusting the brightness of backlight . thus the present invention solves the problem of non - uniform backlight , enhances the brightness contrast , and saves power . fig7 illustrates a basic operating timing diagram according to the present invention . a low voltage signal mode means that the backlight control device is in the current mode , and a high voltage signal mode means that the backlight control device is in the dynamic pwm mode . the data will be latched according to signal clk when the signal dio is triggered . when the backlight control device is in the current mode , the latched data are desired current values . on the other hand , when the backlight control device is in the dynamic pwm mode , the latched data are grey levels of images to be displayed . the rising edge of signal mode signals that the operation of led current sink ic is changed from the current mode to dynamic pwm mode . at this moment , the desired current values are latched in the register of the current control unit . in the dynamic pwm mode , when the signal blank is at a rising edge , the data are the grey levels of images to be displayed and will be latched by the pwm register . when the signal blank is at the low voltage , the outputs of all channels are equal to zero . when the signal blank is at the high voltage , the outputs of all channels are dependent on the grey levels latched by the pwm registers . the next frame appears when the signal blank is at the falling edge . at this time , the control signal of the pwm control unit is reset to zero so as to calculate the control signals for the next frame . the signal clk is the timing signal for the pwm control units , the pwm registers and registers of current control units . fig8 is a pwm timing diagram of all channels when the backlight control device is in the dynamic pwm mode . when the signal blank is at the rising edge , the latched data ( grey levels of video frames ) are stored in the pwm registers of pwm control units . when the signal blank is at the falling edge , the control signals of pwm control units are reset to zero . fig9 shows an embodiment of controlling red , green and blue primary colors according to the present invention . the red , green and blue backlight devices can use any of the backlight control devices shown in fig2 , 3 , 4 , 5 or 6 for controlling the red , green and blue backlight . those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and alterations of the device and method may be made while retaining the teachings of the invention . accordingly , the above disclosure should be construed as limited only by the metes and bounds of the appended claims . | 8 |
fig1 illustrates a gas turbine engine 10 of a type preferably provided for use in subsonic flight , generally comprising in serial flow communication a fan 12 through which ambient air is propelled , a multistage compressor 14 for pressurizing the air , a combustor 16 in which the compressed air is mixed with fuel and ignited for generating an annular stream of hot combustion gases , and a turbine section 18 for extracting energy from the combustion gases . it will be understood however that the invention is equally applicable to other types of gas turbine engines such as a turbo - shaft , a turbo - prop , or auxiliary power units . fig2 shows a transport system , shown generally at 20 , that is used for transporting the gas turbine engine 10 to and from a build stand , a test cell or a shipping post for example , located within or proximal to a production facility . the transport system 20 is adapted to transport the engine 10 while the gas turbine engine 10 is mounted to an engine docking unit ( not shown ). the engine docking unit may comprise pre - dressing equipment and accessories for coupling to the gas turbine engine 10 that are required for testing and evaluation of the gas turbine engine 10 . accordingly , the gas turbine engine 10 may be brought to the text cell in a “ pre - dressed ” condition in order to minimize the down time of the test cell . the transport system 20 comprises a movable support frame 22 having floor engaging members 24 . an actuated support member 26 is pivotally connected to the support frame 22 in an upright position via a gimbal joint 28 and a pneumatic actuator 30 . the actuated support member 26 is also movable connected to the support frame 22 via two actuator assemblies 32 . the transport system 20 also comprises a conventional on - board hydraulic and pneumatic system which is partially shown in fig6 and is used to power the various actuators on the transport system 20 . an upper portion of the support member 26 comprises a male mounting surface 34 which is adapted to mate to a counterpart mounting surface on the engine docking unit and is used to removably secure the engine docking unit to the transport system 20 in a single action . the male mounting comprises a cylindrical portion 36 and a tapered portion 38 . the tapered portion 38 has an upper circular cross - section 40 and a lower square cross - section 42 . the lower square cross - section 42 of the tapered portion 38 serves as preventing rotation of the engine docking unit relative to the support member 26 , and , therefore any non - circular cross - section such as oval or polygonal could also be used . an abutment 27 is provided on the surface of the square cross - section portion 42 for supporting the docking unit against gravity . the top surface of the support member 26 could also offer an arresting or seating surface on which the end wall of the socket of the engine docking unit could rest . however , in the present embodiment , the top surface of the support member 26 is occupied by a reflector ( not shown ). the reflector is used to trigger a laser sensor ( not shown ) on the test cell side . the sensor is for fool proofing the installation process . the docking unit can be readily disengaged from the support member 26 in a single operation by axially displacing the docking unit in an upward direction . the transport system 20 also comprises brackets 44 affixed to each floor engaging member 24 to improve the safety when moving the equipment with a motorized lift truck . these lift trucks typically have narrow sliding forks , which if not properly secured could slide inboard and allow the transport unit to tip off the forks . the brackets 44 increase the width of the lifting surfaces to prevent this possibility . when using a manual pallet lifter this cannot occur , the fork being non - sliding / non adjustable . it is noted that the transport system 20 can be inserted with a pallet truck on all four sides of the base . this is very convenient in small floor space area and sides , for moving engines fitted with intake and exhaust ducts . as shown in fig2 , lateral openings 45 are defined in the outboard side of the floor engaging members 24 for receiving the forks of the lift truck , the pallet lifter or the like , thereby allowing the transport system 20 to be laterally engaged . similar openings are provided at the rear of the base of the transport system 20 . the transport system 20 also has a handle 46 affixed to the support frame 22 that can be used for maneuvering the transport system 20 during taxiing . a shelf 48 and storage boxes 50 for storing fasteners , spare components , sensors or the like associated with the testing or operation of the gas turbine engine 10 are also provided . the transport system 20 further includes an electrical control box 52 which is used to house a power supply such as a battery ( not shown ) and various control circuits such as a conventional programmable logic controller ( plc ) ( not shown ) that are associated with the control and operation of the hydraulic and pneumatic system and the various actuators incorporated in the transport system 20 . a touch screen user interface 54 is also provided to interface with the plc and facilitate the operation of the transport system 20 . in reference to fig2 - 6 , levelling feet 56 are provided on the floor engaging members 24 of the transport system 20 . the levelling feet 56 are used to move the transport system 20 up and down in the p direction as shown in fig6 when the transport system 20 is stationary . the levelling feet 56 are powered by the on - board hydraulic system . fig3 shows the layout of the levelling feet 56 in relation to the floor engaging members 24 . fig3 also shows the configuration of the two actuator assemblies 32 that are pivotally connected to the support member 26 and are used to cause rotation of the support member 26 about the gimbal joint 28 . fig4 shows the actuator assembly 32 that is used to push and pull the support member 26 along an x axis as shown in fig6 . this produces a rotational movement of the support member 26 from the upright position about a y axis as show by the arrow rx in fig4 and 6 . fig5 shows the actuator assembly 32 that is used to push and pull the support member 26 along the y axis as shown in fig6 . this produces a rotational movement of the support member 26 from the upright position about the x axis as shown by the arrow ry in fig5 and 6 . fig7 is a partial cross - sectional view along line 7 - 7 of fig3 and shows details of the support member 26 connected to the gimbal joint 28 and the pneumatic actuator 30 . the gimbal joint 28 comprises a gimbal 58 and a trunnion 60 . a lower portion of the support member 26 is pivotally connected to the gimbal 58 at pivot point 62 to permit rotation of the support member 26 about the x axis ry . the gimbal 58 is in turn pivotally connected to the trunnion 60 to permit rotation of the support member 26 about the y axis rx . the trunnion 60 is affixed to a casing 64 which is movable along the z axis within the support frame 22 . the pneumatic actuator 30 is connected between a bottom side of the casing 64 and the support frame 22 at anchor point 66 . the pneumatic actuator 30 provides support for the casing 64 together with the support member 26 and also causes the casing 64 and the support member 26 to translate upwardly and downwardly along the z axis . as shown in fig8 and 9 , parallel rails 70 are provided on each side of the casing 64 to guide the motion of the casing 64 along the z axis . the rails 70 have a c - shape profile and are adapted to receive and move against bearing members 72 which are affixed to the support frame . a load cell 74 is also connected in series within the load string of the pneumatic actuator 30 and is used to measure a reaction force on the support member 26 along the z axis . advantageously , the pneumatic actuator 30 also provides a pneumatic suspension for the support member 26 and dampens any transportation shocks . the pneumatic actuator 30 further provides resilience for engaging the engine docking unit to static structures such as a test cell . fig1 shows a cross - sectional view of one of the floor engaging members 24 and shows ball casters 76 . two ball casters 76 are provided at opposed end portions of each floor engaging member 24 and can be used to taxi the transport system 20 along relatively smooth floor surfaces . the ball casters 76 allow easy movement in all directions with equal resistance . alternatively , the ball casters 76 can also ride within a guide rail ( not shown ) provided in a test cell for example and allow more precise positional adjustments of the transport system 20 . fig1 and 12 show details of one of the two actuator assemblies 32 that are used to cause the support member 26 to rotate about the x and y axes . each actuator assembly 32 comprises an actuator such as a hydraulic cylinder 78 and a load cell 74 that are housed within housing 80 . the housing 80 is affixed to the support frame 22 . the hydraulic cylinder 78 is operatively connected between the housing 80 and the support member 26 . the hydraulic cylinder 78 is connected to the housing via a spherical bearing 82 and to the support member 26 via a rod end bearing 84 . the load cell 74 is connected in series within the load string of the hydraulic cylinder 78 and is used to measure the reaction force on the support member 26 . fig1 - 15 show a transport system 20 according to another embodiment ; in this embodiment the two floor engaging members 24 additionally comprise a bearing plate 86 . the bearing plate 86 is rotatably attached to the floor engaging members 24 . in this embodiment the floor engaging members 24 have ball casters 76 that are in contact with the inside surface of the bearing plate 86 . the inside surface of the bearing plate 86 provides a relatively smooth surface for the ball casters 76 on which to ride . the ball casters 76 allow the entire support frame 22 to be moved and rotated within a limited range relative to the bearing plate 86 . the bearing plate 86 is especially useful when the surface on which the transport system 20 is placed is relatively rough and minor positional adjustments are necessary . the embodiment shown in fig1 - 15 also comprises manual actuator assemblies 88 instead of the hydraulic actuator assemblies 32 . the manual actuator assemblies 88 are shown in details in fig1 and 17 . each manual actuator assembly 88 comprises a stationary housing portion 90 that is affixed to the support frame 22 , a rotatable housing portion 92 , a load string 94 and a load cell 74 . the rotatable housing portion 92 is threadingly engaged to the stationary housing portion 90 at a threaded interface 96 to form a screw - type linear actuator . the load string 94 is connected between the rotatable housing portion 92 and the support member 26 . the load string 94 is rotatably connected to the rotatable housing portion 92 and is connected to the support member 26 via the rod end bearing 84 . the load cell 74 is connected in series within the load string 94 of and is used to measure the reaction force on the support member 26 . the rotatable housing portion 92 comprises a square socket 98 to which a ratchet 100 having a square drive can be coupled . the ratchet 100 can be used to turn the rotatable housing portion 92 relative to the stationary housing portion 90 . due to the threaded interface between the rotatable housing portion 92 and the stationary housing portion 90 , the relative rotation causes the rotatable housing portion 92 to either move away or towards the stationary housing portion 90 depending on the direction of rotation . this in turn causes the load string 94 to either push or pull the support member 26 . during operation , the transport system 20 may be used to transport the gas turbine engine 10 mounted to an engine docking unit from a build stand where gas turbine engine 10 is assembled for example , to a testing facility for a pass - off test prior to shipping the gas turbine engine 10 to a customer . the engine docking unit may comprise pre - dressing equipment and accessories for coupling to the gas turbine engine 10 that are required for testing and evaluation of the gas turbine engine 10 . accordingly , the engine docking system may be used to interface the gas turbine engine 10 directly to the test cell . the engine docking unit may also comprise engine mounts to which the gas turbine engine 10 is to be secured . the transport system 20 greatly facilitates the task of transferring the gas turbine engine 10 from the build stand to the engine docking unit . the actuated support member 26 of the transport system 20 allows the engine docking unit to be precisely brought in proximity to the gas turbine engine 10 on the build stand and align the various pre - dressing equipment and engine mounts to their counterparts on the gas turbine engine 10 . at this point , an operator can simply and safely make all the necessary connections between the gas turbine engine 10 and the engine docking unit . once the gas turbine engine 10 has been secured to the engine docking unit , the gas turbine engine 10 can safely be unfastened from the build stand . the transport system 20 can then be taxied to the testing facility using a floor transport system such as a pallet lifter or using the ball casters 76 . at the testing facility , actuated support member 26 allows the engine docking unit together with the gas turbine engine 10 to be precisely manipulated so as to allow the engine docking unit to be docked to the testing cell together with the engine . once the engine docking unit has been securely docked to the testing facility , either the transport system 20 can be lowered or the engine docking unit can be raised so as to disengage the engine docking unit from the transport system 20 in a single action . the plc is adapted to control the hydraulic and pneumatic actuators on the transport system 20 via the touch screen user interface 52 . the various load cells 74 are also interfaced to the plc to inform the operator of the reaction forces on the support member 26 so that the operator can avoid actuating the support member 26 in an unsafe manner . for example , when the hydraulic actuator assemblies 32 are used , it is possible to provide means of limiting the applied forces so as to prevent accidental overloading of turbine engine components during engine transfers . it is also possible for example to verify during engine transfer that the weight of the gas turbine engine 10 is entirely supported by the receiving structure such as the test cell before safely unfastening the gas turbine engine 10 from the transport system 20 . by monitoring the reaction loads on the support member 26 through the use of the load cells and the plc , the support member 26 can be actuated to release the load at the attachment points , to thereby permit safe transfer from and to the transport system . a load monitoring system as provided by the load cells and the plc or any other suitable load monitoring elements allows the operator to know the magnitude or direction of the loads at the connection points and , thus , provide guidance as to how the actuator must be operated in order to permit the transfer of the engine . for instance , the engine is typically connected to a build stand with two side mounts . these mounts can be provided in the form of a lug and yoke arrangement connected with quick release pins . to enable the pins removal , during the engine transfer process , the shear loads must be removed from the pins . the same applies in the transfer from the transport system to the engine testing stand , and shipping undressing posts . it is apparent that conventional position sensors such as encoders can readily be integrated into the transport system 20 so as to provide feedback of the angular position of the support member 26 or spatial coordinates of the tip of the support member 26 . a typical movement envelope of the tip of the support member 26 would be about ± 50 mm ( 2 inches ) along the x axis , + 0 to − 330 mm (+ 0 to − 13 inches ) along the y axis , from the upright position , and , about ± 50 mm ( 2 inches ) along the z axis . the y axis being in a rearward direction as shown in fig6 . evidently , the transport system 20 could also be adapted to enable other suitable ranges of motion depending on the application . it is also apparent that the male mounting surface 34 on the support member 26 could be replaced instead by a female mounting surface adapted to mount to a counterpart male mounting surface on the engine docking unit . alternatively , the support member 26 could have two male mounting surfaces arranged in a fork configuration that could be used instead of a tapered portion 38 of varying cross section . the fork configuration would prevent relative rotation of the engine docking unit relative to the support member 26 . it is clear that such arrangements would evidently produce the same “ single action ” securing arrangement of the present configuration . further , the engine docking unit that is used to mount the gas engine turbine 10 may be any type of framework that is suitable to structurally interface the engine to the movable support frame 22 . the examples described above comprises engine pre - dressing equipment but simpler configurations would also work . the gimbal joint 28 provides pivotal movement of the support member 26 in multiple directions . accordingly other types of joints providing pivotal movement of the support member 26 about at least two axes could also be used such as for example two separate pivot joints , a ball joint or a universal joint and would be within the scope of the present invention . the above description is meant to be exemplary only , and one skilled in the art will recognize that changes may be made to the embodiments described without department from the scope of the invention disclosed . it is apparent that the transport system described above can be fabricated using conventional manufacturing procedures using suitable materials such as a structural grade steel or any combinations of suitable materials that would be apparent to a person skilled in the relevant art . it is also apparent that this transport system could also be used to transport and manipulate larger engine parts for the purpose of docking and undocking these parts to an engine core casing in a horizontal engine assembly line and / or a test cell environment . still other modifications which fall within the scope of the present invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art , in light of a review of this disclosure , and such modifications are intended to fall within the appended claims . | 1 |
as the catalyst obtained according to the present invention , a catalyst represented by the following formula is preferred : wherein p , mo , v , cu , nh 4 and 0 are phosphorus , molybdenum , vanadium , copper , ammonium group and oxygen , respectively , x is at least one element selected from the group consisting of potassium , rubidium , cesium and thallium , y is at least one element selected from the group consisting of silver , magnesium , zinc , arsenic , germanium , silicon , tungsten , boron , bismuth , chromium , lanthanum , barium , antimony , iron , zirconium , tellurium and cerium , a , b , c , d , e , f and h are an atomic ratio of each element , g is the number of ammonium molecules , being 0 . 01 to 2 , and when b is 12 , a is 0 . 5 to 3 , c is 0 . 01 to 3 , d is 0 . 01 to 2 , e is 0 . 01 to 2 and f is 0 to 5 , and h is the number of oxygen atoms necessary to satisfy the valence of each component . materials for molybdenum used to prepare the catalyst include molybdenum trioxide and molybdic acid . particularly , good results are obtained when molybdenum trioxide is used . materials for other catalyst - constituting elements include the oxides , carbonates , acetates and / or hydroxides of said elements . in practicing the present invention , for example , the following procedure is taken : the materials for molybdenum , vanadium and phosphorus are dissolved or dispersed in water , the resulting aqueous solution or dispersion is heated to carry out a reaction sufficiently and then other materials for the catalyst are added at the same time or successively . in the present invention , ammonium carbonate , ammonium hydrogen - carbonate , ammonium sulfate and / or ammonium hydrogen - sulfate may be added at the time of addition of other materials for the catalyst . particularly , however , good results are obtained when ammonium carbonate , ammonium hydrogen - carbonate , ammonium sulfate and / or ammonium hydrogen - sulfate dissolved in water is added after all of other materials for the catalyst are added . the amount of ammonium carbonate , ammonium hydrogen - carbonate , ammonium sulfate and / or ammonium hydrogen - sulfate is 1 to 50 wt .%, particularly preferably 3 to 30 wt .% based on the total weight of all the materials for the catalyst . next , water is removed from a mixture containing the materials for the catalyst and ammonium carbonate , ammonium hydrogen - carbonate , ammonium sulfate and / or ammonium hydrogen - sulfate , and on heat - treating the residual product , the desired catalyst is obtained . it is desirable to carry out the heat treatment , for example , at a temperature of 300 ° to 430 ° c . while streaming air and / or a gas containing 5 vol .% or more of oxygen . the catalyst used in the present invention works effectively without a carrier , but it is preferred to use the catalyst supported on or diluted with an inert carrier such as silica , alumina , silica - alumina , silicon carbide , etc . when methacrylic acid is produced with the catalyst obtained by the present invention , the methacrolein concentration of the gas used as a material can be changed in a wide range , but 1 to 20 % by volume , particularly 3 to 10 % by volume is preferably used . methacrolein , a material , may contain small amounts of impurities such as water , a saturated lower aldehyde , etc . these impurities give substantially no effect to the reaction . as an oxygen source , the use of air is economical , but air made rich in pure oxygen may be used if necessary . the oxygen concentration of the gas used as a material is determined by the molar ratio to methacrolein . the value of this molar ratio is 0 . 3 to 4 , particularly preferably 0 . 4 to 2 . 5 . the gas , a material , may be diluted with an inert gas such as nitrogen , steam , carbon dioxide , etc . reaction pressure is preferably atmospheric pressure to several atmospheres . reaction temperature is 200 ° to 420 ° c ., particularly preferably 230 ° to 400 ° c . the reaction can be carried out by using either a fixed bed or fluidized bed . in the following examples and comparative examples , the conversion of methacrolein and the selectivity of methacrylic acid produced are defined as follows : in the following examples and comparative examples , parts are weight , and analyses were carried out by gas chromatography . 100 parts of molybdenum trioxide , 2 . 6 parts of vanadium pentoxide and 6 . 7 parts of 85 % phosphoric acid were added to 800 parts of pure water , and the resulting mixture was heated under reflux for 6 hours . thereafter , 1 . 2 parts of copper acetate was added , and refluxing was continued for further 3 hours with heating . after refluxing , 11 . 2 parts of cesium hydrogen - carbonate dissolved in 100 parts of pure water and then 5 . 6 parts of ammonium carbonate dissolved in 100 parts of pure water were added , and the resulting mixed solution was evaporated to dryness with heating . the solid product obtained was dried at 120 ° c . for 16 hours , shaped by applying pressure and heat - treated at 380 ° c . for 5 hours under air stream . the composition of components except oxygen of the resulting catalyst was p 1 mo 12 v 0 . 5 cu 0 . 1 cs 1 ( nh 4 ) 0 . 3 ( catalysts described herein - below also are represented by the composition of components except oxygen ). a reactor was filled with this catalyst , and a mixed gas consisting of 5 vol .% of methacrolein , 10 vol .% of oxygen , 30 vol .% of steam and 55 vol .% of nitrogen was passed through the reactor at a reaction temperature of 285 ° c . for a contact time of 3 . 6 seconds . the product was collected and analyzed by gas chromatography to find that the conversion of methacrolein was 84 . 1 % and the selectivity of methacrylic acid was 83 . 8 %. a catalyst having the same composition as in example 1 was prepared without adding ammonium carbonate . using this catalyst , reaction was carried out under the same conditions as in example 1 except that the reaction temperature was changed to 290 ° c . as a result , it was found that the conversion of methacrolein was 80 . 0 % and the selectivity of methacrylic acid was 81 . 6 %. a catalyst having a composition , p 1 mo 12 v 0 . 5 cu 0 . 1 k 1 si 0 . 3 as 0 . 2 ( nh 4 ) 0 . 2 , was prepared according to example 1 except that ammonium hydrogen - carbonate of 9 . 2 parts based on 100 parts of molybdenum trioxide was added in place of ammonium carbonate , and that potassium carbonate , silica sol and arsenic acid were used . using this catalyst , reaction was carried out under the same conditions as in example 1 except that the reaction temperature was changed to 270 ° c . as a result , it was found that the conversion of methacrolein was 84 . 3 % and the selectivity of methacrylic acid was 86 . 6 %. a catalyst having the same composition as in example 2 was prepared without adding ammonium hydrogen - carbonate . using this catalyst , reaction was carried out under the same conditions as in example 1 except that the reaction temperature was changed to 280 ° c . as a result , it was found that the conversion of methacrolein was 78 . 9 % and the selectivity of methacrylic acid was 84 . 2 %. a catalyst having a composition , p 1 . 5 mo 12 v 0 . 8 cu 0 . 2 rb 1 ce 0 . 1 fe 0 . 2 sb 0 . 8 ( nh 4 ) 0 . 4 , was prepared according to example 1 except that a part of ammonium carbonate was replaced by ammonium sulfate and a mixed solution containing 2 . 8 parts of ammonium carbonate and 3 . 8 parts of ammonium sulfate based on 100 parts of molybdenum trioxide was added , and that rubidium acetate , cerium oxide and iron oxide were used . in this case , antimony trioxide was used as the source of antimony . using this catalyst , reaction was carried out under the same conditions as in example 1 except that the reaction temperature was changed to 270 ° c . as a result , it was found that the conversion of methacrolein was 89 . 6 % and the selectivity of methacrylic acid was 88 . 7 %. a catalyst having the same composition as in example 3 was prepared without adding ammonium carbonate and ammonium sulfate . using this catalyst , reaction was carried out under the same conditions as in example 1 except that the reaction temperature was changed to 270 ° c . as a result , it was found that the conversion of methacrolein was 77 . 2 % and the selectivity of methacrylic acid was 87 . 0 %. a catalyst having a composition , p 1 . 1 mo 12 v 0 . 8 cu 0 . 2 k 0 . 7 cs 0 . 3 bi 0 . 2 sb 0 . 7 ( nh 4 ) 0 . 4 , was prepared according to example 1 except that a part of ammonium carbonate was replaced by ammonium hydrogen - sulfate and a mixed solution containing 2 . 8 parts of ammonium carbonate and 11 . 5 parts of ammonium hydrogen - sulfate based on 100 parts of molybdenum trioxide was added , and that potassium carbonate , cesium hydrogen - carbonate and bismuth oxide were used . in this case , antimony pentoxide was used as the source of anitomony . using this catalyst , reaction was carried out under the same conditions as in example 1 except that the reaction temperature was changed to 270 ° c . as a result , it was found that the conversion of methacrolein was 90 . 5 % and the selectivity of methacrylic acid was 88 . 7 %. a catalyst having the same composition as in example 4 was prepared without adding ammonium carbonate and ammonium hydrogen - sulfate . using this catalyst , reaction was carried out under the same conditions as in example 1 except that the reaction temperature was changed to 290 ° c . as a result , it was found that the conversion of methacrolein was 87 . 1 % and the selectivity of methacrylic acid was 87 . 3 %. catalysts shown in table 1 were prepared according to example 1 . part in the table which represents the amount of an ammonium salt added means part by weight based on 100 parts by weight of molybdenum trioxide . using these catalysts , reaction was carried out in the same manner as in example 1 except that the reaction temperature was changed . the results also are shown in table 1 . table 1__________________________________________________________________________ amount of reaction conversion selectivity ammonium tempera - of of salt added ture methacrolein methacryliccomposition of catalyst ( part ) (° c .) (%) acid (%) __________________________________________________________________________example 5 p . sub . 1 mo . sub . 12 v . sub . 0 . 5 cu . sub . 0 . 1 tl . sub . 0 . 8 fe . sub . 0 . 3 ammonium 280 88 . 8 86 . 7 zr . sub . 0 . 1 cr . sub . 0 . 2 ( nh . sub . 4 ). sub . 0 . 3 sulfate , 10example 6 p . sub . 1 . 1 mo . sub . 12 v . sub . 0 . 5 cu . sub . 0 . 1 k . sub . 0 . 8 cs . sub . 0 . 3 ammonium 280 89 . 0 87 . 1 fe . sub . 0 . 3 mg . sub . 0 . 2 te . sub . 0 . 2 ( nh . sub . 4 ). sub . 0 . 2 hydrogen + carbonate , 8example 7 p . sub . 1 . 2 mo . sub . 12 v . sub . 0 . 8 cu . sub . 0 . 1 k . sub . 1 fe . sub . 0 . 2 ge . sub . 0 . 2 ammonium 275 89 . 5 87 . 7 b . sub . 0 . 3 ( nh . sub . 4 ). sub . 0 . 2 carbonate , 8__________________________________________________________________________ catalysts shown in table 2 were prepared according to example 3 . part in the table which represents the amount of an ammonium salt added means part by weight based on 100 parts by weight of molybdenum trioxide . using these catalysts , reaction was carried out in the same manner as in example 1 except that the reaction temperature was changed . the results also are shown in table 2 . table 2__________________________________________________________________________ amount of reaction conversion selectivity ammonium tempera - of of salt added ture methacrolein methacrylic composition of catalyst ( part ) (° c .) (%) acid (%) __________________________________________________________________________example 8 p . sub . 1 . 2 mo . sub . 12 v . sub . 0 . 6 cu . sub . 0 . 2 k . sub . 1 bi . sub . 0 . 3 ammonium 280 88 . 3 88 . 9 sb . sub . 0 . 3 ba . sub . 0 . 2 ( nh . sub . 4 ). sub . 0 . 3 carbonate , 7example 9 p . sub . 1 mo . sub . 12 v . sub . 0 . 5 cu . sub . 0 . 2 cs . sub . 1 fe . sub . 0 . 3 ammonium 280 89 . 1 88 . 1 sb . sub . 0 . 6 la . sub . 0 . 1 ag . sub . 0 . 05 ( nh . sub . 4 ). sub . 0 . 5 sulfate , 10 example 10 p . sub . 1 mo . sub . 12 v . sub . 0 . 8 cu . sub . 0 . 1 rb . sub . 1 zn . sub . 0 . 2 ammonium 280 90 . 1 88 . 8 fe . sub . 0 . 2 sb . sub . 0 . 7 w . sub . 0 . 1 ( nh . sub . 4 ). sub . 0 . 1 carbonate , 3 + ammonium sulfate , 7__________________________________________________________________________ | 2 |
this flexible computer input system is characterized inter alia by the fact that the processor is provided with a “ basic topography ” of the fingertips from which an “ assignment topography ” is also obtained , firstly by means of projection on a similar scale , and in that each measured point where pressure triggering takes place ( or actuated input surface region ) is compared with the temporarily applicable “ assignment topography ”. the intended character is either obtained in a directly uniquely defined way from this relation . or it is necessary ( per processor ), under certain circumstances ( for example when there is only a coarsely meshed grid of the sensitive input surface ), to identify the respectively active finger and as a result it is then possible to determine the associated character ( or the associated instruction ). this relation or identification which is to be interrogated is primarily related to the topography of a hand ( or fingertip topography , represented in fig1 as 10 circles ). in order to trigger the signal for a specific character ( for example alphanumerical control character ) certain inputs are used which are processed by a microprocessor or a corresponding electronic data processing unit . in particular the information ( a ) for pressure triggering or activation of the input surface regions , ( b ) the information for identifying the locations of the fingertips and ( c ) the information for the basic topography and assignment topography is used by the processor for ultimately triggering the character signal or control signal . ( a ) the activation or pressure triggering with specific force and speed features can be measured on an as - it - were continuous ( for example mechanically , electromechanically , electrostatically , electronically or magnetically ) sensitive surface . ( that is to say in particular the fact that the chronological gradients of the signals which are analogous to the force and of the signals which are analogous to the speed should reach values which can be set . as a result , for example it is possible to filter out unintended support with a finger other than the one which is active at a particular time , because that would result in a value which is too static in relative terms ). ( b ) the identification of the location of the pressure triggering on the sensitive surface leads , for example , to the description of the location by a grid of coordinates . such coordinates can also be determined simultaneously for a plurality of fingers , for example on the basis of a technically modified , sensitive surface ( possibly use two different sensitive methods , for example also a video image of the contours ). the instantaneous positions of further fingers can therefore be determined . ( there are technical possibilities , for example by means of touch screen , touchpad , film surfaces , other mechanically , electrically , electrostatically or magnetically sensitive surfaces . an existing “ 5 - wire resistance technology ” could be improved , for example , by means of a “ 6 - wire resistance technology ” and supply additional information by means of pressure points and finger positions . here , there will possibly have to be investment in development work , cf . also below with respect to technical feasibility . while the pressure triggering has to be localized in each case only for one finger , the positions of the other fingers should be determined as - it - were simultaneously or be determined in a triggered interrogation method ( for example 5 times per second for the surface )). the processor is always provided with a basic topography ( or “ template ”) of the 10 fingertips which represents a basic position of the hand . this topography is available in particular in the form of the coordinates of the 10 fingertips . ( there are a plurality of ways of predefining this topography , see below .) the topography can be determined individually for each user and on top of that can be adapted dynamically . a ( secondary ) assignment topography which assigns specific characters to the input surface regions arises from the ( primary ) basic topography . ( c ) the pressure triggering location ( or the actuated input surface region ) is to be compared with the current , temporarily stored assignment topography . the intended character is either obtained in a directly uniquely defined way from this relation . or it is necessary ( per processor ) possibly ( for example when there is unclear working or when there is only a coarsely meshed grid of the input surface ) to optimize the decision ( cf . below ), or also to identify the respective active finger ( that is to say for example left hand , middle finger ), and as a result the associated character ( or the associated instruction ) can then be determined . this relation or identification which is to be interrogated therefore relates to the assignment topography . the basic topography ( or fingertip topography , represented in fig1 as 10 circles ) firstly provides the basis for also acquiring , starting from it ( in a secondary fashion ), a comprehensive assignment topography by projection of a similar scale . this assignment topography can be described as sectors or input surface regions which are specified by means of coordinates and which are attributed to a respective character or instruction assignment location . the basic topography covers or determines precisely the characters of the customary basic position ( for the 8 fingers excluding the thumbs these are classically “ a , s , d , f , j , k , l , ö ”). the next , adjoining pressure point positions require a specific small displacement ( represented as arrows in the drawing ) in order to reach the corresponding characters . the direction of this displacement can be clearly separated for the middle finger and ring finger . for the index finger and small finger , the coordinates must be differentiated more finely because there are ( in the sense of the customary system ) a plurality of options ( cf . drawing ). a new role could be assigned to the thumb ( for example important instruction functions ) because in the sense of the customary system it is actually underexploited . the further assignments are to be assigned in the sense of the assignment topography ( see points c . and d . below ). an assignment topography therefore always also follows from the hand topography ( with the limiting values which can be set ). this “ flexible input ” is optionally characterized in that the positions and finger triggering operations of a plurality of fingers are determined and evaluated simultaneously ( cf . claim 2 ) on a sensitive input surface . as a result , it is possible to take facilitating measures and make flexible adaptations for the individual user .— the “ flexible input ” which is specified here is therefore characterized in that it determines not only the position of a finger but also the positions of a plurality of fingers ( simultaneously ), and generates corresponding control signals and determines associated characters on the basis of the positions , movements and ( more or less rapid ) pressure triggering operations of one , two , three or up to ten fingers on a ( relatively ) smooth , sensitive surface . the manoeuvres can be adapted to specific tasks and can thus be simplified and made ergonomically appropriate and “ intuitively suitable ”. the displacement of an implemented pressure location ( or of an activated input surface region ) from the home position ( corresponding to the initialized or instantaneously stored hand topography , cf . fig1 ) can be interpreted in the following way , and ultimately lead to an optimized decision for a specific signal : a .) the displacement is less than a ( settable ) limiting value ( for example 7 mm ). the location is interpreted as a starting point of the finger . it results in a specific character ( for example for the left - hand middle finger “ d ”). b .) the displacement is greater than the limiting value . the direction of the displacement is to be interpreted on the basis of the current template ( in the sense of the home position ) as an activity which is associated with a specific finger . if the direction is displaced , for example , more than 7 mm upwards from the home position , the character “ e ” is produced by means of the middle finger of the left hand . c .) if the displacement ( for example in the upward direction ) is still greater than a second ( settable ) limiting value ( for example 22 mm ), this is equivalent to jumping over a character row , and therefore leads to the numbers ( for example “ 3 ”) being accessed , or special commands ( which are also located , for example , to the side of and below the basic position ) being accessed . as a result of this mode it is sufficient to hit the sector approximately , and the displacement only has to differ sufficiently from the row before it . d .) the ( largely ) uniformly unbroken input surface should as far as possible have a certain degree of transparency in order to represent approximately the current template of the local assignments ( assignment topography ) using projections or led elements . as a result , it is possible for the user to coordinate the finger movements with the eye for more distant assignments or for assignments which are difficult to remember ( for example for special characters or instructions ).— the following decision in the processor corresponds to this : an activation which affects the external assignment locations of the current template ( special characters , instructions and the like ) is always interpreted as a hit for these particular characters . e .) it is also possible to operate or type in the “ single finger ” or “ two finger mode ” with this input , i . e . the ten finger system is exited . this is perceptible if a ( repeated ) “ wandering ” of a finger into a “ foreign ” assignment region takes place , which region is therefore actually not assigned to this finger . or this mode switches on when the current hand position is unclear to the processor . simply the previously agreed or stored template for assigning the assignment character to an activation location , independently of the identity of the respectively active finger applies in this mode . ( it is usually necessary to look ). f .) locations which are possibly pressed simultaneously ( with two or more fingers ) can easily be decided in the processor according to predefined probabilities or priorities (“ filter options ”). g .) locations or input surface regions which have possibly been hit in an ambiguous fashion ( for example when a boundary line is hit ) can nevertheless be converted with a high degree of probability into the intended signals or characters on the basis of the identity ( which can usually still be determined ) of the respectively active finger ( for example a middle finger which is moved upwards by 10 mm and presses can also have meant only one specific character even when there is lateral uncertainty ). one essential quality of this flexible inputting is the capability of adaptation to individual and to dynamic writing habits ( cf . in particular claims 1 , 3 , 7 , 9 and 12 ). the temporarily stored basic topography ( as a primary reference ), ( or thus also the resulting temporarily stored assignment topography as secondary reference ) can be determined in the following way : the topography could also correspond to a simple linear grid in the sense of customary standard keyboards . it can be varied , for example , slightly in its longitudinal extent and transverse extent . the topography could also be adapted ergonomically to an average hand shape by means of curved lines , i . e . the assignments are grouped around an average hand which is put down in a relaxed fashion . in particular , this corresponds to the different lengths and movement possibilities of the 10 fingers ( cf . fig1 ). individual adaptation : however , the topography can be determined and stored in particular in an individual fashion for each user as a result of the fingers being put down in a relaxed fashion , and as a result the topography can be called . for this purpose , all 10 fingers should simply be positioned comfortably on the surface without moving ( for example two seconds simultaneously as an initiating character for the standardization . this applies to the technically more complex variant which can sense a plurality of pressure points simultaneously ).— in the technically simple variant , which can basically sense only one pressure point location simultaneously ( in the same way as temporary touch screens ), all 10 fingers should type once in succession approximately in the basic position for the standardization process .— this “ basic topography ” also results in the “ assignment topography ” as a result of a projection which is similar in scale , for example as a result of the fact that the distances from the other lines of the “ assignment topography ” are also defined approximately in proportion to the distances between the fingertips of the “ basic topography ”. dynamic adaptation : the topography ( basic and assignment topography ) and the working characteristic values and limiting values can be adapted gradually and dynamically in particular during the operation . i . e . in this mode , the location points or pressure points which are implemented by the fingers on average , that is to say the average basic positions of the 10 fingers or the assignment topography , are continuously registered . possible gradual displacements and possible gradual changes of the line distances which are implemented on average are noted and if appropriate corrected as decisive . ( for example it is possible to measure five times per second and to average over the last 20 seconds or over the last 20 completed character activations of a specific input surface region ). as a result , the user can gradually change the way he positions his hand and his writing habits and typing habits . in this sense it is possible to gradually or dynamically change a plurality of working characteristic values and limiting values which are used by the processor ( in particular those for differentiating the geometric displacements from the basic position or for example those for differentiating intentional pressure triggering from passing by too quickly or from resting too statically ). in particular , the distances which are implemented on average are determined with respect to the other assignment lines and the character activation pulses ( chronological gradient ) which are implemented on average , and if appropriate corrected as decisive . the type of projection can thus also be changed from a basic topography to the assignment topography . that is to say it is optionally , for example ultimately , also possible to trigger the respective character with extremely small ( or idiosyncratic ) hand movements . the typing and the inputting of control data can thus be reduced to minimal control movements or pressure triggering operations which are dependent on the person . ( with reduced limiting values , the size and planar extent of the assignment topography are also decreased .) this input system is to this extent “ capable of learning ”. this arrangement makes the 10 - finger writing system more attractive by virtue of the fact that it adapts itself to natural hand shapes and individual movements . with this combination of ( relatively smooth ) input surface and flexible assignment topography , comfortable and fast working is possible , which also forgives certain errors by virtue of filter functions . the adaptation to individual hand shapes and hand manipulation takes place as - it - were automatically . ( by means of a slight upward bulge in the centre the surface could be made to comply with further ergonomic requirements of the hands ). given the current trend for lightweight interfaces which can be operated intuitively , this ergonomically compatible and flexible concept provides particular marketing opportunities . the technical feasibility of determining position ( posb ) or activation of the input surface region and determination of pressure triggering ( drub ) of a plurality of fingers is provided , for example , by virtue of the following proposals : a ( more or less fine ) grid — which is materially present in the input surface — of conductive material permits the finger positions to be determined by measuring resistance or capacitance . the input surface is divided up , in the sense of a grid , into materially manifest , as - it - were dot - shaped elements . it can make available , in the sense of a specific resolution of the ( for example 70 ? 150 ) dot - like elements , the measurement data — changed by finger contacts — of all these elements in a capacitive measurement to the processor in order , at best , to calculate the determination of position ( posb )— which differs from the pressure triggering — and in all cases to calculate the determination of pressure triggering ( drub ) of a plurality of fingers .— for example conductor tracks which are applied by vapour deposition and insulation layers can form the feeder lines to the dot - like sensors . or the technical feasibility for the “ touch - screen - like vision ” can for example be manufactured by virtue of the fact that specific visual pixels in the sensitive zone are replaced by pressure sensors ( acting analogously to the force ), or have said sensors superimposed on them ( for example every fifth pixel or , for example , a surface of 2 × 2 pixels would have to be replaced by a pressure sensor in every fifth row of pixels ). the input surface is divided up into materially manifest , strip - shaped conductor elements . it can provide the processor — in the sense of a specific resolution of the ( for example 150 ) strip - shaped elements — with the measurement data — changed by finger contacts — of these elements in a capacitive measurement , in order , at best , to calculate the determination of position ( posb )— to be different from the pressure triggering — and in each case to calculate the determination of pressure triggering ( drub ) of a plurality of fingers . materially manifest conductors ( cf . also the existing 5 - fibre technology or the proposed 6 - fibre technology ) which run in 5 or 6 directions provide the unambiguous positions or pressure triggering locations of the fingers by means of the combination of the incoming signals . the existing methods ( for example operating with resistors , capacitors , field effects ) of the touch screens are expanded : from the edges , the surface is covered not only in the x or y direction but also , for example , on three different axes ( that is to say from 6 different “ viewing angles ”). a way of obtaining clear differentiation for the evaluation could be obtained by corresponding frequencies which are modulated differently ( depending on the direction ). the computer input system is optionally characterized in that the sensor system can be provided , for example , also by means of an electrical field which is established ( repeatedly per second ) in a plurality of directions , that is to say as - it - were established around the periphery ( in particular for two fingers ) for the simultaneous measuring of a plurality of finger positions . ( cf . claim 11 and fig6 ) the existing methods ( operating for example with resistors , capacitors , field effects ) of touch screens are expanded : from the edges , the surface is covered in terms of measuring equipment with the influence of the fingers not only in the x or y direction but also covered , for example , 10 times per second in , for example , six different axes , that is to say from 12 different “ viewing angles ” ( comparable with the dial of a watch from which the internal region is viewed 12 times ), in order to obtain data about finger positions . this comprises establishing a peripheral sensor field ( as it were an inwardly directed “ peripheral scanning operation ” on the edge of the surface ) ( cf . fig6 ). from this data it is possible to interpret the overlaps of the respectively found points as fingertips . ( cf . also the evaluation methods of seismological investigations ). this results in a specific direction , for example for two fingers positioned simultaneously , with a particularly pronounced bridging effect , that is to say the direction which both fingers form with one another . ( the direction which is orthogonal to this exhibits a minimal bridging effect ). the input surface is optionally characterized ( cf . claim 5 ) in that it provides a feedback in the form of precision motive forces for the activation or pressure triggering , with a triggering force being perceptibly exceeded by virtue of the fact that it uses an elastic ( as far as possible still translucent ) surface with a certain geometric structure ( the surface is supported by narrow struts which are placed transversely in an almost flat position ) which is characterized in that it at the same time uses a toggle effect and bending effect and can be manufactured in particular by means of an extrusion method . a toggle effect and bending effect bring about , for the pressure activation , the rise in the resistance to a specific maximum value , and when this maximum value is exceeded the resistance collapses ( because the narrow transverse struts bend ) and allows the surface to be depressed by a specific distance ( for example by 3 mm ) in order to trigger the control signal . the technical feasibility of the determination of position ( posb ) and activation or determination of pressure triggering ( drub ) of a plurality of fingers with feedback in the form of precision motive forces is therefore provided , for example , by means of the following proposal : the input surface ( the “ touch field ”) is structured as follows : the surface which is relatively smooth on the upper side is composed of an elastic and transparent ( or translucent ) material and has a specific geometry of the cross section so that it can be depressed by the finger with a specific force . this specific resistance force is to be configured by means of toggle effects with a specific geometry ( in particular from respectively two - edged or only single - edged or only single - edged but two - element toggle elements , see fig2 , 4 and 5 ) in such a way that when the surface is pressed it initially rises slightly , the maximum value is then reached , but the resistance force is then reduced again so that the triggering element also reliably and perceptively touches the surface below it ( in particular a printed circuit board ). this results in a desirable feedback in the form of precision motive forces for the finger movements . this aforesaid input surface which operates with toggle and bending effects is characterized in particular by the fact that it can be manufactured by means of extrusion methods ( see fig2 , 4 and 5 ). afterwards , ( a ) the constructed surface , which is complex per se , is left as it is , ( b ) this product is cut open from the underside to such an extent that the surface which runs through the top is retained or ( c ) a specific profile is cut out from this product ( for example by means of hot profile cutting or laser cutting ) from the underside ( the surface running through the top is retained ), to the extent that the toggle supports are separated from one another in the transverse direction , that is to say hardly influence one another anymore in the depression behaviour ( see fig3 ). in the case of ( c ), additional volume , in which for example leds can be accommodated , occurs under the surface . in a further step , specific contact zones may be manufactured on the underside by pressing on conductive ( and at the same time elastic ) material . in the last step , this product can be bonded onto a printed circuit board . this printed circuit board may be fitted , in particular , with conductor tracks transversely to the longitudinal pieces of the toggle supports ( in order to determine the points of the pressure triggering by measuring resistance or capacitance , and passing said points on as a signal ). and the printed circuit board can be fitted in particular with led ( or lcd ) elements which can be seen through the transparent or translucent surface .— for example ribbing of the elastic input surface reduces the horizontal stresses . for example partially slitting open or cutting out this surface structure from below , in parallel with the extrusion profile ( that is to say transversely with respect to the extrusion direction ), improves the spring compression processes — dependent on one another — of the various sections and provides space , for example , for leds . the single - edged and two - element version of a toggle support system ( fig5 ) is still somewhat easier to press in and provides more volume for led elements , for example . this computer input system is also characterized in that it can perform further functions which provide facilitating measures and intuitive operation , in particular by means of the possibility of differentiating two ( or more ) simultaneously positioned fingers ( apart from operation in the sense of a qwert keyboard ). for example , there are resulting possibilities for automatic device controllers or games controllers by virtue of the fact that the input surface can be used as an analogue control ( for example two index fingers and two thumbs ) for simultaneous control signals ( for example then 4 ? 2 that is to say 8 , on the basis of the x and y direction ). for example , the following facilitating measures and applications are also possible with this repertoire : a ) two fingers which are positioned and displaced simultaneously ( for example for longer than 0 . 6 seconds ) control the scrolling function of the screen display . by means of this stroking movement , the representation is displaced , as - it - were , through the direct grip of the two fingers . b ) pressing two fingers simultaneously ( for example for longer than 0 . 3 seconds and with a minimum spacing of 6 mm ) and moving them towards one another controls a zoom function / changing of scale of the display . c ) pressing three fingers simultaneously ( for example for longer than 0 . 3 seconds up to 0 . 6 seconds ) switches the next menu level on , for example . keyboards for mobile phones , handheld computers or other devices with only relatively small displays or input fields ( to be adapted , set and modified by the user himself ). ( instead of a display and a keypad , mobile phones can then simply have a flexible screen which permits different functions , in particular the rapid access , similar to clicking a mouse , to the objects displayed . a small screen can also enable certain quantities of data to be accessed quickly by means of the scroll and zoom functions .) input devices for automatic devices and customer information and prompting systems screens in vehicles ( for example with map displays ) where the screen surface can be used simultaneously as an ( associative , graphically unambiguous ) input surface . cad workstations keyboards for synthesizers . the aforesaid computer input system can also be installed on an input surface or piece of hardware ( in particular in its property of the ergonomic and dynamic adaptation to individual hand shapes and typing habits ) which can operate only one activated point ( or input surface region ) at the same time ( for example for conventional touch screens , cf . the abovementioned product version ( i )). for this purpose , the initial standardization must be carried out to the individual hand topography or basic topography ( initialization ) by successive typing using 10 fingers . and then typing must be carried out as far as possible in succession without the plurality of fingers touching one another at the same time . simultaneous occurrences of contact which may occur are to be uncovered , and eliminated , by means of filter functions ( for example excessively slow change = change which is supported only statically or is too fast = touched only fleetingly ). for example , the application of the computer input system described here on customary touch screens can also be facilitated by the fact that a network - like web ( or a layer which is smooth on the upper side but finely napped on the underside ) is applied ( for example in the lower region of the screen ). the web ( or the layer ) rests on the screen only at specific points ( for example every 2 millimeters in the x and y direction ). as a result , the fingers ( given corresponding standardization of the screen ) can be positioned in a basically looser fashion without the touch screen evaluating this as a pressure triggering operation ( activation ), and only if a specific pressure force is exceeded , in fact as far as possible only with in each case one finger at the same time , does the punctual force ( or the pressure ) become magnified into the triggering signal as a result of the small supporting points . this idea can basically be combined with the idea of feedback in the form of precision motive forces by virtue of a specific structure of the supported surface . | 6 |
as stated above , the desired characteristics of the replacement for amylopectin starch are : ( 1 ) stable dispersions exhibiting no “ retrogradation ”; and , ( 2 ) cold water dispersability , thereby avoiding the need for hot water . the starch industry produces starches which satisfy the stability requirement , and also produces starches which satisfy the dispersability issue , but the selection of starches satisfying both requirements is limited . an array of possible starch candidates was obtained from cargill , national starch , penford products , and grain processing corporation . only one material exhibited both of the two desired characteristics , as most of the samples were not cold water dispersible . the material that exhibited both desired characteristics was a cold water - dispersible , cationic modified starch , available from grain processing corporation as an experimental product , under product number gpc x201 . this material advanced to commercial status under product number gpc g400 . cationic modified starches have been known for many years , and many examples are cited in hofreiter , b . t ., “ natural products for wet - end addition ,” in “ pulp and paper chemistry and chemical technology ,” casey , j . r ., editor , wiley , new york , n . y ., 3rd edition , 1981 , pages 1475 - 1514 ; paschall , e . f ., “ production and uses of cationic starches ,” in “ starch chemistry and technology ,” r . l . and paschall , e . f ., editors , academic press , new york , n . y ., volume ii , pages 403 - 422 ; smith , r . j ., “ characterization and analysis of starches ,” also in “ starch chemistry and technology ,” whistler , r . l . and paschall , e . f ., editors , academic press , new york , n . y ., volume ii , pages 569 - 655 ; and whistler , r . l ., bemiller , j . n ., and paschall , e . f ., “ starch : chemistry and technology ,” second edition , academic press , new york , n . y ., 1984 . cationic modified starches are generally categorized by the weight percent nitrogen incorporated into the starch and the degree of substitution . the degree of substitution ( ds ) is a measure of the average number of hydroxyl groups on each d - glucopyranosyl unit which are derivatized by substituent groups . the ds value is expressed as moles of substituent per d - glucopyranosyl group . the relationship between the added nitrogen content , the degree of substitution , and the molecular weight of the substituent is described by the following equation which is discussed in whistler , r . l ., bemiller , j . n ., and paschall , e . f ., “ starch : chemistry and technology ,” second edition , academic press , new york , n . y ., 1984 : the maximum value of the degree of substitution is 3 . the weight percent nitrogen is generally determined by the dumas method , which can be executed using a leco analyzer as described in “ nitrogen in starch , starch slurry , and glucose ,” organic application note , leco corporation , 3000 lakeview avenue , st . joseph , mich . 49085 . the cationic modified starch used in the foamable concentrate according to the invention should have a degree of substitution of at least approximately 0 . 02 , and in the range from approximately 0 . 02 to 0 . 2 . a preferred starch for use in the invention has a degree of substitution of 0 . 04 . the nitrogen content of the cationic modified starch should be at least approximately 0 . 15 %, and preferably in the range from approximately 0 . 15 % to approximately 2 . 0 %. a preferred starch for use in the invention has a nitrogen content of 0 . 35 %. the grain processing corporation ( gpc ) starch used in this development contained 0 . 35 weight % nitrogen , over and above the nitrogen background amount exhibited by most starches , which , as explained in smith , r . j ., “ characterization and analysis of starches , in “ starch chemistry and technology ,” whistler , r . l . and paschall , e . f ., editors , academic press , new york , n . y ., volume ii , pages 569 - 655 , is usually under 0 . 1 weight %. the corresponding degree of substitution was 0 . 04 moles of substituent per d - glucopyranosyl group . hofreiter , b . t ., “ natural products for wet - end addition ,” in “ pulp and paper chemistry and chemical technology ,” casey , j . r ., editor , wiley , new york , n . y ., 3 rd edition , 1981 , pages 1475 - 1514 suggests that commercial cationic starches contain between 0 . 18 and 0 . 37 weight % nitrogen . according to whistler , r . l ., bemiller , j . n ., and paschall , e . f ., “ starch : chemistry and technology ,” second edition , academic press , new york , n . y ., 1984 , common commercial ds values are below 0 . 2 . cold water dispersability is not necessarily related to the ds value , as starch is generally a water - soluble material after the granular structure has been disrupted . this means a high ds value is not required for easy dispersion . in many instances , with industrial starch , the gelatinizing process is performed at the user &# 39 ; s facility , meaning that the starch producer is selling a non - gelatinized product . granular structure disruption can be affected by pregelatinizing a starch material , and the cationic modified starch for use in the foamable concentrate of the invention is preferably pre - gelatinized , so that it can be readily combined with water . the gpc material described herein is pregelatinized , and disperses readily in cold water . in accordance with the invention , in forming the foamable concentrate , the cationic modified starch should be added to water at a temperature in the range from approximately 10 ° c . to 60 ° c . preferably , however , the water temperature is in the range from 15 ° c . to 30 ° c . at the time the starch is added , and ambient temperature , i . e ., approximately 20 ° c . to 25 ° c ., is entirely suitable . it is important to note that the foam technology benefits achieved by this development are related to the starch stability provided by the cationic substituents , while the process benefits are related to the pregelatinizing of the starch raw material . as mentioned above , the starch industry does offer an array of cationic starches . thus foam technology benefits could be obtained by cooking these non - dispersible cationic starches , thereby gelatinizing them on - site . another alternative is to purchase from the starch supplier a predispersed cationic starch , which , by definition , would have been gelatinized . these are all process alternatives and each leads to essentially the same foam technology benefits . in the following examples , the hydrolyzed keratin protein was produced by industria suma ltda in brazil , and can be obtained from martin baer & amp ; co . p . o . box 11 , essex , conn . 06426 , u . s . a . the amylopectin starch can be obtained from cargill , inc ., p . o . box 9300 , minneapolis , minn ., 55440 , u . s . a ., or national starch and chemical company , 10 finderne avenue , bridgewater , n . j . 08807 , u . s . a . the ferrous sulfate is commonly available and is preferred as the heptahydrate , feso 4 . 7h 2 o . the tsfl dispersant , a combination of ammonium and sodium lignosulfonate , is available from lignotech usa inc ., 100 grand avenue , rothchild , wis . 54474 , u . s . a . the biocide can be stepan onyxide , from stepan company , 22 w . frontage road , northfield , ill ., 60093 , u . s . a ., or nipacide bk , from nipa hardwicke , inc ., 3411 silverside road , 103 hagley building , wilmington , del . 19810 , u . s . a ., or an equivalent biocide . ammonium hydroxide is used to adjust the ph to about 6 . 5 . the cationic starch is commercially available from grain processing corporation , 1600 oregon street , muscatine , iowa 52761 . in making a foamable concentrate using the gpc starch compositions , the required amount of ambient temperature water was placed in a reactor vessel equipped with a stirrer suitable for the batch size . the dry and liquid ingredients were added while stirring was maintained . no heat was added . modest viscosity was exhibited , but only at the higher solids levels . the components were added in the following order : gpc g400 cationic modified starch , ferrous sulfate heptahydrate , hydrolyzed protein , tsfl dispersant , ammonium hydroxide , and finally the biocide . stirring was continued for a time interval sufficient to achieve a homogeneous final mixture , generally between three and ten hours , depending on batch size . in addition , the particle size of the cationic modified starch is important from a process viewpoint , but that variable does not affect the foam properties of importance , namely stiffness and drain time . in some of the development work described herein , gpc x201 , a developmental cationic modified starch having a larger particle size , was used . only about 25 % of the material , by weight , would pass through a 200 mesh screen . gpc g400 , a commercial cationic modified starch , having a smaller particle size , was also used in the development work . in the case of gpc g400 , more than 60 % of the material would pass through a 200 mesh screen . the commercial material having a smaller particle size was more difficult to disperse in that , like many wettable powders , the material formed small globules of dry material which required extra stirring time in the reactor before complete dispersion was achieved . the larger particle size material is preferred not only because it dispersed much more easily , but also because it resulted in less dust and was therefore more comfortable to use . the process schemes provided an opportunity to introduce many variables in the hope that the formulation produced would be better , or that the process itself would be faster or more efficient . a common first choice is to alter the temperature of the formulation process , anticipating that the dispersion sequence will accelerate . in fact , no significant dispersion speed advantage was realized . however , at a higher temperature , the viscosity of the final formulation is very much higher . the same result occurs if a formulation produced at room temperature is subjected to heating after the normal room temperature process is completed . in all cases , heating generates a more viscous concentrate . after a particular composition was prepared and its physical properties defined , the only other laboratory evaluation available was performed . this evaluation involved foaming the diluted material , judging the physical characteristics of the foam produced , and measuring the drain time . since the compositions are essentially all the same , and vary only with respect to concentration , the diluted , “ to - be - foamed ” liquid of a specific composition can be obtained from any of the compositions . common practice involves diluting according to the “ dilution ratio ,” which is defined as the volume of the diluted material divided by the volume of the concentrate . as an example , when one volume of concentrate is added to six volumes of water , the total volume is seven units , and the dilution ratio is seven . in the following examples , the dilution was adjusted to prepare “ to - be - foamed ” liquids with specific levels of gpc g400 starch , since that ingredient is directly related to the drain time performance . the foaming procedure is described in kittle u . s . pat . nos . 4 , 874 , 641 , 5 , 215 , 786 , 5 , 853 , 050 , 6 , 929 , 423 , and 6 , 994 , 491 , and is based on technology originally described in kroll u . s . pat . no . 4 , 474 , 680 . the disclosures of all of these patents are here incorporated by reference . the “ to - be - foamed ” liquid is pumped through a flow control orifice into a mixing block , where it is added to an expansion gas , usually compressed air , similarly controlled by a flow control orifice . the combination is discharged through a mixing zone , which can be constituted by a hose of appropriate length or by a packed bed , so that a foam is discharged onto a target substrate . the technology is fully scalable , with commercial devices having a discharge rate ranging from less than one gallon per minute liquid flow to 60 gallons per minute liquid flow . measuring the drain time for these compositions entails measurement of the “ relative ” drain time rather than attempting to define and measure absolute drain time , which is much more complex . in these cases , all that is required is a standard procedure which is : ( a ) reproducible ; ( b ) easy to carry out ; and ( c ) related to common field experience . a drain time procedure satisfying these requirements has been developed and calibrated . the procedure involves the use of a foaming system , as described above , operating at one gallon per minute liquid flow , which becomes the definition of how much liquid is collected as foam . this discharge is collected for one minute in a fifteen gallon plastic tank having a conical bottom and fitted with a gravity discharge opening at the bottom of the cone . after the calibrated foaming system has stabilized , the foam is discharged into the plastic tank for one minute . the beginning of the time interval ( t = 0 ) used as the measure of drain time is determined to be the time of completion of the discharge of foam into the tank . a collection beaker is set below the bottom of the tank . as the foam drains , liquid is collected , and the weight is incrementally defined as a function of time . since the input volume was one gallon , that is , 3785 cubic centimeters , the grams collected in each time interval can be converted to weight percent drained by dividing by 37 . 85 . the final result can be plotted as weight percent drained as a function of time . the procedure is reliable , and works best for foams having slower drain times . in the following examples , viscosity was measured after the material was allowed to rest overnight . the viscosity measurements were made using a brookfield viscometer , at spindle # 4 speeds of 6 , 12 , 30 and 60 rpm . for reference , a typical commercial batch of product , in accordance with kittle u . s . pat . no . 5 , 853 , 050 , prepared by the procedure previously outlined had the following composition : keratin protein 4 . 00 weight percent amylopectin starch 4 . 00 ferrous sulfate 8 . 00 tsfl 4 . 00 biocide 0 . 50 ammonium hydroxide 0 . 40 water 79 . 10 total 100 . 00 the physical characteristics of this composition are : ( a ) ph at room temperature , 6 . 2 - 6 . 4 ; ( b ) weight percent solids , 15 . 50 ; ( c ) viscosity after the material was allowed to rest overnight , measured using a brookfield viscometer , at room temperature , at spindle # 4 speeds of 6 , 12 , 30 , 60 , was 19000 , 10000 , 4800 , 3000 cps , respectively . by contrast when the same composition is prepared using the same ingredients , but omitting the amylopectin and substituting grain processing corporation &# 39 ; s x201 cationic modified starch , the composition was as follows : keratin protein 4 . 00 weight percent gpc x201 starch 4 . 00 ferrous sulfate 8 . 00 tsfl 4 . 00 biocide 0 . 50 ammonium hydroxide 0 . 40 water 79 . 10 total 100 . 00 , the physical characteristics were identical to those of example one , except that the viscosity was less than 100 cps . in this example , the composition of example two was extended to a higher starch level , and was as follows : keratin protein 4 . 00 weight percent gpc x201 starch 6 . 00 ferrous sulfate 8 . 00 tsfl 4 . 00 biocide 1 . 00 ammonium hydroxide 0 . 50 water 76 . 50 total 100 . 00 , the increased starch content did not significantly increase the viscosity . the ph remained in the same range , and the solids increased to 17 . 49 . repetition of the same composition demonstrated the expected reproducibility . in order to evaluate how far the concentration level could be extended , the components of the formulation ( other than the biocide ) were proportionately increased , by 25 %, while the amount of water was correspondingly decreased , so that the formulation was as follows : keratin protein 5 . 00 weight percent gpc x201 starch 7 . 50 ferrous sulfate 10 . 00 tsfl 5 . 00 biocide 1 . 00 ammonium hydroxide 0 . 60 water 70 . 90 total 100 . 00 the solids increased to 21 . 12 %, the ph remained at 6 . 3 , and the viscosity showed some increase . the viscosity at room temperature , measured using a brookfield viscometer , with spindle # 4 speeds of 6 , 12 , 30 , 60 , resulted in measured viscosities of 2000 , 1500 , 1200 , and 1100 cps , respectively , all of which are well within a usable viscosity range . in this example , the composition was again proportionately increased by about 25 % to arrive at the following composition : keratin protein 6 . 00 weight percent gpc x201 starch 9 . 00 ferrous sulfate 12 . 00 tsfl 6 . 00 biocide 1 . 00 ammonium hydroxide 0 . 70 water 65 . 30 total 100 . 00 the solids increased to 25 . 31 %, the ph stayed the same at 6 . 3 , while the viscosity increased . the viscosity at room temperature , measured using a brookfield viscometer , with spindle # 4 speeds of 6 , 12 , 30 , 60 , resulted in measured viscosities of 9000 , 6000 , 3800 , and 2700 cps , respectively , all of which are still within a usable viscosity range , even though some gel formation was observed . the following formulation was prepared at room temperature , yielding a concentrate having a ph of 6 . 5 , and spindle # 4 viscosities of 2180 , 1470 , 945 , and 510 cps , with spindle speeds of 6 , 12 , 30 , and 60 , respectively . the measurements were taken at 25 ° c . this composition used gpc g400 cationic modified starch , the commercial version of the gpc x201 starch described previously . a formulation corresponding to that of example six was prepared , but at a temperature of 50 - 55 ° c . the corresponding viscosities were 6300 , 4200 , 2820 , 2020 cps , also at 25 ° c . a sample of a scaled - up batch of the example six composition was reheated to 60 - 65 ° c . for three hours while being stirred modestly . after cooling and sitting at rest overnight , the same procedures as used for all the samples , the viscosities were measured at 25 ° c ., with spindle # 4 and the same rotational speeds , yielding viscosity values of 40000 , 25900 , 15200 , and 9900 cps . the foaming performance and drain time results for samples according to examples six , seven and eight , all evaluated under the same conditions , were essentially identical . an explanation for this behavior is that the fluid characteristics of the various concentrates are a function of the processing history , but , when each concentrate is diluted to the same “ to - be - foamed ” composition , the fluid characteristics become identical . the following composition , which is identical to the composition of example three , was prepared at room temperature , yielding expected physical properties : keratin protein 4 . 00 weight percent gpc x201 starch 6 . 00 ferrous sulfate 8 . 00 tsfl 4 . 00 biocide 1 . 00 ammonium hydroxide 0 . 50 water 76 . 50 total 100 . 00 the composition was diluted at a dilution ratio of 6 , by adding 7 . 5 pounds of the composition to 37 . 5 pounds of cold water . the mixture was stirred for a few minutes and foamed directly , as described above . the gpc x201 composition in the diluted “ to - be - foamed ” liquid was 10000 ppm , which was the original composition , 60000 ppm , divided by the dilution ratio . the foam produced was stiff by any common standard and the drain time was measured as described . the drain time results are shown in fig1 . when the same composition was diluted at a dilution ratio of 4 , by adding 10 . 0 pounds of the composition to 30 pounds of cold water , the resulting foam was stiffer . the amount of gpc x201 starch in the diluted , “ to - be - foamed ,” liquid was 15000 ppm , which was the original composition , 60000 ppm , divided by the dilution ratio . the drain time results are also shown in fig1 . when the same composition was diluted at a dilution ratio of 2 , by adding 8000 grams of the composition to 8000 grams of cold water , the resulting foam was extremely stiff . the gpc x201 composition in the diluted , “ to - be - foamed ,” liquid was 30000 ppm , which was the original composition , 60000 ppm , divided by the dilution ratio . the drain time results are shown in fig1 . evaluation of the effect of the starch concentration on the drain time results shows a generally proportional relationship between starch content and drainage . as an example , at 20 hours , the 10000 ppm composition drained about 22 % while the 30000 ppm composition drained about 2 %. when making the same comparison at 40 hours , the values are 38 % and 3 %, respectively . within this range of concentrations , tripling the starch level , 10000 ppm to 30000 ppm , produced a ten fold decrease in the percentage of the foam , which is exactly the effect being sought . a generally acceptable formulation can be prepared using the following composition , which is the same as the composition of example six , but made in a larger batch size . keratin protein 4 . 00 weight percent gpc g400 starch 9 . 00 ferrous sulfate 8 . 00 tsfl 4 . 00 biocide 1 . 00 ammonium hydroxide 0 . 60 cinnamon scent 0 . 10 water 73 . 30 total 100 . 00 the cinnamon is added to mask the hydrolyzed protein odor some find objectionable . the solids for this composition are 20 . 16 % and the ph at 20 ° c . is 6 . 4 . the viscosity profile , after overnight at rest , also at 20 ° c ., was 4100 , 2800 , 1960 , and 1420 cps at spindle # 4 speeds of 6 , 12 , 30 , 60 rpm , respectively . the development work demonstrated that this formulation achieved a suitable balance between the physical properties of the concentrate and foam performance at various dilution ratios , while various application issues were being considered . the drain time measurements were made at dilution ratios of 8 . 0 ( g400 at 11250 ppm ) and 3 . 2 ( g400 at 28125 ppm ). the drain time results are shown in fig2 . alternatively , a generally acceptable formulation can be prepared using the following composition , which is the same as the composition of example ten , but made using the cationic starch in slurry form . keratin protein 4 . 00 weight percent gpc l435 starch ( 30 %) slurry 30 . 00 ferrous sulfate heptahydrate 8 . 00 tsfl 4 . 00 biocide 1 . 00 ammonium hydroxide 0 . 60 cinnamon scent 0 . 10 water 52 . 30 the cinnamon is added to mask the hydrolyzed protein odor . the solids for this composition are 20 . 1 % and the ph at 26 ° c . is 6 . 4 . the viscosity profile , after overnight at rest , at 25 ° c ., was 360 , 200 , 190 , 175 cps at spindle # 2 speeds of 6 , 12 , 30 and 60 rpm , respectively . subsequent development work demonstrated that this formulation achieved a suitable balance between the physical properties of the concentrate and foam performance at various dilution ratios , while various application issues were being considered . the drain time measurements were made at a dilution ratio of 8 . 0 ( l435 at 11250 ppm ). the drain time results are essentially the same as those depicted in fig2 for g400 at 11250 ppm . the formulations as herein described offer a broad array of foam product performance factors unavailable from any other compositions . the basic components in a concentrate formulation can allow foaming with both stiffness and drain time control initially defined by the weight percent levels of the ingredients . since the compositions can be prepared at relatively high weight percent levels , the dilution ratio used in the field now can offer an increased range of performance . there are many applications for the invention . in landfill and hazardous waste applications , discussed by many of the patent references , stiffness and persistence are key performance factors . some mining applications utilize very stiff foams for controlling low pressure differential air flows . in these cases , extreme stiffness may be needed to avoid cold flow or self - leveling . forced recovery of landfill gas ( methane ) as described by kittle in u . s . pat . no . 6 , 929 , 423 , requires good drain time control , but not necessarily excessive stiffness , since the foam is injected into a horizontal distribution pattern , and the foam should not drain significantly until such time as the application is completed . on the other side of the spectrum , the iron component of the protein complex can be useful for controlling hydrogen sulfide as described by kittle in u . s . pat . no . 6 , 994 , 491 , where the foam also needs to be injected into reasonably compacted material . this attribute can also be extended to the control of hydrogen sulfide during mining operations , provided that the contact between the foam phase and the escaping gas is efficient . in coal mining operations , this requires foam application at the cutting interface , thereby minimizing the time between contact and control , compared to the time required for the gas to escape into the environment . in mining , the same technology can also control dust generated by the cutting operation . | 0 |
fig1 schematically shows the design of a data processing system 1 for processing medical texts . the data processing system 1 is connected to a patient administration system 2 or is integrated into such a system . the patient administration system 2 , for example , can be part of a comprehensive hospital information system ( kis ). the patient administration system 2 likewise can be coupled in a data - related manner with a radiology information system ( ris ) and / or a cardiology information system ( cis ). the patient administration system 2 offers the possibility to open a report editor 3 . alteratively , the report editor 3 can be operated independently of the patient administration system 2 . the report editor 3 can call up a text analysis module ( acting as an evaluation unit 4 ) automatically or by means of a suitable user input in order to evaluate and ( in the event that it is necessary ) to correct a medical text . for this purpose , the evaluation unit 4 uses a rule set 5 and has access to two databanks 6 , 7 . the cited components 2 - 7 of the data processing system 1 need not necessarily be physically separate from one another . fig1 merely illustrates a conceptual division , but any of the components 2 - 7 can be merged and / or realized by means of software . the medical text to be evaluated is imported into the evaluation unit 4 . the data input can ensue via a keyboard , a scanner , a microphone or other input means , or combinations thereof . the evaluation unit 4 preferably automatically becomes active as son as the user inputs a text , for example by typing or natural speech . the imported text is evaluated in an ongoing manner using the rule set 5 , whereby it is initially checked whether a word or a series of words could be a technical medical term . if this first question is affirmed by the data processing system 1 , the further analysis ensues under access to the first databank 6 as well as the second databank 7 . the first databank 6 contains latin technical terms , in particular latin - medical - anatomical as well as latin - medical - pathological terms . the terms contained in the second databank 7 are structured according to diagnostic criteria , namely according to the drg system . furthermore , the second databank 7 contains codes associated with the individual drg terms , which codes are in particular to be used in the accounting of medical services . deviating from the exemplary embodiment ( shown simplified ), the databanks 6 , 7 could also access common data sets . an example of a text component that is detected as a medical term and automatically changed by means of the data processing system 1 is the expression “ vasoconstriction of the femoral artery ”. instead of a formulation in english , a formulation in another language ( for example in german ) could also exist . an entry can be input into the data processing system 1 to designate which language should be assumed as the input language , insofar as latin technical medical expressions are not already input . in the present case , the expression identified as a possible technical medical term is automatically converted into the term “ stenosis arterial femoralis ”. this illustrates a typical application case of the data processing system 1 , namely the translation of colloquial terms into latin technical language . furthermore , the data processing system 1 is set up in terms of programming such that an incorrectly - written technical medical term is automatically replaced by the corresponding term in the correct notation or spelling . instead of an abbreviated term , the completely written - out term is likewise inserted into the text . the correct spelling and abbreviation check is thereby realized by means of the first databank 6 , while the second databank 7 contains information beyond this , in particular in a format conforming to accounting . the program workflow in the data processing system 1 is subsequently described more precisely using fig2 , which shows a diagnosis in the manner of a structured chart ( structogram ). the report editor 3 is opened in the first program step s 1 . in the next program step s 2 , a plug - in is started that launches the intelligent software tool which edits ( processes ) the medical text . after the start of the software tool , the rule set 5 is loaded in a program step s 3 . this is the requirement for the software tool “ reading along ” with the input text in the program step s 4 , which is to be equated with the processing in the evaluation unit 4 in the representation according to fig1 . each input term , which can also be formed of multiple words , is evaluated in a first query a 1 as to whether it is potentially a technical medical term . an affirmation of a query is indicated in the structured chart according to fig2 by an appended “ plus ”, a negation by an appended “ minus ”. in the following , the term “ greatest gluteal muscle ” is considered as an input text component . this term is identified as a relevant medical term in the query a 1 . otherwise , the program workflow within the structured chart would end with the program end e and the automatic checking could be continued with the next term in the text . however , because a medical term is to be examined more closely in the present case , the first databank 6 is called up ( invoked ) in the program step s 5 . in a second query a 2 it is tested whether latin equivalents exist for the term input in german . this is the case here ; the term “ musculus glutaeus maximus ” is found . in the program step s 6 , this term is inserted into the text in place of the original english term . deviating from this example , it would also be conceivable for the user of the data processing system 1 to directly type in the term in latin . in this case , the data processing system 1 also represents a significant aid . after input of the letters “ musc ”, thus the first four letters , the data processing system 1 automatically completes the word to “ muscle ”. the letters “ glut ” are automatically completed to “ glutaeus ” in a corresponding manner . the evaluation unit 4 now detects that there are various possibilities for the continuation of the term , namely the appending of “ minimus ”, “ medius ” or “ maximus ”. if the query a 2 leads to such an ambiguity , a term selection is automatically displayed to the user , whereby the selected terms can be arranged in a context - sensitive manner . because a term was selected wholly automatically or with the aid of the user in the program step s 6 , an access to the second databank 7 ensues in the next program step s 7 . in a third query a 3 , it is checked whether the technical term found in the program steps s 5 - s 6 can be replaced with a term conforming to accounting , i . e . with the term compatible with the drg codes . additionally , it is automatically checked whether auxiliary information regarding the corresponding diagnosis are available in the second databank 7 . in the illustrated exemplary embodiment ( musculus glutaeus maximus ), the described pathology is , for example , an abscess after iatrogenic intervention ( spray injection ). there exist various drgs for this , so an appropriate selection is in turn provided to the user of the data processing system 1 . the selected information is inserted into the medical text to be processed in the program step s 8 . the entire text is processed in this manner , such that ultimately a text is available with very precise formulation which can be handled easily for accounting purposes , but also offers a good basis for scientific evaluations . although modifications and changes may be suggested by those skilled in the art , it is the intention of the inventors to embody within the patent warranted hereon all changes and modifications as reasonably and properly come within the scope of their contribution to the art . | 6 |
in the method of the present invention as summarized above , kasugamycin is reacted , preferably in the presence of an acid catalyst , with an acetylating agent under conditions which favor acetolysis of the aminoglycoside . ideally , the kasugamycin is in the form of an hydrochloride salt ; however , the term &# 34 ; kasugamycin &# 34 ; refers to both kasugamycin base as well as any acid - or base - addition salt which is readily available and suitable for use as described herein . in a favored embodiment of the invention , the acetylating agent is chosen from among acetic anhydride , a mixture of acetic anhydride and acetic acid , trifluoroacetic anhydride , a mixture of trifluoroacetic anhydride and trifluoroacetic acid , and a mixture of acetyl halide and acetic acid ; preferred is a mixture of acetic anhydride and acetic acid in a ratio ( by volume ) of about 1 : 1 . the acid catalyst , on the other hand , may be chosen from among mineral acids and lewis acids . suitable mineral acids include hydrochloric acid , hydrobromic acid , hydrofluoric acid , nitric acid , sulfuric acid , and perchloric acid ; suitable lewis acids include bf 3 - etherate and fecl 3 . especially preferred acid catalysts include concentrated sulfuric acid and 70 % perchloric acid , of which 10 drops suffice per 100 ml total reaction volume . the acetolysis reaction may be carded out for a period of time which depends on temperature and the choice of reagents ; the time required can range from two hours to three days , and the temperature may vary from ambient to 120 ° c . the product of the acetolysis reaction is hexa - o - acetyl - d - chiro - inositol or , in the event that trifluoroacetic anhydride is used as acetylating agent , hexa - o - trifluoroacetyl - d - chiro - inositol . it is intended , in both the specification and the claims hereof , that the term &# 34 ; hexa - acetate &# 34 ; encompasses both the hexa - o - acetyl and the hexa - o - trifluoroacetyl intermediates . following acetolysis , the crude hexa - acetate may be purified as described above beginning with removal of the acetylating agent , preferably by vacuum evaporation as in a rotary evaporator , typically resulting in the formation of an oily residue . once &# 34 ; stripped &# 34 ; of substantially all of the acetylating agent , the residue may then be diluted in a solvent system which ideally comprises a first , polar solvent chosen from among ethyl acetate , ch 3 cn , ch 2 cl 2 , chcl 3 , and 1 , 2 - dichloroethane . this solvent system may optionally also comprise a second , non - polar solvent chosen from among long - chain hydrocarbons and aromatic hydrocarbons , especially pentane , hexane , heptane , benzene , xylene or toluene . preferred is a system comprising ethyl acetate and hexane in a ratio ( by volume ) of about 1 : 1 . according to one embodiment of the invention , the resulting solution of crude hexa - acetate is then passed through a filter material which retains any solids as well as some of the contaminant by - products of the acetolysis reaction . depending on the choice of solvent systems , suitable filter materials may include silica gel , alumina , activated carbon , diatomaceous earth , and a mixture of alumina and diatomaceous earth ; preferred for use with the above ethyl acetate / hexane system is silica gel . residual acids in the solution of purified hexa - acetate may then be neutralized , in particular by washing the solution with an aqueous solution of sodium bicarbonate . ( alternatively , the neutralization step may be carried out before purification , as by washing the crude hexa - acetate solution prior to filtering .) after separation of the organic ( intermediate - containing ) and aqueous ( bicarbonate - containing ) layers , the purified hexa - acetate solution is again stripped of solvent , typically resulting as before in the formation of an oil which contains the purified intermediate . in the event that residual acetylating agent ( such as acetic anhydride ) or water ( from the above neutralization with sodium bicarbonate ) remain in the purified hexa - acetate , an optional &# 34 ; azeo - drying &# 34 ; step may be performed . in such a step , the purified intermediate is dissolved in a suitable solvent , such as toluene , isopropanol or n - propanol . the solvent is then stripped or evaporated , along with any azeotropes formed by the solvent and the above contaminants , leaving a more highly purified hexa - acetate material . deacetylation ( or saponification ) of the purified hexa - acetate may then be performed , as for example under basic conditions such as those described in chem . ber . 56 : 1705 ( 1923 ) and j . chem . soc . 3166 ( 1960 ). in particular , deacetylation may be accomplished by dissolving the hexa - acetate in methanol and adding a basic catalyst selected from among lithium methoxide , sodium methoxide , barium methoxide , and potassium methoxide , sodium methoxide being preferred . ( alternatively , the catalyst may be added to the solvent before the hexa - acetate .) the amount of catalyst may range from about 0 . 01 to about 0 . 05 molar equivalents ( or more , if significant amounts of acetylating agent remain ). the reaction may be commenced at room temperature , resulting in the immediate precipitation of d - chiro - inositol product , and may then be continued as by heating to reflux for up to 12 hours . upon cooling , the product may readily be isolated as by filtering and drying . other possible means of deacetylating the hexa - acetate include reacting the intermediate with suitable amounts of ethanol and hydrochloric acid as described in chem . bet . 92 : 173 ( 1959 ). further deacetylation procedures which may be employed are described in h . s . khadem , carbohydrate chemistry : monosaccharides and their oligomers , academic press ( san diego , 1988 ) ( cleavage of acetate esters using sodium hydroxide in acetone ) and t . w . greene and p . g . m . wuts , protective groups in organic synthesis , wiley & amp ; sons ( new york , 1991 ), pp . 90 and 418 - 420 ( identifying various possible reagents and conditions ). although the above methods result in a d - chiro - inositol product of considerable purity , it may be desired to further purify the product as by re - crystallization . in one embodiment of such a purification step , the product is dissolved in a suitable solvent such as water , after which crystallization is induced ( as for example by addition of ethanol ) and the solid product is collected by conventional means . also , if decolorization of the product is desired , d - chiro - inositol can be treated with activated carbon while still in solution . as used throughout this specification and in the appended claims , the following terms have the meanings specified : the term &# 34 ; aromatic hydrocarbons &# 34 ; as used herein refers to cyclic , unsaturated hydrocarbons of between six and ten carbon atoms including , but not limited to , benzene , xylene and toluene . the term &# 34 ; long - chain hydrocarbons &# 34 ; as used herein refers to straight - or branched - chain saturated hydrocarbons of between five and ten carbon atoms including , but not limited to , pentane , hexane and heptane . the method of the present invention will be better understood in connection with the following examples , which are intended as an illustration of and not a limitation upon the scope of the invention . both below and throughout the specification , it is intended that citations to the literature are expressly incorporated by reference . in a process representative of the method of the present invention , the intermediate hexa - o - acetyl - d - chiro - inositol was prepared according to the following procedure : kasugamycin hydrochloride ( 0 . 98 g , 2 . 36 mmol ; sigma chemical co ., st . louis ) in 10 ml acetic anhydride , 10 ml acetic acid and 2 drops of concentrated sulfuric acid was heated at 100 ° c . under nitrogen for 24 hours . after being cooled , the brown mixture was concentrated by rotary evaporation ( maximum bath temperature , 65 °- 70 ° c .) to a brown oil . this oil was diluted with 100 ml of a 1 : 1 mixture ( by volume ) of ethyl acetate and mixed hexanes and heated at reflux for 1 hour . the result was a clear , medium amber solution with brown solids . after cooling to room temperature , this mixture was filtered through a short plug ( approximately 20 g ) of silica gel which had been wetted with 1 : 1 ethyl acetate / hexanes . the silica filter material was washed with 300 ml 1 : 1 ethyl acetate / hexanes . the collected organic fractions were combined and concentrated by rotary evaporation to an amber oil which was found to move readily on a silica gel thin layer chromatography plate ( r f = 0 . 27 using 1 : 1 ethyl acetate / hexanes ) and could be visualized with phosphmolybdic acid after heating for 1 - 2 minutes . based on the similarity of these results with data reported for hexa - o - acetyl - myo - inositol , the product was identifed as hexa - o - acetyl - d - chiro - inositol . material prepared in the above manner was further purified chromatographically using silica gel and 1 : 1 ethyl acetate / hexanes , and concentrated to a pale amber oil . removal of residual solvent in a vacuum oven at 65 ° c . overnight gave 61 % of an oil which had a 1 h nmr spectrum consistent with that of the desired product . because of a rotational symmetry axis , only three acetate signals are present in the proton spectrum and a relatively simple pattern of signals was observed . 1 h nmr ( 300 mhz , cdcl 3 ): δ1 . 99 ( s , 6h ); 2 . 04 ( s , 6h ); 2 . 19 ( s , 6h ); 5 . 29 ( dt , 2h ); 5 . 38 ( d , 2h ); 5 . 42 ( dd , 2h ). in an alternative embodiment of the method of the present invention , kasugamycin ( 1 . 00 g ) in 5 ml acetic anhydride , 5 ml acetic acid and 0 . 26 ml concentrated sulfuric acid was heated at 100 ° c . under nitrogen for 24 hours . the dark brown mixture was cooled to room temperature and concentrated by rotary evaporation to an oil . this residue was slurried in 25 ml of a 3 : 2 mixture ( by volume ) of ethyl acetate and heptanes for 20 minutes , and then filtered through 2 g silica gel which had been wetted with ethyl acetate . the filter material was washed with 15 ml 3 : 2 ethyl acetate / hexanes , and the collected organic fractions were combined . these were then washed with saturated aqueous sodium bicarbonate ( 4 × 50 ml ), water ( 1 × 50 ml ) and brine ( 1 × 50 ml ) and dried over sodium sulfate . the resulting material was filtered through a coarse scintered - glass funnel and concentrated to an oil by rotary evaporation . this oil was then azeo - dried by dissolving in 20 ml toluene and reconcentrating using a rotary evaporator . the resulting 0 . 95 g of pale amber oil was identified the hexa - acetate intermediate by tlc . the hexa - acetate product of example 3 ( 0 . 83 g ) was dissolved in 10 ml of methanol . three drops of 25 % naome / meoh were added to the stirred solution which was then heated at reflux for 15 hours . the slurry was cooled to room temperature and the solids were collected by filtration . the collected solids were then washed with ambient temperature ethanol ( about 5 ml ) and dried to constant weight in a vacuum oven at 75 ° c ., affording d - chiro - inositol ( 0 . 28 g , 80 % yield ) which by 1 h nmr was & gt ; 98 % pure . it is understood that the foregoing detailed description and accompanying examples are merely illustrative and are not to be taken as limitations upon the scope of the invention , which is defined solely by the appended claims and their equivalents . various changes and modifications to the disclosed embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art . such changes and modifications , including without limitation those relating to the reagents , concentrations and reaction conditions used in the method of the invention , may be made without departing from the spirit and scope thereof . | 2 |
[ 0017 ] fig1 shows a check valve according to the invention . a fluid can flow through this valve in only one flow direction . as a result , it can be used , for example , in a fuel supply unit of an internal combustion engine , which usually contains a fuel pump . the fuel pump delivers fuel under pressure to an internal combustion engine . for this particular application , the check valve is disposed between the fuel pump and the internal combustion engine and when the fuel pump is switched off , prevents fuel from flowing back to the fuel pump from the internal combustion engine . this maintains the fuel pressure in the internal combustion engine . the check valve includes a housing 1 having an inlet opening 2 and an outlet opening 3 , which communicate with an inner chamber 4 . the inlet opening 2 leads to an inlet conduit 5 , which at its other end , transitions into a for example conical valve seat 6 . the valve seat 6 is disposed in a first end wall 16 of the inner chamber 4 , which contains a movable closing body 7 and is connected to an outlet conduit 14 that leads to the outlet opening 3 . the cross section of the inner chamber 4 narrows monotonically starting from the first end wall 16 in the opening direction 15 of the closing body 7 . when the check valve is closed , the closing body 7 rests against the for example conical valve seat 6 . a stop 8 limits the movement of the closing body in the opening direction 15 . the closing body 7 is comprised of a closing section 9 , which is oriented toward the valve seat 6 and embodied for example in the form of a hemisphere , and an adjoining cylindrical section 10 . the closing section 9 here is comprised of rubber or plastic , for example . the diameter of the cylindrical section 10 can be greater than , equal to or smaller than the diameter of the closing section . the cylindrical section 10 is provided with a guide pin 11 , which is guided in a guide bore 12 of the housing 1 . a compression spring 13 rests against the cylindrical section 10 of the closing body 7 and presses the closing body 7 toward the valve seat 6 . if the fuel pressure upstream of the valve seat 6 exceeds a predetermined value , then the closing body 7 lifts away from the valve seat 6 . the check valve opens and fuel flows through the inlet conduit 5 , the inner chamber 4 , and the outlet conduit 14 . if the fuel pressure falls below this predetermined value , e . g . when the fuel pump is switched off , then the check valve closes again and the delivery of fuel stops . in the check valve according to fig2 parts that remain the same or function in the same manner in comparison to the check valve in fig1 are labeled with the same reference numerals . the check valve according to fig2 differs from the check valve in fig1 in that the closing body 7 is embodied as a sphere 17 , which the compression spring 13 presses into the valve seat 6 . the sphere 17 is guided by at least three ribs 18 distributed over the circumference of the inner chamber 4 guide , which ribs 18 can also be seen in fig3 and which extend in the opening direction of the closing body . [ 0023 ] fig4 shows a characteristic curve of the check valve , depicted with the stroke h on the ordinate and the volumetric flow v on the abscissa . the characteristic curve extends in almost a straight line in a beginning region 20 and then transitions into an exponential region 21 in which a slight change in the volumetric flow v produces a large stroke h of the closing body 7 . the characteristic curve then transitions into a horizontal region 22 when the cylindrical section 10 rests against the stop 8 . [ 0024 ] fig5 shows a characteristic curve of the check valve according to the invention , depicted with the total pressure loss ap on the ordinate and the volumetric flow v on the abscissa . the total pressure loss of the check valve is chiefly composed of the pressure loss at the cross sectional reduction at the valve seat 6 and the pressure loss at the narrowing between the circumference of the inner chamber 4 and the closing body 7 , 17 or the cylindrical section 10 . the narrowing of the inner chamber cross section results in the fact that the closing body 7 , 17 already opens wide at a comparatively low flowing fluid quantity and the pressure loss at the valve seat 6 drops sharply as a result . by contrast , the increase in the pressure loss at the closing body 7 , 17 is lower so that the total pressure loss characteristic curve 23 indicates a strongly pronounced pressure loss minimum 24 . the foregoing relates to preferred exemplary embodiments of the invention , it being understood that other variants and embodiments thereof are possible within the spirit and scope of the invention , the latter being defined by the appended claims . | 8 |
now , the imaging optical system according to the present invention will be described more detailedly below with reference to the preferred embodiments shown in the accompanying drawings and given in the form of the following numerical data : ______________________________________ f = - 112 . 213 ˜ 3 . 825 , image height 1 . 4331 ˜ 3 . 2929 object point 0 . 37103r . sub . 1 = ∞ d . sub . 1 = 0 . 3710 n . sub . 1 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 1 = 64 . 15r . sub . 2 = ∞ d . sub . 2 = 0 . 6957r . sub . 3 = ∞ d . sub . 3 = 0 . 5566 n . sub . 2 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 2 = 64 . 15r . sub . 4 = ∞ d . sub . 4 = 0 . 0557r . sub . 5 = - 56 . 3034d . sub . 5 = 0 . 9276 n . sub . 3 = 1 . 51823 ν . sub . 2 = 58 . 96r . sub . 6 = - 3 . 061d . sub . 6 = 0 . 2876r . sub . 7 = 5 . 2891d . sub . 7 = 1 . 0203 n . sub . 4 = 1 . 6223 ν . sub . 4 = 53 . 2r . sub . 8 = - 5 . 2891d . sub . 8 = 0 . 5102r . sub . 9 = - 6 . 6981d . sub . 9 = 0 . 8255 n . sub . 5 = 1 . 74 ν . sub . 5 = 28 . 29r . sub . 10 = 2 . 2299d . sub . 10 = 1 . 6882 n . sub . 6 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 6 = 45 . 91r . sub . 11 = - 8 . 9094d . sub . 11 = 2 . 1984r . sub . 12 = - 17 . 3922d . sub . 12 = 1 . 3728 n . sub . 7 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 7 = 45 . 91r . sub . 13 = - 5 . 1963d . sub . 13 = 0 . 4545r . sub . 14 = ∞ ( aperture stop ) d . sub . 14 = d . sub . 1 ( variable ) r . sub . 15 = 15 . 0751d . sub . 15 = 3 . 6083 n . sub . 8 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 8 = 64 . 15r . sub . 16 = - 15 . 0751d . sub . 16 = 1 . 8552 n . sub . 9 = 1 . 5927 ν . sub . 9 = 35 . 29r . sub . 17 = ∞ d . sub . 17 = d . sub . 2 ( variable ) r . sub . 18 = - 50 . 4188d . sub . 18 = 0 . 9276 n . sub . 10 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 10 = 55 . 52r . sub . 19 = 3 . 8383d . sub . 19 = 1 . 3914 n . sub . 11 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 11 = 37 . 16r . sub . 20 = 7 . 1823d . sub . 20 = d . sub . 3 ( variable ) r . sub . 21 = 18 . 8448d . sub . 21 = 2 . 7828 n . sub . 12 = 1 . 696 ν . sub . 12 = 55 . 52r . sub . 22 = - 7 . 5607d . sub . 22 = 0 . 9276 n . sub . 13 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 13 = 37 . 16r . sub . 23 = - 25 . 0522d . sub . 23 = 17 . 8838r . sub . 24 = ∞ ( flare stop ) d . sub . 24 = 1 . 8552r . sub . 25 = ∞ d . sub . 25 = 20 . 3141 n . sub . 14 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 14 = 45 . 55r . sub . 26 = ∞ d . sub . 26 = 0 . 0928r . sub . 27 = ∞ d . sub . 27 = 0 . 9276 n . sub . 15 = 1 . 52287 ν . sub . 15 = 59 . 9r . sub . 28 = ∞ d . sub . 28 = 5 . 4727r . sub . 29 = ∞ d . sub . 29 = 1 . 3914 n . sub . 16 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 16 = 64 . 15r . sub . 30 = ∞ d . sub . 30 = 10 . 1014r . sub . 31 = ∞ d . sub . 31 = 0 . 371 n . sub . 17 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 17 = 64 . 15r . sub . 32 = ∞ f - 112 . 213 12 . 534 3 . 825d . sub . 1 2 . 998 0 . 543 3 . 061d . sub . 2 1 . 653 8 . 186 12 . 259d . sub . 3 13 . 171 9 . 094 2 . 503β . sub . 12 ( w ) = - 7 . 3915 , β . sub . 12 ( s ) = - 7 . 4113β . sub . 12 ( t ) = - 7 . 3910β . sub . 3 ( w ) = - 0 . 6239 , β . sub . 3 ( s ) = - 1 . 00185β . sub . 3 ( t ) = - 1 . 6138β . sub . 4 = - 1 . 67677 , f . sub . 3 = - 10 . 77 , f . sub . 4 = 19 . 66ε = 1 . 736 °˜ 1 . 542 °, ε &# 39 ; = - 0 . 113 °˜ 2 . 56 ° θ = 0 . 06 ° ______________________________________ ______________________________________ f = 45 . 54 ˜ 2 . 829 , image height 1 . 6399 ˜ 3 . 768 object point 0 . 42162r . sub . 1 = ∞ d . sub . 1 = 1 . 0614 n . sub . 1 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 1 = 64 . 15r . sub . 2 = ∞ d . sub . 2 = 2 . 6111r . sub . 3 = - 5 . 0693d . sub . 3 = 0 . 5625 n . sub . 2 = 1 . 78472 ν . sub . 2 = 25 . 71r . sub . 4 = 9 . 3861d . sub . 4 = 2 . 1653 n . sub . 3 = 1 . 53113 ν . sub . 3 = 62 . 44r . sub . 5 = - 4 . 165d . sub . 5 = 0 . 1698r . sub . 6 = 246 . 5711d . sub . 6 = 1 . 0826 n . sub . 4 = 1 . 713 ν . sub . 4 = 53 . 84r . sub . 7 = - 9 . 5548d . sub . 7 = 0 . 1592r . sub . 8 = 5 . 3283d . sub . 8 = 1 . 4117 n . sub . 5 = 1 . 713 ν . sub . 5 = 53 . 84r . sub . 9 = 8 . 3384d . sub . 9 = 0 . 1061r . sub . 10 = 3 . 8773d . sub . 10 = 1 . 3692 n . sub . 6 = 1 . 713 ν . sub . 6 = 53 . 84r . sub . 11 = 10 . 5833d . sub . 11 = 0 . 5944 n . sub . 7 = 1 . 5927 ν . sub . 7 = 35 . 29r . sub . 12 = 2 . 3585d . sub . 12 = 3 . 4177r . sub . 13 = ∞ ( aperture stop ) d . sub . 13 = d . sub . 1 ( variable ) r . sub . 14 = 15 . 4576d . sub . 14 = 3 . 1264 n . sub . 8 = 1 . 48749 ν . sub . 8 = 70 . 2r . sub . 15 = - 18 . 3761d . sub . 15 = 2 . 1018 n . sub . 9 = 1 . 5927 ν . sub . 9 = 35 . 29r . sub . 16 = ∞ d . sub . 16 = d . sub . 2 ( variable ) r . sub . 17 = 171 . 6296d . sub . 17 = 2 . 1228 n . sub . 10 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 10 = 37 . 16r . sub . 18 = - 6 . 2371d . sub . 18 = 1 . 0614 n . sub . 11 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 11 = 55 . 52r . sub . 19 = 9 . 2109d . sub . 19 = 1 . 2737r . sub . 20 = - 5 . 0772d . sub . 20 = 1 . 2206 n . sub . 12 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 12 = 55 . 52r . sub . 21 = - 8 . 7247d . sub . 21 = d . sub . 3 ( variable ) r . sub . 22 = 50 . 5648d . sub . 22 = 1 . 5585 n . sub . 13 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 13 = 55 . 52r . sub . 23 = - 16 . 9216d . sub . 23 = 0 . 2123r . sub . 24 = 14 . 8884d . sub . 24 = 3 . 5324 n . sub . 14 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 14 = 55 . 52r . sub . 25 = - 11 . 1969d . sub . 25 = 3 . 738 n . sub . 15 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 15 = 37 . 16r . sub . 26 = 16 . 0921d . sub . 26 = 5 . 2997r . sub . 27 = ∞ d . sub . 27 = 17 . 5027 n . sub . 16 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 16 = 45 . 55r . sub . 28 = ∞ d . sub . 28 = 0 . 1061r . sub . 29 = ∞ d . sub . 29 = 1 . 0614 n . sub . 17 = 1 . 52287 ν . sub . 17 = 59 . 9r . sub . 30 = ∞ d . sub . 30 = 0 . 1061r . sub . 31 = ∞ d . sub . 31 = 1 . 5921 n . sub . 18 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 18 = 64 . 15r . sub . 32 = ∞ f 45 . 54 6 . 953 2 . 829d . sub . 1 3 . 348 0 . 53 2 . 566d . sub . 2 5 . 719 12 . 703 16 . 438d . sub . 3 11 . 077 6 . 912 1 . 14β . sub . 12 ( w ) = - 7 . 6048 , β . sub . 12 ( s ) = - 7 . 6258β . sub . 12 ( t ) = - 7 . 6106β . sub . 3 ( w ) = - 0 . 5987 , β . sub . 3 ( s ) = - 0 . 9969β . sub . 3 ( t ) = - 1 . 5487β . sub . 4 = - 1 . 6968 , f . sub . 3 = - 10 . 459 , f . sub . 4 = 16 . 526ε = 0 . 021 °˜ 0 . 025 °, ε &# 39 ; = - 0 . 262 °˜ 3 . 815 ° θ = 0 . 06 ° ______________________________________ ______________________________________ f = - 389 . 004 ˜ 2 . 89 , image height 1 . 6752 ˜ 3 . 2529 object point 0 . 66554r . sub . 1 = ∞ d . sub . 1 = 0 . 4337 n . sub . 1 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 1 = 64 . 15r . sub . 2 = ∞ d . sub . 2 = 0 . 3253r . sub . 3 = ∞ d . sub . 3 = 0 . 6506 n . sub . 2 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 2 = 45 . 55r . sub . 4 = ∞ d . sub . 4 = 0 . 3253r . sub . 5 = - 65 . 8156d . sub . 5 = 1 . 0843 n . sub . 3 = 1 . 51823 ν . sub . 3 = 58 . 96r . sub . 6 = - 3 . 5782d . sub . 6 = 0 . 3361r . sub . 7 = 6 . 1827d . sub . 7 = 1 . 1927 n . sub . 4 = 1 . 6223 ν . sub . 4 = 53 . 2r . sub . 8 = - 6 . 1827d . sub . 8 = 0 . 5964r . sub . 9 = - 7 . 8297d . sub . 9 = 0 . 965 n . sub . 5 = 1 . 74 ν . sub . 5 = 28 . 29r . sub . 10 = 2 . 612d . sub . 10 = 1 . 9734 n . sub . 6 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 6 = 45 . 91r . sub . 11 = - 10 . 4147d . sub . 11 = 2 . 5698r . sub . 12 = - 20 . 3988d . sub . 12 = 1 . 6048 n . sub . 7 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 7 = 45 . 91r . sub . 13 = - 6 . 0742d . sub . 13 = 0 . 5313r . sub . 14 = ∞ ( aperture stop ) d . sub . 14 = d . sub . 1 ( variable ) r . sub . 15 = 15 . 9464d . sub . 15 = 3 . 2504 n . sub . 8 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 8 = 64 . 15r . sub . 16 = - 15 . 4875d . sub . 16 = 2 . 085 n . sub . 9 = 1 . 5927 ν . sub . 9 = 35 . 29r . sub . 17 = ∞ d . sub . 17 = d . sub . 2 ( variable ) r . sub . 18 = - 10 . 5871d . sub . 18 = 2 . 1686 n . sub . 10 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 10 = 37 . 16r . sub . 19 = - 4 . 4433d . sub . 19 = 1 . 0843 n . sub . 11 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 11 = 55 . 52r . sub . 20 = 12 . 5152d . sub . 20 = d . sub . 3 ( variable ) r . sub . 21 = 37 . 2411d . sub . 21 = 2 . 1686 n . sub . 12 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 12 = 55 . 52r . sub . 22 = - 20 . 5354d . sub . 22 = 0 . 2169r . sub . 23 = 12 . 7862d . sub . 23 = 3 . 6463 n . sub . 13 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 13 = 55 . 52r . sub . 24 = - 12 . 8368d . sub . 24 = 3 . 9289 n . sub . 14 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 14 = 37 . 16r . sub . 25 = 13 . 1533d . sub . 25 = 4 . 013r . sub . 26 = ∞ d . sub . 26 = 17 . 88 n . sub . 15 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 15 = 45 . 55r . sub . 27 = ∞ d . sub . 27 = 0 . 1084r . sub . 28 = ∞ d . sub . 28 = 1 . 0843 n . sub . 16 = 1 . 52287 ν . sub . 16 = 59 . 9r . sub . 29 = ∞ d . sub . 29 = 0 . 1084r . sub . 30 = ∞ d . sub . 30 = 1 . 6264 n . sub . 17 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 17 = 64 . 15r . sub . 31 = ∞ f - 389 . 004 9 . 032 2 . 89d . sub . 1 2 . 388 0 . 53 2 . 991d . sub . 2 9 . 024 14 . 326 17 . 921d . sub . 3 12 . 444 9 . 001 2 . 945β . sub . 12 ( w ) = - 6 . 725 , β . sub . 12 ( s ) = - 6 . 737β . sub . 12 ( t ) = - 6 . 721β . sub . 3 ( w ) = - 0 . 6420 , β . sub . 3 ( s ) = - 1 . 0121β . sub . 3 ( t ) = - 1 . 6630β . sub . 4 = - 1 . 7894 , f . sub . 3 = - 9 . 3037 , f . sub . 4 = 15 . 9608ε = 1 . 685 °˜ 2 . 183 °, ε &# 39 ; = 0 . 17 °˜- 4 . 296 ° θ = 0 . 06 ° ______________________________________ ______________________________________ f = 93 . 59 ˜ 3 . 036 , image height 1 . 4236 ˜ 3 . 271 object point 0 . 2764r . sub . 1 = ∞ d . sub . 1 = 0 . 4607 n . sub . 1 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 1 = 64 . 15r . sub . 2 = ∞ d . sub . 2 = 0 . 7259r . sub . 3 = ∞ d . sub . 3 = 0 . 3041 n . sub . 2 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 2 = 64 . 15r . sub . 4 = ∞ d . sub . 4 = 0 . 7488 n . sub . 3 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 3 = 45 . 55r . sub . 5 = ∞ d . sub . 5 = 0 . 0533r . sub . 6 = - 55 . 9283d . sub . 6 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 4 = 1 . 51823 ν . sub . 4 = 58 . 96r . sub . 7 = - 3 . 0406d . sub . 7 = 0 . 2856r . sub . 8 = 5 . 2538d . sub . 8 = 1 . 0135 n . sub . 5 = 1 . 6223 ν . sub . 5 = 53 . 20r . sub . 9 = - 5 . 2538d . sub . 9 = 0 . 5068r . sub . 10 = - 6 . 6535d . sub . 10 = 0 . 82 n . sub . 6 = 1 . 74 ν . sub . 6 = 28 . 29r . sub . 11 = 2 . 2151d . sub . 11 = 1 . 677 n . sub . 7 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 7 = 45 . 91r . sub . 12 = - 8 . 8501d . sub . 12 = 2 . 1837r . sub . 13 = - 17 . 2763d . sub . 13 = 1 . 3637 n . sub . 8 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 8 = 45 . 91r . sub . 14 = - 5 . 1617d . sub . 14 = 0 . 4515r . sub . 15 = ∞ ( aperture stop ) d . sub . 15 = d . sub . 1 ( variable ) r . sub . 16 = 14 . 9747d . sub . 16 = 3 . 5843 n . sub . 9 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 9 = 64 . 15r . sub . 17 = - 14 . 9747d . sub . 17 = 1 . 8428 n . sub . 10 = 1 . 5927 ν . sub . 10 = 35 . 29r . sub . 18 = ∞ d . sub . 18 = d . sub . 2 ( variable ) r . sub . 19 = - 50 . 0829d . sub . 19 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 11 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 11 = 55 . 52r . sub . 20 = 3 . 8128d . sub . 20 = 1 . 3821 n . sub . 12 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 12 = 37 . 16r . sub . 21 = 7 . 1344d . sub . 21 = d . sub . 3 ( variable ) r . sub . 22 = 11 . 9433d . sub . 22 = 2 . 7706 n . sub . 13 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 13 = 55 . 52r . sub . 23 = 16 . 625d . sub . 23 = 1 . 8365 n . sub . 14 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 14 = 37 . 16r . sub . 24 = 52 . 1671d . sub . 24 = 16 . 1430r . sub . 25 = ∞ ( flare stop ) d . sub . 25 = 1 . 3821r . sub . 26 = ∞ d . sub . 26 = 21 . 9755 n . sub . 15 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 15 = 45 . 55r . sub . 27 = ∞ d . sub . 27 = 0 . 0921r . sub . 28 = ∞ d . sub . 28 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 16 = 1 . 52287 ν . sub . 16 = 59 . 90r . sub . 29 = ∞ d . sub . 29 = 5 . 4363r . sub . 30 = ∞ d . sub . 30 = 1 . 3821 n . sub . 17 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 17 = 64 . 15r . sub . 31 = ∞ d . sub . 31 = 10 . 0341r . sub . 32 = ∞ d . sub . 32 = 0 . 3686 n . sub . 18 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 18 = 64 . 15r . sub . 33 = ∞ f 93 . 59 9 . 39 3 . 362d . sub . 1 2 . 975 0 . 535 3 . 036d . sub . 2 1 . 641 8 . 131 12 . 177d . sub . 3 13 . 084 9 . 034 2 . 486β . sub . 12 ( w ) = - 7 . 3913 , β . sub . 12 ( s ) = - 7 . 4110β . sub . 12 ( t ) = - 7 . 3908β . sub . 3 ( w ) = - 0 . 62332 , β . sub . 3 ( s ) = - 1 . 00198β . sub . 3 ( t ) = - 1 . 61416β . sub . 4 = - 1 . 6769 , f . sub . 3 = - 10 . 700 , f . sub . 4 = 19 . 458ε = 1 . 736 °˜ 1 . 542 °, ε &# 39 ; = - 0 . 132 °˜- 2 . 593 ° θ = 0 . 005 ° ______________________________________ ______________________________________ f = 373 . 237 ˜ 3 . 459 image height 1 . 4236 ˜ 3 . 271 object point 0 . 2764r . sub . 1 = ∞ d . sub . 1 = 0 . 4607 n . sub . 1 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 1 = 64 . 15r . sub . 2 = ∞ d . sub . 2 = 0 . 7259r . sub . 3 = ∞ d . sub . 3 = 0 . 3041 n . sub . 2 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 2 = 64 . 15r . sub . 4 = ∞ d . sub . 4 = 0 . 2488 n . sub . 3 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 3 = 45 . 55r . sub . 5 = ∞ d . sub . 5 = 0 . 0553r . sub . 6 = - 55 . 9283d . sub . 6 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 4 = 1 . 51823 ν . sub . 4 = 58 . 96r . sub . 7 = - 3 . 0406d . sub . 7 = 0 . 2856r . sub . 8 = 5 . 2538d . sub . 8 = 1 . 0135 n . sub . 5 = 1 . 6223 ν . sub . 5 = 53 . 20r . sub . 9 = - 5 . 2538d . sub . 9 = 0 . 5068r . sub . 10 = - 6 . 6535d . sub . 10 = 0 . 82 n . sub . 6 = 1 . 74 ν . sub . 6 = 28 . 29r . sub . 11 = 2 . 2151d . sub . 11 = 1 . 677 n . sub . 7 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 7 = 45 . 91r . sub . 12 = - 8 . 8501d . sub . 12 = 2 . 1837r . sub . 13 = - 17 . 2763d . sub . 13 = 1 . 3677 n . sub . 6 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 8 = 45 . 91r . sub . 14 = - 5 . 1617d . sub . 14 = 0 . 4515r . sub . 15 = ∞ ( aperture stop ) d . sub . 15 = d . sub . 1 ( variable ) r . sub . 16 = 14 . 9747d . sub . 16 = 3 . 5843 n . sub . 9 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 9 = 64 . 15r . sub . 17 = - 14 . 9747d . sub . 17 = 1 . 8428 n . sub . 10 = 1 . 5927 ν . sub . 10 = 35 . 29r . sub . 18 = ∞ d . sub . 18 = d . sub . 2 ( variable ) r . sub . 19 = - 50 . 0829d . sub . 19 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 11 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 11 = 55 . 52r . sub . 20 = 3 . 8128d . sub . 20 = 1 . 3821 n . sub . 12 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 12 = 37 . 16r . sub . 21 = 7 . 1344d . sub . 21 = d . sub . 3 ( variable ) r . sub . 22 = ∞ ( flare stop ) d . sub . 22 = 0 . 4118r . sub . 23 = 63 . 2338d . sub . 23 = 2 . 2492 n . sub . 13 = 1 . 741 ν . sub . 13 = 52 . 68r . sub . 24 = 12 . 354d . sub . 24 = 1 . 6649 n . sub . 14 = 1 . 7495 ν . sub . 14 = 35 . 27r . sub . 25 = - 19 . 5623d . sub . 25 = 0 . 6921r . sub . 26 = 18 . 8702d . sub . 26 = 1 . 6169 n . sub . 15 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 15 = 64 . 15r . sub . 27 = - 64 . 8613d . sub . 27 = 1 . 7394r . sub . 28 = - 29 . 2122d . sub . 28 = 0 . 9505 n . sub . 16 = 1 . 72 ν . sub . 16 = 50 . 25r . sub . 29 = - 18 . 7819d . sub . 29 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 17 = 1 . 7495 ν . sub . 17 = 35 . 27r . sub . 30 = 45 . 9643d . sub . 30 = 10 . 504r . sub . 31 = ∞ ( flare stop ) d . sub . 31 = 1 . 3821r . sub . 32 = ∞ d . sub . 32 = 21 . 9755 n . sub . 18 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 18 = 45 . 55r . sub . 33 = ∞ d . sub . 33 = 0 . 0921r . sub . 34 = ∞ d . sub . 34 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 19 = 1 . 52287 ν . sub . 19 = 59 . 9r . sub . 35 = ∞ d . sub . 35 = 5 . 4363r . sub . 36 = ∞ d . sub . 36 = 1 . 3821 n . sub . 20 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 20 = 64 . 15r . sub . 37 = ∞ d . sub . 37 = 10 . 0341r . sub . 38 = ∞ d . sub . 38 = 0 . 3686 n . sub . 21 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 21 = 64 . 15r . sub . 39 = ∞ f 373 . 237 10 . 236 3 . 459d . sub . 1 2 . 975 0 . 535 3 . 036d . sub . 2 1 . 641 5 . 131 12 . 177d . sub . 3 13 . 084 9 . 034 2 . 486β . sub . 12 ( w ) = - 7 . 3913 , β . sub . 12 ( s ) = - 7 . 4110β . sub . 12 ( t ) = - 7 . 3908β . sub . 3 ( w ) = - 0 . 62332 , β . sub . 3 ( s ) = - 1 . 00198β . sub . 3 ( t ) = - 1 . 61416β . sub . 4 = - 1 . 5413 , f . sub . 3 = - 10 . 699 , f . sub . 4 = 19 . 831ε = 1 . 736 °˜ 1 . 542 °, ε &# 39 ; = 0 . 125 °˜- 2 . 198 ° θ = 0 . 005 ° ______________________________________ ______________________________________ f = - 29 . 354 ˜ 4 . 478 image height 1 . 4236 ˜ 3 . 271 object point 0 . 2764r . sub . 1 = ∞ d . sub . 1 = 0 . 4607 n . sub . 1 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 1 = 64 . 15r . sub . 2 = ∞ d . sub . 2 = 0 . 7259r . sub . 3 = ∞ d . sub . 3 = 0 . 3041 n . sub . 2 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 2 = 64 . 15r . sub . 4 = ∞ d . sub . 4 = 0 . 2488 n . sub . 3 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 3 = 45 . 55r . sub . 5 = ∞ d . sub . 5 = 0 . 0553r . sub . 6 = - 55 . 9283d . sub . 6 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 4 = 1 . 51823 ν . sub . 4 = 58 . 96r . sub . 7 = - 3 . 0406d . sub . 7 = 0 . 2856r . sub . 8 = 5 . 2538d . sub . 8 = 1 . 0135 n . sub . 5 = 1 . 6223 ν . sub . 5 = 53 . 2r . sub . 9 = - 5 . 2538d . sub . 9 = 0 . 5068r . sub . 10 = - 6 . 6535d . sub . 10 = 0 . 82 n . sub . 6 = 1 . 74 ν . sub . 6 = 28 . 29r . sub . 11 = 2 . 2151d . sub . 11 = 1 . 677 n . sub . 7 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 7 = 45 . 91r . sub . 12 = - 8 . 8501d . sub . 12 = 2 . 1837r . sub . 13 = - 17 . 2763d . sub . 13 = 1 . 3637 n . sub . 8 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 8 = 45 . 91r . sub . 14 = - 5 . 1617d . sub . 14 = 0 . 4515r . sub . 15 = ∞ ( aperture stop ) d . sub . 15 = d . sub . 1 ( variable ) r . sub . 16 = 14 . 9747d . sub . 16 = 3 . 5843 n . sub . 9 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 9 = 64 . 15r . sub . 17 = - 14 . 9747d . sub . 17 = 1 . 8428 n . sub . 10 = 1 . 5927 ν . sub . 10 = 35 . 29r . sub . 18 = ∞ d . sub . 18 = d . sub . 2 ( variable ) r . sub . 19 = - 50 . 0829d . sub . 19 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 11 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 11 = 55 . 52r . sub . 20 = 3 . 8128d . sub . 20 = 1 . 3821 n . sub . 12 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 12 = 37 . 16r . sub . 21 = 7 . 1344d . sub . 21 = d . sub . 3 ( variable ) r . sub . 22 = ∞ d . sub . 22 = 0 . 4118r . sub . 23 = - 54 . 2046d . sub . 23 = 1 . 169 n . sub . 13 = 1 . 76182 ν . sub . 13 = 26 . 55r . sub . 24 = 27 . 3666d . sub . 24 = 1 . 5864 n . sub . 14 = 1 . 72916 ν . sub . 14 = 54 . 68r . sub . 25 = - 16 . 9711d . sub . 25 = 0 . 3937r . sub . 26 = 20 . 4547d . sub . 26 = 1 . 4578 n . sub . 15 = 1 . 7 ν . sub . 15 = 48 . 08r . sub . 27 = 51 . 9027d . sub . 27 = 15 . 7312r . sub . 28 = ∞ ( aperture stop ) d . sub . 28 = 1 . 3821r . sub . 29 = ∞ d . sub . 29 = 21 . 9755 n . sub . 16 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 16 = 45 . 55r . sub . 30 = ∞ d . sub . 30 = 0 . 0921r . sub . 31 = ∞ d . sub . 31 = 0 . 9214 n . sub . 17 = 1 . 52287 ν . sub . 17 = 59 . 9r . sub . 32 = ∞ d . sub . 32 = 5 . 4363r . sub . 33 = ∞ d . sub . 33 = 1 . 3821 n . sub . 18 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 18 = 64 . 15r . sub . 34 = ∞ d . sub . 34 = 10 . 0341r . sub . 35 = ∞ d . sub . 35 = 0 . 3686 n . sub . 19 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 19 = 64 . 15r . sub . 36 = ∞ f - 29 . 354 20 . 759 4 . 478d . sub . 1 2 . 975 0 . 535 3 . 036d . sub . 2 1 . 641 8 . 131 12 . 177d . sub . 3 13 . 084 9 . 034 2 . 486β . sub . 12 ( w ) = - 7 . 3913 , β . sub . 12 ( s ) = - 7 . 7110β . sub . 12 ( t ) = - 7 . 3908β . sub . 3 ( w ) = - 0 . 62332 , β . sub . 3 ( s ) = - 1 . 00198β . sub . 3 ( t ) = - 1 . 61416β . sub . 4 = - 1 . 7015 , f . sub . 3 = - 10 . 699 , f . sub . 4 = 18 . 883ε = 1 . 736 °˜ 1 . 542 °, ε &# 39 ; = - 0 . 241 °˜- 2 . 812 ° θ = 0 . 005 ° ______________________________________ ______________________________________ f = - 124 . 214 ˜ 3 . 767 image height 1 . 4237 ˜ 3 . 2713 object point 0 . 2764r . sub . 1 = ∞ d . sub . 1 = 0 . 4607 n . sub . 1 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 1 = 64 . 15r . sub . 2 = ∞ d . sub . 2 = 0 . 7259r . sub . 3 = ∞ d . sub . 3 = 0 . 3041 n . sub . 2 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 2 = 64 . 15r . sub . 4 = ∞ d . sub . 4 = 0 . 2488 n . sub . 3 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 3 = 45 . 55r . sub . 5 = ∞ d . sub . 5 = 0 . 0553r . sub . 6 = - 55 . 933d . sub . 6 = 0 . 9215 n . sub . 4 = 1 . 51823 ν . sub . 4 = 58 . 96r . sub . 7 = - 3 . 0409d . sub . 7 = 0 . 2857r . sub . 8 = 5 . 2543d . sub . 8 = 1 . 0136 n . sub . 5 = 1 . 6223 ν . sub . 5 = 53 . 2r . sub . 9 = - 5 . 2543d . sub . 9 = 0 . 5068r . sub . 10 = - 6 . 654d . sub . 10 = 0 . 8201 n . sub . 6 = 1 . 74 ν . sub . 6 = 28 . 29r . sub . 11 = 2 . 2152d . sub . 11 = 1 . 6771 n . sub . 7 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 7 = 45 . 91r . sub . 12 = - 8 . 8508d . sub . 12 = 2 . 1839r . sub . 13 = - 17 . 2778d . sub . 13 = 1 . 3638 n . sub . 8 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 8 = 45 . 91r . sub . 14 = - 5 . 1621d . sub . 14 = 0 . 4515r . sub . 15 = ∞ ( aperture stop ) d . sub . 15 = d . sub . 1 ( variable ) r . sub . 16 = 14 . 9759d . sub . 16 = 3 . 5846 n . sub . 9 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 9 = 64 . 15r . sub . 17 = - 14 . 9759d . sub . 17 = 1 . 843 n . sub . 10 = 1 . 5927 ν . sub . 10 = 35 . 29r . sub . 18 = ∞ d . sub . 18 = d . sub . 2 ( variable ) r . sub . 19 = - 50 . 0871d . sub . 19 = 0 . 9215 n . sub . 11 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 11 = 55 . 52r . sub . 20 = 3 . 8131d . sub . 20 = 1 . 3822 n . sub . 12 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 12 = 37 . 16r . sub . 21 = 7 . 135d . sub . 21 = d . sub . 3 ( variable ) r . sub . 22 = ∞ d . sub . 22 = 0 . 4118r . sub . 23 = 75 . 3209d . sub . 23 = 1 . 3822 n . sub . 13 = 1 . 50137 ν . sub . 13 = 56 . 4r . sub . 24 = - 14 . 8764d . sub . 24 = 0 . 2764r . sub . 25 = 26 . 5985d . sub . 25 = 2 . 3037 n . sub . 14 = 1 . 72 ν . sub . 14 = 50 . 25r . sub . 26 = - 9 . 3973d . sub . 26 = 0 . 645 n . sub . 15 = 1 . 7495 ν . sub . 15 = 35 . 27r . sub . 27 = 51 . 907d . sub . 27 = 15 . 7325r . sub . 28 = ∞ ( flare stop ) d . sub . 28 = 1 . 3822r . sub . 29 = ∞ d . sub . 29 = 21 . 9773 n . sub . 16 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 16 = 45 . 55r . sub . 30 = ∞ d . sub . 30 = 0 . 0921r . sub . 31 = ∞ d . sub . 31 = 0 . 9215 n . sub . 17 = 1 . 52287 ν . sub . 17 = 59 . 9r . sub . 32 = ∞ d . sub . 32 = 5 . 4367r . sub . 33 = ∞ d . sub . 33 = 1 . 3822 n . sub . 18 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 18 = 64 . 15r . sub . 34 = ∞ d . sub . 34 = 10 . 0349r . sub . 35 = ∞ d . sub . 35 = 0 . 3686 n . sub . 19 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 19 = 64 . 15r . sub . 36 = ∞ f - 124 . 214 12 . 231 3 . 767d . sub . 1 2 . 975 0 . 535 3 . 036d . sub . 2 1 . 641 8 . 132 12 . 178d . sub . 3 13 . 085 9 . 034 2 . 487β . sub . 12 ( w ) = - 7 . 3713 , β . sub . 12 ( s ) = - 7 . 4110β . sub . 12 ( t ) = - 7 . 3908β . sub . 3 ( w ) = - 0 . 62332 , β . sub . 3 ( s ) = - 1 . 00198β . sub . 3 ( t ) = - 1 . 61416β . sub . 4 = - 1 . 7795 , f . sub . 1 = - 10 . 699 , f . sub . 4 = 19 . 085ε = 1 . 736 °˜ 1 . 542 °, ε &# 39 ; = - 0 . 265 °˜- 2 . 858 ° θ = 0 . 005 ° ______________________________________ ______________________________________ f = - 7 . 2657 ˜ 7 . 57723 image height 1 . 03 ˜ 2 . 68 object point 0 . 3688r . sub . 1 = ∞ d . sub . 1 = 0 . 6146 n . sub . 1 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 1 = 64 . 15r . sub . 2 = ∞ d . sub . 2 = 1 . 5240r . sub . 3 = - 74 . 6155d . sub . 3 = 1 . 2293 n . sub . 2 = 1 . 51823 ν . sub . 2 = 58 . 96r . sub . 4 = - 4 . 0566d . sub . 4 = 0 . 3811r . sub . 5 = 7 . 0093d . sub . 5 = 1 . 3522 n . sub . 3 = 1 . 62230 ν . sub . 3 = 53 . 20r . sub . 6 = - 7 . 0093d . sub . 6 = 0 . 6761r . sub . 7 = - 8 . 8766d . sub . 7 = 1 . 0941 n . sub . 4 = 1 . 74 ν . sub . 4 = 28 . 29r . sub . 8 = 2 . 9552d . sub . 8 = 2 . 2373 n . sub . 5 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 5 = 45 . 91r . sub . 9 = - 11 . 8071d . sub . 9 = 2 . 9134r . sub . 10 = - 23 . 0488d . sub . 10 = 1 . 8193 n . sub . 6 = 1 . 53256 ν . sub . 6 = 45 . 91r . sub . 11 = - 6 . 8864d . sub . 11 = 0 . 6023r . sub . 12 = ∞ ( aperture stop ) d . sub . 12 = d . sub . 1 ( variable ) r . sub . 13 = 19 . 9781d . sub . 13 = 4 . 7819 n . sub . 7 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 7 = 64 . 15r . sub . 14 = - 19 . 9781d . sub . 14 = 2 . 4585 n . sub . 8 = 1 . 5927 ν . sub . 8 = 35 . 29r . sub . 15 = ∞ d . sub . 15 = d . sub . 2 ( variable ) r . sub . 16 = - 66 . 8170d . sub . 16 = 1 . 2293 n . sub . 9 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 9 = 55 . 52r . sub . 17 = 5 . 0867d . sub . 17 = 1 . 8439 n . sub . 10 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 10 = 37 . 16r . sub . 18 = 9 . 5182d . sub . 18 = d . sub . 3 ( variable ) r . sub . 19 = 47 . 2753d . sub . 19 = 3 . 0732 n . sub . 11 = 1 . 6968 ν . sub . 11 = 55 . 52r . sub . 20 = - 7 . 0683d . sub . 20 = 1 . 2293 n . sub . 12 = 1 . 834 ν . sub . 12 = 37 . 16r . sub . 21 = - 15 . 1938d . sub . 21 = 6 . 8839r . sub . 22 = ∞ d . sub . 22 = 21 . 5121 n . sub . 13 = 1 . 54869 ν . sub . 13 = 45 . 55r . sub . 23 = ∞ d . sub . 23 = 0 . 7376r . sub . 24 = ∞ d . sub . 24 = 1 . 9668 n . sub . 14 = 1 . 514 ν . sub . 14 = 73 . 00r . sub . 25 = ∞ d . sub . 25 = 0 . 0615r . sub . 26 = ∞ d . sub . 26 = 1 . 2293 n . sub . 15 = 1 . 52287 ν . sub . 15 = 59 . 89r . sub . 27 = ∞ d . sub . 27 = 13 . 1827r . sub . 28 = ∞ d . sub . 28 = 0 . 4917 n . sub . 16 = 1 . 51633 ν . sub . 16 = 64 . 15r . sub . 29 = ∞ f - 7 . 2657 - 20 . 409 7 . 57723d . sub . 1 3 . 968 0 . 714 4 . 050d . sub . 2 2 . 190 10 . 848 16 . 246d . sub . 3 17 . 456 12 . 052 3 . 318β . sub . 12 ( w ) = - 7 . 39129 , β . sub . 12 ( s ) = - 7 . 41101β . sub . 12 ( t ) = - 7 . 39079β . sub . 3 ( w ) = - 0 . 6232 β . sub . 3 ( s ) = - 1 . 00198β . sub . 3 ( t ) = - 1 . 61415β . sub . 4 = - 0 . 90582 , f . sub . 3 = - 14 . 27340f . sub . 4 = 20 . 23261ε = 1 . 72 ° ε &# 39 ; = 1 . 15 °˜ 1 . 72 ° θ = 2 . 24 ° ______________________________________ wherein the reference symbols r 1 , r 2 , . . . represent the radii of curvature on the surfaces of the respective lens elements , the reference symbols d 1 , d 2 , . . . designate the thicknesses of the respective lens elements and the airspaces reserved therebetween , the reference symbols n 1 , n 2 , . . . denote the refractive indices of the respective lens elements , and the reference symbols υ 1 , υ 2 , . . . represent the abbe &# 39 ; s numbers of the respective lens elements . the embodiment 1 has the composition illustrated in fig7 wherein the plane parallel plate ( d 3 ) arranged at the second location as counted from the object side plane parallel plate ( d 25 ) arranged on the image side of the flare stop ( r 24 ) are designed as optical low pass filters made of quartz . out of these filters , the quartz filter arranged on the object side ( d 3 ) determines the cut - off frequency corresponding to the sampling frequency or nyquist frequency of the image guide , whereas the quartz filter arranged on the image side ( d 25 ) determines the cut - off frequency corresponding to the nyquist frequency of the image pickup device . these quartz filters may be integrated into a filter unit which is replaceable with other filter units . in the embodiment 1 , the first lens unit comprises a positive lens component , a positive lens component and a positive cemented lens component so as to correct aberrations independently in the first lens unit . it is therefore possible to modify the imaging optical system preferred as the embodiment 1 so to be combinable with a different type of image guide by replacing the first lens unit with a different type of lens unit . further , the embodiment 1 is compatible with multi - component types of image guides or quartz types of image guides . furthermore , since the embodiment 1 is designed for arrangement in a camera control unit and is not equipped with an eyepiece lens nor adapter , relatively loose restrictions are imposed on the total length and outside diameter thereof , thereby making it easy to correct aberrations in the embodiment 1 . in addition , the embodiment 1 constitutes no hindrance to observation through an eyepiece lens even for an unskilled observer and is free from the tediousness to attach to an adapter . aberration characteristics at the wide position , intermediate focal length and tele position of the embodiment 1 are illustrated in fig1 , fig1 and fig1 respectively . the embodiment 2 has the composition illustrated in fig8 . aberration characteristics at the wide position , intermediate focal length and tele position of the embodiment 2 are visualized in fig1 , fig1 and fig2 respectively . the embodiment 3 has the composition shown in fig9 . at the wide position , intermediate focal length and tele position , the embodiment 3 has the aberration characteristics visualized in fig2 , fig2 and fig2 respectively . fig4 has the composition illustrated in fig1 , and the aberration characteristics shown in fig2 , fig2 and fig2 at the wide position , intermediate focal length and tele position respectively . the embodiment 5 is composed as illustrated in fig1 , and has the aberration characteristics shown in fig2 , fig2 and fig2 at the wide position , intermediate focal length and tele position respectively . the embodiment 6 is composed as shown in fig1 , and has the aberration characteristics illustrated in fig3 , fig3 and fig3 at the wide position , intermediate focal length and tele position respectively . the embodiment 7 is designed in the composition illustrated in fig1 , and has the aberration characteristics shown in fig3 , fig3 and fig3 at the wide position , intermediate focal length and tele position respectively . the embodiment 8 has the composition shown in fig1 . aberration characteristics at the wide position , intermediate focal length and tele position of the embodiment 8 are visualized in fig3 , fig3 and fig3 respectively . the embodiment 8 has the composition shown in fig1 . aberration characteristics at the wide position , intermediate focal length and tele position of the embodiment 8 are visualized in fig3 , fig3 and fig3 respectively . also in each of the embodiments 2 through 8 described above , quartz filters are arranged at a location near the object point and another location near the image point respectively . further , the first lens unit has aberrations corrected sufficiently favorably independently therein and is replaceable with other lens units . as is understood from the foregoing description , the imaging optical system according to the present invention is designed as a zoom lens system which comprises positive , positive , negative and positive lens units , has a high magnification and a high vari - focal ratio , and is sufficiently usable even when it is combined with a very thin fiber scope such as a blood vessel scope . | 6 |
eight printing groups 01 to 08 are provided in the printing press which is represented schematically in fig1 . each one of the eight printing groups 01 to 08 is configured as a rotary printing group . the various components of each the rotary printing groups depicted in fig1 are only schematically indicated . the printing groups 01 , 03 , 05 , 07 are arranged on top of each other on the left side of the printing press . the printing groups 02 , 04 , 06 , 08 are arranged on top of each other on the right side of the printing press . all of the various printing groups 01 to 08 can be operated independently of each other during rotary printing . to allow easier access for the press operators to the printing groups 01 to 08 , which are arranged on top of each other on either the left side or the right side of the printing press , lifting devices 09 or 11 , as seen in fig1 and in fig2 are provided on both sides of the printing press , which lifting devices are embodied in the manner of lifting platforms 09 or 11 and which can be displaced by the use of drive mechanisms , which are not specifically represented in fig1 and 2 . support devices 12 or 13 are provided on the two lifting devices 09 , 11 . operating units 14 or 16 , which are adjustable in their positions , have been attached to upper ends of support devices 12 or 13 , respectively . by setting the height of the operating units 14 , 16 , through movement of the support devices 12 , 13 , the press operators can assume an ergonomically advantageous operating position . the operating units 14 or 16 are each connected by data cables 17 or 18 to a data bus , so that the operating unit 14 can exchange data with the left printing units 01 , 03 , 05 , 07 , and the operating unit 16 can exchange information with the right printing units 02 , 04 , 06 , 08 . as can be seen in fig2 , the press operators can selectively move the lifting device 09 or 11 to the level of the various printing groups 01 to 08 . the actual level of each of the lifting devices 09 , 11 is detected by an appropriate sensor device and this information is passed on to the respective one of the operating units 14 or 16 . as a function of the measured level of the lifting device 09 , 11 , the operating units 14 , 16 are automatically programmed in such a way that only defined ones of the respective printing groups 01 to 08 can exchange data with the operating units 14 or 16 . if , for example , as represented in fig2 , the left side lifting device 09 is located at the level of the left side printing group 07 , the operating unit 14 supported on that lifting device is programmed in such a way that data can only be exchanged between the operating unit 14 and the printing group 07 . a data exchange between the operating unit 14 and all of other printing groups 01 , 03 , 05 is prevented by the provision of such a position sensor . if the respective lifting device 09 , 11 is not in its highest position but , as shown in fig2 , the right lifting device 11 is , for example , positioned at the level of the second - lowest printing group 04 , the operating unit 16 associated with lifting device 11 is automatically programmed in such a way that data can only be exchanged either between the operating unit 16 and the printing group 04 , or between the operating unit 16 and the printing group 06 . in this position of the lifting device 11 , a data exchange between the operating unit 16 and the printing groups 02 or 08 is prevented . graphic displays and / or run control boards are provided at the operating units 14 , 16 . four printing groups 01 , 03 , 05 , 07 , or 02 , 04 , 06 , 08 are arranged on top of each other in the printing tower . each of the printing groups 01 , 03 , 05 , 07 , or 02 , 04 , 06 , 08 has a forme cylinder and a transfer cylinder . two printing groups 01 , 03 , 05 , 07 , or 02 , 04 , 06 , 08 are respectively arranged opposite each other in a bridge - printing manner in the printing tower , again as seen most clearly in fig1 . while a preferred embodiment of a printing tower comprising at least two printing groups , in accordance with the present invention , has been set forth fully and completely hereinabove , it will be apparent to one of skill in the art that various changes in , for example , the specific structure of the printing groups and of the lifting devices can be made without departing from the true spirit and scope of the present invention which is accordingly to be limited only by the appended claims . | 1 |
referring to fig1 a computed tomography scanning ( ct scanning ) system 10 incorporating circuitry according to the invention includes a circular carriage 12 that supports an x - ray source 14 , in such a way that the carriage and x - ray source can be rotated together around the patient ( not shown ). the carriage bears regularly spaced tick marks 16 , which can be placed along its circumference . a series of detectors 20 also sit on the circumference of the carriage at regular intervals . each of these detectors includes a scintillating crystal , which emits infrared light when exposed to x - rays . coupled with the crystal is a photo - diode , which is sensitive to the emitted light . this compound structure generates a differential current signal in response to x - ray intensity . a pair of detector signal lines 22 provide the differential current signal to a data acquisition system ( das ) 24 . the data acquisition system also receives a convert signal 34 on a convert line 32 from a position sensor 18 , which interacts with the tick marks 16 on the carriage 12 . to obtain a diagnostic image of the patient , the system 10 begins by supplying power to the x - ray source 14 and rotating the carriage 12 around the patient . as the carriage rotates , the position sensor 18 successively detects each of the tick marks 16 and provides corresponding pulses 33 , 35 , 36 , 38 in the convert signal 34 . these pulses delimit conversion intervals , during which the data acquisition system 24 translates the current signals from all of the detectors into corresponding digital intensity values . the data acquisition system provides these digital values on its digital output 28 to a digital signal processing ( dsp ) system 26 . the digital signal processing system 26 uses the digital values from the data acquisition system 24 to digitally reconstruct and filter a cross - sectional image of the patient in the plane of the carriage 12 . the system then displays the image to the user on a display 30 . the digital signal processing system typically includes dedicated digital signal processing circuitry that can quickly perform convolution operations for the digital reconstruction and filtering of the image . dedicated digital signal processing integrated circuits , such as the adsp21060 , available from analog devices , inc . of norwood , mass ., are well suited to this task . referring to fig2 each data acquisition channel 40 in the data acquisition system will interface with one of a series of pairs of detector signal lines , which each provide an analog signal . the data acquisition system also interfaces with the convert line 32 , which provides the digital convert signal 34 . the data acquisition system provides a digital output in a format that allows it to be quickly stored in a general purpose computer . of course , different manufacturers may provide somewhat different interfaces to the data acquisition system , but such variations are well within the comprehension of one skilled in the art . ct scanning systems are available from various manufacturers , and bir , inc ., of lincolnshire , ill . offers consulting services in the area of ct scanning . referring to fig1 - 3 , the data acquisition channel 40 according to one embodiment of the invention includes a preamplifier 42 , which is operatively connected to the first and second detector signal lines 21 , 23 from one of the detectors 20 . the preamplifier has an output operatively connected to a voltage divider 44 , which in turn has an output operatively connected to the input of a sigma - delta modulator 46 . a decimator 48 has input operatively connected to the output of the sigma - delta modulator , as well as a convert input operatively connected to the convert line 32 of the position sensor 18 . it also has a digital parallel output operatively connected to a serial input of an output shift register 50 . the preamplifier 42 is a transresistance operational amplifier circuit . it includes an operational amplifier 52 with a non - inverting input line 54 , which is operatively connected to ground and to the cathode of the detector via the second detector signal line 23 . the preamplifier also has an inverting input line 56 , which is operatively connected to the anode of the detector via the first detector signal line 21 . an output line 57 of the operational amplifier serves as the output line of the preamplifier . it is also operatively connected to its non - inverting input line through a feedback resistor 58 . in one embodiment the detectors 20 are capable of providing a one microampere full - scale current . the operational amplifier 52 is an ad822 operational amplifier , which is available from analog devices , inc . of norwood , mass ., powered by a + 5 volt positive supply rail 59 and a - 12 volt negative supply rail 61 . the feedback resistor has a resistance of nominally 10 megaohms , or even as much as 20 megaohms . the voltage divider 44 includes an input resistor 60 with a terminal connected to the output line of the preamplifier 42 and another terminal connected to a terminal of a grounding resistor 62 . the other terminal of the grounding resistor is grounded , and the node between the two voltage divider resistors 60 , 62 serves as the output line of the voltage divider . typical values for these resistors are 6 kiloohms for the input resistor and 4 kiloohms for the grounding resistor . they are on - chip thin - film resistors built into a cmos or bicmos integrated circuit that also includes the sigma - delta modulator 46 . the thin film resistors are implemented in additional steps over those required to implement the cmos or bicmos integrated circuit . note that the stability of the ratio between the resistances of these resistors is generally more important than their actual values . the sigma - delta modulator 46 can be a third order oversampling switched - capacitor sigma - delta modulator circuit . it includes a first summer 64 , which has a non - inverting input line operatively connected to the output of the voltage divider and an inverting input line operatively connected to a modulator feedback line 81 . first , second , and third serially connected integrators 66 , 68 , 70 follow this summer . these three integrators each have an output line that is provided to one of three inputs of a second summer 78 via respective first , second , and third gain elements 72 , 74 , 76 . in this embodiment , the first gain element 72 multiplies the output of the first integrator 66 by a factor of 0 . 863 . the second gain element 74 multiplies the output of the second integrator 68 by a factor of 0 . 335 . the third gain element 76 multiplies the output of the third integrator 70 by a factor of 0 . 0556 . the second summer 78 provides its weighted sum on an output line operatively connected to an input line of a one - bit analog - to - digital converter ( adc ) 80 . an output line of the adc serves as the output line of the sigma - delta modulator 46 , and it is also operatively connected to an input of a one - bit digital - to - analog converter ( dac ) 82 . the dac has an output line operatively connected to the modulator feedback line 81 . the sigma - delta modulator also includes reset circuitry 79 , which monitors the output of the third integrator 70 and the output of the analog - to - digital converter 80 . if the integrator output exceeds the supply voltage of the sigma - delta modulator , or if the output of the modulator exhibits anomalous outputs , this circuitry resets the sigma - delta modulator to a stable state . the reset circuitry detects unstable states during power - up operation . it is contemplated that the reset circuitry will never be needed during operation , except during power - up , as ct scanning applications generally do not tolerate data loss during operation . in this embodiment , there are four separate voltage dividers and four separate corresponding sigma - delta modulators , such as the ones described , on a single integrated circuit . this integrated circuit can be powered by a + 5 volt positive supply rail 69 , and a - 5 volt negative supply rail 71 and can be clocked at a nominal rate of 2 . 56 mhz . its four separate voltage dividers can be connected to preamplifiers for four of the detectors 20 in the ct scanning system 10 . design techniques described in the above referenced commonly assigned application entitled switched - capacitor offset suppression can be used in implementing this integrated circuit . the decimator 48 includes first and second accumulators 84 , 86 , which each have add / subtract inputs 83 , 85 operatively connected to the output line of the sigma - delta modulator 46 . the first accumulator 84 has a non - inverting input 87 , which is operatively connected to an output line of a rom 88 . a first inverter 90 also has an input operatively connected to the output line of the rom , and has an output operatively connected to a non - inverting input 89 of the second accumulator 86 . the first accumulator has a sum output line 91 operatively connected to the first data input line 95 of a multiplexer 92 , and the second accumulator has a sum output line 93 operatively connected to the second data input line 97 of the multiplexer . the multiplexer has a data output line 98 , which acts as the data output line of the decimator . the decimator 48 further includes an address counter 100 , which has a count output 102 that provides addresses to the rom 88 , and a done output 104 that serves as another output of the decimator 48 . the done output line is enabled when the address counter has reached either its maximum or minimum count . the counter also has an up / down input 106 connected to the output line of a toggle flip - flop 108 . the toggle flip - flop 108 has an input line operatively connected to the convert line 32 of the position sensor 18 in the ct - scanner 10 . the flip - flop provides its output line to the counter , to the select input 111 of the multiplexer 92 , to a first input of a first and gate 110 , and to an input line of a second inverter 112 . the second inverter provides an inverted version of the flip - flop output on its output line , which is operatively connected to the first input line of a second and gate 114 . a second input line of each of the first and second and gates is operatively connected to the convert line . the output lines of the first and second and gates are operatively connected respectively to first and second clear inputs 113 , 115 of the first and second accumulators 84 , 86 . the output shift register 50 has a parallel input line 116 , which is operatively connected to the parallel output line of the decimator 48 . in this embodiment , each decimator channel provides a 24 - bit parallel output line to its output shift register . the shift register also includes a serial input 120 , a serial output 122 , and a load control input 118 . the load control input line is operatively connected to the done output line from the address counter 100 . an interval counter 107 has a start input line operatively connected to the convert line 32 . it also has an output 109 , which is provided to the output shift register 50 . it is an up - counter that is clocked at the modulator sampling rate . sixteen decimators and shift registers such as the ones shown in fig2 can be implemented on a single 16 - channel cmos integrated circuit . in this integrated circuit , the address counter 100 , the toggle flip - flop 108 , the rom 88 , the first inverter 90 , the second inverter 112 , and the two and gates 110 , 114 are shared among all sixteen decimators . each of the decimators has its own two accumulators 84 , 86 , multiplexer 92 , and shift register 50 . the shift registers on each integrated circuit are &# 34 ; daisy - chained &# 34 ; together via their serial inputs and outputs . the 16 - channel integrated circuit therefore only has one serial input and one serial output . if necessary , the designer of a data acquisition system can also daisy - chain the serial inputs and outputs of several of the decimator integrated circuits together . in this way , the system designer can provide one or more serial digital outputs for a complete data acquisition system . operation of the acquisition channel 40 of fig2 in connection with the ct scanning system 10 of fig1 will now be discussed . the detector 20 for the channel 40 shown in fig2 receives a small portion , or beam , of the x - rays emitted by the x - ray source and transmitted through the patient . the intensity of each received x - ray beam depends on the patient &# 39 ; s anatomical features in the path of that beam . the detector converts this intensity into a current of up to about one microampere , and the preamplifier 42 then translates the current into a voltage that is proportional to it . the gain of this transresistance amplification is dependent on the value of the feedback resistor ribner et al . propose providing a preamplifier output voltage directly to a sigma - delta modulator in u . s . pat . no . 5 , 142 , 286 . in this embodiment of the present invention , however , the preamplifier 42 receives a different power supply voltage than the sigma - delta modulator 46 , and has a voltage divider connected between the preamplifier and the sigma - delta modulator . this configuration actually reduces noise in the input stage of the circuit and improves dynamic range of the acquisition channel . these improvements arise because the voltage divider 44 allows for the use of a larger feedback resistor 58 , which is a noise source that limits the dynamic range performance of the channel . although this larger resistor generates additional thermal noise , it also increases preamplifier gain , and the gain increase outweighs the noise increase . once the voltage divider has divided the preamplified voltage down to levels suitable for operation of the sigma - delta modulator , therefore , the resistor noise is at a lower level than it would have been with a smaller preamplifier resistor and a direct connection between the preamplifier and the modulator . more particularly , the input noise voltage is given by : ## equ1 ## where k is the boltzmann constant , t is the temperature in kelvin , r is the feedback resistance value , and f bw is the bandwidth of interest . if the feedback resistor r were to be doubled , for example , equation 1 indicates that the noise voltage v n will increase by a factor of √ 2 . but the signal voltage at the preamplifier output is increased by a factor of 2 . the net signal - to - noise ratio is therefore improved by a factor of √ 2 . operating the preamplifier with higher voltages also reduces the contribution of the operational amplifier &# 39 ; s input offset in the preamplifier output , while running the switched - capacitor circuit at five volts may allow the circuit to be implemented using a process that can allow it to switch at a higher speed . and because the voltage divider 44 resistors are implemented on the same integrated circuit as the sigma - delta modulator 46 , the signal - to - noise ratio improvement is achieved with little impact on per channel circuit board real estate , parts , and associated assembly costs . resistor values for the voltage divider should be chosen such that the maximum output voltage of the preamplifier 42 does not exceed the maximum input voltage that the sigma - delta modulator 46 can accommodate . otherwise , any excess voltage at the input of the modulator could cause instability in the modulator . this can be important in systems that employ x - rays because they can introduce spikes into the preamplifier . in addition , the temperature coefficients of the voltage divider 44 resistors 60 , 62 should be well matched . this is because the digital signal processing stage 26 cannot compensate for gain drift . and the nature of the ct scanning application leaves no time for periodic calibration during scans . the matching of temperature coefficients can be achieved with precision thin film resistors and ordinary layout precautions , such as orienting resistors in the same direction and placing them close to each other . in the present embodiment , such techniques have enabled the drift of the voltage divider ratio to be below 5 ppm /° c . the sigma - delta modulator 46 performs a third order modulation operation on the output of the voltage divider 44 , according to the modulator coefficients 72 , 74 , 76 , and it provides a one - bit digital output data stream to the decimator 48 . for a discussion of third order sigma - delta modulator design , see chao et al ., &# 34 ; a higher order topology for interpolative modulators for oversampling a / d converters &# 34 ;, ieee transactions on circuits and systems , vol . ca5 - 37 , pp . 309 - 318 , march 1990 . the use of a third order single - bit modulator is desirable because it requires only a small amount of analog circuitry , it has good linearity , and it allows for low decimation filter complexity due to its one - bit modulator outputs . the decimator 48 implements an approximation to the first order sinc filter that is desired for ct . the time - domain response of this decimator is shown as the top trace 134 of fig3 . this time - domain response differs from an ideal sinc filter in that its rising and falling ends 130 , 132 are significantly rounded , instead of being rectangular . these ends are rounded enough to provide the decimator with a sharper roll - off at high frequencies , which allows it to remove substantially all high frequency quantization noises unlike an ideal first - order sinc filter . low frequency response ( below and around the sinc roll - off frequency ) is not significantly affected by this rounding , so it does not tend to adversely affect the generally low - frequency ct signals . in this embodiment , quantization noise is removed to the eighteenth bit level , but other characteristics for the filter are also possible . the decimator 48 has a variable length conversion interval that is timed by the convert signal . to achieve this variable length conversion interval , the time - domain response of the decimator is divided into a first rounded rising phase 136 , a second plateau phase 138 , and a third rounded falling phase 140 , with the second phase being variable in length . this variable length conversion interval results in a group delay error , but the digital signal processing stage 26 can compensate for this based on the output of the interval counter . the convert line 32 marks the start of the first phase 136 of the conversion interval . when the decimator 48 receives convert pulses on the convert line , the toggle flip - flop 108 toggles back and forth between a logic low and a logic high . in the case where a convert pulse 36 causes the flip - flop to go from a logic low to a logic high , the first and gate 110 provides a logic high on the clear input 113 of the first accumulator 84 , clearing it to zero . the positive going transition on the output of the flip - flop also causes the address counter 100 to start incrementing from zero . the address counter 100 , which is clocked by the same clock as the sigma - delta modulator 46 , provides a sequence of successively increasing addresses to the rom 88 . this causes the rom to retrieve a series of stored filter coefficients for the first phase 136 of the time - domain response , and provide them in succession to the input 87 of the first accumulator 84 . the first accumulator either adds or subtracts each of these filter coefficient from a running sum it maintains , depending on whether the modulator is providing a high or a low input to its add / subtract input line 83 . when the address counter 100 reaches its maximum count value , the second phase 138 begins . during this second phase , the first accumulator 84 continues its adding and inverting , but uses the same coefficient value for these operations . the filter remains in the second phase until the next convert pulse 38 . when the next convert pulse 38 occurs , the flip - flop 108 output goes low , which causes the address counter 100 to provide a stream of successively decrementing counts on its output 102 . the rom 88 uses these counts to again retrieve its coefficients , but this time in reverse order . once the address counter reaches zero , the third phase 140 is complete , and the done output 104 of the address counter generates a done pulse . this done pulse actuates the load input 118 of the output shift register 50 , causing it to load the value at the output 91 of the first accumulator 84 via the multiplexer 92 . the convert pulse 38 that signals the start of the third phase 140 of the current cycle also initiates the first phase of the next conversion cycle . this next conversion cycle is similar to the first conversion cycle , except that it uses the second accumulator 86 instead of the first accumulator 84 . at the end of the next conversion cycle , another done pulse will cause the output shift register 50 to load the value from the second accumulator 86 . this interleaved operation is repeated continuously during the conversion of signals . each location in the rom 88 holds a filter coefficient that one of the accumulators can use directly . the other accumulator can use an inverted version of this coefficient at the same time , because the rising and falling ends 130 , 132 of the decimator response are axially symmetrical . this allows both channels to operate off of a single rom , which reduces the complexity of the resulting circuit . appropriate rom coefficients can be obtained by convolution of an ideal ct sinc filter with a low pass filter . for example , if the output rate is 2 . 5 khz , rom coefficients can be obtained by convolving a 1 . 25 khz sinc filter with a fourth order low pass filter having a 5 khz corner frequency . the interval counter 107 is used to determine the actual length of the entire integrator intervals . it provides a duration value for each variable length integration interval to the output shift register 50 . the digital signal processing stage 26 can then normalize the measurement values by dividing them by the duration values to obtain a normalized intensity , which is independent of variations in the conversion interval . in this embodiment , the sigma - delta modulator 46 is clocked with a 2 . 56 mhz clock , and the nominal convert frequency is 2 . 56 kilohertz , resulting in a variable decimation ratio centered at 1024x . the decimator 48 is advantageous in that it is immune to jitter and other variations in the timing of the convert pulses from the ct scanning system . this is important in ct scanning systems because their convert pulses can have up to 20 % timing uncertainties caused by a variety of factors such as motor speed variations . and since the extent of conversion interval variations tolerable using this approach is limited only by the number of bits in the data paths , these variations can be made arbitrarily large . this allows the ct scanning system to use relaxed motor speed control requirements and may thereby reduce its cost . it is particularly advantageous that the decimator achieves its immunity without complex frequency - locked circuitry . certain prior art approaches require a complicated frequency - locked timing subsystem because they employ fixed decimation ratios . the approach in this embodiment overcomes this limitation and allows the system clock to be fixed and independent . the decimator in this embodiment , for example , only needs a simple and inexpensive quartz crystal oscillator to generate its clock signal . the decimator 48 is also efficient to implement , as it requires only approximately two parallel adders and accumulators per channel . this is particularly important for a ct scanning system , which can employ 1 , 000 or more channels . unlike the above embodiment which implements a so - called integrating mode signal processing , the ct scanning system shown in fig4 provides an active signal processing system . this embodiment employs a novel iir decimation filter , which is discussed in more detail in the above - referenced application entitled multi - rate iir decimation and interpolation filters . this iir filtering permits an alternative approach to dealing with variations in the timing of the convert pulses from the ct scanning system . referring to fig4 an active filter decimator 200 includes a 4 - tap fir ( finite impulse response ) filter 202 , followed by an improved iir filter 204 , which is in turn followed by a linear interpolator 206 . the fir filter is a simple 4 - tap implementation of a sinc 3 filter , with a decimation ratio of 2 . the input line 208 of this filter forms the input line of the decimator . this input is operatively connected to an input of a first delay element 210 . a first fir gain element 220 has an input operatively connected to an output of the first delay element , and an output operatively connected to a first non - inverting input of a first summer 228 . a second delay element 212 has an input that is also operatively connected to the output of the first delay element . a second fir gain element 222 has an input operatively connected to an output of the second delay element , and an output operatively connected to a second non - inverting input of the first summer . similarly , a third delay element 214 has an input operatively connected to the output of the second delay element and an output operatively connected to an input of a fourth delay element 216 . a third gain element 224 has an input operatively connected to the output of the third delay element , and an output operatively connected to a third non - inverting input of the first summer . a fourth gain element 226 has an input operatively connected to an output of the fourth delay element , and an output operatively connected to a fourth non - inverting input of the first summer . the summer also has an output , which is operatively connected to an input of a decimator 231 . the decimator has an output , which acts as an output of the fir filter . in one embodiment , the first gain element has a gain of 0 . 125 , the second gain element has a gain of 0 . 375 , the third gain element has a gain of 0 . 375 , and the fourth gain element has a gain of 0 . 25 . the decimator has a decimation ratio of 2 in this embodiment . the iir filter 204 is a fourth - order iir decimation filter , which is discussed in more detail in the above - referenced copending application entitled multi - rate iir decimation and interpolation filters . it includes a second summer 230 that has a non - inverting input that is operatively connected to the output of the decimator 231 . an output of the second summer is operatively connected to an input of a first integrator 232 , and an output of this integrator is operatively connected to an input of a first decimator 240 . a first gain element 242 has an input operatively connected to the output of the first decimator and an output operatively connected to a non - inverting input of a third summer 250 . the third summer has an output that is operatively connected to a inverting input of the second summer . also operatively connected to the output of the first summer are three further integrators 234 , 236 , 238 . in particular , the second integrator 234 has an input operatively connected to an output of the first decimator 240 , and an output operatively connected to a second non - inverting input of the third summer 250 via a second gain element 244 . similarly , the third integrator 236 has an input operatively connected to an output of the second integrator , and an output operatively connected to a third non - inverting input of the third summer via a third gain element 246 . the fourth integrator 238 has an input operatively connected to an output of the third integrator , and an output operatively connected to a fourth non - inverting input of the third summer via a fourth gain element 248 . the output of the fourth integrator also forms the output of the iir filter 204 . in one embodiment , the decimation ratio of the first decimator 240 is 16 . the second , third , and fourth integrators do not have decimators at their respective outputs , although in other embodiments , such decimators could be provided . decimation is not used after the second , third , and fourth integrators 234 , 236 , 238 because the ct das application makes this difficult without more elaborate computation in the post - processing , as will be explained below . the total decimation from the modular output to the iir filter output is 32x . the gain of the first gain element 242 is 3 . 92398 × 10 - 3 , the gain of the second gain element 244 is 4 . 69404 × 10 - 6 , the gain of the third gain element 246 is 3 . 05644 × 10 - 9 and the gain of the fourth gain element 248 is 9 . 78106 × 10 - 13 . in practice it is preferable to provide some gain in the integrators 232 , 234 , 236 , 238 themselves to compensate for the incremental decimation operations and maintain maximum dynamic range with minimum word widths without affecting overall frequency response characteristics . providing this gain in the integrators will impact the gain values of the gain elements 242 , 244 , 246 , 248 . the iir filter 204 has properties of a conventional fourth - order , low pass state - variable filter . this iir filter takes advantage of the fact that at the output of each integrator stage , the signal is low pass filtered and therefore can be decimated . this property allows the decimation process to be embedded within the iir filter . in addition , the multiplications with the iir filter coefficients , which can constitute a major computation load for iir filters , can be performed at decimated rates , with only the first stage integrator needing to operate at the full input data rate . the entire iir decimation filter can be implemented with as few as 2 equivalent adds per channel per input sample , which can be at least a factor of 2 more efficient than a single - stage fir decimation filter . this efficient implementation can be quite advantageous in ct - scanning systems , which have a high number of channels . the interpolator 206 includes a fifth delay element 252 that has an input operatively connected to the output of the iir filter 204 . it also includes a fourth summer 254 that has a non - inverting input operatively connected to the input of the fifth delay element 252 , and a inverting input operatively connected to the output of the fifth delay element . the output of the fifth delay element is also operatively connected to a non - inverting input of a fifth summer 256 . the fifth summer has a second non - inverting input that is operatively connected to an output of a first multiplier 260 , and an output operatively connected to the input of a gate 258 , which has an enable input operatively connected to the convert line 32 . this gate has an output operatively connected to a non - inverting input of a sixth summer 262 . the sixth summer has an output operatively connected to a first input of a second multiplier 264 , which has an output to an input of an output shift register 266 . the first multiplier 260 has one input operatively connected to an output of the fourth summer 254 , and a second input operatively connected to an output of a phase register 270 . an offset register 272 has an output operatively connected to a non - inverting input of the sixth summer 262 . a gain register 274 has an output operatively connected to a second input of the second multiplier . the gain and offset registers obtain calibration values from calibration circuitry 276 , which performs periodic calibration of the channels in order to normalize the relative zero and full scale performance of all the channels in the das . in some systems , the gain and offset normalization function is performed by the digital signal processor 26 . the phase register includes counting circuitry that is clocked at the modulator sampling frequency . this clocking circuitry includes a reset circuit that resets its count in response to the output sampling rate of the decimator , and an output latch that is controlled by the convert signal . in one embodiment where the overall decimation factor is 32x , the phase register is a 5 bit counting register . referring also to fig5 the interpolator 206 provides an output that approximates an undecimated filter output by interpolating the output of the iir filter to the sampling rate of the modulator 200 . the interpolator performs a linear interpolation of the two most recent iir filter samples . in particular , when a convert pulse 280 is detected , the phase register 270 latches in the closest 284 of the 32 possible phases 286 during which the convert pulse was detected . the fourth summer then subtracts the previous iir filter output 288 , which it obtains at the output of the fifth delay element 252 , from the most recent iir filter output 290 , which it obtains from the input of the fifth delay element 252 . the first multiplier 260 takes the resulting difference 294 and scales it by the value of the phase register divided by the number of possible phases . the fifth summer 256 adds the resulting scaled output to the previous iir filter output to obtain an approximated value to an undecimated filter output at the time of the convert signal . the linear approximation can have an error 296 by which it differs from an ideal value 298 . in the one embodiment for which specific numbers are provided above , the linear approximation is accurate to within 0 . 5 ppm of full - scale for a worst case signal . this level of error should cause no noticeable degradation to the data acquisition system measurements . increasing the iir decimation ratio beyond 32x may substantially increase the linear approximation error , which could require a much more complex second - order interpolation to minimize . referring also to fig6 simulations were performed for the channel 40 of fig2 with the active filter mode decimator of fig4 substituted for the integrating filter mode decimator 48 of fig2 . the sampling frequency used for the simulation was 2 . 56 mhz . one simulation was performed with a 200 hz sine wave input signal 300 . as can be seen from the simulated output signal 302 , the out - of - band quantization noise from the sigma - delta modulator is effectively removed by the decimator 200 in this simulation . group delay of the iir filter is evident in the delay between the input and output wave forms . additional simulations have indicated that the low - pass frequency characteristic of the iir filter 204 is not adversely impacted by the decimation within the iir filter . several active filter mode decimators 200 can be implemented as dedicated digital circuitry on a single integrated circuit . the above embodiments discuss a chip set for use in ct scanning system data acquisition channels . of course , a designer may also obtain benefits from the circuitry and concepts of the invention , without implementing them as integrated circuits . furthermore , one skilled in the art will realize that parts of the circuitry could be implemented in different , but equivalent ways . for example , dedicated processing circuitry , microprogrammed processing circuitry , or general purpose processing circuitry running special purpose software could be used to implement the embodiment described . in addition , it will be apparent that some digitally - implemented functionality is equivalent to analog - implemented functionality . it is contemplated that the above - described circuitry could be adapted to service ct scanning systems that employ multiple asynchronous convert signals for each channel . it is also possible to perform the both active and integrating signal processing operations a compound using a same integrated circuit that shares circuitry between modes . this integrated circuit could then be employed for both types of systems . currently , however , applicants contemplate separate chip sets for each type of operation . in addition , acquisition channels according to the invention can find application in other areas . for example , electrocardiogram ( ekg ) monitoring , electroencephalagram ( eeg ) monitoring , seismic detection , and chemical analysis should benefit , because of their requirement for large numbers of analog - to - digital conversion channels . applications that require detection of small current signals can also benefit from the improved dynamic range of the channels according to the invention . while there have been shown and described what are at present considered the preferred embodiments of the present invention , it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that various changes and modifications may be made therein without departing from the scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims . | 7 |
for overcoming the disgusting original color and smell of the traditional pigskin dog chews , said rawhide pigskin products or bound pigskin products can be put into a smoker 1 as showing in fig1 which includes a smoke cage 2 , a grid 3 and a cap 4 , placing on the topside of said grid 3 of said smoke cage 2 , meanwhile some fumigant 6 is put on the bottom of said smoker 1 , when heating , the smoker 1 makes the fumigant 6 carbonize by overheat to generate heat smoke rising upward and passing through the air vents 5 on said grid 3 to get the inside of said cap 4 , then along the rim side , flow back down to the grid 3 to form a heat smoke flow circle to absorb on and combine with said molded products located on the grid 3 so as to reach the goal of changing original color and smell of said pigskin dog chews . in the heat - smoke flow circle , heated smoke flows up and cooled flows down so that the smoke stream continuously touches and penetrates the goods to generate crystal absorbing on the inside of the material , meanwhile it can prevent the goods from overheating to be carbonized . when smoking , the temperature born by said pigskin dog chew product should not be over high or over low , if not , the goods will be carbonized or not be smoked into desired effect , therefore the inventor concludes many results of experiments to induce the following exercising data : when the diameter of said smoke cage 2 is in 50 cm to 120 cm range , the distance from the bottom of said smoker 1 to the grid 3 is about 20 cm so that the heated smoke steam flows up at least 20 cm to get the smoked objects to guarantee the temperature surrounding the goods from over high and avoid the smoked objects carbonized ; meanwhile the distance from the grid 3 to the cap 4 is not less than 25 cm so that the smoke steam has basic flowing back space for preventing the temperature of flow - back smoke steam from being cooled over low , therefore guaranteeing the smoking effect , during the smoking treatment , the smoked objects reacts with said smoke thoroughly just as the stream flows back after touching the cap . referring to fig1 in the embodiment , when the diameter φ of said smoke cage 2 , the distance a from the bottom of said smoker 1 to the grid 3 and the distance b from the grid to the cap 4 are respectively 78 cm , 30 cm and 15 cm , the smoking effect can be guaranteed in the better level . said fumigant used in the smoking processing is consisted of a sort of amyloidal fumigant — like potato shreds or grain or rice , mixing with a sort of carbohydrate fumigant — like red granulated sugar or original sugar or yellow sugar or pellet sugar , therein when said amyloidal fumigant should hold from 55 % to 65 % of total quantity , and said carbohydrate fumigant accounts for from 45 % to 35 %, the smoking process will get a better effect . during the smoking processing , the main elements of the starch and sugar of the mixed fumigant are carbonized by overheating and oxygen less to create good smelled smoke of the baked starch and sugar filling out all the space at the inside of said smoker 1 , additionally higher temperature in the inside of said smoke cage 2 , the surface of the goods is roasted , meanwhile the strenuous molecule moving enhance the smoke containing elements of sugar and starch to absorb on the goods in better , further to change the color and smell and taste of the goods and to make the goods golden and with a bit charming sweet . for a long term studying , the inventor find the fumigant consisted of 60 % potato shreds and 40 % red granulated sugar may get a desired result . | 0 |
the present invention and its advantages are best understood by referring to the drawings . the elements of the drawings are not necessarily to scale , emphasis instead being placed upon clearly illustrating the principles of the invention . fig1 illustrates one exemplary embodiment of a camera assembly 10 . a camera body 11 houses an optical sensor ( not illustrated ) and camera electronics ( not illustrated ). in the illustrated embodiment of the invention , the camera body 11 is a charge coupled device ( ccd ) camera , though other cameras may be used in other embodiments of the invention . a camera lens 12 receives images , and may be a standard c - mount compatible lens . a substantially vertical handle 13 supports the camera assembly 10 in an upright position . the handle 13 connects to the bottom side 81 camera body 11 by a mounting screw 41 ( fig2 ) turned by a thumb wheel 16 , the outer edge of which thumb wheel 16 protrudes through an opening 37 on left side 77 of the upper portion 18 of the handle . the upper portion 18 of the handle 13 is contoured to fit the user &# 39 ; s hand ( not illustrated ) for a comfortable grip . a user ( not illustrated ) depresses trigger 15 with a finger ( not illustrated ) to start the camera 11 recording . releasing the trigger 15 stops the recording . in an alternative embodiment , depressing the trigger 15 stops the recording and releasing the trigger starts the recording . a viewfinder 17 ( illustrated in undeployed position in fig1 ) is used for aligning the camera assembly 10 to its subject ( not illustrated ). the viewfinder 17 may be of the type illustrated in fig1 , wherein a front viewfinder portion 20 and a rear viewfinder portion 21 are both foldable against the top 78 of the camera body 11 when not in use , as further illustrated in fig2 . in other embodiments , such as the embodiment illustrated in fig3 , the viewfinder 17 may be fixed ( i . e ., not foldable ). in still other embodiments , the viewfinder 17 may be replaced with an lcd display ( not illustrated ). referring to fig1 , a rechargeable battery ( not illustrated ) housed inside a battery 14 provides power for the camera assembly 10 . in the illustrated embodiment , the battery 14 is a hitachi eb1214s model battery that supplies 12v dc power at a minimum of 500 ma of current . fig4 is an exploded view of the interior of the handle 13 of the camera assembly 10 . the handle 13 is comprised of two side portions 33 and 34 which are joined together by a plurality of screws 38 . the side portions 33 and 34 are substantially hollow for receiving internal components such as the battery 14 ( fig1 ), the thumb wheel 16 , and a power controller 30 . the side portions 33 and 34 may be fabricated from molded hard plastic , composite material , or any suitable rigid material . although fig4 illustrates the interior of only one portion 34 of the two side portions 33 and 34 , the two side portions are substantially similar and generally mirror - imaged to one another . the thumb wheel 16 turns the mounting screw 41 that makes the physical connection between the handle 13 and the camera body 11 ( fig1 ). when the side portions 33 and 34 are joined together , the thumb wheel 16 fits into a recess 42 on the side portions 33 and 34 , and an outer edge 45 of the wheel 16 protrudes through the opening 37 , as shown in fig1 . although fig4 illustrates only the opening 37 on side portion 33 of the handle 13 , side portion 34 comprises an identical opening , such that the wheel 16 protrudes through openings 37 on both sides of the handle 13 . referring to fig4 , an aperture 40 is a hole in the top surface 44 of the handle 13 created by the joining of portions 33 and 34 . the mounting screw 41 protrudes through the aperture 40 and threads into an opening ( not illustrated ) on the lower side 81 ( fig1 ) of the camera body 11 to secure the camera body 11 to the handle 13 . the trigger 15 is held in position by a trigger alignment shelf 36 , which is a raised portion of the interiors of handle portions 33 and 34 . the trigger alignment shelf 36 is bounded by an upper stop 51 and a lower stop 52 , as illustrated in fig4 . when the handle portions 33 and 34 are joined , the alignment shelf 36 “ sandwiches ” the trigger 15 to prevent the trigger 15 from dislocating in the ± x direction ( see fig4 ), and the upper and lower stops 51 and 52 prevent it from dislocating in the ± y direction ( see fig4 ). depressing the trigger 15 activates a switch 32 , which allows a trigger signal generated in the power controller 30 to be transmitted to the camera assembly 10 to start the recording process . the power controller 30 comprises a circuit hoard that fits into a recess 43 in the handle portions 33 and 34 and is secured via a plurality of screws 35 . the power controller 30 further comprises power filtering circuitry ( not shown ) and a synch pulse generator ( not shown ). a pair of contacts 31 protruding from the power controller 30 makes electrical contact with contacts on the battery ( not illustrated ). the power controller 30 receives 12 vdc power from the battery 14 and filters and conditions the power received from the battery 14 and then provides the power to the camera body 11 . as illustrated in fig4 , a bottom concavity 39 is defined by the flared bottom portion 50 of handle portions 33 and 34 for receiving the battery 14 ( fig1 ). the bottom concavity 39 detachably receives the battery 14 . the contacts 31 extend from the power controller 30 into the bottom concavity 39 for connection to the battery contacts ( not illustrated ). right side notch portion 46 a on side portion 34 forms a notch ( not shown ) when joined with left side notch portion 46 b on side portion 33 . the notch comprised of 46 a and 46 b fits into a mating hole on the bottom of the camera body 11 ( fig1 ) to prevent the camera body 11 from rotating about the mounting screw 41 when installed . referring to fig4 , with further reference to fig7 , when a user ( not illustrated ) depresses the finger - operated trigger 15 , the trigger 15 moves in the − z direction sufficiently to cause the switch 32 to close , sending power from the battery ( not illustrated ) to the power controller 30 , and then to the camera body 11 . fig5 is a rear view of the camera assembly 10 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure . two ( 2 ) light - emitting diodes ( leds ) 26 and 27 are disposed on the rear side 79 of the handle 13 . in the illustrated embodiment , a green led 27 activates when the camera assembly 10 is powered on to provide a visual indication to the user ( not illustrated ) that the camera assembly 10 is powered . the camera assembly 10 powers on ( and the green led 27 activates ), as soon as a battery 14 is installed into the handle 13 . the green led 27 will remain activated for as long as the voltage received by the power controller 30 is within a predetermined range for optimal operation of the camera assembly 10 . for example , a particular camera may require 10v for operation , and the 12v battery 14 will eventually drop below 10v . in such an event , the power controller 30 shuts off power to the camera and the green led 27 deactivates as a visual indication that the camera is not powered . in the embodiment illustrated in fig5 , a yellow led 26 activates when the camera assembly 10 is recording to provide a visual indication to the user ( not illustrated ) that the camera assembly 10 is recording . in other embodiments ( not illustrated ), no yellow led 26 is present , and the green led 27 will change from a solid green ( indicating power on to camera ) to a blinking green when the camera is recording . referring to fig5 , port 24 provides an ieee 802 . 3 ethernet connection on the rear of the camera body 11 . port 24 is a gigabit ethernet port in the illustrated embodiment , but in other embodiments may be any other suitable data interface , either analog or digital , such as a camlink interface . a trigger input port 22 receives the trigger signal ( not shown ) from the power controller 30 . a power input port 25 provides power to the camera body 11 . a power output port 29 houses a power cord ( not illustrated ) that delivers power to the power input port 25 . remote activation port 28 provides a connection from the power controller 30 for remote activation of the camera by a computer ( not illustrated ). remote activation of the camera assembly 10 may be used in lieu of manual depression of the trigger 15 to start and stop camera operation . fig6 and 7 are cross - sectional views of one embodiment of the present disclosure illustrating the battery 14 inserted into the bottom concavity 39 of the handle 13 of the camera assembly 10 . as illustrated , a top portion 60 of the battery 14 is enclosed in the bottom portion 50 of the handle 13 . the battery 14 is detachably restrained within the handle 13 via a friction fit and a standard latch ( not shown ). the bottom portion 61 of the battery 14 is larger than the top portion 60 . the size , shape , and weight of the battery 14 enables it to serve as a counter - balance such that it steadies the camera assembly 10 when it is in use . the bottom surface 80 of the battery 14 is substantially flat , such that the camera can be supported in operable orientation ( i . e ., with the handle 13 oriented vertically ) when set on a generally flat surface . a threaded tripod - mounting hole ( not shown ) on the bottom surface 80 of the battery 14 connects to a standard camera tripod ( not shown ), if desired . two ( 2 ) springs 98 and 99 ( fig7 ) apply force against the trigger 15 from the inside of the handle 13 to maintain the trigger 15 in an outwardly - deployed orientation until it is depressed . fig8 is a block diagram of one embodiment of the camera assembly 10 of the present disclosure . the camera body 11 comprises an image sensor 70 that receives images ( not illustrated ) through the lens 12 . a camera controller 71 contains processing components ( not illustrated ) for controlling camera operation . a standard digital interface 72 ( e . g . usb , firewire , serial , ethernet ) interfaces with a remote host computer 73 , which contains memory 74 . the handle 13 comprises the battery 14 and the trigger 15 . depression of the trigger 15 activates a switch 32 , which causes a synch pulse generator ( not shown ) in the power controller 30 to send trigger signals to the camera controller 71 to start the recording process . releasing the trigger 15 stops the recording process . power controller 30 further comprises power filtering circuitry ( not shown ) that prevents a short circuit that would damage the camera assembly 10 . power controller 30 further comprises circuitry ( not shown ) that shuts off power to the camera if the voltage received from the battery 14 falls outside of a predetermined range . this feature protects the camera from being subject to depleted voltage from the battery 14 . in operation of the camera assembly 10 according to one embodiment of the present disclosure , a user ( not shown ) installs the battery 14 into the handle 13 . once the battery 14 is installed , power from the battery 14 flows to the power controller 30 , where it is conditioned and transmitted to the camera controller 71 . green led 27 activates when the battery 14 is both installed and providing power within a predetermined voltage range . depression of the trigger 15 causes the switch 32 to close , and a pulse synch generator ( not shown ) within the power controller 30 generates a 200 hz pulse train which is sent to the camera controller 71 to start the recording process . yellow led 26 activates while the trigger 15 is depressed to server as a visual indicator that the camera is recording . the camera controller 71 receives image data ( not illustrated ) from the image sensor 70 and passes the image data in a frame buffered form to remote memory 74 or disk space within the remote host computer 73 the remote host computer 73 may be a laptop , pc , or any standard computer . when the trigger 15 is released , recording stops after a short delay of generally about a half a second . fig9 depicts an exemplary power controller 30 of the present disclosure . the exemplary power controller 30 generally comprises a processing unit 106 , an input port 108 , and an output port 109 . the power controller 30 further comprises power filter logic 105 , which can be software , hardware , or a combination thereof . the power controller 30 further comprises trigger logic 110 , which can be software , hardware , or a combination thereof . in the exemplary power controller 30 , power filter logic 105 and trigger logic 110 are shown as stored in memory 104 . the processing unit 106 may be a digital processor or other type of circuitry configured to run the power filter logic 105 and trigger logic 110 by processing and executing the instructions of the power filter logic 105 and trigger logic 110 . the processing unit 106 communicates to and drives the other elements within the power controller 30 via a local interface 107 , which can include one or more buses . in the exemplary power controller 30 of fig9 , the power filter logic 105 and trigger logic 110 are shown as being implemented in software and stored in the filter memory 104 . however , the power filter logic 105 and trigger logic 110 may be implemented in hardware , software , or a combination of hardware and software in other embodiments . when stored in filter memory 104 , the power filter logic 105 and trigger logic 110 can be stored and transported on any computer - readable medium for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system , apparatus , or device , such as a computer - based system , processor - containing system , or other system that can fetch the instructions from the instruction execution system , apparatus , or device and execute the instructions . in the context of this document , a “ computer - readable medium ” can be any means that can contain , store , communicate , propagate , or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system , apparatus , or device . the computer readable medium can be , for example but not limited to , an electronic , magnetic , optical , electromagnetic , infrared , or semiconductor system , apparatus , device , or propagation medium . note that the computer - readable medium could even be paper or another suitable medium upon which the program is printed , as the program can be electronically captured , via for instance optical scanning of the paper or other medium , then compiled , interpreted or otherwise processed in a suitable manner if necessary , and then stored in a computer memory . the power filter logic 105 may perform a plurality of functions . as an example , the power filter logic 105 may control the conditioning of power received from the battery 14 . the power filter logic may shut off power to the camera assembly 10 if the power from the battery 14 falls outside of a predetermined range . for example , if the battery 14 provides 12 vdc power , and the camera assembly 10 requires a minimum of 10 vdc power to operate , the power filter logic 105 shuts off power to the camera if the power from the battery 14 drops below 10 vdc . the power filter logic further may control power to the leds 26 and 27 . the trigger logic 110 may perform a plurality of functions . as an example , the trigger logic 110 may control the generation of the trigger pulse required to start and stop the recording of the camera . the trigger logic 110 initiates a trigger pulse of the pulse rate required by the particular camera used . the display unit 111 indicates the status of the camera assembly 10 . the display unit 111 may consist of the green led 27 and the yellow led 26 , as discussed above . fig1 is a flowchart depicting exemplary architecture and functionality of a camera assembly 10 ( fig1 ) of the present disclosure . referring to step 201 of fig1 , a power source ( e . g ., battery 14 ) is connected to the digital camera controller 71 via the handle 13 , the handle 13 having the trigger 15 for actuating by a user . referring to step 202 , a trigger pulse signal is generated for use by the digital camera controller 71 when the trigger 15 on the handle 13 is actuated . fig1 illustrates in block diagram form an alternative embodiment of the camera assembly 10 , wherein an adapter 120 is disposed between the handle 13 and the camera housing 11 . the adapter 120 samples ( without destroying ) the data signal ( not shown ) received from the camera controller 71 through the digital interface 72 and converts it into a national television system committee ( ntsc ) signal via an a / d converter 121 . the adapter also passes the original digital data signal back out of the adapter to the remote host 73 . the ntsc signal ( not shown ) is then transmitted to a display monitor 123 that may be installed on top of the camera housing 11 in lieu of the viewfinder 17 ( fig1 ). the purpose of the adapter 120 in this configuration is thus to split the data transmitted from the camera controller 71 for use by both the display monitor 123 , and the host computer . the adapter 120 could also or alternatively house a wireless interface ( not shown ) so that a wired connection to the remote host computer 73 is not required . in another embodiment of the camera assembly 10 , the adapter 120 might also intercept the power signal from the power controller 30 and split it out to provide power to a light or lights ( not shown ) mounted on the camera to illuminate the event of interest . this invention may be provided in other specific forms and embodiments without departing from the essential characteristics as described herein . the embodiments described are to be considered in all aspects as illustrative only and not restrictive in any manner . as described above and shown in the associated drawings and exhibits , the present invention comprises a portable high speed digital camera . while particular embodiments of the invention have been described , it will be understood , however , that the invention is not limited thereto , since modifications may be made by those skilled in the art , particularly in light of the foregoing teachings . it is , therefore , contemplated by the appended claims to cover any such modifications that incorporate those features or those improvements that embody the spirit and scope of the present invention . | 6 |
an embodiment of the present invention provides a switch topology that may be based on parascan ® tunable material . parascan ® is a family of tunable dielectric material with excellent rf and microwave properties , such as , high q , fast tuning , and high ip3 . further , the term parascan ® as used herein is a trademarked word indicating a tunable dielectric material developed by the assignee of the present invention . parascan ® tunable dielectric materials have been described in several patents . barium strontium titanate ( batio 3 — srtio 3 ), also referred to as bsto , is used for its high dielectric constant ( 200 - 6 , 000 ) and large change in dielectric constant with applied voltage ( 25 - 75 percent with a field of 2 volts / micron ). tunable dielectric materials including barium strontium titanate are disclosed in u . s . pat . no . 5 , 312 , 790 to sengupta , et al . entitled “ ceramic ferroelectric material ”; u . s . pat . no . 5 , 427 , 988 by sengupta , et al . entitled “ ceramic ferroelectric composite material - bsto - mgo ”; u . s . pat . no . 5 , 486 , 491 to sengupta , et al . entitled “ ceramic ferroelectric composite material — bsto - zro 2 ”; u . s . pat . no . 5 , 635 , 434 by sengupta , et al . entitled “ ceramic ferroelectric composite material - bsto - magnesium based compound ”; u . s . pat . no . 5 , 830 , 591 by sengupta , et al . entitled “ multilayered ferroelectric composite waveguides ”; u . s . pat . no . 5 , 846 , 893 by sengupta , et al . entitled “ thin film ferroelectric composites and method of making ”; u . s . pat . no . 5 , 766 , 697 by sengupta , et al . entitled “ method of making thin film composites ”; u . s . pat . no . 5 , 693 , 429 by sengupta , et al . entitled “ electronically graded multilayer ferroelectric composites ”; u . s . pat . no . 5 , 635 , 433 by sengupta entitled “ ceramic ferroelectric composite material bsto - zno ”; u . s . pat . no . 6 , 074 , 971 by chiu et al . entitled “ ceramic ferroelectric composite materials with enhanced electronic properties bsto - mg based compound - rare earth oxide ”. these patents are incorporated herein by reference . the materials shown in these patents , especially bsto - mgo composites , show low dielectric loss and high tunability . tunability is defined as the fractional change in the dielectric constant with applied voltage . barium strontium titanate of the formula ba x sr 1 - x tio 3 is a preferred electronically tunable dielectric material due to its favorable tuning characteristics , low curie temperatures and low microwave loss properties . in the formula ba x sr 1 - x tio 3 , x can be any value from 0 to 1 , preferably from about 0 . 15 to about 0 . 6 . more preferably , x is from 0 . 3 to 0 . 6 . other electronically tunable dielectric materials may be used partially or entirely in place of barium strontium titanate . an example is ba x ca 1 - x tio 3 , where x is in a range from about 0 . 2 to about 0 . 8 , preferably from about 0 . 4 to about 0 . 6 . additional electronically tunable ferroelectrics include pb x zr 1 - x tio 3 ( pzt ) where x ranges from about 0 . 0 to about 1 . 0 , pb x zr 1 - x srtio 3 where x ranges from about 0 . 05 to about 0 . 4 , kta x nb 1 - x o 3 where x ranges from about 0 . 0 to about 1 . 0 , lead lanthanum zirconium titanate ( plzt ), pbtio 3 , bacazrtio 3 , nano 3 , knbo 3 , linbo 3 , litao 3 , pbnb 2 o 6 , pbta 2 o 6 , ksr ( nbo 3 ) and naba 2 ( nbo 3 ) 5 kh 2 po 4 , and mixtures and compositions thereof . also , these materials can be combined with low loss dielectric materials , such as magnesium oxide ( mgo ), aluminum oxide ( al 2 o 3 ), and zirconium oxide ( zro 2 ), and / or with additional doping elements , such as manganese ( mn ), iron ( fe ), and tungsten ( w ), or with other alkali earth metal oxides ( i . e . calcium oxide , etc . ), transition metal oxides , silicates , niobates , tantalates , aluminates , zirconnates , and titanates to further reduce the dielectric loss . in addition , the following u . s . patent applications , assigned to the assignee of this application , disclose additional examples of tunable dielectric materials : u . s . application ser . no . 09 / 594 , 837 filed jun . 15 , 2000 , entitled “ electronically tunable ceramic materials including tunable dielectric and metal silicate phases ”; u . s . application ser . no . 09 / 768 , 690 filed jan . 24 , 2001 , entitled “ electronically tunable , low - loss ceramic materials including a tunable dielectric phase and multiple metal oxide phases ”; u . s . application ser . no . 09 / 882 , 605 filed jun . 15 , 2001 , entitled “ electronically tunable dielectric composite thick films and methods of making same ”; u . s . application ser . no . 09 / 834 , 327 filed apr . 13 , 2001 , entitled “ strain - relieved tunable dielectric thin films ”; and u . s . provisional application ser . no . 60 / 295 , 046 filed jun . 1 , 2001 entitled “ tunable dielectric compositions including low loss glass frits ”. these patent applications are incorporated herein by reference . the tunable dielectric materials can also be combined with one or more non - tunable dielectric materials . the non - tunable phase ( s ) may include mgo , mgal 2 o 4 , mgtio 3 , mg 2 sio 4 , casio 3 , mgsrzrtio 6 , catio 3 , al 2 o 3 , sio 2 and / or other metal silicates such as basio 3 and srsio 3 . the non - tunable dielectric phases may be any combination of the above , e . g ., mgo combined with mgtio 3 , mgo combined with mgsrzrtio 6 , mgo combined with mg 2 sio 4 , mgo combined with mg 2 sio 4 , mg 2 sio 4 combined with catio 3 and the like . additional minor additives in amounts of from about 0 . 1 to about 5 weight percent can be added to the composites to additionally improve the electronic properties of the films . these minor additives include oxides such as zirconnates , tannates , rare earths , niobates and tantalates . for example , the minor additives may include cazro 3 , bazro 3 , srzro 3 , basno 3 , casno 3 , mgsno 3 , bi 2 o 3 / 2sno 2 , nd 2 o 3 , pr 7 o 11 , yb 2 o 3 , ho 2 o 3 , la 2 o 3 , mgnb 2 o 6 , srnb 2 o 6 , banb 2 o 6 , mgta 2 o 6 , bata 2 o 6 and ta 2 o 3 . thick films of tunable dielectric composites can comprise ba 1 - x sr x tio 3 , where x is from 0 . 3 to 0 . 7 in combination with at least one non - tunable dielectric phase selected from mgo , mgtio 3 , mgzro 3 , mgsrzrtio 6 , mg 2 sio 4 , casio 3 , mgal 2 o 4 , catio 3 , al 2 o 3 , sio 2 , basio 3 and srsio 3 . these compositions can be bsto and one of these components , or two or more of these components in quantities from 0 . 25 weight percent to 80 weight percent with bsto weight ratios of 99 . 75 weight percent to 20 weight percent . the electronically tunable materials can also include at least one metal silicate phase . the metal silicates may include metals from group 2a of the periodic table , i . e ., be , mg , ca , sr , ba and ra , preferably mg , ca , sr and ba . preferred metal silicates include mg 2 sio 4 , casio 3 , basio 3 and srsio 3 . in addition to group 2a metals , the present metal silicates may include metals from group 1a , i . e ., li , na , k , rb , cs and fr , preferably li , na and k . for example , such metal silicates may include sodium silicates such as na 2 sio 3 and nasio 3 - 5h 2 o , and lithium - containing silicates such as lialsio 4 , li 2 sio 3 and li 4 sio 4 . metals from groups 3a , 4a and some transition metals of the periodic table may also be suitable constituents of the metal silicate phase . additional metal silicates may include al 2 si 2 o 7 , zrsio 4 , kalsi 3 o 8 , naalsi 3 o 8 , caal 2 si 2 o 8 , camgsi 2 o 6 , batisi 3 o 9 and zn 2 sio 4 . the above tunable materials can be tuned at room temperature by controlling an electric field that is applied across the materials . in addition to the electronically tunable dielectric phase , the electronically tunable materials can include at least two additional metal oxide phases . the additional metal oxides may include metals from group 2a of the periodic table , i . e ., mg , ca , sr , ba , be and ra , preferably mg , ca , sr and ba . the additional metal oxides may also include metals from group 1a , i . e ., li , na , k , rb , cs and fr , preferably li , na and k . metals from other groups of the periodic table may also be suitable constituents of the metal oxide phases . for example , refractory metals such as ti , v , cr , mn , zr , nb , mo , hf , ta and w may be used . furthermore , metals such as al , si , sn , pb and bi may be used . in addition , the metal oxide phases may comprise rare earth metals such as sc , y , la , ce , pr , nd and the like . the additional metal oxides may include , for example , zirconnates , silicates , titanates , aluminates , stannates , niobates , tantalates and rare earth oxides . preferred additional metal oxides include mg 2 sio 4 , mgo , catio 3 , mgzrsrtio 6 , mgtio 3 , mgal 2 o 4 , wo 3 , sntio 4 , zrtio 4 , casio 3 , casno 3 , cawo 4 , cazro 3 , mgta 2 o 6 , mgzro 3 , mno 2 , pbo , bi 2 o 3 and la 2 o 3 . particularly preferred additional metal oxides include mg 2 sio 4 , mgo , catio 3 , mgzrsrtio 6 , mgtio 3 , mgal 2 o 4 , mgta 2 o 6 and mgzro 3 . the additional metal oxide phases are typically present in total amounts of from about 1 to about 80 weight percent of the material , preferably from about 3 to about 65 weight percent , and more preferably from about 5 to about 60 weight percent . in one preferred embodiment , the additional metal oxides comprise from about 10 to about 50 total weight percent of the material . the individual amount of each additional metal oxide may be adjusted to provide the desired properties . where two additional metal oxides are used , their weight ratios may vary , for example , from about 1 : 100 to about 100 : 1 , typically from about 1 : 10 to about 10 : 1 or from about 1 : 5 to about 5 : 1 . although metal oxides in total amounts of from 1 to 80 weight percent are typically used , smaller additive amounts of from 0 . 01 to 1 weight percent may be used for some applications . the additional metal oxide phases can include at least two mg - containing compounds . in addition to the multiple mg - containing compounds , the material may optionally include mg - free compounds , for example , oxides of metals selected from si , ca , zr , ti , al and / or rare earths . turning to fig1 , illustrated generally as 100 , is a schematic of one embodiment of the present invention of an sp3t switch that may use a tunable dielectric capacitor as the switching elements . although not limited in this respect , an embodiment of the present invention provides the radio frequency ( rf ) signal is input at port 1 105 , the active port is port number 4 110 , and the other two ports ( port 3 , 114 and port 2 , 120 ) may be isolated . to achieve this , the impedances looking at nodes n 2 125 and n 3 130 of the cross 135 , should show an rf open . in this way all the signal input at port 1 , 105 will be available at port 4 , 110 except for small insertion loss . to achieve an rf open at node n 2 125 of the cross 135 there must be an rf short at node n 2 125 of the tee 140 in the path to port 2 120 as well as λ / 4 of transmission line between n 2 125 of cross 135 and n 2 125 of tee 140 junction . the rf short at n 3 145 of the tee 140 is achieved by the combination of the transmission lines shown in fig1 and the impedance provided by a variable capacitor made of tunable dielectric material . similar operation may occur in the path to port 3 115 of the switch 100 . the operation of the active path is different from the isolated paths in that the impedance seen at node 3 155 of the tee 150 junction is an rf open . this way , all of the rf signal present at the cross 135 will reach port 4 110 , except for minor insertion loss . turning now to fig2 , shown generally as 200 , is a layout of an sp3t switch using tunable capacitors in one embodiment of the present invention . it is understood that there are numerous possible circuit configurations and types of switches and these are provided merely for illustrative purposes . as shown , the tunable capacitors 210 and 215 may be placed in the gaps shown . rf input is shown at 205 with the dc bias circuit not shown . turning now to fig3 , generally at 300 is illustrated s - parameters 305 and 310 in frequency 320 vs . db 315 of a switch of one embodiment of the present invention with port 4 active . as illustrated in fig3 , the isolation of the non - active ports is better than 20 db over approximately 70 mhz of the band . in another embodiment of the present invention as shown in fig4 , generally as 400 , is a layout of an sp3t switch using tunable capacitors with high isolation which include two parallel switching sections which may be used in each path of the 3 - way switch . tunable capacitors are illustrated at 405 , 410 , 415 , 420 , 425 and 430 however , it is understood that any number of tunable capacitors in many different configurations are within the scope of the present invention . by integrating the tunable capacitors of fig4 , the isolation of the inactive paths will be increased . this is shown in fig5 at 500 in frequency 420 vs . db 515 at 505 and 515 where it can be observed that the isolation of more than 40 db is achieved over similar bandwidth . turning now to fig6 is a schematic of an on - off switch 600 with at least one tunable capacitor . parascan ® tunable material may be used to facilitate an on - off switch 600 . although not limited in this respect , fig6 illustrates a stop band filter topology with port 1 615 and port 2 610 , wherein at certain values of tuning capacitors , the stop band filter 605 will resonate and therefore isolate port 1 615 from port 2 ( off condition ) 610 . this condition is shown in fig7 at 700 in frequency ( ghz ) 715 vs db 720 . it is observed that the frequencies around 2 . 4 ghz will be isolated by about 30 db with a bandwidth of 50 mhz as shown by the trace depicted at 705 contrasted by the trace at 710 . in an embodiment of the present invention , in the “ on ” condition , the capacitors may be tuned to different values by changing the bias voltage , and the stop band filter may no longer work as such . although not limited in this respect , this condition may be achieved typically by a 2 : 1 capacitance tuning . fig8 at 800 , shows the response in frequency ( ghz ) 815 vs . db 820 . as observed in the traces 805 and 815 , all of the rf signal may pass through the circuit with minimum insertion loss and better than 20 db return loss over a wide band . while certain features of the invention have been illustrated and described herein , many modifications , substitutions , changes , and equivalents will now occur to those skilled in the art . it is , therefore , to be understood that the appended claims are intended to cover all such modifications and changes as fall within the true spirit of the invention . | 7 |
the invention will be described hereinunder with reference to the accompanying drawings . fig1 ( a ) to 1 ( c ) show first to third embodiments of the present invention . in these figures , a reference numeral 6 denotes a capacitor which is connected in parallel to a pyroelectric element 1 or a composite pyroelectric element 4 . these parts are accomodated , together with other circuit elements such as a leakage resistor 2 and a fet 3 , in a t0 - 5 metal package or a plastic package . there is no limit in the capacitance of the capacitor 6 , but the dielectric loss of this capacitor peferably should not be greater than 0 . 01 as measured at room temperature at 100 hz . it is true that any resistor such as the leakage resistor 2 , when formed on an alumina substrate by a thick - film printing , causes a parasitic capacitance more or less particularly when the distance between the electrodes is small , so that a capacitor of a small capacitance with a large dielectric loss is seemingly formed . with such a capacitor , however , it is not possible to effect accurate control . fig2 is a graph showing the values of the voltage responsivity r v shown in the formula ( 1 ) and the noise v n shown in formula ( 2 ) theoretically calculated by selecting the chopping frequency at a level of 0 . 3 hz , in relation to the capacitance c . the sensitivity in the low frequency region such as f = 0 . 3 hz is critical for enabling a very slow motion of , for example , an intruder in the case of an intrusion alarm . for the purpose of computing the voltage responsivity r v , constants are employed in the formula ( 1 ) such as η = 0 . 95 , a = 0 . 02 cm 2 , g = 2 . 51 × 10 - 3 ( j / k sec ), η t = 0 . 25 sec , dp s / dt = 4 . 4 × 10 - 8 ( c / cm 2 k ) and r = 3 × 10 11 ω . on the other hand , the calculation of the noise is conducted by employing , in the formula ( 2 ), constants such as i n = 3 . 6 × 10 - 16 amp / hz and t = 198k . these conditions approximate the case of so - called dual type pyroelectric detector shown in fig1 ( b ) which makes use of lead zirconate titanate ( pzt ) as the pyroelectric material . the capacitance as viewed from the output side without connecting the capacitor 6 is about 35 pf . thus , the detector designed under the above - mentioned condition can realize the condition of c equals 35 pf in fig2 . as will be clearly seen from fig2 both r v and v n are decreased as the value of c is increased . however , it has been found that the s / n ratio of the pyroelectric detector is not substantially changed but maintained substantially at the constant level of 1 . 30 × 10 10 even when the capacitance c is changed . this result of the theoretical calculation has been confirmed also through experiment . thus , it has been confirmed that any increase in the capacitance component c does not impair substantially the final performance of the pyroelectric detector , i . e ., the s / n ratio . therefore , when it is desired to maintain the noise of the pyroelectric device at a low level due to the requirement of an amplifier circuit connected to the pyroelectric detector , it is possible to freely adjust the noise level by connecting a capacitor of a suitable level in parallel to the pyroelectric element . the capacitance c 2 of the capacitor 6 to be coupled is determined by c 2 = c - c 1 , where c 1 represents the capacitance of the pyroelectric element 1 or the composite pyroelectric element 4 ( in case of the dual type , composite capacitance produced by two elements connected in series ). for instance , when the capacitance c 1 of the pyroelectric element is given as c 1 = 35 pf , the value of the noise is about 6 . 6 μv . it is possible to reduce the noise level to about a half by connecting a capacitor 6 of 33 pf in parallel to the pyroelectric element 1 or the composite pyroelectric element 4 so as to create the capacitance of c = 68 pf . there is no limit in the kind of the capacitor 6 used , but the capacitor 6 is preferably small in size and can be attached as closely as possible to the pyroelectric element 1 or the composite pyroelectric element 4 . practical examples of the capacitor 6 are chip - type capacitors which make use of mica or ceramics as the dielectric material . the effect produced by the capacitor 6 connected in parallel to the element 1 or 4 is the same in all the embodiments shown in fig1 ( a ), 1 ( b ) and 1 ( c ). fig3 shows a fourth embodiment of the present invention which incorporates a circuit composed of two pyroelectric detectors of dual type and accommodated in a single package . this embodiment offers the same advantage as those produced by the embodiments described before and , obviously , falls within the scope of the present invention . | 6 |
referring to fig1 there is seen the inventive jig 10 which is used to easily and quickly assemble rebar pier cages such as cage 12 seen in fig2 . rebar pier cages are commonly constructed and used in the construction art to reinforce concrete piers and pilasters . cage 12 is seen to be generally rectilinear in shape , comprising four elongated rebars 14 , 16 , 18 and 20 secured in parallel , spaced relation by a plurality of rectangular shaped rebars 22 typically termed &# 34 ; stirrups &# 34 ; in the art . as seen , the elongated rebars 14 , 16 , 18 and 20 are abutted against a respective , inner corner of each stirrup 22 , and secured thereto with a metal tie band 24 or the equivalent . also , the ends of the elongated rebars may be flared outwardly such as at 26 where the concrete footing is poured . it is noted that rectangular cage 12 is a common configuration for a pier cage , however , it is understood that the present invention may be used to assemble pier cages of various shapes , sizes and dimensions and that the rectangular pier cage 12 is used herein merely for purposes of description . referring back to fig1 jig 10 is seen to generally comprise a work table having a legged frame 28 supporting a horizontal , planar work surface 30 . various jig elements are secured to work surface 30 to be described in detail below . legged frame 28 is seen to include four vertical legs 32 , 34 , 36 and 38 interconnected by upper and lower , horizontally extending support bars 40 - 43 , and 44 - 47 , respectively ( two of the upper support bars ( 46 , 47 ) not shown in the drawing figures ). casters 48 and 50 are provided at what is considered the &# 34 ; front &# 34 ; of the jig 10 allowing transportation of jig 10 about a work site as needed . this would simply involve lifting and pushing and / or pulling the back of jig 10 adjacent legs 32 and 38 . attention is now turned to the various jig elements secured to work surface 30 which are used to receive and assemble the rebar elements described above into a rebar pier cage such as seen in fig2 . in particular , first and second channel bar members 50 and 52 are fixedly secured to work surface 30 closely adjacent ( i . e ., substantially flush ) and traversing the two smaller , opposite edges of the rectangular shaped work surface 30 . as seen in the cross - sectional view of fig3 channel bar 50 ( of which channel bar 52 is identical ) is a rectangular hollow piece having an opening 54 formed in the upwardly facing surface thereof ( opposite work surface 30 ) and which extends the full longitudinal length thereof having a constant width w 2 . third and fourth channel bars 56 and 58 are of the same configuration as bars 50 and 52 having longitudinally extending openings 60 and 62 , respectively , formed in the surface thereof directed upwardly away from work surface 30 . bars 56 and 58 slidingly attach in parallel at opposite ends thereof to bars 50 and 52 such that bars 56 and 58 traverse the longitudinal length l of work surface 30 in a direction perpendicular to bars 50 and 52 . as seen best in fig3 bars 56 and 58 attach to bars 50 and 52 with a screw - type clamp assembly having female and male connector elements 61 and 63 , respectively . each end of bars 56 and 58 include a circular aperture 64 formed in the surface thereof opposite longitudinal opening 60 wherethrough the threaded rod portion 63 &# 39 ; of male connector element 63 extends and exits through opening 60 . ( it is understood that the structures of the clamp assembly elements and channel bars found at both ends of both bars 56 and 58 are identical ). thus , as seen in fig3 the flat head 63 &# 34 ; part of male connector element 63 is inserted within the hollow portion of channel bar 50 with threaded rod 63 &# 39 ; extending through the longitudinal opening 54 . since the channel bars are open ended , insertion of male connector head 63 &# 34 ; is easily accomplished by inserting it into the channel bar at either end thereof . as aforementioned , channel bar 56 is positioned atop bar 50 with the threaded rod 63 &# 39 ; of male connector element 63 passing through aperture 64 and exiting through longitudinal opening 60 . a washer 66 is disposed over the exposed , free end of threaded rod 63 &# 39 ; followed by securing female connector element 61 thereto . in particular , female connector element 61 includes a flat head 61 &# 39 ; with a shaft 61 &# 34 ; extending therefrom having a longitudinally extending , threaded aperture 68 formed therein and wherein threaded rod 63 &# 39 ; threadedly engages . thus , bar 56 may be placed in tight , clamping engagement with bar 50 by tightening female connector element 61 to male connector element 63 . likewise , female and male connector elements 61 and 63 may be loosened whereupon bars 56 and 58 are movable in either lateral direction perpendicular to and with respect to bars 50 and 52 . in this way , the lateral distance d 1 between bars 56 and 58 ( fig4 ) may be varied in accordance with the particular size of rebar pier cage to be constructed using jig 10 , as will be understood more fully below . it is seen that bars 56 and 58 include a plurality of elongated retaining elements 70 removably attached thereto which are used to hold individual stirrups 22 in place during assembly of a pier cage . as seen best in fig5 retaining element 70 comprises an upper , u - shaped portion formed from sheet metal having first and second , elongated legs 72 and 74 which lie in spaced , parallel planes to one another . the base 76 of the u - shaped portion which extends perpendicularly between and interconnects legs 72 and 74 is fixedly mounted to a nut element 78 which includes a longitudinally extending , internal , threaded aperture 80 . a male fastening element 82 is provided having a rectangular head portion 84 with a threaded rod portion 86 extending therefrom . bar 56 ( and bar 58 since they are identical as mentioned above ) is seen in fig5 to include a rectangular opening 88 formed in the top surface thereof which includes longitudinal opening 60 , with rectangular opening 88 contiguously formed with longitudinal opening 60 . to insert retaining element 70 within bar 56 , male fastening element 82 is threaded a small distance into nut element 78 leaving a maximum distance between rectangular head portion 84 and nut element 78 . rectangular head portion 84 is then inserted into bar 56 through rectangular opening 88 and moved in either direction along the longitudinal axis of bar 56 in accordance with the arrows with threaded rod portion 86 extending upwardly through longitudinal opening 60 . the enlarged circular portion 79 of nut element 78 has a diameter d larger than the lateral width w of longitudinal opening 60 . as such , retaining element 70 may be releasably secured to bar 56 by rotating retaining element 70 with male fastening element 82 within bar 56 whereupon threaded rod 86 fully engages threaded aperture 80 , the surface of bar 56 on either side of longitudinal opening 60 being tightly clamped between rectangular head portion 84 and circular portion 79 . in the fully secured position , legs 72 and 74 of retaining element 70 lie in planes which extend perpendicular to the longitudinal axis x -- x of bar 56 . referring back to fig1 and particularly to the method of assembling the rebar pier cage 12 of fig2 a predetermined , equal number of retaining elements 70 are attached and secured to bars 56 and 58 with each retaining element 70 in bar 56 positioned in direct , lateral alignment with a respective retaining element 70 in bar 58 . it will be noticed an elongated hanger bar 47 is attached to and extends between table legs 36 and 38 on which extra retaining elements 70 may be suspended . each laterally aligned pair of retaining elements 70 in bars 56 and 58 may receive and hold a stirrup 22 between legs 72 and 74 thereof with one stirrup 22 shown spaced above a pair of retaining elements 70 and one stirrup 22 shown positioned and held between a pair of retaining elements 70 in fig1 in the intended manner . since , as mentioned above , legs 72 and 74 lie in planes perpendicular to the longitudinal axis x -- x of bar 56 , stirrups 22 positioned therebetween also lie in spaced , parallel planes perpendicular to axis x -- x . the size of pier cage needed for a particular application may vary widely , as measured both between successive stirrups and the dimensions of each stirrup themselves . jig 10 may therefore be adjusted prior to assembly by moving bars 56 and 58 away or towards each other to a predetermined distance d 1 in the manner described above to adjust for the width w of the stirrup to be placed therebetween ( fig4 ). the distance d 1 between bars 56 and 58 should be smaller than the width w of the stirrup 22 such that the sides of the stirrup extend laterally outwardly beyond bars 56 and 58 . likewise , the longitudinal distance d 2 between retaining elements 70 ( fig1 ) on each bar 56 and 58 may be adjusted by moving elements 70 along openings 60 and 62 , respectively , by loosening and tightening nut element 78 thereof . this adjustment dictates the distance d 2 between each successive stirrup 22 in the fully assembled cage 12 ( fig2 ). in this respect , measuring indicia such as at 71 and 73 ( fig1 and 6 , respectively ) are affixed to the vertical , outwardly facing surfaces of bars 54 and 56 to quickly and accurately gauge the desired distances between bars 56 and 58 and retaining elements 70 , respectively . following placement of a stirrup 22 in between each laterally aligned pair of retaining elements 70 , two of the four elongated rebars 18 and 20 are slidingly inserted through each stirrup 22 between the sides of the stirrup and a retaining element 70 with rebars 18 and 20 positioned to abut the two lower , inner corners thereof , respectively ( fig4 ). the rebars 18 and 20 are then secured to the stirrups 22 by attaching metal tie clasps 24 ( fig2 ) around the rebars 18 and 20 and respective corners of the stirrups as is conventional practice in the art . the remaining two rebars 14 and 16 are slidingly inserted through each of stirrups 22 and positioned immediately adjacent rebars 20 and 18 , respectively , with the terminal ends of each pair being lined up . once lined up , rebars 14 and 16 are lifted directly above rebars 20 and 18 , respectively , and positioned to abut the opposite , inside corners of stirrup 22 as seen in fig4 . rebars 14 and 16 are then also secured to stirrups 22 by metal tie clasps 24 being attached thereto at the respective corners of each stirrup 22 in the same manner as were rebars 20 and 18 thereby finishing the assembly of rebar pier cage 12 . as seen best in fig4 and 7 , work surface 30 is hingedly connected to support bar 44 of table frame 28 with hinges 90 and 92 attached thereto adjacent legs 34 and 36 , respectively . the overall length l of work surface 30 is substantially equal to the sum of the length l and height h of table 28 with the portion p of work surface 30 extending beyond the front of table 30 being equal to h . with the smaller edge of work surface 30 at the back of the table frame 28 being substantially flush with the back edge of the table frame , work surface 30 may be moved between the horizontal position seen in fig1 and 6 , and the vertical position seen in fig7 . this feature allows for quick and easy removal of a fully assembled rebar pier cage 12 from jig 10 where no appreciable lifting is required . there is thus provided a novel and efficient apparatus and method for quickly assembling rebar pier cages . while the invention has been described with particular reference to a preferred embodiment thereof , it is understood that modifications may be made thereto without departing from the full spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the claims which follow . | 8 |
if reference is made to fig1 to 3 , it is seen that these figures show an electro - portable apparatus according to the invention for the production of steam intended to be applied to a surface 1 , for example for the purpose of ungluing a wall coating such as a wallpaper adhering to this surface . the apparatus comprises a two - part housing , which is constituted by a lower parallelepipedic box 2 and an upper cover 3 . the lower box 2 comprises a horizontal bottom 4 , two vertical side walls 5 , 6 , a vertical rear wall 7 and a vertical partition wall 8 extending between the two lateral walls 5 and 6 , parallel to the rear wall 7 . the partition wall 8 defines , with the rear wall 7 , a rear compartment 9 which is closed and , on the opposite side , a front compartment 11 , which is open and which constitutes part of a vaporization cavity or of a &# 34 ; steam plate &# 34 ;. in the rear compartment 9 is housed a steam generator proper constituted by a parallelepipedic porous body 12 intended for storing water to be vaporized , and by heating means 13 constituted by parallel , horizontal electrodes in contact with the porous body 12 . this porous body 12 may be 160 mm in height , 200 mm wide and 30 mm thick , this body being cut out from a mattress of rock fibers of which the fiber diameters are in majority between about 1 micrometer and 3 . 5 micrometers and of which the length ranges for example from 5 mm to 15 mm . these fibers preferably form , by assembly , laminated layers parallel to the heating electrodes , being maintained by a binding agent promoting the impregnation of the water . in the example in question , the porous body 12 has an original density of 75 kg / m 3 which , by slight compression between the heating electrodes , presents a final density of 130 kg / m 3 for a width of 30 mm . in the embodiment of the invention described by way of non - limiting example , the heating means 13 are constituted by twelve horizontal electrodes 13a , 13b , . . . 13l which are distributed , in pairs of electrodes located at the same level , on the two large front and rear vertical faces of the porous body 2 . consequently , the rear face of the porous body 2 bears the electrodes 13a , 13b , . . . 13f , which extend horizontally and follow one another from top to bottom in that order . the front face of the porous body 2 , i . e . that which lies near the partition wall 8 , bears in the same way the electrodes 13g , 13h , . . . 13l , which extend horizontally and follow one another from top to bottom in that order . the electrodes are for example made of copper and are preferably shaped so as each to have a u - shaped cross section . each electrode is applied against the porous body by its web and the two arms of each u extend outwardly . the electrodes 13a - 13l advantageously have a length such that they project beyond either side of vertical uprights 14 , 15 disposed on the sides of the two small vertical faces of the porous body 12 , in the immediate vicinity thereof . the uprights 14 , 15 are fast , at their upper ends , with the cover 3 . each of these uprights 14 , 15 is pierced with twelve holes in which are engaged the end parts of the horizontal electrodes 13a - 13l . the distances between the electrodes are variable from bottom to top . for example , the centre distance between the lowermost electrodes 13e ( or 13k ) is for example 52 mm , the centre distance between electrodes 13d , 13e ( or 13j , 13k ) is 24 mm , the centre distance located thereabove is 28 mm , then 24 mm , then 28 mm between the two uppermost electrodes ( 13a , 13b ), and finally , 24 mm between electrodes 13k - 13l and 13e - 13f . fig5 is a diagram of an electrical wiring for commutation of the electrodes 13a - 13l to operate the steam generator apparatus at a mean power of 1500 watts , for a range of resistivity of the water ranging from 850 cm to 2200 cm . in this example of wiring , the electrodes 13h , 13j and 13k placed on the front face of the porous body 12 , and possibly electrode 13l , are electrically connected together to a phase of the mains 16 whilst electrodes 13b , 13d and 13e and possibly electrode 13f which are disposed respectively at the same level as the preceding ones on the rear face of the porous body 12 , are connected to the other phase 17 of the mains , for a voltage of 220 volts . in other words , the three pairs of electrodes 13b 13h , 13d 13j , 13e 13k which are located at the same level , are connected in parallel to the two phases 16 , 17 of the mains . furthermore , the front electrodes 13g , 13i are connected together and to a contact of a switch 18 of which the other contact is connected to phase 16 , whilst the rear electrodes 13a and 13c are connected together and to a contact of a switch 19 of which the other contact is connected to the other phase 17 of the mains . in other words , the pairs of electrodes 13a 13g and 13c 13i which are located at the same level , are connected in parallel , via the switches 18 , 19 , to the two phases 16 , 17 of the mains . as may be seen in fig1 and 2 , the cover 3 of the apparatus is fixed to the lower box 2 by means of screws 21 , with the interposition of a seal 22 . the cover 3 has a shape complementary of that of the lower box 2 , i . e . it comprises an upper horizontal wall 23 , of the same extent as the bottom 4 of the box 2 , two vertical lateral walls 24 , 25 joined to the vertical lateral walls 5 , 6 of the box 2 , a vertical rear wall 26 joined to the vertical rear wall 7 of the box 2 and a vertical partition wall 27 joined to the partition wall 8 of the box 2 and extending between the two vertical lateral walls 24 and 25 . the vertical partition wall 27 thus defines , in the cover 3 , two compartments , namely a rear compartment 28 located above the rear compartment 9 of the box 2 and a front compartment 29 located above the front compartment 11 of the box 2 , the two front compartments 11 and 29 together constituting the vaporization cavity or the &# 34 ; steam plate &# 34 ; intended to be applied , by its peripheral edge , on the surface 1 having to receive the steam . the vertical partition wall 27 of the cover 3 is traversed by tubes 31 extending horizontally and causing the two rear and front compartments 28 and 29 , respectively , to communicate , in order to convey the steam produced towards and into the vaporization cavity constituted by the front compartments 11 and 29 . according to a variant , passages may be provided , in place of the tubes 21 or in addition thereto , between the two rear and front compartments 9 and 11 , respectively , of the box 2 at any height , in the partition wall , so as optimally to distribute the steam produced . the cover 3 also comprises an orifice 32 intended for filling the apparatus with water , this orifice 32 being closed by a stopper 33 . on the rear side , the lower box 2 is fast with a vertical handle 34 connected , at its upper and lower ends , to the rear wall 7 of the box 2 and in this handle 34 passes a cord 35 for electrical supply , connected to the mains , which terminates , at its upper end , at a female socket 36 . this female socket is engaged in a male plug 37 borne by an upper extension 38 of the handle 34 . the female socket 36 passes through an opening having a section of the same shape as the cross section of the female socket 36 , which is made in a vertical flange 39a , extending downwardly , to the rear of the extension 38 , of an angle - shaped piece 39 made of plastics material . this angle - shaped piece 39 is articulated on the cover 3 and to that end it is fast with a pivot 41 on which it is maintained by means of a screw 42 . the angle - shaped piece 39 is fast with a lever arm 43 extending horizontally , along the upper part of the rear wall 26 of the cover 3 , and this lever arm 43 is fast , at its end , with a cover 44 disposed above the water filling orifice 32 closed by the stopper 33 which is fast with the cover 44 , therebelow . this cover 44 which comprises a tongue 45 for gripping , is fitted between walls 46 , 47 and 48 of the cover 3 of the apparatus so that filling of water is effected in a basin of which the lower part is indicated at 49 in fig2 . furthermore , as may be seen in fig3 the rear wall 26 of the cover 3 of the apparatus bears tight passages 51 , 52 , 53 for the electrical connection wires connected to the electrodes of the steam generator , according to the wiring diagram of fig5 and which terminate at the contacts of the switches 18 , 19 which are borne by the extension 38 of the handle 34 , between this extension and the rear wall 7 of the box 2 . in the particular embodiment of the invention described hereinabove , the general dimensions of the apparatus are a length of 255 mm , a height of 185 mm and a thickness of 65 mm , including an inner width of 50 mm for housing the water storage and vaporization device . the apparatus according to the invention , which has been described , operates as follows : firstly , to fill the storage and vaporization device with water , the female socket 36 is withdrawn from the male plug 37 , which releases the angle - shaped piece 39 . in this way , the lever arm 43 and the water admission cover 44 are released . the water admission cover 44 may then be raised with the aid of the tongue 45 , to place this assembly in vertical position , which thus makes it possible to fill the apparatus with water through the orifice 32 , either by means of a jet issuing from a tap or from any recipient . the apparatus is thus totally filled until the water appears at the height of the filling orifice 32 . then the porous body 12 is left to be impregnated with water , for a few seconds , then , by turning the apparatus over , the excess water contained around the porous body 12 is eliminated . the device thus having been impregnated , there remains only to fold down the water admission cover 44 and consequently the stopper 33 closing the orifice 32 so that the lever arm 43 comes into horizontal position . in this position , the opening of the angle - shaped piece 39 lies opposite the male plug 37 , which makes it possible to introduce , through this opening , the female socket 36 in the male plug 35 . from that moment , the electrodes of the steam generator unit are live and the electrical current passes through the water contained in the porous body 12 to heat it then vaporize it . the steam thus produced is distributed in the whole of the box 2 and in the inner compartment 28 of the cover 3 , and this steam escapes through the tubes 31 to arrive in the vaporization cavity or the &# 34 ; steam plate &# 34 ; constituted by the front compartments 11 , 29 . the steam thus arrives on the wallpaper to be unglued when the apparatus is applied on the wall 1 . it should be noted that , when the water filling orifice 32 is accessible , it is impossible to position the female socket 36 since the angle - shaped piece 39 covers the entrance of the male plug 37 , which thus provides perfect safety with regard to a risk of electrocution , being given that the electrodes are no longer live during filling with water . similarly , it should be noted that , by eliminating the excess water , after filling of the porous body , the elimination is thus effected by foreign bodies which may accumulate in the porous body as well as in the vaporization enclosure . when the apparatus is switched on , depending on the resistivity of the water used or the desired flowrate of steam , the results obtained as a function of the positioning of switch 18 , 19 in two positions are indicated hereinafter . the diagram of fig6 shows four examples of results representing four profiles of steam flowrates obtained with the apparatus described hereinabove . the dissipated power , expressed in watts , is plotted on the y - axis whilst the time is plotted on the x - axis , in minutes . curves a , b , c are representative for the use of water having a resistivity of 2000 cm . curve a corresponds to the case of the two switches 18 , 19 being open ( relatively low flowrate of steam ); curve b corresponds to the case of switch 18 being open and switch 19 being closed ( average flowrate of steam ), whilst curve c corresponds to the case of the two switches 18 and 19 being closed ( high flowrate of steam ). curve d represents the case of using water having a resistivity of 1000 cm when switches 18 and 19 are open . in this example of result and for an apparatus of design with relatively moderate cost price , its use is thus ensured in the range of resistivity of water distributed for a maximum power of 2000 watts , whilst making it possible to obtain relatively constant steam flowrate profiles and a sufficient autonomy for these types of works . to ensure a greater versatility of use of the apparatus , when , for example , it is desired to obtain progressive flowrates of steam , the apparatus may be equipped with an electronic power variator making it possible to vary this power between 0 and 100 %. in general , for example , a triac is used , associated with different components of which a potentiometer ensures the desired adjustment of the flowrate of steam . when this device forms an integral part of the apparatus for ungluing the wallpaper , the interconnection diagram of the electrodes becomes the following : according to fig5 the electrodes 13g , 13h , 13i , 13j , 13k and possibly 13l are placed in parallel , then likewise electrodes 13a , 13b , 13c , 13d , 13e and possibly 13f , of which each of the interconnections is connected to the electronic circuit . in addition to the possibility of adjustment of the flowrate of steam , this circuit presents the advantage of broadening the range of use of the resistivity of the water . another type of electronic circuit may also be used , for example based on triac , whose function , by the use for example of a zener diode , will ensure a constant power despite wide deviations in resistivity of the water used . in that case , an apparatus may be developed with two positions of steam flowrate corresponding , for example , to two powers : 1000 watts and 1500 watts . in this way , by these different ways of supplying the vaporization device with electrical current , it is possible to offer a whole range of apparatus to give the consumers a choice as well as a price range . the diagram of fig7 shows the results comparing the times of rise of temperature of the paper obtained with the apparatus according to the invention and with a known wallpaper stripper of which the boiler rests on the floor , provided with its pipe connected to a steam plate . this measurement was carried out by inserting thermocouples in the plaster close to the wallpaper and , in both cases , the time necessary for reaching 100 ° c . was measured . the temperature , in ° c ., is plotted on the y - axis as a function of the time , plotted on the x - axis , in seconds . curve e is relative to the stripper according to the invention , and curve f to the boiler on the floor . being given that the softening point of the glues lies towards 75 ° c ., it will be noted that less than half the time is required , to the benefit of the invention , to obtain the same result when the two apparatus have the same power . inversely , for half the power , the works can be carried out in the same time . fig8 is an embodiment of an electronic device for controlling the vaporizer which may be associated with the female supply socket of the apparatus . this assembly is composed of a female socket 54 which may be housed in the male plug 37 , an adjusting knob 55 , for example fast with a potentiometer for controlling the electronic circuit to vary the flowrate of steam , a calorie dissipator 56 for evacuating the heat from the triac by its association therewith , an electrical supply cord 57 and a hermetic assembly 58 containing the components of the circuit if , in the embodiment of the water storage and vaporization device described previously , only one porous body unit has been used , the latter may be made differently , for example in the form of three elementary porous bodies mounted horizontally , comprising , for example , two electrodes each , these elementary porous bodies being spaced apart by 5 mm from one another . similarly , if porous bodies having a density of 130 kg / m 3 have been used , a density range of between 90 kg / m 3 and 180 kg / m 3 may be used , with similar results for this type of apparatus and depending on the types of electronic control devices . similarly , other types of porous materials may be used , for example glass fibers , or , for example , cellular materials . likewise , if the distance between the electrodes is 30 mm for a voltage of 220 volts , said distance may be included between 25 mm and 35 mm . if it is desired to create a range of apparatus by taking into account the optimizations for each , it is possible to act on compromises : choice of material , type and density of the porous bodies , location and distance of the electrodes , width and nature of the material thereof , quantity of complementary water capable of surrounding the porous body to increase its duration of autonomy without refill , etc .. to satisfy the power , the supply voltage , the weight , bulk , life duration of the product , cost price , etc . . . . the general or particular design of the elements of the apparatus may also be changed , for example its general shape , location of water admission , its means for obturation of the water admission , for example , place a rack to actuate masking of the socket , or actuate a switch breaking the two poles of the mains , in connection with the stopper of the water admission orifice , or , for example , locate differently the orifices serving the steam in the plate , etc . . . . and other devices for controlling operation of vaporization may likewise be applied thereto without departing from the scope of the invention . from the embodiment of the water storage and vaporization device , it is also possible to broaden the range of the wallpaper stripper by using , for example , other sources of energy , for example gas , other types of design of the electronic device for controlling the vaporization unit , and other ways of effecting its water supply , for example by a pump drawing the water from a recipient and controlled for example by a vaporization current level detection which thus affects the operation of the pump . | 1 |
fig1 shows a top view of a typical earring , with a geometric or fanciful configuration , such as lace floret body member 1 , shown with petals 2 and central decorative area 3 , both covered by thin outer cover layer 2 a . petal layers 2 and central area 3 are covered with thin perfume fragrance integument cover layer 2 a prior to use , in accordance with the embodiments discussed heretofore in the summary of the invention . thin integument cover layer 2 a is coated or sprayed with a fragrance , or wherein integument cover layer 2 a is impregnated with fragrance oils . other methods include the application of powder with appropriate binders . an alternate method is to use a printing technique to apply fragrance oils to the top surface of the thin cover layer covering the body member 1 . in another method the substrates mentioned can be coated with fragrance oils that have been encapsulated into tiny beads forming a time release mechanism . fig2 shows the underside of earring floret 1 of fig1 , shown with adhesive pad 6 covered with release liner 7 . it is further noted that the underside of earring floret 1 can be also covered by a thin integument fragrance emitting cover layer 2 a , so that the fragrance emitted therefrom can contact the earlobe skin of the wearer . fig3 shows a side view detail with floret 1 adhesively attached to ear lobe 10 via adhesive patch 6 . after a single use , floret 1 is peeled off earlobe 10 and can be discarded ; the price point of these earrings permit such use . alternatively , used adhesive patch 6 can be peeled off the backside of floret 1 , and another new adhesive patch 6 can be attached in its place ( with integral release liner 7 ) for the next use . more perfume of the same type can be sprayed onto floret 1 prior to reuse . fig3 a shows dangling earring 1 a , which is suspended freely from a post through the earlobe 10 , or by a clasp ( not shown ), loosely dangling and intermittently contacting the skin of neck 10 a of the user . it is further noted that the fragrant scent cover layer can be applied on both inner side 2 b and outer side 2 c of petal portions 2 a , so that an outer portion 2 c of floret earring 1 directly emits a fragrant scent to the ambient air , while an inner portion 2 c of earring floret 1 will have a scent emitting cover layer adjacent to the skin of the neck 10 a , whereby the fragrant scent can intermittently contact the skin of the neck 10 a of the user and mix with body oils therefrom , during natural movements of the head , neck and ear . instead of attaching florets 1 to the user &# 39 ; s ear lobes , the floret body members 1 having thin fragrance emitting outer cover layer 2 a can be adhesively attached to a smooth plastic band 12 as in fig4 . this may be a smooth transparent or colored vinyl band constructed like an adjustable bra strap with adjustable loop 14 via buckle 15 , and attachment clip 13 . this can be adjusted to function as a “ choker ”. florets 1 ( four are shown in the illustration ) are adhesively attached to band 12 . in this manner , matching necklace and earrings are easily matched by attaching several of the same decorative elements , such as florets 1 , as are used as earrings . an alternate embodiment of fragrance emitting earring for pierced ear lobes is shown in fig5 . this is illustrated as an embroidered fabric flower applique body member 20 with central disk 22 with hole 23 surrounded by petals 21 . in this embodiment , the fragrance emitting element is a thin pre - impregnated integument pad 22 which is adhesively attached via pressure sensitive adhesive layer 24 to the underside of disk 22 ( as shown in the crossectional view of fig6 ). as shown in the attachment method of fig7 , applique 20 is attached by inserting gold spike 26 with decorative end 25 through hole 23 and then through the hole in ear lobe 10 and finally retained via spring clip 27 . integument pad 22 is a fragrance - impregnated fabric , such as polyester , or an open cell foam that gently touches the skin at the ear lobe . the fragrance liquid from the thin integument pad thus mingles with skin oils to form a subtle fragrance vapor in the vicinity of the ear in such a manner as to be unique to the combination of fragrance liquid and body chemistry . peeling off used fragrance pads and replacing with a new one , which can be a different fragrance if desired , can reuse appliques such as body members 20 . fig8 and 10 illustrate another embodiment of fragrance emitting jewelry in the form of a jewelry piece in the form of a string of beads 40 with beads 41 strung on an elastic cord , and pendant 42 attached to the cord . the construction of pendant 42 is shown in the back view of fig1 and the edge view of fig1 . the fragrance - emitting element is a thin ring layer 55 of fabric or open cell foam adhesively attached to flat pendant face 57 at the edge . the design of pendant 42 includes cutouts 61 to facilitate air movement in the vicinity of ring 55 . hair clasp 59 with hinge 58 and latch 60 lies flat enough such that it does not protrude beyond ring 55 so as to permit user &# 39 ; s skin to touch ring 55 when string of beads 40 is used as a necklace . loop 56 attaches pendant 42 to the elastic cord . while fig8 shows use of the jewelry 40 as a necklace , fig8 a shows use of the jewelry 40 as a headband . furthermore , while string of beads 40 is shown as a headband surrounding the hair , it is further noted that the locks of hair of the wearer can be combed over the string of beads , thereby only exposing pendant 42 to view . by clasping pendant / hair clip 42 , as shown in fig9 and then draping beads 42 over it downward and then wrapping it around hair into small loop 43 , pony tail 43 is formed . the elastic cord helps in forming this operation since otherwise a string of beads that can also be used as a necklace would be too short . by just forming a large loop 50 as shown in fig1 , hair is guided through forming a looser type of hairstyle . fig1 shows another method of using string of beads 40 to form ponytail 46 . in this case , beads 41 are draped under hair clip 42 and then wrapped around hair forming small loop 43 . then some hair 65 is combed or brushed over beads 41 to hide them . similarly , by draping beads 41 under hair clip 42 as shown in fig1 , forming large loop , guiding hair 51 through large loop , and then using some hair 67 to cover beads 41 , another hair style is formed . fig1 shows yet another embodiment of fragrance emitting jewelry . this is a necklace 70 using any type of chain with a dangling three dimensional pendant 71 . pendant 71 , as illustrated , is a triangular pyramid . fig1 is a bottom view of the base showing three edges of dimension b . fig1 shows a flat pattern of thin fragrance emitting decorative fabric integument cover layer 75 that is used to cover pendant 71 . long edges 76 will meet at a common seam , and short edges 77 will be at the bottom of pendant 71 when draped around on creases 78 . the underside of pattern 75 has a pressure sensitive adhesive layer covered with a release liner ; this is peeled off prior to attachment . if pendant 71 is not disposable , fragrant emitting patterns 75 would be available for replacement in a sealed airtight pouch . fig1 through 20 show a few other alternatives of three - dimensional pendants . all have a swivel attachment loop 82 which facilitates changing the point of contact with the user &# 39 ; s skin to facilitate mixing the fragrance emitting material from the thin fragrance emitting outer integument cover layer with the skin oils to create a unique personal fragrance experience . many other geometric or decorative shapes can be used . the cube 80 of fig1 has a fragrance covering integument cover layer on the vertical sides 81 . sphere 85 of fig1 has thin fragrance emitting spherical sector integument cover layers 86 , which are part of a flat pattern . pear shaped pendant 88 of fig2 also has sectors 89 of fragrance emitting material that will be form - fitting when draped around from a flat pattern . in the foregoing description , certain terms and visual depictions are used to illustrate the preferred embodiment . however , no unnecessary limitations are to be construed by the terms used or illustrations depicted , beyond what is shown in the prior art , since the terms and illustrations are exemplary only , and are not meant to limit the scope of the present invention . it is further known that other modifications may be made to the present invention , without departing from the scope of the invention . | 0 |
example embodiments will now be described more fully with reference to the accompanying drawings . example embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough , and will fully convey the scope to those who are skilled in the art . numerous specific details are set forth such as examples of specific components , devices , and methods , to provide a thorough understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure . it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that specific details need not be employed , that example embodiments may be embodied in many different forms and that neither should be construed to limit the scope of the disclosure . in some example embodiments , well - known processes , well - known device structures , and well - known technologies are not described in detail . the terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular example embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting . as used herein , the singular forms “ a ,” “ an ,” and “ the ” may be intended to include the plural forms as well , unless the context clearly indicates otherwise . the terms “ comprises ,” “ comprising ,” “ including ,” and “ having ,” are inclusive and therefore specify the presence of stated features , integers , steps , operations , elements , and / or components , but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features , integers , steps , operations , elements , components , and / or groups thereof . the method steps , processes , and operations described herein are not to be construed as necessarily requiring their performance in the particular order discussed or illustrated , unless specifically identified as an order of performance . it is also to be understood that additional or alternative steps may be employed . when an element or layer is referred to as being “ on ,” “ engaged to ,” “ connected to ,” or “ coupled to ” another element or layer , it may be directly on , engaged , connected or coupled to the other element or layer , or intervening elements or layers may be present . in contrast , when an element is referred to as being “ directly on ,” “ directly engaged to ,” “ directly connected to ,” or “ directly coupled to ” another element or layer , there may be no intervening elements or layers present . other words used to describe the relationship between elements should be interpreted in a like fashion ( e . g ., “ between ” versus “ directly between ,” “ adjacent ” versus “ directly adjacent ,” etc .). as used herein , the term “ and / or ” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items . although the terms first , second , third , etc . may be used herein to describe various elements , components , regions , layers and / or sections , these elements , components , regions , layers and / or sections should not be limited by these terms . these terms may be only used to distinguish one element , component , region , layer or section from another region , layer or section . terms such as “ first ,” “ second ,” and other numerical terms when used herein do not imply a sequence or order unless clearly indicated by the context . thus , a first element , component , region , layer or section discussed below could be termed a second element , component , region , layer or section without departing from the teachings of the example embodiments . spatially relative terms , such as “ inner ,” “ outer ,” “ beneath ,” “ below ,” “ lower ,” “ above ,” “ upper ,” and the like , may be used herein for ease of description to describe one element or feature &# 39 ; s relationship to another element ( s ) or feature ( s ) as illustrated in the figures . spatially relative terms may be intended to encompass different orientations of the device in use or operation in addition to the orientation depicted in the figures . for example , if the device in the figures is turned over , elements described as “ below ” or “ beneath ” other elements or features would then be oriented “ above ” the other elements or features . thus , the example term “ below ” can encompass both an orientation of above and below . the device may be otherwise oriented ( rotated 90 degrees or at other orientations ) and the spatially relative descriptors used herein interpreted accordingly . according to the principles of the present teachings , as illustrated in the figures , a sensing assembly 10 is disclosed that provides distributed and multi - modal sensing in a wide variety of applications . it should be appreciated that although the present teachings will be discussed in connection with specific configuration , methodologies , and uses , the principles of the present teachings are applicable to a wide variety of configurations , methods , and uses . therefore , the present teachings should not be regarded as limiting . for example , the present teachings will describe specific analog circuit elements used in connection with sensing assembly 10 , however alternative circuit elements such as capacitors , inductors , resistors , sensors , and / or actuators are envisioned . additionally , the present teachings will describe lithographic patterning and layer - by - layer deposition of layers used in connection with sensing assembly 10 , however alternative patterning and deposition methods known in the art are applicable in some embodiments . as illustrated in fig2 a , 2b . and 3 , in some embodiments , sensing assembly 10 can comprise a substrate 12 having one or more thin - film circuit elements 14 patterned or otherwise formed in a sequential layer process thereon . thin - film circuit elements 14 are configured to output an analog sensing signal in response to a perceived stimulus . in some embodiments , circuit elements 14 can provide different and / or varying sensing modalities that can be electrically coupled via analog circuitry to output a derived measurement . in some embodiments , substrate 12 can be a rigid substrate or a flexible substrate . a flexible substrate can be used in applications requiring flexible sensing , such as use in connection with clothing and the like . as illustrated in fig2 a , 2b , and 3 , in some embodiments , thin - film circuit elements 14 can comprise a wide range of analog circuit elements , such as but not limited to capacitors , inductors , resistors , sensors , and / or actuators . each thin - film circuit element 14 is configured as a multi - layer member configured to output an analog signal . the specific configuration and method of manufacture will be described in greater detail herein . it should be understood that each circuit element 14 can comprise any one of a number of component elements , such as but not limited to nanotubes . in fact , several potential advantages of sensing assembly 10 are bolstered by advancements in material science and nanotechnology . for instance , the discovery of carbon nanotubes has generated significant interest in many sensing communities as they have displayed a range of exceptional physical and electrical properties . these properties include increased strength , stiffness , aspect ratio , and a range of intriguing electrical characteristics . the properties of carbon nanotubes can be extended to larger applications by embedding nanotubes in a polymer matrix to form nanocomposites . this allows for the nanoengineering of thin film properties including an electrical impedance response to mechanical strain that is useful in sensing assembly 10 . one established method for the uniform fabrication of sensing assembly 10 is a layer - by - layer ( lbl ) deposition process which utilizes oppositely charged polyelectrolytic solutions for surface adhesion to sequentially build films . through this process , films can be fabricated with capabilities for spatial strain sensing . however , heretofore these methods are yet to take hold as an optimal sensing solution due to the challenges of instrumenting such sensors on an actual structure . for example , prior work in lbl assembled thin films sensors deposited the film on the structure itself ; this is not a scalable approach and rules out retrofit application on existing structures . another challenge identified is the approach of creating spatial mappings of film readings . while electrical impedance tomography ( eit ) has been shown to be capable of deriving film resistivity mappings from a finite set of boundary measurements , the method is computationally expensive . nanocomposite sensing skins can be further developed through processes commonly used in microelectromechanical systems ( mems ). patterning cnt based composites has been investigated by a number of researchers . of the various patterning methods attempted , optical lithography provides an effective approach for patterning polymer materials by leveraging mature cleanroom tools and processes . in using optical lithography , polymer - based thin films can be patterned with exceptional geometric control , thereby opening the door for a diverse set of applications . additionally , the use of widely established patterning tools would allow for a relatively low cost and repeatable means to the design and production of thin films sensors . patterning thin film sensors broadens the options available to engineers in designing thin film electronics and , more specifically , impedance - based thin film sensors . according to the principles of the present teachings , a patterned nanocomposite sensing film is developed as the basis for future component - specific strain sensing skins . the potential for this patterning was explored through the fabrication and testing of five linear circuit elements 14 of varying width . these circuit elements 14 are patterned on a flexible polyimide substrate using conventional optical lithography . in some embodiments , the nanocomposite sensing material is deposited using the lbl fabrication process . these circuit elements 14 are designed with varying sensor widths so that the limits of the fabrication process can be assessed in the context of strain sensing . the mechanical - electrical behavior of circuit element 14 is tested using uniaxial cyclic testing on standard tensile coupon specimens . the patterned sensing skin technology of the present disclosure is further validated using a large sensing skin designed specifically for monitoring the strain profile of a flexural structural member . in this proof - of - concept study , two sensing skins are designed , fabricated and instrumented on the web of a steel i - beam in close vicinity to a welded beam - column connection exposed to cyclic lateral loading . the present disclosure concludes with a summary of the key results and a discussion of anticipated modifications capable of further advancing the patterned sensing skin technology . as discussed herein , sensing assembly 10 can be fabricated according to any one of a number of fabrication methods . however , for purposes of discussion , the following fabrication process is described for illustration and clarity . in accordance with the present disclosure , pi - 2525 polyimide and vm - 651 polyimide adhesion promoter were obtained from hd microsystems . poly ( vinyl alcohol ) ( pva ) and poly ( sodium 4 - styrenesulfonate ) ( pss ) were obtained from sigma - aldrich . hipco single walled carbon nanotubes ( swnt ) were obtained from unidym , inc . spr 220 - 3 . 0 photoresist from rohm and haas co . and az 726 developer from clariant corporation were used . silver paste and copper tape were obtained from ted pella , inc . all solutions were made using 18 mo cm deionized ( di ) water . chrome and copper were deposited from targets . fabrication was completed by layering thin films on a glass slide followed by detachment of the fabricated materials from the slide to yield a free - standing thin film . this process begins by spin coating adhesion promoter and then polyimide on a cleaned glass slide . the polyimide is spun at 2000 rpm resulting in a thickness of about 12 microns for each polyimide layer . four polyimide layers are deposited to produce a polyimide film with a thickness of about 48 microns ( fig1 a ). the polyimide is cured on a hot plate by increasing the temperature from 25 ° c . to 300 ° c . at 5 ° c ./ minute and then holding the temperature at 300 ° c . for one hour . after substrate fabrication , copper electrodes are patterned on the polyimide substrate 12 . this process begins with the deposition of a seed layer using a cooke electron beam evaporator . the seed layer is comprised of 800 angstroms of copper atop a 70 angstrom chromium layer for improved adhesion to the polyimide . the seed layer is patterned using conventional photolithography . copper is then added to the patterned seed layer to complete electrode fabrication using electroplating . next , photoresist ( pr ) is patterned on the substrate 12 using optical lithography . this begins with drying and priming the polyimide for pr using an image reversal oven to apply a hexamethyldisilazane ( hmds ) layer . next , a pr layer is spun over the sample at 2000 rpm and soft baked for 90 seconds at 115 ° c . the pr is then exposed under a mask . a post exposure bake is completed for 90 seconds at 115 ° c . and then the pr is developed with az 726 developer for two rounds lasting 60 seconds each . after pr is patterned on the polyimide substrate 12 , the process transitions to the fabrication of the cnt thin film . the polyimide that is not covered with pr is treated with poly - l - lysine by soaking for five minutes to promote surface adhesion with the polyelectrolytes that will comprise the nanocomposite film . the copper electrode surfaces to be coated with cnt - polymer composites are cleaned immediately prior to fabrication with a sodium persulfate solution . the nanocomposite film is then deposited over the polyimide and pr by the lbl directed - assembly method ( fig1 b ). when this is complete , the cnt composite film is lifted off of the pr covered areas by placing the samples in an acetone bath for 10 minutes and then placing this bath in a bath sonicator to apply surface energy to aid in tearing of the cnt composite film . during bath sonication , energy is applied for 30 seconds and then the samples are stationary for one minute . this process continues for approximately 10 minutes until the pr film has fully lifted from the surface . such patterning procedures for layer - by - layer fabricated films can be utilized to create various geometries for modular elements including sensors , resistors , capacitors , inductors , and actuators . the use of this layer - by - layer patterning with pr in planar design then allows for extended sensing and analog computing capabilities to be encoded on the very same sensing substrate 12 . the specimens fabricated by robotic lbl assembly on glass slides ( termed herein as small - scale sensing skins ) are patterned as 5 parallel strips roughly 2 cm long with varying thicknesses : 10 um , 250 um , 500 um , 1000 um and 1500 um ( fig1 c ). at the end of the strips are square pads where silver paste can be applied to create a wired electrical connection to a data acquisition system that is used to measure film resistances . the nanocomposite sensing skins are fabricated with an established layer - by - layer fabrication process . this process utilizes oppositely charged polyelectrolyte solutions to attract thin layers of each solution to the substrate surface . the substrate 12 is sequentially dipped in two solutions of opposite charge in order to build up a well - controlled , uniform thin film . the positively charged solution used here is 1 . 0 wt . % pva and the negatively charged solution is 1 . 0 wt . % pss . single wall carbon nanotubes ( 0 . 1 wt . %) are non - covalently dispersed in the pss solution using deep tip ( 3 . 178 mm tip , 150 w , 22 khz , 90 minutes ) and bath ( 135 w , 42 khz , 360 minutes ) sonication . the deposition sequence for one layer of one polyelectrolyte solution consists of dipping in the solution ( pss or pva ) for four minutes followed by submersing in di water twice for two minutes each . these steps are then followed by low pressure air drying for seven minutes and high pressure air drying for one minute . this results in the application of a single monolayer ( pss or pva ). once this process is completed , the process is repeated using the oppositely charged polyelectrolyte solution to yield a single thin film bi - layer . the bilinear process is repeated until a film with a thickness of 50 bilayers is fabricated . the fabrication process is automated with a lbl robotic fabrication setup . once the nanocomposite film is deposited and patterned by the lift - off process , the film is annealed for 20 minutes at 180 ° c . on a hot plate . finally , the polyimide substrate is removed from the substrate by etching away a layer of glass using buffered hydrofluoric acid . the layer - by - layer process on a flexible substrate 12 with pr patterned films allows for a compelling suite of design capabilities beyond those defined in the specific example above . some key attributes of the proposed assembly process that sets this technology apart include : the polymeric substrate 12 is flexible and hence conformable to multiple surfaces . in addition , the film can be fully encapsulated in the polymeric substrate material providing environmental isolation of all or parts of the substrate &# 39 ; s thin film assemblies . the selection of various nanoengineered materials ( nanoscale fillers and polymers ), processing parameters ( dip time , drying methods , and polymer sequencing ), and annealing processes can be used to alter film properties through control of film composition . films can have a designed bulk resistivity to create planar resistive elements or planar polymer - based electrodes . strain sensitivity ( i . e ., resistivity changes as a function of strain ) can be designed by altering annealing processes and material compositions . this could be used either to enhance strain measurements or remove strain sensitivity for non - sensing modular circuit elements . additionally , lbl films can be tailored for sensitivity to different measurands such as ph ( polyaniline ) or light . through controlled thin film assembly , capacitive and inductive elements can be assembled . capacitive elements are assembled by layering two conductive layers with an insulative layer between . inductive elements can be made by patterning coils in the thin film . patterning of copper allows for conductive elements and traces to be deposited in any spatial configuration desired . patterned copper can also be used to leave pads for the soldering of small solid state integrated circuit chips ( e . g ., operational amplifiers , wireless transceiver ) to be soldered to the film to aid in signal processing and to provide interfaces for collection of data from the film sensor . lithographic patterning of the thin films allow more than one circuit element type ( sensor , resistive element , conductive element , capacitive element and inductive element ) to be created . furthermore , through appropriate sequential creation of structural and sacrificial layers , any number or combination of elements can be created on the same film . this allows multiple sensors measuring multiple parameters to be created on the same substrate . even more novel , by combining resistive , capacitive , and inductive elements , the sensing outputs can be combined through analog circuits to process sensor outputs to output derived measurands not possible with a single sensor . the sign of the gage factor ( i . e . normalized change in resistance with strain increasing or decreasing ) can be engineered via annealing processes . differing material cross - linking and reconfiguration during annealing allows for the design of negative gage factors at lower temperatures ( around 180 c ) and positive gage factors at higher temperatures ( above 250 c ). the fabrication methodology is scaled up for the development of component - specific strain sensors over larger areas . the larger - scale fabrication is completed on four inch ( 10 . 2 cm ) diameter glass wafers . the process is the same as previously summarized with the exception of certain aspects of the optical lithography and nanocomposite deposition . the hdms priming , pr spinning , and developer processes are automated with an automated optical lithography cluster tool when fabricating on a four - inch glass wafer . lbl deposition is performed by hand to accommodate the larger fabrication area . the wafer specimens were hand dipped in solution ( pva and pss ) for five minutes , rinsed with di water , and then dried completely to fabricate each monolayer . fabrication is otherwise completed as with the smaller glass slides . the larger - scale sensing skins are patterned in the center of the four inch glass wafers in 8 parallel strips roughly 3 . 5 cm long , 1 . 5 mm thick , and spaced 4 . 5 mm apart . fabricated small - scale sensing skins are epoxy bonded to pvc composite specimens for uniaxial tensile testing . this requires the addition of electrodes to the patterned sensing skins . wires are soldered to the copper bond pads patterned previously to allow for data acquisition . a digital multimeter is used to probe the attached electrodes and to determine film resistance once electrodes are dry . the multimeter is used to measure resistance and these values are collected throughout uniaxial cyclic testing . a picture of the instrumented pvc coupon is shown in fig1 d . the mechanical - electrical response of the sensing skins is determined using uniaxial cyclic testing on a hydraulic load frame . in this process the films are loaded for three cycles of tension - compression . the strain in the structural member is also monitored using a traditional 120ω metal foil strain gage opposite the patterned thin film sensor . the ambient behavior of the small - scale sensing skins on the structural members is observed for five minutes prior to each test . this allows for the observation of a drift that is commonly displayed by this type of sensing film . the specimen is then loaded at a rate of 0 . 5 mm / min and strain data is collected throughout the loading at a 1 hz sample rate . the large - scale sensing skins ( fig5 b ) are instrumented on a realistic structural system to illustrate the potential impact of patterned sensing skin technologies . these thin film sensors are epoxy bonded directly onto the surface of steel i - beam members . once bonded to the surface of a steel beam element , copper tape and colloidal silver paste are used to create electrodes for resistance measurements . circuit elements 14 are connected to a wheatstone bridge with a matching resistor to produce a voltage that is low - pass filtered and amplified with a gain of 50 . these boards are then connected to a wireless sensing unit that supplies a source voltage ( 5v ) to the sensors and allows for data acquisition . data is collected from the sensor as quasi - static loading is applied to the structural system . for this proof - of - concept test , the sensing skins are placed on the web of a steel beam connected to a traditional welded beam - column connection ( fig5 a ). the beam - column assembly supports a concrete deck that is constructed to act in composite action with the beam . the beam - column assembly is loaded laterally at the top of the column with a hydraulic jack . the specimen is also instrumented with conventional strain gages for comparison purposes . a macroscopic view of the patterned circuit elements 14 is presented in fig1 c . to see more clearly the quality of the patterned films , the films are imaged under a traditional optical microscope ; microscope images ( 20 times magnification ) of the edges of the nanocomposite films can be seen in fig6 a and 6b . all sensor geometries attempted were patterned successfully using standard optical lithography processes . there was no noticeable deterioration of pattern quality with decreasing feature size , indicating that the lower limit on feature sizes was near that of conventional lithography materials ( i . e ., approximately 2 um ). there was difficulty at times in achieving nanocomposite film tearing during lift - off resulting in an incomplete lift - off process but when lift - off is achieved , film geometries were defect free . the resistance of each instrumented small - scale sensing skin was observed for five minutes prior to cyclic loading of the pvc bar . this observation displayed a rapid exponential signal decay that is commonly observed in such sensing skins . the results for each sensor under cyclic loading can be seen in fig7 . here it is readily apparent that each sensor was effective in tracking the strain of the specimen ( note that fig7 f is the measured strain using the metal foil gage ). it can further be observed that all sensors have similar signals with limited noise and fairy uniform sensitivities . the initial bulk resistance , sheet resistance , and gage factors of the five sensors of varying thickness can be seen in fig7 . circuit elements 14 of larger widths are more conductive as is expected for these nanocomposite films ( fig8 a ). the sheet resistance of all fabricated elements was very similar with the exception of the 10 micron thick circuit element 14 ( fig8 b ). the results also indicate a fairly uniform gage factor across all sensor geometries despite the significant variance in sensor thicknesses ( fig8 c ). a large - scale sensing skin ( fig9 ) is fabricated to observe strain in the web of a beam responding in flexure . the sensor was instrumented on a steel beam within a beam - column structural system with a composite slab . a plot observing resistance trends in the eight sensing elements on the beam during system loading can be seen in fig1 . these plots correspond to one cycle of lateral inter - story drift ( 1 . 5 %) response . elements 1 , 2 , 5 , 6 , 7 and 8 track the response of the beam well when compared to the waveform collected by traditional 120ω strain gages installed at the top , middle , and bottom of the beam on the opposite side of the web ( fig1 ). while the response is tracked well , there is some variation of the amplitude of the measured voltage signal suggesting variation in the gage factors of the films themselves . for example , elements 5 through 8 are clearly below the beam neutral axis and hence , these elements should have amplitudes increasing with depth since strain increases with depth . discrepancy in the amplitudes may be attributed to variations in the films over their long lengths or due to local ripples in the polyimide skin when epoxy bonded to the beams . elements 3 and 4 provided erroneous readings due to what is suspected to be faulty electrode connections . element 3 trends properly compared to element 1 but at 240 seconds the film response jumps ; the film also outputs an unexplained spike at 300 seconds . regardless , the results suggest the large - scale sensing skins are viable sensing platforms , but also indicate these platforms require additional investigation to improve their performance . nanocomposite sensing skins are patterned and tested for mechanical - electrical response . the sensor was fabricated on a flexible polyimide substrate using conventional optical lithography tools then epoxied to a pvc bar for testing . all geometries attempted were successfully patterned suggesting a limiting feature size near that of conventional lithography materials ( 2 um ). five small - scale sensing skin elements of varying width displayed similar sheet resistances and gage factors when instrumented and tested in uniaxial tension . the uniformity of gage factor with varying geometry was unexpected when considering the wide range of sensor geometries tested . these materials and processes were then extended to develop a component - specific sensor for monitoring the distribution of strain in a beam web . this sensor was instrumented on a beam - column structural system with a composite slab where it displayed the potential to measure the strain profile in a steel beam web . while the film elements trended well , additional work is needed to achieve a uniform gage factor of the elements . it is suspected the gage factor is varying due to the means of application of the film and not due to the film itself . for example , ripples in the film during epoxy bonding may enhance the gage factor is uncontrollable and non - repeatable ways . to remedy this potential issue , a thicker encasing layer is currently under investigation . nonetheless , the malleability of the patterning and fabrication processes utilized provides the platform for the development of component - specific structural sensors for components of a vast range of structural systems . the foregoing description of the embodiments has been provided for purposes of illustration and description . it is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the disclosure . individual elements or features of a particular embodiment are generally not limited to that particular embodiment , but , where applicable , are interchangeable and can be used in a selected embodiment , even if not specifically shown or described . the same may also be varied in many ways . such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the disclosure , and all such modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the disclosure . | 7 |
exemplary embodiments now will be described more fully herein with reference to the accompanying drawings , in which exemplary embodiments are shown . this disclosure may , however , be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the exemplary embodiments set forth herein . rather , these exemplary embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete and will fully convey the scope of this disclosure to those skilled in the art . in the description , details of well - known features and techniques may be omitted to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the presented embodiments embodiments may include methods of preparing a semiconductor substrate so that a semiconductor - on - insulator ( soi ) substrate has a top layer made of two different semiconductor regions . the method may include forming a isolation region in the soi layer of the soi substrate to divide the soi layer into a first portion and a second portion ( fig2 ), removing the second portion of the soi layer ( fig4 ), etching a hole in the buried insulator layer beneath the removed second portion of the soi layer to exposed the base substrate ( fig5 ), and growing a semiconductor region on the base substrate to replace the second portion of the soi layer ( fig6 ). by forming the semiconductor region of a different material than the soi layer , the soi substrate may then have a top layer formed by both a first semiconductor material on one side of the isolation region and a second semiconductor material on the other side of the isolation region . the soi substrate may then be used to fabricate any number of microelectronic devices where such a dual - material substrate would be desirable . for example , a finfet device may be fabricated including both nfets and pfets , where the nfets have silicon fins and the pfets have silicon - germanium fins . for purposes of the description hereinafter , terms such as “ upper ”, “ lower ”, “ right ”, “ left ”, “ vertical ”, “ horizontal ”, “ top ”, “ bottom ”, and derivatives thereof shall relate to the disclosed structures and methods , as oriented in the drawing figures . terms such as “ above ”, “ overlying ”, “ atop ”, “ on top ”, “ positioned on ” or “ positioned atop ” mean that a first element , such as a first structure , is present on a second element , such as a second structure , wherein intervening elements , such as an interface structure may be present between the first element and the second element . the term “ direct contact ” means that a first element , such as a first structure , and a second element , such as a second structure , are connected without any intermediary conducting , insulating or semiconductor layers at the interface of the two elements . in the interest of not obscuring the presentation of embodiments of the present invention , in the following detailed description , some processing steps or operations that are known in the art may have been combined together for presentation and for illustration purposes and in some instances may have not been described in detail . in other instances , some processing steps or operations that are known in the art may not be described at all . it should be understood that the following description is rather focused on the distinctive features or elements of various embodiments of the present invention . referring to fig1 , a soi substrate 100 may include a base semiconductor layer 110 , a buried insulator layer 120 , and an soi layer 130 . the buried insulator layer 120 may isolate the soi layer 130 from the base semiconductor layer 110 . the base semiconductor layer 110 may be made from any of several known semiconductor materials such as , for example , silicon , germanium , silicon - germanium alloy , carbon - doped silicon , carbon - doped silicon - germanium alloy , and compound ( e . g . iii - v and ii - vi ) semiconductor materials . non - limiting examples of compound semiconductor materials include gallium arsenide , indium arsenide , and indium phosphide . in a preferred embodiment , the base semiconductor layer 110 may include silicon , silicon - germanium , or carbon - doped silicon . typically the base layer 110 may be approximately , but is not limited to , several hundred microns thick . for example , the base layer 110 may have a thickness ranging from approximately 0 . 5 mm to approximately 1 . 5 mm . the buried insulator layer 120 may be formed from any of several dielectric materials . non - limiting examples include , for example , oxides , nitrides , oxynitrides of silicon , and combinations thereof . oxides , nitrides and oxynitrides of other elements are also envisioned . in addition , the buried insulator layer 120 may include crystalline or non - crystalline dielectric material . the buried insulator layer 120 may be 100 - 500 nm thick , preferably about 200 nm . the soi layer 130 may be made of any of the several semiconductor materials possible for the base layer 110 . in general , the base layer 110 and the soi substrate layer 130 may include either identical or different semiconducting materials with respect to chemical composition , dopant concentration and crystallographic orientation . in a preferred embodiment , the soi layer 130 comprises silicon , silicon - germanium , or carbon - doped silicon . the soi layer 130 may be doped with p - type dopants , such as boron , or doped with n - type dopants , such as phosphorus and / or arsenic . the dopant concentration may range from approximately 1 × 10 15 cm − 3 to approximately 1 × 10 19 cm − 3 , preferably approximately 1 × 10 15 cm − 3 to approximately 1 × 10 16 cm − 3 . in one embodiment , the soi layer is undoped . the soi layer 130 may have a thickness ranging from approximately 5 nm to approximately 300 nm , preferably approximately 30 nm . referring to fig2 , an isolation region 210 may be formed in the soi layer 130 , so that the soi layer 130 is divided into a first soi portion 135 and a second soi portion 137 . the isolation region 210 may be formed using various methods known in the art . for example , a shallow trench isolation ( sti ) process may be utilized . in a sti process , a trench may be etched in the soi layer 130 , an insulating layer may be deposited to fill the trench , and the insulating layer is planarized to remove any insulating material from outside the trench ( not shown ). in other embodiments , the first soi portion 135 and the second soi portion 137 may be masked while dopants may be implanted into the isolation region 210 so that the material of the soi layer 130 in the isolation region 210 is converted from semiconductive to insulating ( not shown ). the isolation region 210 may also be formed using other suitable methods not explicitly disclosed herein . referring to fig3 , the first soi portion 135 may be masked by a masking layer 310 . the masking layer 310 may be made of any suitable material capable of protecting the first soi portion 135 during the subsequent etch and epitaxial growth processes discussed below in conjunction with fig4 - 6 . particularly , the masking layer 310 may be heat resistant to withstand high temperatures required of some epitaxial growth processes , as well as being resistant to subsequent processes used to etch the buried insulator layer 120 , as described below in conjunction with fig5 . in an exemplary embodiment , the masking layer 310 may be made of oxides , nitrides , and oxynitrides of silicon , as well as oxides , nitrides , and oxynitrides of silicon of other elements , and may have a thickness of approximately 10 nm to approximately 10000 nm . in a preferred embodiment , the buried insulator layer 120 may be made of silicon nitride and have a thickness of approximately 50 nm to approximately 500 nm . referring to fig4 , the second soi portion 137 may be removed to form an exposed region of the buried insulator layer 120 . the second soi portion 137 may be removed using any suitable etching technique known in the art , including both wet and dry etching techniques , as well as isotropic and anisotropic etching techniques . in a preferred embodiment , a wet etching technique may be used , for example a potassium hydroxide wet etch or a hna ( hydrofluoric acid , nitric acid , acetic acid ) wet etch . other methods of removing the second soi portion 137 are known in the art , including , for example , rie etching and hydrogen chloride gas etching . referring to fig5 , a hole 410 may be formed in the buried insulator layer 120 to form an exposed region of the base semiconductor layer 110 . the hole 410 may preferably be as small as possible while still allowing the epitaxial growth process detailed below in conjunction with fig6 . in an exemplary embodiment , the hole 410 may be approximately round with a diameter w 1 of not less than approximately 10 nm . in another embodiment , the hole 410 may be a trench with a width w 1 of not less than approximately 10 nm . the hole 410 may be formed using any typical isotropic etch process , including , for example , rie or plasma etching . in an exemplary embodiment ( not shown ), a photoresist layer may be deposited above the buried insulator layer 120 , patterned to form a hole in the photoresist layer , so that the hole in the photoresist layer has the same dimensions as desired for the hole 410 . the buried insulator layer 120 may then be etched beneath the hole in the photoresist layer . other typical photolithography and etching techniques may also be utilized , including , for example , forming a planarization layer between the buried insulator layer 120 and the photoresist layer because of the uneven topography ( i . e ., the height difference between the exposed portion of the buried insulator layer 120 and the first soi portion 135 ). referring to fig6 , a semiconductor layer 510 may be formed above the exposed region of the buried insulator layer 120 by growing an epitaxial semiconductor layer on the exposed region of the base semiconductor layer 110 . the semiconductor layer 510 may have a thickness , measured from the top surface of the buried insulator layer 120 , at least equal to or greater than the thickness of the first soi portion 135 . the semiconductor layer 510 may be made of any the materials possible for the soi layer 130 , including , for example , known semiconductor materials such as , for example , silicon , germanium , silicon - germanium alloy , carbon - doped silicon , carbon - doped silicon - germanium alloy , and compound ( e . g . iii - v and ii - vi ) semiconductor materials . in a preferred embodiment , the material of the semiconductor layer 510 is the same as the material of the base semiconductor layer 110 , but different from the first soi portion 135 . in other embodiments , the material of the semiconductor layer 510 may be different from the base semiconductor layer 110 . in further embodiments , the material of the semiconductor layer may be the same as the first soi portion 135 . in an exemplary embodiment , the base semiconductor layer 110 and the semiconductor layer 510 may be made of silicon , while the soi layer 130 may be made of silicon - germanium . the semiconductor layer 510 may be formed by utilizing any epitaxial growth or deposition process known in the art . the terms “ epitaxial growth and / or deposition ” and “ epitaxially formed and / or grown ” mean the growth of a semiconductor material on a deposition surface of a semiconductor material , in which the semiconductor material being grown has the same crystalline characteristics as the semiconductor material of the deposition surface . in an epitaxial deposition process , the chemical reactants provided by the source gases are controlled and the system parameters are set so that the depositing atoms arrive at the deposition surface of the semiconductor substrate with sufficient energy to move around on the deposition surface and orient themselves to the crystal arrangement of the atoms of the deposition surface . therefore , an epitaxial semiconductor layer has the same crystalline characteristics as the deposition surface on which it is formed . for example , an epitaxial semiconductor material deposited on a { 100 } crystal surface will take on a { 100 } orientation . in some embodiments , epitaxial growth and / or deposition processes are selective to forming on semiconductor surface , and do not deposit material on dielectric surfaces , such as silicon dioxide or silicon nitride surfaces . examples of various epitaxial growth process apparatuses that are suitable for use in forming the semiconductor layer 510 include , for example rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition ( rtcvd ), low - energy plasma deposition ( lepd ), ultra - high vacuum chemical vapor deposition ( uhvcvd ), atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition ( apcvd ) and molecular beam epitaxy ( mbe ). in an exemplary embodiment where the semiconductor layer 510 is made of silicon - germanium , a number of different source gases may be used . in one embodiment , a combination of a silicon source gas and a germanium source gas may be used in forming the layer of silicon germanium alloy . examples of silicon source gases that may be used include silane , disilane , trisilane , tetrasilane , hexachlorodisilane , tetrachlorosilane , dichlorosilane , trichlorosilane , methylsilane , dimethylsilane , ethylsilane , methyldisilane , dimethyldisilane , hexamethyldisilane and combinations thereof . examples of germanium source gases that may be used include germane , digermane , halogermane , dichlorogermane , trichlorogermane , tetrachlorogermane and combinations thereof . in some embodiments , a single source gas that includes a silicon component and a germanium component may be used in forming the semiconductor layer 510 . carrier gases like hydrogen , nitrogen , helium and argon may be used during the epitaxial growth process . in an exemplary embodiment where the semiconductor layer 510 is made of carbon - doped silicon , a carbon source gas may be added the silicon source gas described above . examples of carbon source gases that may be used in the present application include , for example , alkanes , alkenes , and alkynes . referring to fig7 , the semiconductor layer 510 may be planarized so that the top surface of the semiconductor layer 510 is approximately coplanar with the top surface of the first soi portion 135 . any suitable planarization process may be used , including , for example , chemical - mechanical planarization ( cmp ). to ensure coplanarity , the first soi portion 135 may be used as a planarization stop layer . after planarization , the semiconductor layer 510 may have substantially the same thickness as the first soi portion 135 referring to fig8 , a first plurality of fins 610 and a second plurality of fins 620 may be formed from the first soi portion 135 and the semiconductor layer 510 , respectively , so that the first plurality of fins 610 are made of the material of the first soi portion 135 and the second plurality of fins 620 are made of the material of the semiconductor layer 510 . while the first plurality of fins 610 and the second plurality of fins 620 are each depicted as including 5 fins , each may include as few as one fin or more than 5 fins . each of the first plurality of fins 610 and the second plurality of fins 620 may have a width of approximately 2 nm to approximately 100 nm , preferably approximately 4 nm to approximately 40 nm . because of planarization process described above in conjunction with fig7 , the first plurality of fins 610 and the second plurality of fins 620 may have substantially the same height . the first plurality of fins 610 and a second plurality of fins 620 may be formed by removing material from the soi layer 130 ( fig1 a - 1d ) using a photolithography process followed by an anisotropic etching process such as reactive ion etching ( rie ) or plasma etching . in other embodiments , the first plurality of fins 610 and a second plurality of fins 620 may be formed by any other process known in the art , including , for example , sidewall image transfer ( sit ). after forming the first plurality of fins 610 and a second plurality of fins 620 , further typical semiconductor fabrication processes may performed on the first plurality of fins 610 and a second plurality of fins 620 to form a microelectronic device such as plurality of fin field effect transistors ( finfets ). a person of ordinary skill in the art will understand how an soi substrate including a top semiconductor layer made of a first semiconductor material and a second semiconductor material may be desirable in the fabrication of microelectronic devices other than finfets . the descriptions of the various embodiments of the present invention have been presented for purposes of illustration , but are not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the embodiments disclosed . many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the described embodiments . the terminology used herein was chosen to best explain the principles of the embodiment , the practical application or technical improvement over technologies found in the marketplace , or to enable other of ordinary skill in the art to understand the embodiments disclosed herein . it is therefore intended that the present invention not be limited to the exact forms and details described and illustrated but fall within the scope of the appended claims . | 7 |
the invention relates generally to an arrangement for a piece of furniture 1 , ( in the above accepted general definition ), in a construction 2 , fixed or movable , rigid or not , comprising at least one essentially vertical partition 3 with an opening 4 made in it for the piece of furniture 1 to pass through . the piece of furniture 1 may be in either of the two extreme positions respectively on one side and on the other side of the partition 3 . one of these positions is called internal and the other external . the piece of furniture 1 can be moved from one to the other of these two extreme positions by means of an actuation force applied to the piece of furniture 1 and mechanical means 5 of support and guidance . the piece of furniture 1 can have the function , the shape , and the structure which stem from the accepted general definition given above . in the particular application , which is non - restrictive , it has a general monobloc shape limited by a flat parallelepipedal contour with a large surface which is at least substantially horizontal . however , other shapes can be envisaged . the qualificatives &# 34 ; vertical &# 34 ;, &# 34 ; horizontal &# 34 ; refer to the arrangement , to the piece of furniture , to the construction and in particular to the vehicle , in its most usual use position . however , these same elements can essentially be in a different absolute position , in particular when the difference is slight , without this affecting the invention substantially . in a particular application , as will be seen below , the construction is a vehicle serving as a habitation , such as a caravan or equivalent . the partition 3 is understood to be a wall which is essentially rigid and continuous in its entirety , in particular thin and overall plane , such as the partitions or walls currently used in fixed or movable constructions . in particular , the partition 3 is a panel which forms part of a caravan or equivalent . it could be conceived that generally there would be no partition 3 , the absence of a partition 3 having the effect of making the passageway necessary for the piece of furniture 1 . however , it would then be necessary for the construction 2 to be formed by any other element or solid structure , in particular to which the means 5 can be rigidly linked . moreover , the existence of such a partition 3 makes it possible on the one hand to represent physically or pinpoint the two extreme positions , in particular internal and external , of the piece of furniture 1 , and on the other hand to divide the space into an internal space 6 and an external space 7 , respectively , in which the piece of furniture 1 can be in its two extreme positions and a user of the said piece of furniture 1 can also be , the spaces 6 , 7 having different references ( such as support surface ). the partition 3 is essentially vertical , that is to say that it has a general vertical direction , which does not exclude it having a slight overall inclination or more pronounced inclinations locally if this partition has an uneven shape . the partition 3 comprises two opposite faces which are , respectively , internal 8 and external 9 , on the side of the internal space 6 and the external space 7 , respectively . the opening 4 is limited by edges 10a and 10b of the partition . this opening 4 is sufficiently large ( that is to say the facing edges are sufficiently far apart ) to allow the piece of furniture 1 to pass through ( and the means 5 ) from one to the other of the two extreme positions . according to the invention , the two positions , internal and external respectively , of the piece of furniture 1 are both positions for the functional use of the piece of furniture 1 by a user who is normally in the internal space 6 or the external space 7 , in which the piece of furniture 1 is at the time . these two positions are stable and can remain lasting for the time desired by the user . between these two extreme positions , the piece of furniture 1 can , during its movement , be in an infinite number of successive passage positions . the actuation force for moving the piece of furniture 1 from one to the other of its extreme positions is in particular a manual force applied directly or indirectly to the piece of furniture 1 , in particular applied to the means 5 . the means 5 are linked to the partition 3 , directly or indirectly , or more generally to the structure of the construction 2 , and linked to the piece of furniture 1 . these means 5 comprise in general connecting rods , rods , arms , pivots , hinges , slide rails , slides , etc . according to the invention , the extreme positions of the piece of furniture are on the one hand situated close to the partition 3 and , on the other , are offset in relation to one another along the latter . in particular , the extreme positions are respectively against or substantially against , respectively , the partition 3 on the internal face 8 and the external face 9 . by positions offset in relation to one another along the partition it is to be understood that the two positions are not facing ( or symmetrical with ) one another in relation to the partition 3 . in relation to such an intermediate position which is facing ( or symmetrical with ) a starting position , the final position is brought about by sliding along the partition 3 . thus , in the particular application case of a caravan or equivalent , one extreme position , in particular internal , is high and the other , in particular external , is low , the qualificatives &# 34 ; high &# 34 ; and &# 34 ; low &# 34 ; having to be understood in a relative manner , which means in this case that the two positions are at different levels . preferably , the mechanical means 5 of support and guidance comprise at least one connecting rod 19 , 20 articulated on the one hand to the partition 3 , directly or not , and , on the other hand , to the piece of furniture 1 . a possible embodiment of these means 5 will be given in detail later . preferably , the means 5 are also capable of ensuring a constant relative orientation of the piece of furniture 1 in relation to a reference direction . this reference direction is orthogonal to the direction of articulation of the connecting rod 19 , 20 of the means 5 to the partition 3 and to the piece of furniture 1 . in the particular application case of a caravan or equivalent , which is represented in the drawings , this reference direction is vertical or substantially vertical and the piece of furniture 1 is horizontal or substantially horizontal in its two extreme positions and in its intermediate positions , which has the effect of avoiding the overturning of the piece of furniture 1 . in this case , the axes of articulation of the connecting rods of the means 5 are at least substantially horizontal . in other application cases , the reference direction can be horizontal , the axes of the connecting rods of the means 5 being vertical . the mechanical means capable of ensuring a constant relative orientation of the piece of furniture 1 in relation to a reference direction form part of the mechanical means 5 of support and guidance , which comprise to this end at least two connecting rods 19 , 20 , which are articulated on the one hand to the partition 3 and on the other to the piece of furniture 1 , constituting a deformable parallelogram 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 . preferably , two pairs of connecting rods 19 , 20 are provided , which are separated transversely from one another along their common axes of articulation 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 . the arrangement also comprises manual gripping means 11 which make it possible to apply the actuation force to move the piece of furniture 1 . these means 11 comprise , for example , a handle 12 linked to a connecting rod of the means 5 . for example , the handle 12 forms part of a u - shaped frame 13 connecting the two pairs of connecting rods 19 , 20 of the means 5 . furthermore , the manual gripping means 11 are preferably arranged to form a lever in such a manner that moving the piece of furniture 1 is made easier . referring to the case ( such as that of a caravan ) in which the reference direction is vertical , the axes of the connecting rods of the means 5 horizontal , and the extreme positions high and low respectively , the partition 3 separates , preferably , two support areas , which are at least substantially horizontal and at different levels , one being a high level or area 14 and the other being a low level or area 15 . the extreme positions of the piece of furniture 1 are respectively high level and low on the side of the high 14 and low level 15 , and the vertical spacings h ( fig3 ) between the two support areas 14 , 15 and the two extreme positions of the piece of furniture 1 are substantially equal or close thereto . as results from the above , a possible , but non - restrictive , application of the arrangement for the piece of furniture 1 which has just been described is that of a vehicle such as a caravan ( the case represented in the figures ). in this case , the partition 3 forms part of a vehicle or a habitation 2 such as a caravan , which is also provided with a floor which forms a high internal support area 14 , which is supported by wheels or supports 16 resting on the ground , which forms a low external support area 15 , the spacing h between the two extreme positions of the piece of furniture 1 in a vertical direction being substantially equal to or close to the height h of the floor 14 in relation to the ground 15 , the effect of which is that the piece of furniture 1 is at the same relative height for a user in its two extreme positions . the invention then relates , and as a particular application , to a vehicle , in particular serving as a habitation , such as a caravan , camping vehicle , mobile home , truck or trailer used as a shop or equivalent , fixed or movable , which comprises a floor 14 which is raised in relation to the ground 15 and supported by supports 16 such as wheels , props , or equivalent , as well as partitions delimiting the habitation , and which is provided with a functional furniture arrangement comprising in general a plurality of pieces 1 and 17 of furniture of which at least one 1 , or part of one , is in either of the two extreme positions , of which one is a high internal use position close to an essentially vertical partition 3 , and can be moved from one to the other of these two extreme positions , while remaining constantly at least substantially in a relative horizontal position , by means of an applied actuation force , which causes its movement , and mechanical means 5 of support and guidance . in such a vehicle , the two extreme positions of the piece of furniture 1 are the high internal position for use and a low external position also for use , which latter position is close to the partition 3 and on the opposite side of the latter from the high internal position , the two positions being offset in relation to one another in a vertical direction with a spacing h which is substantially equal to or close to the height h of the floor 14 in relation to the ground 15 ; the partition 3 comprising an opening 4 for the piece of furniture 1 to pass through from one to the other of its extreme positions ; the effect of which is that the piece of furniture 1 can be used on the inside or the outside of the vehicle 2 , according to whether it is in a high internal position or a low external position respectively , while being at a substantially equal relative height of use for the user in both cases . the piece of furniture 1 is , for example , a kitchen unit or part of a kitchen unit . in this case , the piece of furniture 1 may be , in relation to the respective support surface 14 , 15 on which it is located , at a height in the region of approximately 90 cm , and since the floor 14 is at a height from the ground of in the region of 50 cm , the two positions , high and low , have a vertical separation of in the region of 50 cm also . as results from that which has already been mentioned , the mechanical means 5 of support and guidance comprise at least one connecting rod 19 , 20 articulated on the one hand to a substructure 17 fixed to the partition 3 , and on the other hand to the piece of furniture 1 , about axes which are at least substantially horizontal . preferably , the mechanical means 5 of support and guidance comprise at least two connecting rods 19 , 20 constituting a deformable parallelogram 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , and comprise at lest one pair of connecting rods which are separated transversely from one another along their common axes of articulation . furthermore , there are linked to the mechanical means 5 of support and guidance manual gripping means 11 , which make it possible to apply the actuation force to move the piece of furniture 1 and which are constituted by a handle 12 forming the central part of a u - shaped frame 13 , the two branches 18 of which are fixed rigidly to two connecting rods of the means 5 . reference is now made to the figures in which the means 5 and 11 are represented . these means 5 and 11 comprise two front connecting rods 19 , which are separated transversely from one another , and two rear connecting rods 20 , which are separated transversely from one another , which rods are articulated to the substructure 17 about lower front axes 21 and lower rear axes 22 respectively and to the piece of furniture 1 about upper front axes 23 and upper rear axes 24 , the axes 22 , 21 , 23 , 24 constituting a deformable parallelogram ; the lower front axis 21 being positioned at a higher level than the lower rear axis 22 ; the lower rear axis 22 being situated immediately next to the partition 3 ; the connecting rods 19 , 20 being inclined at approximately 45 ° in the extreme positions of the piece of furniture 1 ; the u - shaped frame 13 being fixed by its branches 18 to the rear connecting rods 20 , substantially perpendicularly to the latter and substantially in the centre of the latter ; the handle 12 forming the central part of the u - shaped frame 13 , in the high internal position of the piece of furniture 1 being situated close to the partition 3 , behind and close to the piece of furniture 1 , at least substantially at the same level as the upper rear axis 24 , and in the low external position of the piece of furniture 1 being situated close to the partition 3 , below and close to the piece of furniture 1 . the piece of furniture 1 , which forms a kitchen unit which has a general parallelepipedal and relatively flat shape , comprises an upper surface 26 and , rigidly fixed and directed downwards , two vertical transverse lateral cheeks 27 , to which the connecting rods 19 , 20 of the mechanical means 5 of support and guidance are linked , the kitchen unit 1 resting on the substructure 17 , in the high internal position , by means of its cheeks 27 . for example , the kitchen unit 1 comprises , incorporated in the upper surface 26 , kitchen equipment such as a sink 99 ( fig3 ), or one or more cooking plates 100 ( fig4 ). the switches or control knobs 101 of the cooking plate or plates are located on the upper surface 26 , the effect of which is that they are accessible in both one and the other of the the two extreme positions of the piece of furniture 1 . the fluidic connections of the kitchen equipment such as those for water , gas , and electricity , are either permanent and comprise deformable elements or arranged in a movable manner . the upper surface 26 bears substantially against the partition 3 in the high internal and the low external positions , on its internal face 8 and its external face 9 , respectively . the piece of furniture or substructure 17 is in the general form of a box with a general parallelepipedal shape positioned against the partition 3 and on the floor 14 , and is delimited by two vertical transverse lateral walls 28 , which are coplanar with the cheeks 27 and to which the connecting rods 19 , 20 of the mechanical means 5 of support and guidance are linked . the substructure is also limited by a vertical and longitudinal front wall 29 and an upper horizontal wall 30 . the substructure 17 can also comprise kitchen equipment , such as in particular a refrigerator , oven , cupboard , etc . the upper horizontal wall 30 is intended to serve as a support for the piece of furniture 1 in the high internal position . in this high internal position , the piece of furniture 1 and the substructure are piled up in the form of a column , the cheeks 27 and the walls 28 being coplanar or substantially coplanar , as are the vertical front cants 31 of the surface 26 and of the lateral cheeks 27 . the lower cants 32 of the lateral cheeks 27 are , in this high internal position , supported against the upper horizontal wall 30 . the front wall 29 and the front cants 31 are parallel and separated from the partition 3 . the vertical rear cants 33 , which are parallel to , opposite to , and set towards the rear in relation to the vertical front cants 31 in relation to a user located in a normal use position in front of the piece of furniture 1 , are , in the high internal position of the piece of furniture 1 , separated from the partition 3 , making between them an empty space 34 , in which the handle 12 is positioned . according to the invention , the movement of the kitchen unit 1 from one to the other of its high and low positions is carried out by a user manipulating the handle 12 and being in the external space 7 , for example standing on the ground 15 . consequently , it is not indispensable to have access to the handle 12 and to the empty space 34 above , from the internal space 6 , when the kitchen unit 1 is in the high position . also , the upper surface 26 can project towards the rear in relation to the vertical rear cants 33 until it bears against or is immediately next to the partition 3 . the axis 21 is situated , for example , at an equal distance from the front wall 29 and from the partition 3 and close to the upper horizontal wall 30 . the axis 23 is situated , for example , close to the angle or corner formed by the upper surface 26 and the vertical front cants 31 . the axis 24 is situated , for example , substantially in the centre of the lateral cheeks 27 substantially at an equal distance from the cants 31 , 33 on the one hand and from the surface 26 and the cants 32 . the opening 4 is delimited by two horizontal edges , an upper 10a and a lower 10b , and two vertical edges 10c . the upper horizontal edge 10a is preferably positioned sufficiently high -- that is to say with sufficient spacing from the upper surface 26 of the kitchen unit 1 in the high position -- for the reasons explained below . the lower horizontal edge 10b is positioned , for example , below the lowest of the axes 21 to 24 , namely the lower rear axis 22 , in particular slightly below the level of the axis 22 in a downward direction ( that is to say towards the ground 15 ) and an outward direction ( that is to say towards the external space 7 ) of the rear connecting rod 20 , from the axis 22 , when the connecting rod 20 is in the position in which the piece of furniture 1 is in the high internal position . the edges 10c are close , horizontally opposite , to the cheeks 27 and walls 28 as well as the connecting rods 19 , 20 which are close to them , in such a manner that the piece of furniture 1 and the means 5 can pass through the opening 4 with the necessary clearance . in the low external position , the piece of furniture 1 rests against the partition 3 by its front cants 31 . thus , for a user positioned successively in the internal space 6 and the external space 7 with the piece of furniture 1 situated in the space in which the user is located , the front of the piece of furniture 1 becomes the rear and conversely the rear becomes the front . it is for this reason that the piece of furniture 1 is arranged conveniently to allow this transformation ( in particular for the upper position of the control switches ). in the low external position , the rear connecting rods 20 are supported on the front connecting rods 19 . more specifically , the rear connecting rod 20 is positioned above and on the front connecting rod 19 , the branches 18 of the u - shaped frame 13 being directed from top to bottom and from the outside towards the inside . in this position , the connecting rods 19 , 20 are inclined from the inside towards the outside and from top to bottom at approximately 20 ° to 30 ° to the horizontal , the lower horizontal edge 10b being positioned below the part of the connecting rods 19 , 20 which passes through the opening 4 , in order to avoid any undesirable collision . in this low position , the handle 12 is situated close to the partition 3 , on the side of its external face 9 and close to the cants 32 , in an area where it is consequently not in the way and practically invisible , whilst being able to be grasped in order for the piece of furniture 1 to pass from its low position to its high position , between the two cheeks 27 where there is a free space . if necessary ( not shown ), in the low external position , the handle 12 forming the central part of the u - shaped frame 13 is held by a support fixed to the partition 3 . additionally , this support may comprise an anti - return locking device or a security closing device . thus , in the low position , the kitchen unit 1 is supported by its cheeks 27 and its front cants 31 against the partition 3 , the rigidity , the hold and the stability of the whole being assured by this support as well as , if necessary , the support of the rear connecting rod 20 on the front connecting rod and the support or the locking respectively of the handle 12 on the support provided to this end . consequently , it is not indispensable to provide a special underframe to support the kitchen unit 1 on the ground 15 . according to another possible and preferred variant , the opening 4 is temporary , capable of being sealed by at least one movable flap between two extreme positions of opening and closing respectively , in which the opening 4 is open and closed , a retaining or locking device ensuring that the flap is held in the desired extreme position . gripping means , such as a handle or equivalent , are provided for manipulating the flap . means of support and guidance of the flap are also provided , such as a slide , hinge , or other according to whether the flap is moved by sliding ( in particular vertical ) or pivoting ( in particular about a horizontal axis ). preferably , two flaps , a high flap 35 and a low flap 36 respectively , are provided , which are independent of one another and coplanar in a closed position . these two flaps have , for example , a general shape which is substantially plane and rectangular , delimited in the case of the high flap 35 by the upper horizontal edge 37 , lower horizontal edge 38 , and lateral edge 39 , and in the case of the low flap 36 by the lower horizontal edge 40 , horizontal edge 41 , and lateral edge 42 . the high flap 35 is mounted articulated by its upper horizontal edge 37 to the partition 3 , in particular to the edge 10a of the opening 4 , and is movable in the external space 7 between a closed position , in which it is vertical and directed downwards , and an open position , in which it leaves the opening 4 , which it is intended to seal , free . in the open position , the high flap 35 is positioned substantially horizontally in the external space 4 , fulfilling the function of a canopy and is held by means of props or equivalent 43 . preferably , the high flap 35 , in the open position , is slightly inclined from bottom to top , from its edge 37 adjoining the partition 3 to its opposite free edge 38 . the prop 43 can be of the type articulated to the flap 35 on at least one of its edges 39 and to the partition on its corresponding edge 10c . the average height of the high flap 35 in the open position makes it possible for the user on the ground 15 to be positioned underneath in order to use the kitchen unit 1 . furthermore , the rather high position of the edge 10a and of the edge 37 produces an opening 4 which is rather high above the kitchen unit 1 and the substructure 17 , which can impart to this opening 4 a function of hatch or window with canopy . the low flap 36 is mounted articulated by its lower horizontal edge 40 to the partition 3 , in particular to the edge 10b of the opening 4 , and is movable in the external space 7 between a closed position , in which it is vertical and directed upwards , and an open position , in which it is vertical and directed downwards . more specifically , in the open position , the low flap 36 is positioned against the external face 9 of the partition 3 , interposed between the latter and the piece of furniture 1 . as results from the figures , the lower edge 10b of the opening 4 is positioned at a lower level and close to the upper surface 26 of the piece of furniture 1 in the low external position . furthermore , the high flap 35 and the low flap 36 have respective heights such that , in the closed position , their free contiguous edges 38 , 41 are situated adjacent above the upper surface 26 of the piece of furniture 1 , in the low position , in particular at least substantially coplanar with the upper horizontal wall 30 of the substructure 17 , in such a manner that , if the piece of furniture 1 is in the low external position , the high flap 35 can be brought into the closed position without interfering with the piece of furniture 1 or the connecting rods 19 , 20 , while substantially closing the opening 4 of the partition 3 . to this end , the high flap 35 is a large flap and the low flap 36 is a small flap , the latter having , for example , a height in the region of the height of the piece of furniture 1 . the flaps 35 , 36 are , for example , comparable to the partition 3 from which they are cut out . the invention can be the subject of variants , improvements etc . for example , it can be provided with uni - or bidirectional assistance elements , such as jacks or endless screws , autonomous or operated manually or by means of a motor , which are capable of facilitating the movement of the movable elements . the function of the vehicle which has just been described is the following . initially ( fig1 ), the kitchen unit 1 is in the high internal position , in which it rests on the substructure 17 . the opening 4 is closed , the flaps 35 and 36 being in the closed position , in particular locked . a user can use the kitchen unit 1 normally in the internal space 6 , standing on the floor 14 , the kitchen unit 1 being at a convenient height for use . then ( fig4 ), the flaps 35 , 36 are attached in the open position , by pivoting about their respective edges 37 , 40 by manual , motorized , or assisted action . it follows that the opening 4 is then open . in this situation , a user can gain access , from the external space 7 , to the handle 12 and manipulate it in order to make the kitchen unit pass from its high position to its low position . in the low position ( fig2 ), the kitchen unit 1 rests as has already been indicated , in particular on the low flap 36 , and it is in a convenient position for use for a user standing on the ground 15 . it is then possible to substantially seal the opening 4 ( fig3 ) by bringing the high flap 35 into the closed position , the low flap 36 remaining in the open position . the opening 4 is then virtually completely masked by either the flap 35 in the closed position , the piece of furniture 1 , or the substructure 17 . this situation is used at night for example . in this situation , the kitchen unit 1 can still be used . | 1 |
the invention will now be described by reference to the preferred embodiments . this does not intend to limit the scope of the present invention , but to exemplify the invention . embodiments of the present invention relate to a dangerous operation support system for supporting firefighting operations of a firefighting team formed by multiple firefighters . in the following description , a firefighting operation is taken by as an example . a firefighting operation is given as an example of dangerous operations and the system is applicable to dangerous operations in general in which multiple workers cooperate . for example , the system is applicable to rescue operations or recovery operations undertaken in the event of a natural disaster such as an earthquake or landslide . the system is also applicable to operations in dangerous places such as sites of mine development . fig1 shows the configuration of a dangerous operation support system 1 according to the embodiments of the present invention . the dangerous operation support system 1 includes a management device 30 installed at a command center 3 , a biosensor device 20 worn by each worker , and a terminal device 10 held or carried by each worker . in this specification , a case of three workers is taken as an example . the biosensor device 20 is worn by the body of the worker and detects biological information such as heart rate , body temperature , and posture . the biosensor device 20 is available in various types including a type glued to the body by a gel pad , a type wound around the arm or leg by a band , a type attached inside a clothing . near field communication is established between the biosensor device 20 and the terminal device 10 . in this specification , an example in which bluetooth ( registered trademark ) is used as near field communication is described . near field communication other than bluetooth ( registered trademark ), such as wireless lan , infrared communication , may be used for near field communication . a simplified mobile wireless device for business wireless communication is used as the terminal device 10 . the management device 30 is installed at a place such as a fire station or command van that serves as the command center 3 . the management device 30 may be implemented by a pc connected to the base station radio device for business wireless communication . instead of using business wireless communication , an ordinary cell phone network may be used . in this case , the terminal device 10 may be implemented by an ordinary mobile terminal device such as a smartphone , feature phone , etc . the management device 30 may be implemented by a pc connected to the ip network . in the description below , business wireless communication is assumed to be used . fig2 shows the configuration of the biosensor device 20 according to the embodiments . the biosensor device 20 includes a control unit 21 , a storage unit 22 , a communication unit 23 , a sensor unit 24 , and a controller 25 . the control unit 21 includes a biological information acquisition unit 211 , a biological information communicating unit 212 , a mode control unit 213 , and a pairing management unit 214 . the functions of the control unit 21 are implemented by the coordination of hardware resources and software resources , or hardware resources alone . a processor , rom , ram , and other lsis can be used as hardware resources . programs such as firmware can be used as software resources . fig2 depicts only those function blocks of the control unit 21 related to the process of interest in the embodiments . the storage unit 22 includes a storage medium such as a nonvolatile semiconductor memory . the communication unit 23 includes a near field communication unit 231 . medium or long distance wireless communication capabilities of a business wireless communication system , a cell phone network , etc . are not provided . the sensor unit 24 includes a heart rate sensor , a body temperature sensor , a three - axis acceleration sensor or the like to detect the heat rate , body temperature , posture or the like of the worker wearing the device . the sensor unit 24 outputs the detected biological information to the control unit 21 . the biological information acquisition unit 211 acquires the detected biological information from the sensor unit 24 . the biological information communicating unit 212 periodically ( e . g ., at the intervals of several seconds ) communicates the acquired biological information to the terminal device 10 paired with the biosensor device 20 via the near field communication unit 231 . a description of the mode control unit 213 and the pairing management unit 214 will be given later . the configuration of the biosensor device 20 shown in fig2 is common to embodiments 1 and 2 described below . fig3 shows the configuration of the terminal device 10 according to embodiment 1 . the terminal device 10 includes a control unit 11 , a storage unit 12 , a communication unit 13 , a display unit 14 , a controller 15 , and a sound input and output unit 16 . the control unit 11 includes a biological information acquisition unit 111 , a biological information communicating unit 112 , a biological information evaluation unit 113 , a searching unit 114 , a pairing management unit 115 , a communication destination determination unit 116 , an electric field detection unit 117 , a rescue request communicating unit 118 , and a mode switching instruction communicating unit 119 . the functions of the control unit 21 are also implemented by the coordination of hardware resources and software resources , or hardware resources alone . fig3 depicts only those function blocks of the control unit 11 related to the process of interest in embodiment 1 . the storage unit 12 includes a storage medium such as a nonvolatile semiconductor memory . the storage unit 12 includes a biosensor id storage unit 121 . fig3 also depicts only those function blocks of the storage unit 12 related to the process of interest in embodiment 1 . the biosensor id storage unit 121 stores identification information on multiple biosensor devices 20 respectively worn by multiple workers belonging to a team undertaking a disaster - relief operation in cooperation with each other . the sound input and output unit 16 includes a microphone and a speaker . the communication unit 13 includes a near field communication unit 131 and a business wireless communication unit 132 . the near field communication unit 131 is used for communication with the biosensor device 20 and the business wireless communication unit 132 is used for communication with the management device 30 or another terminal device 10 . fig4 shows the configuration of the management device 30 according to embodiment 1 . the management device 30 includes a control unit 31 , a storage unit 32 , a communication unit 33 , a display unit 34 , a controller 35 , and a sound input and output unit 36 . the control unit 31 includes a biological information acquisition unit 311 , a display control unit 312 , a rescue request acquisition unit 313 , and a communication destination determination unit 317 . the functions of the control unit 31 are also implemented by the coordination of hardware resources and software resources , or hardware resources alone . fig4 also depicts only those function blocks of the control unit 31 related to the process of interest in embodiment 1 . the storage unit 32 includes a storage medium such as a nonvolatile semiconductor memory . the storage unit 32 includes a device information storage unit 321 . fig4 also depicts only those function blocks of the storage unit 32 related to the process of interest in embodiment 1 . the device information storage unit 321 stores the name of a worker , identification information on the terminal device 10 carried by the worker , and identification information on the biosensor device 20 worn by the worker , mapping the information to each other . the terminal device 10 and the biosensor device 20 may be permanently assigned to each worker for use . alternatively , the terminal device 10 and the biosensor device 20 used may be dynamically changed . the sound input and output unit 36 includes a microphone and a speaker . the operation of the terminal device 10 , the biosensor device 20 , and the management device 30 will be described below in specific details with reference to fig5 - 8 . first , a description will be given of the process performed before a worker arrives at a scene of a disaster . each worker should pair the biosensor device 20 worn by the worker , a slave module of bluetooth ( registered trademark ) ( hereinafter , simply referred to as a slave module ), and the terminal device 10 that the worker carries with him or her , a master module of bluetooth ( registered trademark ) ( hereinafter , simply referred to as a master module ). the biosensor device 20 is in either of two modes including the normal mode in which the device does not respond to a pairing search from the master and the pairing mode in which the device responds to a pairing search from the master . in the normal mode , the existence of the device is not disclosed to a search from the master module to protect privacy and prevent unauthorized access . fig5 is a flowchart illustrating the pairing process in the preparatory stage . when worker a uses the controller 25 of the biosensor device 20 a to designate a transition to the pairing mode , the mode control unit 213 of the biosensor device 20 causes the host device to make a transition from the normal mode to the pairing mode ( s 01 a ). when worker a uses the controller 15 of the terminal device 10 a to request a pairing search , the searching unit 114 starts searching for a device capable of pairing connection ( s 02 a ). the pairing search detects a device capable of pairing connection and located within the range of near field communication . only those devices that are in the pairing mode are detected , and devices in the normal mode are not detected . when worker a uses the controller 15 of the terminal device 10 a to select the biosensor device 20 a , the pairing management unit 115 determines the selected biosensor device 20 a as the pairing device ( s 03 a ) and establishes pairing with the biosensor device 20 a ( s 04 a ). similarly , the pairing management unit 214 of the biosensor device 20 a establishes pairing with the terminal device 10 a ( s 04 a ). when pairing is established , the mode control unit 213 of the biosensor device 20 a causes the host device to make a transition from the pairing mode to the normal mode ( s 05 a ). when pairing is established , the pairing management unit 115 of the terminal device 10 a communicates , to the management device 30 , pairing information including the identification information on the terminal device 10 a , the identification information on the biosensor device 20 a , and the name of the worker ( s 06 a ). the identification information on the pairing device is stored in the storage unit 12 of the terminal device 10 a and the storage unit 22 of the biosensor device 20 a . this allows the terminal device 10 a and the biosensor device 20 a to establish pairing automatically when they are turned on subsequently . like worker a , worker b and worker c also pair the terminal devices 10 b and 10 c with the biosensor devices 20 b and 20 c , respectively . the control unit 31 of the management device 30 acquires pairing information from the terminal devices 10 a , 10 b , and 10 c and stores the acquired information in the device information storage unit 321 ( s 07 ). if the terminal device 10 and the biosensor device 20 are permanently assigned to each worker for use , the processes in step s 06 and s 07 are omitted . a description will now be given of the process performed during a firefighting operation at a scene of a disaster . the biosensor devices 20 a - 20 c are worn by the bodies of workers a - c . the workers a - c hold the terminal devices 10 a - 10 c , respectively . the biosensor devices 20 a - 20 c and the terminal devices 10 a - 10 c are respectively paired by near field communication . the terminal devices 10 a - 10 c are master modules and the biosensor devices 20 a - 20 c are slave modules . fig6 is a flowchart showing the flow of the basic process in the dangerous operation support system 1 . the biological information acquisition unit 211 of the biosensor device 20 a acquires biological information on worker a from the sensor unit 24 . the biological information communicating unit 212 communicates the acquired biological information to the terminal device 10 a by near field communication ( s 11 a ). the biological information acquisition unit 111 of the terminal device 10 a paired with the biosensor device 20 a acquires the biological information from the biosensor device 20 a by near field communication . the biological information communicating unit 112 communicates the biological information to the management device 30 of the command center 3 by business wireless communication ( s 12 a ). the biological information on workers b and c are similarly communicated to the management device 30 of the command center 3 . the biological information acquisition unit 311 of the management device 30 acquires the biological information on workers a - c by business wireless communication . the display control unit 312 causes the display unit 34 to display the acquired biological information on workers a - c ( s 13 ). the commander at the command center 3 monitors the biological information on workers a - c displayed on the display unit 34 and know the states of workers a - c . the commander sends commands based on the states of workers a - c thus known . for example , if the heart rate of worker a shows an abnormal increase , the commander directs worker a to stop the firefighting operation and pull out . for example , the direction is given by outputting sound from the sound input and output unit 36 to the terminal device 10 a carried by firefighter a by business wireless communication . fig7 is a flowchart illustrating a method of requesting a rescue by using the dangerous operation support system 1 according to embodiment 1 . the biological information acquisition unit 211 of the biosensor device 20 a acquires biological information on worker a from the sensor unit 24 . the biological information communicating unit 212 communicates the acquired biological information to the terminal device 10 a by near field communication ( s 21 a ). the biological information acquisition unit 111 of the terminal device 10 a paired with the biosensor device 20 a acquires the biological information on worker a from the biosensor device 20 a by near field communication . the biological information evaluation unit 113 determines whether the acquired biological information on worker a is normal . for example , the biological information evaluation unit 113 determines whether the heart rate is accommodated within the normal range . if it is not accommodated in the normal range , a determination of abnormality is yielded . if the biological information is abnormal , it is estimated that worker a is in a dangerous state . the biological information may be evaluated in the biosensor device 20 a . in this case , flag information indicating normality / abnormality is appended to the biological information transmitted from the biosensor device 20 a . if biological information is evaluated in the biosensor device 20 a , the biological information evaluation unit 113 of the terminal device 10 a can be omitted . if the biological information on worker a is determined to be abnormal , the mode switching instruction communicating unit 119 of the terminal device 10 a communicates a mode switching instruction to the other terminal devices 10 b and 10 c by business wireless communication to direct the other terminal devices 10 b and 10 c to switch the mode of the biosensor devices 20 b and 20 c to the pairing mode ( s 22 a ). when the mode switching instruction communicating unit 119 of the terminal device 10 b acquires the mode switching instruction from the terminal device 10 a by business wireless communication , the mode switching instruction communicating unit 119 communicates the mode switching instruction to the biosensor device 20 b by near field communication ( s 23 b ). when the mode control unit 213 of the biosensor device 20 b acquires the mode switching instruction from the terminal device 10 b by near field communication , the mode control unit 213 causes the biosensor device 20 b to make a transition from the normal mode to the pairing mode ( s 24 b ). the terminal device 10 c and the biosensor device 20 c operate similarly . this allows the biosensor devices 20 b and 20 c to be detected by the terminal device 10 a . if the devices are configured to return a response to a pairing search from other devices in the normal mode as well , the processes in steps s 22 a , s 23 b , s 23 c , s 24 b , and s 24 c are omitted . the searching unit 114 of the terminal device 10 a starts a pairing search to search for a device connectable by near field communication ( s 25 a ). as a result of the search , the biosensor device 20 b worn by worker b at a location capable of near field communication with the terminal device 10 a held by worker a , i . e ., near the terminal device 10 a , is detected as a pairing candidate . meanwhile , the biosensor device 20 c worn by worker c at a location incapable of near field communication with the terminal device 10 a held by worker a , i . e ., not near the terminal device 10 a , is not detected as a pairing candidate ( s 26 a ). for example , given that class 2 bluetooth ( registered trademark ) is used , communication is disabled at a distance of about 10 m or more . the searching unit 114 acquires the identification information on the biosensor device 20 b identified by the search from the biosensor device 20 b via the near field communication unit 131 ( s 26 a ). the rescue request communicating unit 118 communicates , to the management device 30 , a rescue request including information indicating that worker a is in a dangerous state and the information acquired by the searching unit 114 ( the identification information ( id = b ) of the biosensor device 20 b , in the case of fig3 ) by business wireless communication . the rescue request acquisition unit 313 of the management device 30 acquires the rescue request from the terminal device 10 a by business wireless communication . the communication destination determination unit 317 acquires the identification information on the terminal device 10 mapped to the identification information on the biosensor device 20 acquired by the rescue request acquisition unit 313 , based on the device information stored in the device information storage unit 321 . the display control unit 312 causes the display unit 34 to display that worker a is in a dangerous state and that worker b is nearby . the display control unit 312 also causes the display unit 34 to display the device information on worker b acquired from the device information storage unit 321 . the commander viewing the screen on which these items of information are shown tells worker b that worker a in a dangerous state is nearby and directs worker b to rescue worker a . for example , the commander sends sound to the terminal device 10 b by business wireless communication ( s 28 ). if multiple biosensor devices 20 connectable to the terminal device 10 a by near field communication are detected as a result of the pairing search in step s 26 a above , the electric field detection unit 117 detects the radio field intensity of response signals transmitted from the connectable biosensor devices 20 . it is estimated that the higher the radio field intensity , the closer to the terminal device 10 a . if the devices are configured to return a response to a pairing search from other devices in the normal mode as well , the processes in steps s 22 a , s 23 b , s 23 c , s 24 b , and s 24 c are omitted . in this case , the biosensor device 20 a worn by the worker himself is excluded from the candidates of destination of communication . alternatively , the rescue request communicating unit 118 may communicate information on destinations of sending a rescue request by communicating the identification information on all the biosensor devices 20 detected as a result of the pairing search and the radio field intensity of the respective biosensor devices 20 . the commander at the command center 3 can determine the destination to send a rescue request based on the information on radio field intensity . as described above , the terminal device 10 a according to this embodiment performs the processes based on the radio field intensity in near field communication from the respective biosensor devices 20 instead of the radio field intensity in business wireless communication from the respective terminal devices 10 . this is because the output voltage in business wireless communication or cell phone communication is higher than that of near field communication so that it is difficult to estimate the distance from other workers located at the same scene based on the radio field intensity . if a scheme of communication routed by a base station or a relay station is employed for business wireless communication or cell phone communication , the radio field intensity detected will represent the intensity of radio field from the base station or the relay station , which is another reason why it is impossible to estimate the distance from the respective terminal devices 10 in communication . if multiple biosensor devices 20 connectable to the terminal device 10 a by near field communication are detected as a result of the pairing search in step s 26 a above , the pairing management unit 115 of the terminal device 10 a may establish pairing with all the biosensor devices 20 detected . if the system is designed to enable only one - to - one pairing , the terminal device 10 a and the detected biosensor devices 20 cancel the pairing established previously and establish pairing between the terminal device 10 a and the detected biosensor device 20 . the biological information acquisition unit 111 of the terminal device 10 a acquires biological information from the biosensor device 20 newly paired with the terminal device 10 a . the biological information evaluation unit 113 determines whether the value indicated by the biological information is in a dangerous range . if the value indicated by the biological information is in a dangerous range , the terminal device 10 held by the worker wearing the biosensor device 20 is excluded from the destinations of sending a rescue request . in other words , the rescue request communicating unit 118 excludes the terminal device 10 held by the worker for which the value indicated by the biological information is in a dangerous range from the destinations of sending a rescue request . the pairing management unit 115 of the terminal device 10 a cancels pairing with the associated biosensor device 20 and establishes pairing with another biosensor device 20 connectable with the terminal device 10 a by near field communication . the process is performed for all the biosensor devices 20 detected . when the biological information acquired from all the biosensor devices 20 detected has been evaluated , the terminal device 10 a and the detected biosensor devices 20 return the pairing devices to the original state . fig8 is a flowchart illustrating a method of requesting a rescue by using the dangerous operation support system 1 according to a variation to embodiment 1 . the processes through step s 26 a of the flowchart of fig8 are the same as those of the flowchart of fig7 . in the variation , the storage unit 12 of the terminal device 10 is also provided with a device information storage unit , like the storage unit 32 of the management device 30 . in the variation , the terminal device 10 a directly sends a rescue request to worker b without being mediated by the command center 3 . in other words , the rescue request communicating unit 118 of the terminal device 10 a communicates a rescue request to the terminal device 10 b held by worker b by business wireless communication , based on the result of pairing search ( s 29 a ). since the terminal device 10 b is within the range covered by radio waves for near field communication , the terminal device 10 b may communicate a rescue request by near field communication instead of business wireless communication . if a display unit is provided in the biosensor device 20 , the rescue request communicating unit 118 may communicate a rescue request to the biosensor device 20 b by near field communication . if multiple biosensor devices 20 connectable to the terminal device 10 a by near field communication are detected as a result of the pairing search in step s 26 a above , the communication destination determination unit 116 determines the terminal device 10 held by the worker wearing the biosensor device 20 ( one of the multiple biosensor devices 20 that are connectable ) with the highest radio field intensity as the destination of sending a rescue request . a rescue request may be sent to multiple destinations . in this case , the communication destination determination unit 116 identifies a preset number of biosensor devices in the descending order of radio field intensity , from the multiple connectable biosensor devices 20 . the communication destination determination unit 116 determines multiple terminal devices 10 held by multiple workers wearing the identified biosensor devices 20 as the destination of sending a rescue request . of the pairing candidates detected in step s 26 a above , the communication destination determination unit 116 only defines the terminal device 10 held by the worker wearing the biosensor device 20 having its identification information stored in the device information storage unit as the candidate of sending a rescue request . in other words , the rescue request communicating unit 118 excludes the terminal device 10 a held by a worker other the workers belonging to the same team from the targets of communicating a rescue request . if the biosensor device 20 as detected is of the same type as the biosensor device 20 of the requesting worker but is worn by a worker of another team , the terminal device 10 held by the worker wearing the detected biosensor device 20 is excluded from the destinations of sending a rescue request . as described above , according to embodiment 1 , a dangerous state of a worker can be made known to nearby workers smoothly by identifying the nearby worker using a pairing search in near field communication . by detecting the radio field intensity in near field communication , a worker estimated to be closest to the worker in the dangerous state can be identified . a worker estimated to be closest can be identified even if the worker is operating in a scene not covered by gps waves . fig9 shows the configuration of the terminal device 10 according to embodiment 2 . the control unit 11 of the terminal device 10 according to embodiment 2 includes a biological information acquisition unit 111 , a biological information communicating unit 112 , a biological information evaluation unit 113 , a searching unit 114 , a pairing management unit 115 , an electric field detection unit 117 , a search instruction communicating unit 118 a , a mode switching instruction communicating unit 119 , a search result communicating unit 1110 , and a presentation control unit 1111 . the features other than the control unit 11 are identical to the features of the management device 30 according to embodiment 1 shown in fig3 . fig1 shows the configuration of the management device 30 according to embodiment 2 . the control unit 31 of the management device 30 according to embodiment 2 includes a biological information acquisition unit 311 , a display control unit 312 , a search result acquisition unit 313 a , a biological information evaluation unit 314 , a mode switching instruction communicating unit 315 , and a search instruction communicating unit 316 . the features other than the control unit 31 are identical to the features of the management device 30 according to embodiment 1 shown in fig4 . fig1 is a flowchart illustrating a method of requesting a rescue by using the dangerous operation support system 1 according to embodiment 2 . the biological information acquisition unit 211 of the biosensor device 20 a acquires biological information on worker a from the sensor unit 24 . the biological information communicating unit 212 communicates the acquired biological information to the terminal device 10 a by near field communication ( s 31 a ). the biological information acquisition unit 111 of the terminal device 10 a paired with the biosensor device 20 a acquires the biological information on worker a from the biosensor device 20 a by near field communication . the biological information communicating unit 112 communicates the biological information on worker a to the management device 30 of the command center 3 by business wireless communication ( s 32 a ). the biological information acquisition unit 311 of the management device 30 acquires the biological information on worker a from the terminal device 10 a by business wireless communication . the biological information evaluation unit 314 determines whether the acquired biological information on worker a is normal . if the biological information on worker a is determined to be abnormal , the mode switching instruction communicating unit 315 of the management device 30 communicates a mode switching instruction to the terminal device 10 a by business wireless communication to direct the terminal device 10 a to switch the biosensor device 20 a from the normal mode to the pairing mode ( s 33 ). when the mode switching instruction communicating unit 119 of the terminal device 10 a acquires the mode switching instruction from the management device 30 by business wireless communication , the mode switching instruction communicating unit 119 communicates the mode switching instruction to the biosensor device 20 a by near field communication ( s 34 a ). when the mode control unit 213 of the biosensor device 20 a acquires the mode switching instruction from the terminal device 10 a by near field communication , the mode control unit 213 causes the biosensor device 20 a to make a transition from the normal mode to the pairing mode ( s 35 a ). if the devices are configured to return a response to a pairing search from other devices in the normal mode as well , the processes in steps s 33 , s 34 a , and s 35 a are omitted . after the biosensor device 20 a has made a transition to the pairing mode , the search instruction communicating unit 316 of the management device 30 communicates a search instruction to the terminal devices 10 b and 10 c worn by workers b and c , respectively , by business wireless communication , to direct the terminal devices 10 b and 10 c to initiate a pairing search for the biosensor device 10 a worn by worker a by near field communication ( s 36 ). the identification information ( id = a ) of the biosensor device 20 a searched for is appended to the search instruction . upon acquiring the search instruction from the management device 30 , the searching unit 114 of the terminal device 10 b starts a pairing search to search for a device connectable by near field communication ( s 37 b ). the terminal device 10 b held by worker b is at a distance capable of near field communication with the biosensor device 20 a , the biosensor device 20 a searched for is detected as a pairing candidate ( s 38 b ). the presentation control unit 1111 causes the display unit 14 to display that worker a in a dangerous state is nearby . this allows worker b to recognize that worker a in need of a rescue is within the range covered by radio waves for near field communication . the presentation control unit 1111 may cause the sound input and output unit 16 to output a sound to alarm that worker a in a dangerous state is nearby . the search result communicating unit 1110 communicates a search result including a message indicating that the biosensor device 20 a searched for is successfully detected to the management device 30 by business wireless communication ( s 39 b ). as in the terminal device 10 a , the searching unit 114 of the terminal device 10 c also starts a pairing search for a device connectable by near field communication , upon acquiring a search instruction from the management device 30 ( s 37 c ). since the terminal device 10 c held by worker c is not within the range covered by radio waves for near field communication with the biosensor device 20 a , the biosensor device 20 a searched for is not detected as a pairing candidate ( s 38 c ). the search result communicating unit 1110 communicates a search result , including a message indicating the failure to detect the biosensor device 20 a searched for , to the management device 30 by business wireless communication ( s 39 c ). the search result acquisition unit 313 a of the management device 30 acquires the search result from the terminal devices 10 b and 10 c by business wireless communication . the display control unit 312 causes the display unit 34 to display that worker b is near worker a in a dangerous state . the display control unit 312 also acquires the device information on worker b from the device information storage unit 321 and causes the display unit 34 to display the acquired information . the commander viewing the screen on which these items of information are shown tells worker b that worker a in a dangerous state is nearby and to rescue worker a . for example , the commander sends sound from the sound input and output unit 16 to the terminal device 10 b by business wireless communication ( s 399 ) to give the instruction . in step s 38 b above , the electric field detection unit 117 of the terminal device 10 b may detect the radio field intensity of a response signal transmitted from the biosensor device 20 a detected by the pairing search . the search result communicating unit 1110 communicates a search result including a message indicating that the biosensor device 20 a worn by worker a is successfully detected and the detected radio field intensity to the management device 30 by business wireless communication . by reporting a search result including the radio field intensity to the command center 3 in a case the biosensor device 20 a worn by worker a is detected by multiple terminal devices 10 , the commander can know which worker is closest to worker a by referring to the radio field intensity . after step s 38 b above , the pairing management unit 115 of the terminal device 10 b may establish pairing with the biosensor device 20 a worn by worker a detected . if the system is designed to enable only one - to - one pairing , the terminal device 10 b and the biosensor devices 20 a detected by the pairing search temporarily cancel the pairing established previously and establish pairing between the terminal device 10 b and the biosensor device 20 a . the biological information acquisition unit 111 of the terminal device 10 b acquires biological information from the biosensor device 20 a newly paired with the terminal device 10 b . the presentation control unit 1111 causes the display unit 14 to display the acquired biological information and / or causes the sound input and output unit 16 to output sound . for example , the numerical value of the acquired biological information may be read out by speech synthesis . worker b can know how dangerous worker a is by referring to the presented biological information and use it to build a rescue plan . fig1 is a flowchart illustrating a method of requesting a rescue by using the dangerous operation support system 1 according to a variation to embodiment 1 . the biological information acquisition unit 211 of the biosensor device 20 a acquires biological information on worker a from the sensor unit 24 . the biological information communicating unit 212 communicates the acquired biological information to the terminal device 10 a by near field communication ( s 31 a ). the biological information acquisition unit 111 of the terminal device 10 a paired with the biosensor device 20 a acquires the biological information on worker a from the biosensor device 20 a by near field communication . the biological information evaluation unit 113 determines whether the acquired biological information on worker a is normal . if the biological information on worker a is determined to be abnormal , the mode switching instruction communicating unit 119 communicates a mode switching instruction to the biosensor device 20 a by business wireless communication to direct the biosensor device 20 a to switch from the normal mode to the pairing mode ( s 34 a ). when the mode control unit 213 of the biosensor device 20 a acquires the mode switching instruction from the terminal device 10 a by near field communication , the mode control unit 213 causes the biosensor device 20 a to make a transition from the normal mode to the pairing mode ( s 35 a ). if the devices are configured to return a response to a pairing search from other devices in the normal mode as well , the processes in steps s 34 a and s 35 a are omitted . the subsequent processes are identical the processes following steps s 35 b and s 35 c in the flowchart of fig1 . in the variation , the search result communicating unit 1110 of the terminal devices 10 b and 10 c may communicate the search result to both of the requesting terminal device 10 a and the management device 30 by business wireless communication ( s 39 b , s 39 c ). as described above , according to embodiment 2 , a dangerous state of a worker can be made known to a nearby worker smoothly by identifying the nearby worker using a pairing search in near field communication . since multiple terminal devices 10 conduct a pairing search for the biosensor device 20 worn by the worker in a dangerous state , the redundancy is high . even if a trouble occurs in the near field communication unit 131 of one of the terminal devices 10 , the worker holding another terminal device 10 detecting the biosensor device 20 can come to a rescue . described above is an explanation based on an exemplary embodiment . the embodiment is intended to be illustrative only and it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that various modifications to constituting elements and processes could be developed and that such modifications are also within the scope of the present invention . in embodiment 1 , the searching unit 114 of the terminal device 10 a searches for a device connectable in near field communication when the biological information on worker a detected by the biosensor device 20 a is abnormal . a trigger other than abnormality in biological information can start a search so long as the trigger indicates abnormality in worker a undertaking a dangerous operation . for example , a heat sensor or a smoke sensor may be provided in the terminal device 10 held by worker a and , if it is estimated that worker a falls to the floor by referring to the output values from the sensor , a search may be started . a search may be alternatively started when worker a presses down a rescue request button of the controller 15 of the terminal device 10 a . in embodiments 1 and 2 , the biosensor device 20 is searched for in a pairing search as a slave module in near field communication . the terminal devices 10 held by other workers may also be searched for in the pairing search . since the biosensor device 20 is less likely to be removed from the body of a worker than the terminal device 10 , it would be appropriate to use the result of search for the biosensor device 20 in preference to the result of search for the terminal device 10 , if the results differ . the biosensor device 20 according to embodiments 1 and 2 is an example of communication terminal device on which the near field communication unit 131 is mounted and on which the business wireless communication unit 132 or a cell phone communication unit is not mounted . therefore , an accessory device such as a headset that supports bluetooth ( registered trademark ) may be used in place of the biosensor device 20 . | 7 |
latexes are typically used as a component in many commercial and industrial products , such as coatings , films , polishes , varnishes , paints , inks , adhesives and floor finishes . in many instances , these latexes do not require further antimicrobial or preservative additions . for example , many of these acrylic latexes , such as acrylic latex a ( described below ), may have a ph between 2 - 3 and need no preservative . however , these latexes are not stable to hot or cold temperature . one typical way to stabilize latexes is by partial or optimal neutralization with ammonia . when we refer to a “ stabilized acrylic latex ” we mean to encompass an acrylic latex that has been ph adjusted so that the latex is stable . in the examples below the ph was adjusted to ph 6 - 7 . however , once one has neutralized the latex , one must address the need for antimicrobial or biocidal additives . ( by the terms “ antimicrobial ” and “ biocidal ” we mean to include anti - fungal , anti - yeast and anti - bacterial properties .) our challenge test results initially showed that the maximum allowable level for bronopol ( 2 - bromo - 2 - nitro - 1 , 3 - propanediol , bnpd ) failed to control the growth of aspergillus niger and the maximum allowable level for bioban cs - 1135 ( 4 , 4 - dimethyl - oxazolidine ) failed to control candida albicans in a test stabilized acrylic latex . similarly , the maximum allowable level for dowicil 75 ( 1 -( 3 - chloroallyl )- 3 , 5 , 7 - triaza - 1 - azoniaadamantane chloride ) failed to control candida albicans in the test stabilized acrylic latex . surprisingly , we found that a combination of bronopol and bioban cs - 1135 and a combination of bronopol and dowicil 75 provided synergistic fungal enhancement of biocidal activity . therefore , a fully stabilized latex would comprise both ph modification and a synergistic combination of biocides . in one embodiment , the present invention is a combination of bronopol and bioban cs - 1135 in a stabilized latex , preferably an acrylic latex . the examples below disclose that the combination of 0 . 16 % bronopol and 0 . 5 % bioban cs - 1135 showed the synergistic result of killing both aspergillus niger and candida albicans in the test stabilized acrylic latex a . in another version , the present invention is a combination of bronopol and dowicil 75 in a stabilized latex , preferably an acrylic latex . the combination of 0 . 16 % bronopol and 0 . 15 % dowicil 75 also gave a similar synergistic result in the stabilized latex a . these two combinations were also found to work effectively in controlling the fungal growth in another test latex described below ( acrylic latex b ). we envision that the present invention would be suitable for a wide variety of latexes . latex generated by polymerization of acrylic esters would be especially preferred for the present invention . for example , acrylic monomers suitable for latexes of the present invention would include ethyl , butyl and 2 - ethylhexyl acrylate , as well as methyl and butyl methacrylate . styrene is typically copolymerized with these acrylic monomers , although other copolymerizations may be used . the examples in this case represent state of the art surfactant - supported acrylic latexes made by the semicontinuous batch process where the monomers are added at a controlled rate so the reaction exotherm can be controlled . in addition , they have an acid functional monomer , maa ( methacrylic acid ), incorporated into the polymer backbone , which can provide additional ionic stabilization when partially or totally neutralized with a base to form a carboxyl salt . in some cases , although not used with these examples , the semi - continuous process involves a precharge of a small amount of the monomer into the reactor to form a seed latex prior to the addition of the remainder of the monomers . the number of latex particles in the seed is a tool to help control the final particle size of the finished batch . the first latex ( latex a ) also represents a latex that can go from the colloidal dispersion form when not neutralized to a water - soluble polymer when fully neutralized . this solubility is accomplished by the proper level of acid functionality , and the use of a chain transfer agent ( iompa ) to lower the molecular weight . this latex was made without any base ( such as ammonia ) and it has a ph & lt ; 3 . at this ph , it is in the colloidal form , but it is not stable to freeze - thaw or elevated temperatures . it will also gel at extended times ( about 1 year ) at room temperature . however , it is relatively resistant to microbes when it is at an acidic ph . this latex can be stabilized to hot and freezing temperatures , and remain in colloidal form , by partial neutralization of the acid . however , this brings the ph into the 6 - 7 ph range and the latex is much more susceptible to microbial attack . this latex cannot be fully neutralized ( at the weight solids at which it was made ) or it will go into solution and the viscosity will be too high to be useful . the second latex ( latex b ) will not go into solution when all the acid is neutralized because the acid functionality is lower and the molecular weight is very high since a chain transfer agent was not used . ammonia is added at the end of the reaction to provide carboxyl groups to help stabilize the latex . its ph is also in the near neutral range and susceptible to microbial attack . this latex was also well protected by the combination of biocides . other types of “ state of the art ” latices or latexes are made by varying the rates and composition of monomer addition . for example , “ core - shell ” latexes are made by adding a blend of monomers from the first monomer tank to the reactor . these form the core or the latex particles . a second , and different blend , of monomers is then fed into the reactor to form the shell of the latex particles . a variation of this process called a “ linear power feed ,” simultaneously feeds a second tank of well - mixed monomers into the first tank of well - mixed monomers as the first tank is being fed into the reactor . this results in a continuous change from the composition of the first tank to the composition of the second tank during the polymerization process . resin supported latexes , such as exemplified in u . s . pat . nos . 4 , 839 , 413 and 5 , 216 , 064 and u . s . application 2004 / 0044124 a1 , are also suitable latexes for the present invention . we emphasized acrylic latexes , but the biocidal protection is expected to be effective with other types of latices or latexes , such as ethylene - vinyl acetate , vinyl acetate ( and other vinyl esters ), styrene butadiene , polyurethane dispersions and vinylidene chloride - acrylate . we expect the protection to be effective with other types of latexes as long as the biocides are stable at the desired ph . the examples below describe one typical way of incorporating the biocides into the stabilized acrylic latex . other ways of incorporating the biocides would be apparent to one of skill in the art . the biocide is typically added at the completion of the emulsion procedure . the present invention involves the incorporation of bronopol , bioban cs - 1135 and dowicil 75 in stabilized acrylic latexes . these biocides can be purchased commercially , typically from the dow chemical company , midland , mich . ; basf biocides limited , mount olive , n . j . ; and avecia biocides , wilmington , del . the examples below disclose that a combination of 0 . 16 % bronopol ( 30 % active ) and 0 . 5 % bioban cs - 1135 is effective and a combination of 0 . 16 % bronopol ( 30 % active ) and 0 . 15 dowicil 75 is effective . we believe that the following range of biocide concentration would be suitable for the present invention : one would use between 0 . 12 % and 0 . 16 % bronopol ( 30 % active ) and between 0 . 3 % and 0 . 5 % bioban cs - 1135 or 0 . 12 % and 0 . 16 % bronopol ( 30 % active ) and 0 . 15 % to 0 . 3 % dowicil 75 . test acrylic latex a ( defined below ) has a ph between 2 - 3 and needs no preservative . however , the latex is not stable to hot or cold temperature . one way to stabilize acrylic latex a is by raising the ph with ammonia into the “ dn ” range of 12 - 34 . ( dn is “ degree of neutralization ,” or the % of acid groups neutralized by ammonia , and is a preferred calculation of the number of moles of acid that are reacted with ammonia ). having a more neutral ph , addition of preservative is needed to prevent microbial contamination in the stabilized acrylic latex a . to screen for effective preservatives , the desired preservative is required to pass the antimicrobial effectiveness test or challenge test in the laboratory . we describe below the results to testing combinations of bronopol , bioban cs - 1135 and dowicil 75 with test polymers in our laboratory . the following cultures were obtained from american type culture collection ( atcc ) at 10801 university boulevard , manassas , va . 20110 - 2209 : escherichia coli # 11229 , pseudomonas aeruginosa # 15442 , candida albicans # 10231 , aspergillus niger # 6275 . the bacterial inoculum was 0 . 10 ml of a 1 : 1 mixture of the 24 - hr ± 4 hr culture of e . coli and p . aeruginosa in 25 grams of sample to give approximately 4 × 10 6 cfu / g . both e . coli culture and the p . aeruginosa culture were grown in nutrient broth ( difco laboratories , detroit , mich .) at 35 ° c . the yeast inoculum was 0 . 10 ml of a 72 - hr ± 4 hr culture of c . albicans in 25 grams of sample to give approximately 2 × 10 5 cfu / g . the c . albicans culture was grown in potato dextrose broth ( difco laboratories , detroit , mich .) at 28 ° c . the mold inoculum was 0 . 10 ml of a a . niger culture suspension in 25 grams of sample to give approximately 2 × 10 5 cfu / g . the culture suspension was obtained from 7 - day - old a . niger culture grown on sabouraud dextrose agar ( difco laboratories , detroit , mich .) with 0 . 2 % triton x - 100 in 0 . 85 % saline . each of the 25 - g samples were inoculated or challenged with 0 . 10 ml of the bacterial inoculum , the yeast inoculum , and the mold inoculum respectively on day - 0 and day - 14 . all samples were stored at ambient temperature . each sample ( 10 microliter ) was streaked on appropriate agar plates ( bacteria on tryptic soy agar ( difco laboratories , detroit , mich .) plates with neutralizer and yeast / mold on potato dextrose agar ( difco laboratories , detroit , mich .) plates with neutralizer ) on day - 1 , day - 2 , day - 3 , day - 7 , day - 14 , day - 15 , day - 16 , day - 17 , day - 21 , and day - 28 to test for survivors . streaked plates were incubated at appropriate temperature and time ( 48 - hr at 35 ± 2 ° c . for bacteria and 72 - hr at 28 ± 2 ° c . for yeast / mold ). on day - 14 , each sample was re - inoculated with appropriate inoculum after streaking on agar plates . plates were read after incubation time . recovery of surviving organisms at 14 days was a failing result for the challenge test . we performed our experiments on test samples of acrylic latex . the two sample acrylic latexes we used are described below . acrylic latex a ingredient name percentage deionized water 67 . 777000 methyl methacrylate 22 . 729000 methacrylic acid 250 ppm mehq 5 . 682000 abex jkb ( ether sulfate , anionic 2 . 870000 surfactant , rhone - poulenc , cranberry , nj ) isooctyl mercaptopropionate 0 . 371000 disulfonated anionic surfactant 0 . 317000 ammonium persulfate 0 . 284000 total percent : 100 . 000000 both acrylic latex a and acrylic latex b are made by the semi - continuous batch process , where the surfactants and initiator are precharged to the reactor and held at a specified time and temperature , and then the monomers are fed into the reactor by a controlled addition rate . di water ( deionized water ) is charged into the semicontinuous batch process production reactor ( minus about 3 % for flushes , etc .) and heated to 79 - 81 ° c . the reactor is a standard reactor used to make latex polymers comprising a stirrer and various feed tanks . methyl methacrylate ( mma ), methacrylic acid ( maa ), and isooctyl mercaptopropionate ( iompa ) are charged into the monomer tank and blended thoroughly . note monomer temperature should be between 4 and 21 ° c . ; the material must be cooled or warmed accordingly . the surfactants ( abex jkb and disulfonated anionic surfactant ) are charged into the reactor . the reactor is purged with 100 % nitrogen for 3 minutes and then reduced to a 20 % rate for the remainder of the run . the ammonium persulfate ( aps ) is charged into the reactor and the reactor is sealed . note : monomer addition must begin within 10 minutes of the aps addition . monomer charge is begun at a steady rate so that all the monomer is added in 50 minutes . after monomer addition has been completed , the batch is held at 80 ° c . for 30 minutes and then cooled to 30 - 40 ° c . the batch is then filtered . di water is charged ( minus about 3 % for flushes , etc .). the surfactants ( abex jkb and gemtex 691 / 40 ) are then charged into the reactor . the reactor is purged with 100 % nitrogen and agitation is begun . the reactor is heated to 79 - 81 ° c . methyl methacrylate ( mma ), methacrylic acid ( mma ), styrene ( sty ), and butyl acrylate ( ba ) are charged into the monomer tank and agitation is begun . note that monomer temperature should be between 5 and 22 ° c . ; cool or warm accordingly . into a small tank , the ammonium persulfate ( aps ) is charged along with 0 . 6 % of the di water and mixed . this is charged into the reactor , which is at 80 ° c . the reactor is sealed . agitated for 2 - 3 minutes ( no more than 10 minutes ). the monomer charge is begun at a steady rate so that all the monomer is added in 60 minutes while holding the temperature at 80 ° c . after monomer addition has been completed , the batch is heated to 85 ° c . in the reactor and held 60 minutes to react all the monomers . cooled to 45 ° c . and slowly added a 5 : 1 mixture of di water : ammonia ( 20 %) with vigorous agitation . cooled to 30 - 40 ° c . and then batch is filtered . biocides were always added after the reaction has been completed and after the batch has been cooled to & lt ; 50 ° c . the desired temperature was dependent on the specific biocide . many biocides become deactivated if exposed to high temperatures for an extended time . each biocide was diluted with about 5 × its weight with di water and slowly added to the batch with good agitation . the dilution is to prevent the biocide from shocking the latex . the batch was mixed for a minimum of 20 minutes after the biocide was added to ensure good incorporation . if any temporary destabilization to the latex had occurred , it had time to recover prior to filtration . the biocide is generally added last , after the ph adjustment , so that the biocide does not have to go through a ph change . the challenge test is a qualitative laboratory procedure used to differentiate poorly and marginally preserved products from well - preserved products . products are intentionally inoculated with test organisms and then evaluated by use of streak plating technique to determine if microbial reduction has been attained . challenge test results from table 1 showed that 2 . 0 % bioban cs - 1135 was required to kill all organisms in the stabilized acrylic latex a and bronopol at 0 . 5 % was required to kill all organisms in the stabilized acrylic latex a . we are interested in lowering the concentration of bronopol and bioban cs - 1135 due to regulatory concerns . the highest recommended concentration for bioban cs - 1135 is 5000 ppm ( 0 . 5 %) and the maximum level for bronopol is 500 ppm as an active ingredient . bronopol ( bioban bp - 30 ) used in the study is 30 % active . therefore the highest concentration for the 30 % active bronopol is 0 . 16 % ( 500 ppm as active ingredient ). results from table 1 showed that bioban cs - 1135 at 1 . 2 % failed to kill yeast ( c . albicans ) and 0 . 2 % bronopol failed to kill the mold ( a . niger ) in acrylic latex a . however , the combination of 0 . 5 % bioban cs - 1135 and 0 . 16 % bronopol showed surprising synergistic results of killing both the yeast ( c . albicans ) and the mold ( a . niger ). results from table 3 showed that 0 . 4 % dowicil 75 failed to kill the yeast ( c . albicans ) in the stabilized acrylic latex a with dn at 17 %. the highest concentration for dowicil 75 allowed by us epa is 0 . 3 %. surprising synergistic results of killing both the yeast ( c . albicans ) and the mold ( a . niger ) in polymer acrylic latex a were observed with the combination of dowicil 75 ( 0 . 15 %/ 0 . 3 %) and 0 . 16 % bronopol . the combination of bioban cs - 1135 was found to control the fungal growth in another test latex , acrylic latex b . the same result was found with the combination of dowicil 75 and bronopol in acrylic latex b . ( tables 2 and 4 ) table 4 challenge test results of dowicil 75 and bronopol ( 30 % active ) in acrylic latex b bacteria compound a compound b yeast mold e . coli and dowicil 75 bronopol c . albicans a . niger p . aeruginosa 0 . 15 % 0 . 15 % pass pass pass synergism was determined by the method described by f . c . kull , p . c . eisman , h . d . sylwestrowicz , and r . l . mayer in applied microbiology , volume 9 , pages 538 - 541 , 1961 using the ratio determined by synergy index ( si )= qa / qa + qb / qb = 1 is additivity , & lt ; 1 is synergism , and & gt ; 1 is antagonism where , qa = concentration of compound a , in the mixture , producing an end point qa = concentration of compound a , acting alone , producing an end point qb = concentration of compound b , in the mixture , producing an end point qb = concentration of compound b , acting alone , producing an end point according to kull &# 39 ; s synergy method , synergy index & lt ; 1 means synergism has occurred . table 5 shows that the 0 . 5 % bioban cs - 1135 and the 0 . 16 % bronopol combination had the synergy index of 0 . 57 which meant synergism has occurred . table 6 showed that the combination of 0 . 15 % dowicil 75 and 0 . 16 % bronopol had the synergy index of & lt ; 0 . 70 , which also meant synergism has occurred . | 0 |
hereinafter , these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete , and will fully convey the scope of the inventive concept to those skilled in the art . embodiments of the inventive concept will be described with reference to a static ram ( hereinafter , referred to as sram ). that is , a semiconductor memory device is assumed as a sram device . however , a semiconductor memory device according to embodiments of the inventive concept is not limited to the sram device . fig1 is a block diagram illustrating a part of a sram device according to an embodiment of the inventive concept . referring to fig1 , the sram device 100 includes a memory cell array 110 , a sense amplifier ( sa ) circuit 120 , a data input / output ( i / o ) circuit 130 , a driving circuit 140 and a control logic 150 , connected as illustrated . a row address decoder ( not shown ) may also be included within the driving circuit 140 . the memory cell array 110 is connected to the driving circuit 140 through word lines wls and is connected to the sense amplifier circuit 120 through pairs of bit lines . the memory cell array 110 includes a plurality of memory cells arranged in a matrix form . each memory cell is connected to a word line wl and a corresponding bit line pair bl and / bl . the sense amplifier circuit 120 includes a plurality of sense amplifiers . each sense amplifier is connected to a corresponding bit line pair bl and / bl , and operates in response to a sense amplifier enable signal sa_en . each sense amplifier senses and amplifies a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl selected by a column gate circuit ( not shown ) and then transmits the amplified voltage difference to the data i / o circuit 130 through a data line pair dl and / dl . the data i / o circuit 130 is connected to the sense amplifier circuit 120 through the data line pair dls and / dls . the data input circuit 130 may include typical components such as a data buffer . the data i / o circuit 130 transmits data data provided from the sense amplifier circuit 120 to the external . the data i / o circuit 130 operates in response to a control of the control logic circuit 150 . the driving circuit 140 includes a word line driver 141 and a sense amplifier driver 142 . the driving circuit 140 operates in response to a clock signal clk . this will be described in more detail with reference to fig2 . the word line driver 141 drives a word line wl selected based on a decoded row address provided from the row address decoder ( not shown ). the word line driver 141 generates a word line signal to drive the selected word line wl . the sense amplifier driver 142 is connected to the sense amplifier circuit 120 . the sense amplifier driver 142 drives sense amplifiers in response to a control of the control logic circuit 150 . the sense amplifier driver 142 generates a sense amplifier enable signal sa_en to drive sense amplifiers . the row address decoder within the driving circuit 140 decodes a row address among addresses addr provided from the external and selects a word line wl based on the decoded row address . the control logic circuit 150 controls important operations of the sram device 100 . the control logic circuit 150 operates in response to a control signal ctrl and a clock signal clk delivered from the external . as well known , in order to read data stored in a memory cell of a sram device , firstly , a word line signal is applied to a word line corresponding to a selection memory cell . next , a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl connected to the selection memory cell is generated . next , the sense amplifier senses and amplifies the voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl in response to a sense amplifier enable signal sa_en . at this point , a time point for sensing a pulse width of a word line signal and a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl affect operation error occurrence . a word line signal for preventing an operation error needs to be maintained until a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl is greater than a critical value . moreover , a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl should be sensed after it is increased more than a critical value . the sram device may be divided into a high speed sram device and a low speed sram device . the high speed sram device operates by a clock signal of a high frequency and a driving voltage of a high voltage . on the other hand , the low speed sram device operates by a block signal of a low frequency and a driving voltage of a low voltage . due to these characteristics , compared to the high - speed sram device , the low speed sram device may take longer time to increase a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl greater than a critical value . that is , compared to the high speed sram device , a develop time of a bit line pair bl and / bl may be longer in the low speed sram device . accordingly , in order to prevent an operation error in the low speed sram device , a pulse width of a word line needs to be increased , and a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl needs to be delayed . the sram device 100 includes a sense amplifier driver for adjusting a pulse width of a word line signal according to a frequency change of a clock signal clk using both a rising edge and a falling edge of a block signal clk and a sense amplifier driver for adjusting a time point for detecting a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl . accordingly , the sram device 100 may perform stable operations in both a high speed operation mode and a low speed operation mode . fig2 is a block diagram that more specifically illustrates a part of the sram device shown in fig1 . for concise description , memory cells constituting one column among a plurality of memory cells of the memory cell array 110 are illustrated . hereinafter , overlapping content described with reference to fig1 will be omitted . referring to fig2 , the driving circuit 140 of fig1 of the sram device may further include a clock signal delay circuit 143 for delaying a clock signal clk . the clock signal delay circuit 143 delays the clock signal clk by a predetermined time to generate a delay clock signal d_clk . the clock signal delay circuit 143 provides the delay clock signal to the sense amplifier driver 142 . the sense amplifier 121 is connected to memory cells constituting one column through a bit line pair bl and / bl . the sense amplifier 121 senses and amplifies a voltage difference between the bit line pair bl and / bl in response to a sense amplifier enable signal sa_en provided from the sense amplifier driver 142 . the word line driver 141 is connected to each memory cell through a corresponding word line wl . the word line driver 141 generates a word line signal in response to the clock signal clk . at this point , the word line driver 141 adjusts a pulse width of a word line signal using both a rising edge and a falling edge . that is , the word line driver 141 adjusts a pulse width of a word line signal according to a frequency of the clock signal clk . this will be described in more detail with reference to fig3 , 5 , and 6 . the sense amplifier driver 142 generates a sense amplifier enable signal sa_en in response to a rising edge of a delay clock signal d_clk in the high speed operation mode . at this point , a fixed delay time between the clock signal clk and the delay clock signal d_clk determines an occurrence time point of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en in the high speed operation mode . on the other hand , the sense amplifier driver 142 generates a sense amplifier enable signal sa_en in response to a falling edge of a clock signal clk in the low speed operation mode . as a result , the sense amplifier driver 142 adjusts an occurrence time point of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en according to a frequency of a clock signal clk . this will be described in more detail with reference to fig4 through 6 . fig3 is a circuit diagram illustrating the word line driver shown in fig2 . referring to fig3 , the word line driver 141 includes a signal delay unit 210 , an and gate 220 , first and second pmos transistors 230 and 240 , an nmos transistor 250 , and first and second inverters 260 and 270 . the clock signal clk is delivered to an input of the signal delay unit 210 , a gate of the first pmos transistor 230 , and a first input of the and gate 220 . an output of the signal delay unit 210 is connected to a second input of the and gate 220 . an output of the and gate 220 , a gate of the second pmos transistor 240 , and a gate of the nmos transistor 260 are connected to a first node n 1 . a drain and a source of the first pmos transistor 230 are connected to a driving power vcc and a second node n 2 , respectively . a drain and a source of the second pmos transistor 240 are connected to second and third nodes n 2 and n 3 , respectively . a drain and a source of the nmos transistor 250 are connected to a third node n 3 and a ground gnd , respectively . the first and second inverters 260 and 270 constitute a latch between the third node n 3 and the word line wl . the signal delay unit 210 and the and gate 220 constitute a short pulse generator . the signal delay unit 210 delays a clock signal clk for a predetermined time and inverts the delayed clock signal clk , and then outputs the inverted clock signal clk . for this , the signal delay unit 210 may include an odd number ( for example , 2n − 1 where n is a natural number ) of inverters . herein , as the number of inverters is increased , a delay time is increased . the and gate 220 performs an and operation on a clock signal clk and an output signal of the signal delay unit 210 . the short pulse generator generates a short pulse through an and operation on the clock signal clk and the inverted delay signal . at this point , a pulse width of the short pulse generated by the and operation is proportional to a fixed delay time of the signal delay unit 210 . the short pulse shifts into a high level in response to a rising edge of the clock signal clk . at this point , the first transistor 230 is turned off by the clock signal clk . moreover , the second pmos transistor 240 is turned off by a short pulse and the nmos transistor 250 is turned on . when the nmos transistor 250 is turned on , an output signal of the second inverter 270 shifts into a high level as a word line signal . consequently , the word line signal shifts into a high level in response to a rising edge of the clock signal clk . in order to describe a time point when the word line signal shifts into a low level , it is assumed that a falling edge of the clock signal clk occurs before a falling edge of a short pulse ( i . e ., characteristic of the high speed operation mode ). first , if a falling edge of a clock signal clk occurs , the first pmos transistor 230 is turned on . however , since the second pmos transistor 240 is still turned off and the nmos transistor 250 is turned on , the word line signal maintains a high level . later , if a falling edge of a short pulse occurs , all of the first and second pmos transistor 230 and 240 are turned on and the nmos transistor 250 is turned off . due to this , an output signal of the second inverter 280 shifts into a low level as a word line signal . as a result , a word line signal shifts into a low level in response to a falling edge . this means that the word line signal corresponds to a short pulse that is generated in response to a rising edge of the clock signal clk in the high speed operation mode . unlike this , it is assumed that a falling edge of a clock signal clk occurs after a falling edge of a short pulse ( i . e ., characteristic of the low speed operation mode ). first , a falling edge of a short pulse occurs , the second pmos transistor 240 is turned on and the nmos transistor 250 is turned off . however , the first pmos transistor 230 is still turned off . accordingly , the third node n 3 floats . even when the third node n 3 floats , the word line signal maintains a high level by the first and second inverters 260 and 270 that operate as a latch . next , if a falling edge of a clock signal clk occurs , all of the first and second pmos transistors 230 and 240 are turned on . due to this , an output signal of the second inverter 270 shifts into a low level as a word line signal . as a result , the word line signal shifts into a low level in response to a falling edge of the clock signal clk . as mentioned above , the word line signal shifts into a low level in response to a falling edge that occurs later among falling edges of a short pulse , which are generated in response to a falling edge of a clock signal clk and a rising edge of a clock signal clk . due to this , a pulse width of a word line signal in the high speed operation mode during which a clock signal clk of a high frequency is inputted guarantees a pulse width of a short pulse determined by a fixed delay time . on the contrary , as a pulse width of a clock signal clk is increased in the low speed operation mode during which a clock signal clk of a low frequency is inputted , a pulse width of a word line signal is increased . fig4 is a circuit diagram illustrating a sense amplifier driver shown in fig2 . referring to fig4 , the sense amplifier driver 142 includes an inverter 310 , first and second pmos transistors 330 and 340 , first and second nmos transistors 340 and 350 , a signal delay unit 360 , and an and gate 370 . the sense amplifier driver 142 operates in response to a clock signal clk and a delay clock signal d_clk that delays the clock signal clk . as mentioned above , the delay clock signal d_clk is provided from the clock signal delay circuit 143 of fig2 . the clock signal clk is delivered to a gate of the first pmos transistor 320 and a gate of the second nmos transistor 350 . the delay clock signal d_clk is delivered to an input of the inverter 310 . an output of the inverter 310 , a gate of the second pmos transistor 330 , and a gate of the first nmos transistor 340 are connected to a first node n 1 . a drain and a source of the first pmos transistor 320 are connected to a driving power vcc and a second node n 2 , respectively . a drain and a source of the second pmos transistor 330 are connected to second and third nodes n 2 and n 3 , respectively . a drain and a source of the first and second nmos transistors 340 and 350 are connected to third node n 3 and a ground gnd , respectively . the inverter 310 inverts a delay clock signal d_clk and outputs an inverted delay clock signal / d_clk . the inverted delay clock signal / d_clk is delivered to a gate of the second pmos transistor and a gate of the first nmos transistor 340 . the first and second pmos transistor 320 and 330 and the first and second nmos transistors 340 and 350 perform a nor operation on the clock signal clk and the inverted delay clock signal / d_clk . a signal generated by the nor operation is delivered to the third node n 3 . the signal delay unit 360 and the and gate 370 constitute a short pulse generator . the signal delay unit 360 delays a signal delivered to the third node n 3 for a predetermined time , and inverts and outputs the signal . for this , the signal delay unit 360 may include an odd number ( for example , 2n − 1 where n is a natural number ) of inverters . herein , as the number of inverters is increased , a delay time is increased . the and gate 370 perform an and operation on a signal delivered to the third node n 3 and an output signal of the signal delay unit 360 . the short pulse generator generates a short pulse by performing an and operation on a signal delivered to the third node n 3 and the inverted delay signal . at this point , a pulse width of a short pulse generated by the and operation is proportional to a fixed delay time of the signal delay unit 360 . the short pulse is provided to the sense amplifier 121 of fig2 as a sense amplifier enable signal sa_en . in order to describe a time point when the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en occurs , it is assumed that a falling edge of the clock signal clk occurs before a rising edge of the delay clock signal d_clk ( that is , characteristic of the high speed operation mode ). first , when a falling edge of the clock signal clk occurs , the first pmos transistor 320 is turned on and the second nmos transistor 350 is turned off . however , a signal delivered to the third node n 3 maintains a low level because the second pmos transistor 330 is turned off and the first nmos transistor 340 is turned on . later , when a rising edge of the delay clock signal d_clk occurs , the second pmos transistor 330 is turned on and the first nmos transistor 340 is turned off . due to this , a signal delivered to the third node shifts into a high level . then , the short pulse generator generates a rising edge of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en in response to a rising edge of a signal delivered to the third node n 3 . as a result , the sense amplifier driver 142 generates the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en in response to a rising edge of the delay clock signal d_clk in the high speed operation mode . unlike this , it is assumed that a falling edge of a clock signal clk occurs after a rising edge of a delay clock signal d_clk ( i . e ., characteristic of the low speed operation mode ). first , a rising edge of the delay clock signal d_clk occurs , the second pmos transistor 330 is turned on and the first nmos transistor 340 is turned off . however , the first pmos transistor 320 is still turned off . however , a signal delivered to the third node n 3 maintains a low level because the first pmos transistor 320 is turned off and the second nmos transistor 350 is turned on . next , if a falling edge of a clock signal clk occurs , the first pmos transistor 320 is turned on and the second nmos transistor 350 is turned off . due to this , a signal delivered to the third node n 3 shifts into a high level . moreover , the short pulse generator generates a rising edge of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en in response to a rising edge of a signal delivered to the third node n 3 . as a result , the sense amplifier driver 142 generates a sense amplifier enable signal sa_en in response to a falling edge of the clock signal clk in the low speed operation mode . as mentioned above , the sense amplifier driver 142 generates a sense amplifier enable signal sa_en in response to one that occurs later among a falling edge of the clock signal clk and a rising edge of the delay clock signal d_clk . due to this , an occurrence time point of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en in the high speed operation mode in which a clock signal clk of a high frequency is inputted is determined according to a fixed delay time . on the contrary , as a pulse width of the clock signal clk is increased in the low speed operation mode in which a clock signal clk of a low frequency is inputted , an occurrence time point of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en is delayed further . fig5 is a timing diagram illustrating a high speed operation mode of a sram device according to an embodiment of the inventive concept . that is , referring to fig5 , the sram device is synchronized with a clock signal clk of a high frequency . referring to fig5 , a word line signal wl shifts into a high level in response to a rising edge of the clock signal clk . a pulse width of the word line signal wl is determined by a fixed delay time td_wl of the signal delay unit 210 shown in fig3 . in order for a stable operation , the fixed delay time td_wl may be set longer than a develop time of a bit line pair bl and / bl . the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en shifts into a high level in response to a rising edge of the delay clock signal d_clk . at this point , the sense amplifier 121 of fig2 performs a sense operation . in order to prevent an operation error , a sense operation should be performed after a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl becomes greater than a critical value . accordingly , the fixed delay time td_clk between the clock signal clk and the delay clock signal d_clk is set to allow the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en to shift into a high level after a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl becomes greater than a critical value . a pulse width of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en is determined according to a fixed delay time td_sa of the signal delay unit 310 shown in fig4 . however , a pulse width of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en does not affect a sense operation greatly because the sense operation is performed at a rising edge of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en . fig6 is a timing diagram illustrating a low speed operation mode of a sram device according to an embodiment of the inventive concept . that is , as shown in fig6 , the sram device is synchronized to a clock signal clk of a low frequency . referring to fig6 , a word line signal wl shifts into a high level in response to a rising edge of the clock signal clk . however , unlike the high speed operation mode , the word line signal wl shifts into a low level in response to a falling edge . a falling edge of the clock signal clk in the low speed operation mode occurs after a falling edge of a word line signal in the high speed operation mode . accordingly , compared to the high speed operation mode , a pulse width of the word line signal wl is increased in the low speed operation mode . this means that a pulse width of the word line signal wl is increased more than a pulse width , which is determined according to a fixed delay time td_wl of the signal delay unit 210 shown in fig3 . that is , it means that a pulse width of the word line signal wl is increased if a pulse width of the clock signal clk is increased in the low speed operation mode . if a pulse width of the word line signal wl in the low speed operation mode , a develop time ( which is used for increasing a voltage difference between pairs of lines bl and / bl more than a critical value ) is obtained . unlike the high speed operation mode , the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en shifts into a high level in response to a falling edge of the clock signal clk . due to this , as a pulse width of the clock signal clk is increased , a rising edge of the sense amplifier enable signal sa_en occurs later compared to the high speed operation mode . this means that a sense operation may be performed after a voltage difference between a bit line pair bl and / bl is greater than a critical value . accordingly , the sram device may perform a stable sense operation . compared to a high speed operation mode , a develop time of a bit line pair bl and / bl is longer in the low speed operation mode . due to this , if a sense operation is performed in the low speed operation mode at the same time point as the high speed operation mode , a voltage difference between pairs of lines bl and / bl may be sensed below a critical value , such that an operation error may occur . in order to prevent this operation error , the sram device of the inventive concept generates a word line signal having a pulse width that is increased as a pulse width of the clock signal clk is increased in a low speed operation mode . additionally , the sram device generates a sense amplifier enable signal to delay a sense operation time point . accordingly , the sram device may perform a stable sense operation . in relation to a semiconductor memory device according to embodiments of the inventive concept , a pulse width and a detection operation time point of a word line signal can be adjusted according to a frequency change of a clock signal . accordingly , the semiconductor memory device can perform a stable operation in all of a high speed operation mode synchronized to a clock signal of a high frequency and a low speed operation mode synchronized to a clock signal of a low frequency . the above - disclosed subject matter is to be considered illustrative and not restrictive , and the appended claims are intended to cover all such modifications , enhancements , and other embodiments , which fall within the true spirit and scope of the inventive concept . thus , to the maximum extent allowed by law , the scope of the inventive concept is to be determined by the broadest permissible interpretation of the following claims and their equivalents , and shall not be restricted or limited by the foregoing detailed description . | 6 |
drawing fig1 depicts a first embodiment of a vertical surface mount package ( vsmp ) having a locking device for holding the vsmp in place on a circuit board by pressure . package 10 , having a suitable integrated circuit device or semiconductor device therein which may include memory for a computer , includes a plurality of gull - wing , zig - zag , in - line package leads 12 , mounted to a bottom surface edge of package 10 . a pair of locking shoulders 14 of the package 10 each receive a locking pin that attaches to a circuit board or substrate . drawing fig2 depicts an alternative embodiment of package 10 still having the plurality of gull - wing , zig - zag , in - line package leads 12 . instead of having locking shoulders 14 , locking holes 16 are provided into which j - shaped locking pins insert and hold package 10 in bias tension against a circuit board . in either embodiment , the gull - wing , zig - zag , in - line package leads 12 can extend the full length of the bottom of the package 10 to the very edge of package 10 . this allows a greater density of contacts to be provided than would otherwise be possible in the prior art systems of the anchoring pins , as taught in u . s . pat . no . reissue 34 , 794 , entitled gull - wing , zig - zag , inline - lead package having end - of - package anchoring pins , incorporated herein by reference for all purposes . drawing fig3 depicts in cross - sectional view a package connection assembly 18 where package 10 is mounted to a printed circuit board 22 , or any other suitable substrate 22 , using j - hooks ( also called j - shaped locking pins ) 20 . the package 10 includes one or more integrated circuit devices or semiconductor devices ( shown in dotted outline ) therein which may include memory type semiconductor devices or combination processor and memory type devices . the j - hooks 20 latch onto locking shoulders 14 of package 10 . printed circuit board 22 can be any type of printed circuit board including a personal computer motherboard or a daughter card , or any other carrier card mounted to a motherboard . j - shape locking pins 20 are mounted to printed circuit board 22 either by being soldered in place or resiliently press fitted into printed circuit board 22 . j - shape locking pins 20 are also designed to resiliently flex when inserting and locking in place semiconductor device package 10 or when removing package 10 . the gull - wing package leads 12 are resiliently biased against matching bonding pads on printed circuit board 22 when the package 10 is secured in place with j - shaped locking pins 20 resiliently engaging locking shoulders 14 . package 10 , as shown in drawing fig3 allows the gull - wing package leads 12 to extend the full length of the bottom of package 10 . this allows for a greater density of leads to be biased in connection to printed circuit board 22 . further , since j - shaped locking pins 20 mount into printed circuit board 22 , rather than package 10 having anchoring pins inserted into openings in printed circuit board 22 , the tension or force acting on printed circuit board 22 is greatly reduced because either a much stronger mechanical connection is provided via the soldering of j - shaped locking pins 20 into printed circuit board 22 or j - shaped locking pins 20 are resiliently biased much more readily than any anchoring pins that would have been attached to package 10 as previously described in the prior art section . with the pins readily replaceable , should one break , the package 10 itself is not damaged but an inexpensive and easily replaceable anchoring device is thereby provided . drawing fig4 illustrates a cross - sectional side view of a plurality of packages 10 mounted to printed circuit board 22 . in the embodiment of drawing fig4 the manner of locking is the same as that depicted in drawing fig2 . in this instance , a locking pin 26 is fitted within printed circuit board 22 having a resilient biasing portion 30 , which fits and is received within locking hole 16 , and is retained in a biased position within locking hole 16 by n - hooks 32 . for removing locking pin 26 from locking hole 16 , the end of the n - hook 32 of resilient biasing portion 30 is urged together sufficiently so that they may be removed through locking hole 16 . once in position , the gull - wing package leads 12 are resiliently biased against lead contacting board traces 28 . locking pins 26 can be soldered in printed circuit board 22 or resiliently press fitted in printed circuit board 22 . further , locking pins 26 are able to resiliently flex when loading or removing package 10 . integrated circuit package 10 can be any type of circuit device contemplated for use within a computer system . for example , package 10 can be used to clear the memory devices of a computer system or be used to implement a memory storage device of a computer system . other types of implementation may incorporate a processing unit that either provides the main functions of operation within a computer system or any preferable implantation processing capabilities such as for a video card or any other preferable device . an example of the manner in which the semiconductor device package 10 may be integrated into a computer system is illustrated in drawing fig5 . referring to drawing fig5 illustrated in block diagram form is a computer system 36 integrated with the semiconductor device package 10 mounted to a printed circuit board 22 . printed circuit board 22 further includes a central processing unit 38 , connected to a bus 40 , which further communicates through output data device 42 and input data device keyboard 44 . additional preferable structure for a computer system 36 would be readily apparent to those skilled in the art . additional embodiments are possible with the concepts outlined in either drawing fig1 or drawing fig2 as well as in drawing fig3 and 4 . one example would be to mount semiconductor device packages 10 on either side of the printed circuit board 22 in such a fashion to double the amount of surface mount vertical packages connected to the printed circuit board 22 . other embodiments will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art . as such , any such changes or modifications that are apparent to those skilled in the art may be made thereto without departing from the spirit and the scope of the invention as claimed . | 7 |
an embodiment according to the present invention to illustrate a selfaligned process for a flash memory is shown in fig2 to fig3 . fig2 is the cross - sectional view after a gate stack 10 and a source 30 / drain 32 are formed , in which a tunnel oxide layer 14 is formed on a substrate 12 with a polysilicon layer 16 thereon , an ono layer 18 is formed on the polysilicon layer 16 with another polysilicon layer 20 thereon , and a tungsten silicide layer 22 is formed on the second polysilicon layer 20 with a hard mask layer 24 thereon . after forming the gate stack 10 , the source 30 and drain 32 are formed on the substrate 12 with the gate structure 10 as the mask in the first selfaligned process . then a solution with a high etch selectivity to tungsten silicide is used to clean the sidewall of the tungsten silicide layer 22 in the gate structure 10 . preferably , sc - 1 is used for the solution in this clean process . sc - 1 is an alkaline peroxide solution that composes of five parts of deionized water , one part of 30 % hydrogen peroxide , and one part of 29 % ammonia . after this step , the sidewall of the tungsten silicide layer 22 is etched for the control of the critical dimension of the tungsten silicide layer 22 . when the high etching selectivity solution is used to clean the sidewall of the tungsten silicide layer 22 , the tungsten silicide layer 22 has a faster etching rate than other layers , and thus the sidewall of the tungsten silicide layer 22 is etched to form recess on its sidewall . after the above clean process is finished , rapid thermal processing ( rtp ) is preceded in an atmosphere containing oxygen radical in a chamber so as to activate the gate , source and drain structures and form an oxide layer at the polysilicon 16 outskirt of the floating gate polysilicon 16 to prevent current leakage . due to the thermal treatment using rapid thermal treatment in an atmosphere with oxygen radical , surface reaction is the main reaction mechanism of the thermal oxidation in this atmosphere and thus the tungsten silicide layer 22 is kept smooth on its surface and not easy to expand . when using the rapid thermal process in an atmosphere with oxygen free radical , hydrogen and oxygen are additionally pumped into the chamber at a low pressure from about 5 torrs to 50 torrs . after the above annealing process , the crystal structure of the tungsten silicide layer 22 is transferred from tetragon cubic crystal to hexagon cubic crystal . sin or sio2 is deposited and etched to form spacers 26 and 28 on the sidewalls of the gate structure 10 , as shown in fig3 . since the tungsten silicide layer 22 is previously cleaned with a high etch selectivity solution , gaps 34 and 36 are formed between the tungsten silicide layer 22 and spacers 26 and 29 from the recesses , and thereby increasing the distance between the tungsten silicide layer 22 and spacers 26 and 28 . when the tungsten silicide layer 22 expands due to the thermal stress in the subsequent thermal process , no squeezing is happened to damage the gate structure 10 . as a result , the surface of the tungsten silicide layer 22 and gate structure 10 is kept smooth , and the distances between the tungsten silicide layer 22 and contact windows will not be shortened . poor performance such as increasing in local electric field and decreasing in breakage voltage won &# 39 ; t happen . fig4 is an illustration of the deformation of a conventional gate structure due to the thermal expansion of the tungsten silicide for comparison with the resultant structure formed by the inventive process . in a conventional selfaligned process , the tungsten silicide layer in a gate structure will expand due to thermal stress in any subsequent thermal process . since there is no excess space in the gate structure for the expanded volume of the tungsten silicide layer caused by thermal stress , the grains inside the tungsten silicide layer will push each other and increases the critical dimension of the tungsten silicide layer , and the breakage voltage between the tungsten silicide layer and contact windows will be lowered . in contrast , the inventive selfaligned process generates a buffer gaps 34 and 36 between the tungsten silicide layer 22 and spacers 26 and 28 . when the tungsten silicide layer 22 expands due to thermal stress , gaps 34 and 36 buffer the expansion of the tungsten silicide layer 22 and thereby do not affect the structure inside the tungsten silicide layer 22 . fig5 is a microscope photograph of a conventional gate structure . the squeezing of the tungsten silicide layer due to the thermal expansion caused by thermal stress can be seen thereof , and the surface of the sidewall is very rough . fig6 is a microscope photograph of the gate structure produced by the inventive process , in which the tungsten silicide layer is not squeezed due to the expansion caused by thermal stress , and the surface of the sidewall is very smooth . comparing fig5 and 6 , the selfaligned process proposed in the present invention has obviously improved the disadvantages of the prior gate structure . while the present invention has been described in conjunction with preferred embodiments thereof , it is evident that many alternatives , modifications and variations will be apparent to those skilled in the art . accordingly , it is intended to embrace all such alternatives , modifications and variations that fall within the spirit and scope thereof as set forth in the appended claims . | 7 |
in the following detailed description , reference is made to the accompanying drawings , which form a part hereof and are shown by way of illustration specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced . these embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention . it is understood that other embodiments may be utilized without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention . to avoid detail not necessary to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention , the description may omit certain information known to those skilled in the art . the following detailed description is , therefore , not to be taken in a limiting sense , and the scope of the present invention is defined only by the appended claims . with reference to fig1 , the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 of access panel 30 are shown in their retracted and stowed position . the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 are mounted on a frame structure 10 . with reference to fig2 where the framing structure 10 is removed for clarity , the first ladder section 500 is spaced away from the inner surface 810 of the cover 800 ( see fig1 ). beams 801 are mechanically attached to the cover 800 . in this manner , the climbing of the steps of ladder 500 is not affected by the presence of the cover 800 . in other words , the resting position of the feet of the user of the ladder portions of the access panel 30 remains the same whether the user is on ladder sections 700 , 600 or 500 . this allows each step of the ladder sections to have the same depth , and this provides to the user the same position of steps against his feet regardless of which section of the ladder he is standing on . there are many manual retractable ladders that are commonly used in the industry , and more particularly in the construction industry . these ladders are composed of different sections that are arranged to slide on one another so that they can be extended and retracted . however the steps of these ladders are usually composed of a plurality of rungs . such a step configuration would be neither comfortable nor safe for everyone to use . therefore , as shown on fig2 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , and 12 , all the steps have a comfortable width for the security of the person climbing of each of the sections . with reference to fig2 the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 are configured to allow a longitudinal sliding motion between each other . section 500 is mechanically attached to cover 800 and spaced from it by beams 801 . section 600 is configured to slide longitudinally on top of , but inside , section 500 . section 700 is configured to slide longitudinally on top of , but outside , section 600 . no further description of the sliding arrangement is made as this is a very well known and used in industrial ladders technology . cover 800 that supports the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 is hinged via hinge 819 on forward end 13 of the framing structure 10 ( see fig1 and 2 ). since ladder section 500 is mechanically attached to cover 800 , the hinge 819 can alternatively be installed between ladder section 500 and forward end 13 of framing structure 10 . still in reference to fig2 , one end of cables 50 is attached to reels 101 while their other end is attached to bars 703 of ladder section 700 . cables 50 are guided by pulleys 301 hinged on the framing structure 10 ( see fig1 ), the pulleys 303 hinged on cover 800 and pulleys 305 hinged on ladder section 500 . clevis supports 304 of pulleys 303 are located such that the portion of the cables 50 that is guided by pulleys 301 and 303 is substantially vertical . this decreases the force required for the closing of the cover 800 . pulleys 305 are supported by clevis fittings 306 that are mechanically attached to either the forward portion of ladder section 500 or the forward portion of the cover 800 . retainer cables 60 have one end attached to bolts 19 that are mechanically attached to longitudinal sides 11 and 12 of framing support 10 ( see fig3 ). the other end of cables 60 is hinged on clevis fitting 802 that is mechanically attached to the cover 800 . still in reference to fig2 , the locks 201 have been moved away from their locked position by the rod 704 that is mechanically attached to ladder section 700 . the locks 201 are spring loaded via springs 202 towards their locked position , and their function is to lock the cover 800 to its full opened position when the ladder sections 600 and / or 700 have moved away from their retracted position . with reference to fig3 , the framing structure 10 that supports the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 has a forward end 13 , a intermediate distal end 14 and an aft end 15 . the three ends 13 , 14 , 15 are bordered by two identical longitudinal opposite sides 11 and 12 . there is a central through opening 17 disposed between the forward end 13 and intermediate distal end 14 and the longitudinal sides 11 and 12 . there is no central through opening between intermediate distal end 14 and aft end 15 and the longitudinal sides 11 and 12 ; however , there is a cavity 20 that has a floor 16 . this cavity 20 houses the latching system ( as will be subsequently described ), the safety system and the driving mechanism 100 of the apparatus of the invention . still in reference to fig3 , the forward end 13 provides the support for locks 201 , the function of which is described later . the longitudinal sides 11 and 12 support the driving shafts of the braking system 102 , the devices 302 which support pulleys 301 , and the bolts 19 of the retainer cables 60 ( fig2 ). the lower faces of the longitudinal walls 11 and 12 and of the forward end 13 and intermediate distal end 14 are fitted with a seal 18 that is sandwiched by cover 800 when in its closed position . in this manner , should the access panel 30 be installed in a ceiling of a room that has a atmospheric controlled environment , energy spending is minimized . with reference to fig6 , the cover 800 is shown in its full opened position . cover 800 cannot open further because it is retained by cables 60 . pulled by springs 202 , the mechanical locks 201 have started to pivot on mounting devices 203 that are mechanically attached to forward end 13 . one end 205 of the springs 202 is attached to the locks 201 while the other end 206 is attached to rod 503 of ladder section 500 ( see fig9 ). in this position the mechanical locks 201 have hot yet reached their latched position because the ladder section 700 has not moved away from its retracted position . with reference to fig7 , the mechanical locks 201 are pulled by springs 202 and have reached their latched position . the mechanical locks 201 are resting on their abutment fitting 204 that is mechanically attached to the forward end 13 . the mechanical locks 201 are also resting on fittings 501 ( see fig9 ). in this position , the cover 800 and the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 are locked in the opened position because of the over center arrangement of the mechanical locks 201 . also in this position , the reaction force that the ladder section 500 communicates to the mechanical locks 201 is to further rotate the mechanical locks 201 towards an even more secure locked position , but this not possible as the abutment fittings 204 prevent the mechanical locks 201 from rotating further . in reference to fig8 , the ladder sections 600 and 700 are fully extended . cables 60 prevent further opening of cover 800 . operation of cables 50 with pulleys 301 , 303 and 305 and reels 101 retract the ladder sections 600 and 700 and close the cover 800 as will be described hereinbelow . starting with fig1 , the access panel 30 is retracted and closed or stowed . to initiate the opening of the cover 800 of the access panel 30 , one needs to press a switch in the living area ( not shown ) for energizing of the solenoid 223 that has its piston rod spring loaded in the retracted position ( see fig5 ). this action extends the piston rod of the solenoid 223 which then pivots the unlatching lever 221 of stow latch 225 towards its unlatched position . the unlatch lever 221 disengages stow latch 225 from its latch receptacle 220 mounted on the intermediate distal end 14 of the framing structure 10 , and by gravity the cover 800 moves away from its latched position , but is stopped by the safety latch 211 that engages teeth of latch wheel 210 , which is mechanically attached to one of the reels 101 ( see fig4 ). energizing the solenoid 213 retracts its piston rod which pivots the safety lever 211 around its axis that is supported by clevis fitting 212 . the piston rod of solenoid 213 is spring loaded in the extended position . therefore , energization of the solenoid 213 must be maintained for the safety latch 211 to disengaged from the teeth of the wheel 210 . the switch ( not shown ) that energized the solenoid 213 is a not an on - off switch , but a switch that needs to be pressed and maintained pressed by the user to open the cover 800 and lower ladder sections 600 and 700 . this is a safety characteristic of the invention , as the access panel 30 cannot accidentally fully open and fully extend unless the user has decided to do so . for example , this prevents the full opening of the access panel 30 and extension of the ladder sections 600 and 700 , should solenoid 223 be accidentally energized by a child or anyone else or should the stow latch 225 break . in the event of an electrical failure , the stow latch 225 can be manually released by pulling on rope or chain 151 that goes through the floor 16 of the framing structure 10 ( see fig3 , 5 and 6 ). safety latch 211 can be manually released by pulling on rope or chain 152 ( see fig4 and 6 ). once stow latch 225 is released and safety latch 211 is kept away from engaging the teeth of latch wheel 210 , by gravity only , without energizing motor 109 , the cover 800 and the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 keep on opening until the access panel 30 is fully opened to the position shown in fig6 is reached . during this phase of the opening , it is gravity only that unrolls the cables 50 from their reels 101 . cover 800 has cables 60 to limit the opening of the panel access 30 to a predetermined angle typically ranging between 60 and 70 degrees . still in reference to fig6 , mechanical locks 201 are pulled by their associated springs 202 that force the mechanical locks 201 to rotate around the pivoting axis of mounting devices 203 attached to forward end 13 of framing structure 10 . the pivoting of mechanical lock 201 is also guided and limited by rods 704 attached to ladder section 700 ( see fig6 and 11 ). in the position shown in fig6 , the mechanical locks 201 have not reached their locked position because they are still resting on rods 704 and are not resting on fittings 501 of ladder section 500 . gravity effect on ladder sections 600 and 700 continues to unroll cables 50 from reels 101 until the ladder sections 600 and 700 reach the position shown in fig7 . the stops 603 of ladder section 600 ( see fig1 ) rest on step 740 of ladder section 700 , so that when ladder section 700 is extending from the position of fig6 to the position shown in fig7 , ladder section 600 follows in unison with ladder section 700 . in the position of fig7 , the stops 602 of ladder section 600 ( see fig1 ) rest on the stops 502 of ladder section 500 ( see fig9 ) and , consequently , ladder section 600 has reached its fully extended position . as is also shown in fig7 , the mechanical locks 201 are no longer resting on rods 704 of ladder section 700 as mechanical locks 201 are pulled by associated springs 202 to their fully locked position . mechanical locks 201 are now resting on fittings 501 of ladder section 500 ( see fig9 ) and on abutment fittings 204 . in this position the cover 800 and its associated ladder sections 500 , 600 and 700 are locked open and cannot be closed . gravity effect of ladder section 700 continues to unroll cables 50 from their reels 101 until stops 702 reach stops 604 of ladder section 600 ( see fig1 ). in this position the ladder sections 500 , 600 and 700 have reached their fully extended position shown in fig8 . in order to slow down the speed of opening of the cover 800 , and the speed of extension of the ladder sections 500 , 600 and 700 , a braking system 102 is installed on one of the reels 101 as will be described hereinbelow . in reference to fig4 and 4 b the longitudinal wall 12 of framing structure 10 is equipped with a braking system 102 that slows down the rotational speed of the reels 101 when the reels 101 unroll the cables 50 for the opening of the cover 800 and the extension of the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 . the braking system 102 consists of a free wheel 162 whose inner shaft 150 is part of a flange 161 that is mechanically attached to side wall 12 . the free wheel 162 supports a braking disk 163 . the free wheel 162 is mounted such that it is not free to turn when the free wheel 110 is free to turn i . e ., when the free wheel 110 is allowing the reels 101 to unroll the cables 50 . in other words the free wheel 162 of the braking system 102 of the reels 101 is mounted in the opposite way compared to the free wheel 110 . the friction force of reel 101 against braking disc 163 is adjusted through nuts 105 ( see fig4 ). as shown in fig8 and 11 , ladder section 700 is equipped with adjustable legs 730 , fitted with rotating shoes 731 to ensure perfect contact with the ground when the ladder sections are fully extended . as previously described , the opening of the cover 800 and the extending of the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 is only achieved through gravity . the retraction of the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 and the closing of the cover 800 is achieved via the assistance of a motor . starting from the position shown in fig8 , the motor 109 shown in fig4 and 5 is energized via a switch ( not shown ) in the living area that closes the circuit of the electrical connections of the motor 109 to an electrical power source ( not shown ). no further description of this is provided as this is very well known in the art . pinion 108 mounted on the shaft of the motor 109 drives a chain 107 that , is connected to a single gear free wheel 110 . a single gear free wheel 110 is driven by the chain 107 in only one direction of rotation , but is free to rotate in the opposite direction to unroll the cables 50 . the driven rotation of single gear free wheel 110 corresponds to rolling cables 50 on their respective reels 101 . as shown in fig4 and 4 a one of reels 101 is connected to the single gear free wheel 110 via a plurality of fixed rods 11 1 , while the other reel 101 is connected to single gear free wheel 110 via a plurality of adjustable rods 103 and 104 , the adjustment being carried out through nuts 105 . the single gear free wheel 110 is mechanically attached to a center shaft 106 that is supported by the longitudinal walls 11 and 12 of the framing structure 10 . the motorized drive of the single gear free wheel 110 in the direction of rolling up the cables 50 on their respective reels 101 continues until the ladder section 700 reaches the position shown in fig7 . at such point , step 740 of ladder section 700 ( see fig1 ) meets with stops 603 of ladder section 600 ( see fig1 ). thereafter , further reeling in of cables 50 further retracts ladder section 700 and pulls with it ladder section 600 towards their retracted position . when ladder section 700 approaches its fully retracted position , its rods 704 meet with locks 201 and drives locks 201 towards the unlatched position . at such point as the position shown in fig6 is reached , the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 are fully retracted , but the cover 800 is unlatched and ready to be closed by the further rolling up of the cables 50 on their reels 101 to reach the closed position . when the cover 800 is approaching the closed position , stow latch 225 , via spring 224 , meets its latch receptacle 220 ( see fig5 ) forcing stow latch 225 to re - latch . during the complete rolling up sequence of the cables 50 , the teeth of the latch wheel 210 rotate the safety latch 211 away from its latching position ( see fig4 ). once the access panel 30 is fully re - latched , it is in the configuration shown on fig1 and 2 and the electric motor is automatically de - energized , via known means such as electrical load currents for example . during the complete retraction of the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 and the closing of the cover 800 , the braking system 102 offers no resistance as it is free to rotate in the direction of rolling up the cables 50 . in reference to fig9 , and 11 ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 are respectively fitted with a series of steps 520 , 620 , 720 that provides comfort and safety to the user . for instance the steps 520 , 620 , 720 may be covered with a non slippery surface . in addition for ease of climbing , ladder sections 500 , 600 are respectively fitted with railing 505 , 605 ( see fig9 and 10 ). the invention uses only the motor 109 to retract the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 and close the cover 800 . only gravity is used to open the cover 800 of access panel 30 and extend the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 as previously described . fig1 shows the cover 800 on which the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 ( not shown for clarity ) are mechanically attached and in their stored position adjacent longitudinal side 1 l . longitudinal side 11 is equipped with at least one off center pivoting cam 1010 on axis 1020 and a fixed cam 1000 . pivoting cam 1010 can either take the off center position shown in fig1 , or the off center position shown on fig1 . the cable 50 , through the weight of the cover 800 and ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 , produces counter clockwise pivoting motion mi that forces off center pivoting cam 1010 to stay in its position shown in fig1 . cable 50 is free , i . e ., not squeezed between off center pivoting cam 1010 and fixed cam 1000 . in fig1 , the ladder sections 500 , 600 , 700 have started their deployment and cable 50 , through gravity , produces clockwise pivoting motion m 2 to the off center pivoting cam 1010 which makes it rotate around axis 1020 and , consequently , applies a braking pressure force to said cable 50 against the fixed cam 1000 . gravity feed is consequently slowed down by the braking pressure force on cable 50 between off center pivoting cam 1010 and fixed cam 1020 . this arrangement shown and described in connection with fig1 and 14 has the benefit to easily control the speed of opening of the ladder sections 500 , 600 and 700 and their fall to the ground . it can be used as a stand alone , or in combination with the devices that control the lowering down of the ladder to the ground . | 4 |
according to an embodiment of the present invention , a jewelry clasp protector is provided . the jewelry clasp protector is comprised of a hollow cylinder with thin exterior walls and a slit running the entire length of the hollow cylinder . the interior and exterior walls of the hollow cylinder may be of any shape . some examples of the various shapes of the interior and exterior walls of the hollow cylinder are shown in the attached figures . for example , the exterior walls may be wavy ( see fig2 - 3 ), rounded ( see fig4 , 8 , 9 ), rectangular or tapered ( see fig7 ) and the interior walls may be rounded ( see fig9 ), wavy ( see fig1 ), rectangular or tapered . one of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that the interior and exterior walls could be of any shape , and embodiments of the present invention are contemplated for use with any shape of interior wall or exterior wall and any combination thereof . the jewelry clasp protector is designed to allow jewelry clasps , such as those that are used to connect two ends of a necklace or bracelet , to be received within the hollow cylinder via the slit . advantageously , having the jewelry clasp received within the hollow cylinder of the jewelry clasp protector serves several functions , including , but not limited to , protecting the jewelry clasp from damage and protecting the individual wearing the particular piece of jewelry associate with the jewelry clasp from the pinching or pulling of hair or skin that frequently occurs with regular wearing of jewelry with clasps . jewelry clasp protectors , in accordance with embodiments of the present invention , may be made from soft , flexible materials , including , but not limited to , soft silicone or clear vinyl . one of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that any number of soft flexible materials could be used with embodiments of the present invention , and embodiments of the present invention are contemplated for use with any soft flexible materials . alternatively , jewelry clasp protectors , in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention , may be made from firm materials or a combination of firm and soft , flexible materials . for instance , the jewelry clasp protector could be made from firm plastic or the hollow cylinder portion of the jewelry clasp protector could be made from firm plastic and the slit portion of the jewelry clasp protector could be comprised of soft silicone . one of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that any number of firm materials or combination of firm materials and soft flexible materials could be used with embodiments of the present invention , and embodiments of the present invention are contemplated for use with any firm material or combination of firm materials and soft flexible materials . according to an embodiment of the present invention , a jewelry clasp protector may be comprised of a material that shrinks when heated above a certain threshold temperature . in this embodiment , the jewelry clasp is first received within the hollow cylinder portion of the jewelry clasp protector via the slit and then the jewelry clasp protector is heated above the threshold temperature . once above the threshold temperature , the jewelry clasp protector will shrink around the jewelry clasp . in this manner , the jewelry clasp protector may provide a better fit and stay securely in place , even when the wearer of the piece of jewelry is active . additionally , in one embodiment in accordance with the present invention , the heating of the jewelry clasp protector above the threshold temperature may cause the jewelry clasp protector to become affixed to the piece of jewelry by permanently or semi - permanently sealing the slit . in this embodiment , the jewelry clasp protector may be either slidably affixed to the piece of jewelry or non - slidably affixed to the piece of jewelry . in an embodiment where the jewelry clasp protector is slidably affixed , the jewelry clasp protector may be slid off of the jewelry clasp so that a wearer may unfasten the jewelry clasp to remove the piece of jewelry . in an embodiment where the jewelry clasp protector is non - slidably affixed to the piece of jewelry , the jewelry clasp protector is not able to be slid off of the jewelry clasp and the jewelry clasp protector must be removed before the jewelry clasp may be unfastened . the later embodiment may be most useful in pieces of jewelry removable in manners other than unfastening the jewelry clasp ( e . g ., necklaces removable over the wearer &# 39 ; s head ). according to an embodiment of the present invention , a jewelry clasp protector may be comprised of a material that is substantially transparent . in this manner , the jewelry clasp protector does not detract from the piece of jewelry &# 39 ; s luster or beauty . in an alternative embodiment , a jewelry clasp protector may be comprised of a material that is colored or decorative . in this manner , the jewelry clasp protector may add to the decorative nature of a piece of jewelry . according to an embodiment of the present invention , a jewelry clasp protector may be initially comprised of a flat planar material . the flat planar material is then wrapped around a jewelry clasp to form a hollow cylinder around jewelry clasp . in this embodiment , the jewelry clasp protector may or may not be comprised of a slit running the entire length of the cylinder . this embodiment allows for the jewelry clasp protector to fit on a wide variety of jewelry styles and sizes . turning now to fig1 and 10 , cross - sectional views of a jewelry clasp protector , in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention , is shown . in this embodiment , the exterior and interior walls of the jewelry clasp protector are wavy and allow for the retention of a jewelry clasp to be situated within . turning now to fig2 and 8 prospective views of a jewelry clasp protector , in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention , is shown . here , the slit 20 can be seen running the entire length of the jewelry clasp protector . slit 20 allows the jewelry clasp to be removably inserted within the jewelry clasp protector such that , while inside , the jewelry clasp is protected from harm and causing harm . turning now to fig3 , 4 and 7 , prospective views of a jewelry clasp protector , in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention , is shown . this view shows the back side of an exemplary jewelry clasp protector , in that its slit is hidden from view and all that can be seen is a smooth , unaffected surface with the jewelry strand 30 extending from either end . the surface may be clear or mute in color as to not attract attention to it , or loud or artistic in order to draw attention to the jewelry clasp protector , making it part of the ambiance of the jewelry . turning now to fig5 , a prospective view of a jewelry clasp protector , in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention , is shown . here , the slit 20 can be seen running the entire length of the jewelry clasp protector . additionally , jewelry strand 30 can be seen extending from either end of the jewelry clasp protector . turning now to fig6 , a cross - sectional view of a jewelry clasp protector , in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention , is shown . in this embodiment , the exterior walls 40 of the jewelry clasp protector are round and tapered , while the interior walls 41 are wavy . one of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that any combination of exterior and interior wall shapes are usable with embodiments of the present invention , and embodiments of the present invention are contemplated for use with any combination of exterior and interior wall shape . turning now to fig9 , a cross - sectional view of a jewelry clasp protector , in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention , is shown . in this embodiment , the exterior and interior walls of the jewelry clasp protector are rounded and allow for the retention of a jewelry clasp to be situated within . turning now to fig1 , a top view of a jewelry clasp protector , in accordance to an embodiment of the present invention , is shown . in this embodiment , the jewelry clasp protector is comprised of a thin material that may be wrapped over a jewelry clasp , forming a rolled substantially tubular format that encircles the jewelry clasp . fig1 shows a side view of this embodiment . the jewelry clasp protector of this embodiment may be removably connected to the jewelry clasp by way of wrapping and unwrapping the clasp accordingly . optionally , the jewelry clasp protector of this embodiment may be permanently or semi - permanently affixed to the jewelry clasp . for instance , a material that shrinks when heated may be utilized , whereby heat is applied to permanently or semi - permanently affix the jewelry clasp protector to the jewelry clasp . it is understood that the above - described embodiments are illustrative of only a few of the many possible specific embodiments , which can represent applications of the invention . numerous and varied other arrangements can be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention . | 0 |
fig1 illustrates a circuit arrangement 10 having a voltage source 12 as an electrical power source , a converter 14 and an electrical load 16 . the converter can be a single - phase or multiphase converter , can be galvanically isolated or not galvanically isolated , unidirectional or bidirectional . the electrical power source 12 can be a dc voltage source , an ac voltage source , a dc current source or an ac current source . the electrical load 16 can comprise reactive components in addition to resistive components . the converter 14 comprises for a first phase a first switch s i , a second switch s ii , an inductance l and a converter controller 18 . both switches s i , s ii , are single - pole switches . the first switch s i is typically a semiconductor switch , for example a mosfet or an igbt ( insulated gate bipolar transistor ). the second switch s ii is typically the same type of semiconductor or is a flyback diode . a first terminal 21 of the first switch s i is connected to the voltage source 12 , and a second terminal 22 of the first switch s , is connected to the inductance l . it is indicated in the figure that the converter 14 can comprise a plurality of circuits sk i . . . sk n of identical design for one or more further phases between converter input 14 a and converter output 14 b . these circuits then typically operate using switching cycles d , f , b in intermittent mode and d , f in non - intermittent mode ( see fig2 a ), which cycles have a different time offset from one another . unless stated otherwise , the following description explains the converter controller 18 for the first phase . the concepts described can be applied to further phases . a switching - signal generator 24 ( modulator ) generates a first switching signals ss , for actuating the first switch s i . the first switching signals ss , are transmitted via a first control connection sv i to the first switch s i . in the exemplary embodiment shown , the switching - signal generator 24 also generates second switching signals ss ii for actuating the second switch s ii . the second switching signals ss ii are transmitted via a second control connection sv ii to the second switch s ii . the converter 14 can alternately adopt the following three operating states d , f , b : a conducting state d , a flyback state f and a standby state b . in the standby state b , the switching - signal generator 24 controls the two switches s i , s ii , such that the flow of the output current i l is stopped . in the conducting state d , the switching - signal generator 24 controls the switches s i , s ii such that an output current i l can flow through the first switch s i but is stopped for the second switch s ii . in the flyback state f , the switching - signal generator 24 controls the switches s i , s ii such that an output current i l can flow through the second switch s ii but is stopped for the first switch s i . during operation under partial load , the three operating states d , f , b alternate cyclically in the following sequence : conducting state d , flyback state f , standby state b . when the amount of power transferred between the electrical power source 12 and electrical load 16 is low , the conducting state d , i . e . the proportion of time of the conducting state d compared with the switching period , is small . as the amount of power transferred between converter input 14 a and converter output 14 b increases , the proportion of time of the conducting state d compared with the switching period increases . a person skilled in the art knows numerous possible embodiments for converter switching patterns that can also be used here . these switching patterns are not explained below because these details are not essential to the invention . the converter controller 18 is part of an open - loop control circuit , which comprises at least one first control loop comprising the following components : a controlled system rs , a first comparator 28 a for comparing a first reference value fg a with a first controlled variable rg a , a first closed - loop controller 30 a and a final control element 24 , s i , s ii . in the exemplary embodiment illustrated in the figure , the controlled system rs is formed by the power source , the input filter ( not illustrated ), the switches , inductance l , output filter ( not illustrated ) and the load . the final control element 24 , s i , s ii is formed jointly by the switching - signal generator 24 and the two switches s i , s ii . the proportion of time of the flyback state f compared with the total period of the switching cycle d , f , b acts as the first correcting variable sg a . the minimum min ( i l ) of the output current i l output by the converter 14 to the electrical load 16 acts as the first controlled variable rg a . the first controlled variable rg a is obtained by means of a phase - specific current sensor 34 for detecting an intensity of an output current i l1 on an output line 35 of a phase of the converter 14 , and by means of a sampler 36 and a subsequent current - signal analyzer 37 . the sampler 36 and the signal analyzer 37 are components of the converter controller 18 . the first comparator 28 a determines a first error signal e a by means of a first comparison of the first reference value fg a with the first controlled variable rg a . the first closed - loop controller 30 a ( for example a pid controller ) determines the first correcting variable sg a from the temporal waveform of the first error signal e a . the exemplary embodiment illustrates a second control loop , which comprises some of the same components 24 , 34 , 36 , 37 , l , s i , s ii as the first control loop . the second control loop includes the following components : the controlled system rs , a second comparator 28 b for a comparison between a second reference value fg b and a second controlled variable rg b , a second closed - loop controller 30 6 and the final control element 24 , s i , s ii . the inductance l again forms the controlled system rs . as in the first control loop , the final control element 24 , s i , s ii is formed jointly by the switching - signal generator 24 and the two switches s i , s ii . in the second control loop , the proportion of time of the conducting state d compared with the total period of the switching cycle d , f , b acts as the second correcting variable sg b . a second characteristic value of the power transfer by the converter 14 acts as a second controlled variable rg b . this can be , for example , a maximum , a mean or an effective value of the output current i l output by the converter 14 to the electrical load 16 . in the exemplary embodiment , the second controlled variable rg b is obtained using the same current sensor 34 , the same sampler 36 and the same signal analyzer 37 as the first controlled variable rg a . a selector switch 33 can be used to select the second controlled variable rg b from a plurality of alternatives ( for example types of mean values ). the second comparator 28 b determines a second error signal e b by means of a second comparison of the second reference value fg b with the second controlled variable rg b . the second closed - loop controller 30 b ( for example also a pid controller ) determines the second correcting variable sg b from a temporal waveform of the second error signal e b . only the peak current is controlled directly by the rising edge . all the other calculated values ( such as effective values , mean values ) are based on the complete signal , but can also be set with the rising edge . fig2 a illustrates an example of a temporal waveform of the first switching signal ss i for switching on es i and switching off as ii the first switch s i of the converter 14 during the conducting state d , during the flyback state f and during the standby state b . the boundaries of the time periods of the operating states d , f , b are illustrated in fig2 a to 2 d by dashed lines . fig2 b illustrates an example of an associated temporal waveform of the second switching signal ss ii for switching on es ii and switching off as ii the second switch s ii of the converter 14 . fig2 c illustrates an example of an associated temporal waveform of the output current i l , of a phase of the converter 14 . in the conducting state d , the intensity of the current i l through the output line 35 rises . hence during the conducting state d , a rising edge 38 develops in the temporal waveform of the output current i l . in the flyback state f , the current i l through the output line 35 falls . hence during the conducting state , a falling edge 39 develops in the temporal waveform of the output current i l . fig2 d illustrates an example of an associated temporal waveform of a sample signal s sample after sampling 120 by means of the sampler 36 . the dash - dotted lines in fig2 c and 2 d illustrate an example of a pattern for sampling the output current i l by the sampler 36 . in the example illustrated in fig2 c and 2 d , sampling 120 of the output current i l is performed almost once every switching period , wherein the sampling 120 in the immediately following switching period in each case ( relative to the start thereof ) is performed slightly later than in the immediately preceding switching period ( relative to the start thereof ). the sampling cycle is asynchronous with the switching periods of the switching signals ss i , ss ii . as a result of the slippage between the sampling cycle and the switching signals ss i , ss ii , the sampling 120 maps the temporal waveform of the intensity of the output current i l1 of a phase into a sample signal s sample having a similar waveform but longer time scale , i . e . lower frequency f sample . in an alternative ( not illustrated explicitly in the fig . ), the second correcting variable sg b can be a preset reference value ( instead of being provided by the second closed - loop controller 30 b ). in a further preferred alternative , the second correcting variable sg b can be provided by a voltage regulator 40 or by a load - current distributor 42 . fig3 illustrates an example of an embodiment having a density function h ( t dist ) for time intervals between successive time - contiguous trigger signals of the sampler 36 . here , a mean sampling frequency f sample is defined as the inverse of a mean value of the time intervals t dist of successive time - contiguous trigger signals ts for opening the gate of the sampler 36 for the purpose of defining points in time for taking measurement values of the measurement signal sm . fig4 illustrates a schematic block diagram of an embodiment of a load - current distributor circuit 43 , which generates such a second correcting variable sg b for each phase . here , the output voltage u from the converter 14 is compared in a comparator 28 b1 with a setpoint voltage u soll , and the second correcting variable sg b1 for the first phase is generated by means of a voltage regulator 40 1 . for the second phase , the output current i l1 of the first phase is first compared with the output current i l2 of the second phase . the current difference i l2 − i l1 is in turn compared with a current difference δi l2 defined as the reference value . a comparator 28 b2 determines therefrom an error signal e b2 = i l2 − i l1 − δi l2 , on the basis of which a second current regulator 41 2 determines a first contribution to a second correcting variable sg b2 of the second phase . the second correcting variable sg b2 is formed by combining 44 2 ( preferably summating ) the first contribution with the second correcting variable sg b1 of the first phase . correspondingly for further phases i ( where i is between 3 and nεn ), the output current i l1 of the first phase is first compared with the output current i li of the further phase i , and a further current regulator 41 i of the further phase i is used to generate from the current difference i li - i l1 ( equals the error signal e bi ) a first contribution to a second correcting variable sg bi of the further phase i . the second correcting variable sg bi of the further phase i is also formed by combining 44 i ( preferably by summating ) the first contribution with the second correcting variable sg b1 of the first phase . fig5 illustrates a schematic flow diagram of an embodiment of a control method 100 for operating a converter 14 . the control method 100 comprises the following steps 110 , 120 , 130 , 140 : generating 110 measurement signals sm on the basis of an electrical status i l1 of an output line 35 by means of a sensor 34 ; generating 120 a sample signal s sample by sampling the received measurement signals sm by means of a sampler 36 at a sampling frequency f sample ; analyzing 130 the sample signal s sample and generating 140 a switching signal ss i at a switching frequency f sw , wherein the switching frequency f sw is higher than the sampling frequency f sample . the controller 18 for a converter 14 is designed to analyze the received measurement signals sm and to generate for the rising edge 38 , measurement signals sm that are independent of measurement signals sm generated for the falling edge 39 . the concept in accordance with the invention can be applied to different types of converters , in particular also to dc - dc converters , inverters and / or frequency converters . the switching principles described can also be applied with the reverse polarity . analog and / or digital electrical signals that are represented in the exemplary embodiments in the form of voltages can be represented alternatively or additionally as ( impressed ) currents . amplifiers or converters can be used to modify the magnitude of voltages or currents mentioned in the description in the path from their respective sources to their respective sinks . analog or digital signals that are represented in the form of voltages or currents can be linearly or non - linearly encoded in accordance with a known method or a method that is not yet known today . examples of applicable coding methods are pulse width modulation and pulse code modulation . the analog and / or digital signals can be transmitted electrically , optically or by radio . the analog and / or digital signals can be transmitted in a space - division multiplex ( i . e . using different lines ), in a time - division multiplex or in a code - division multiplex . the analog and digital signals can be transmitted via one or more bus systems . 120 generating a sample signal by sampling received measurement signals | 7 |
the deposition of aluminum to conformally fill window holes with aspect ratios greater than 1 . 1 is described in h . w . piekaar , et al ., sixth international ieee vlsi multilevel interconnection ( v - mic ) conference , pg . 122 ( 1989 ), which is hereby incorporated by reference . basically , this procedure involves utilizing a purified triisobutyl aluminum precursor and introducing this precursor to the deposition substrate heated to a temperature in the range 200 ° c . to 400 ° c . the triisobutyl aluminum ( tiba ) is carefully treated to substantially reduce organic impurities . tiba liquid flow rates in the range 20 to 80 ml / min at a temperature in the range 35 ° to 70 ° c . and tiba partial pressures in the range 20 - 70 pa are typically employed . as previously discussed through this procedure , conformal window contact is produced , but substantial interfacial void defects are also obtained . to avoid interfacial void defects , a nucleation layer is first formed on the substrate before deposition of the aluminum . however , the nucleation layer should be carefully chosen such that before the aluminum deposit reaches an average thickness of 120 å or less on the nucleating material , the resulting aluminum grains occupy at least 97 . 5 % of the substrate area . ( grains smaller than 0 . 15 micron in largest dimension as well as artifacts such as whiskers are not considered for this area determination .) for a titanium nitride nucleation layer deposited in a chamber previously evacuated to a high vacuum with a stoichiometric composition or containing 45 to 55 atomic percent nitrogen with the remainder titanium this criterion is satisfied while for a layer composition produced by exposing the wafer to titanium tetrachloride introduced in a chamber previously evacuated to a pressure of 2 × 10 - 4 pa , it is not . it has been found that voids are avoided with the former while a substantial level of voids , e . g ., greater than approximately 10 6 per cm 2 , are obtained with the latter . ( the nucleation grain coverage is easily discerned through scanning electron microscopy done at appropriate intervals on a control sample and the average thickness is determined by weighing the deposition substrate before and after these intervals .) a variety of materials formed under conditions that avoid the substantial formation of native oxides yield the appropriate aluminum nucleation criterion . exemplary of suitable nucleation materials is titanium nitride preferably having a nitrogen content in the range between 45 to 55 atomic percent and metals such as titanium . generally doses of oxidizing agents greater than 0 . 1 torr - sec for titanium nitride and 10 - 4 torr - sec for metals such as titanium tend to yield excessive oxidation . for example , titanium exposed to a vacuum of 2 × 10 - 4 pa or worse for approximately 2 hours generally yields poor nucleation with whisker growth while titanium deposited in a vacuum of 2 × 10 - 5 pa for less than 1 minute leads to films that satisfy the above - cited criterion . thus typically nucleation layers such as titanium nitride and metals should generally be formed in a relatively high vacuum environment and should not be subsequently exposed to an oxidizing medium before deposition of the aluminum . conventional deposition techniques are available for depositing a nucleation layer . for example , titanium nitride is deposited by reactive sputtering as described by d . s . williams , et al ., journal of vacuum science and technology b , vol . 5 , p . 1723 - 1729 ( 1987 ), and titanium or other metals are deposited by sputtering as described in &# 34 ; handbook of thin film technology &# 34 ;, edited by l . i . maissel and r . glang , mcgraw - hill ( 1970 ), chapter 4 , &# 34 ; application of sputtering to the deposition of films &# 34 ;. typically , a nucleation layer having a thickness in the range 0 . 005 μm to 0 . 15 μm is employed . layers thinner than 0 . 005 μm generally have excessive discontinuities while layers thicker than 0 . 15 μm are undesirable because they are generally of high electrical resistance and thus will increase the total electrical resistance of the interconnect lines . although the precise mechanism leading to the resulting absence of voids is unknown , a contemplated explanation is that significant oxide on the nucleating surface substantially hinders the β - hydride elimination required for deposition of aluminum from a triisobutyl aluminum precursor . sporadic nucleation induced by the presence of oxide leads to relatively large grains separated by empty spaces when these grains coalesce . thus , it is believed that the surprising formation of voids occurs due to unacceptable nucleation and it is cured by the use of a nucleating layer that satisfies the nucleation requirements described . by a particularly judicious choice of nucleation layer deposition conditions , not only are voids essentially eliminated but also pin holes are substantially reduced . for example , the use of a ti x n y where x and y are 1 . 0 and 1 . 0 ± 0 . 05 respectively , deposited in an appropriate environment produces a void free layer having a pin hole destiny lower than 3 × 10 3 cm - 2 ( the detection limit of typical instruments such as scanning electron microscope after examining several hundred sample areas ). similarly , titanium layers deposited and maintained under high vacuum conditions with subsequent deposition of aluminum at 230 ° and 270 ° c . also produce a void free surface while reducing the pin hole level below 3 × 10 4 cm - 2 , ( the detection limit of a scanning electron microscope after examining 20 sample areas ). although many films satisfying the desired criterion exhibit the substantial reduction of pin holes , some exceptions such as substantially increased pinhole densities at approximately 250 ° c . deposition temperature on non - stoichiometric tin and titanium are observed . the precise reason for these exceptions is not yet fully understood . generally , the density of pinholes seems to be most reduced at aluminum deposition temperatures of approximately 270 ° c . a chemical vapor deposition ( cvd ) system was used for aluminum ( a1 ) deposition . the cvd system had a hexagonal central robotic wafer handling chamber ( whc ). on each side of the hexagon there was a gate valve through which a separate vacuum chamber was connected to the whc . three of such chambers were respectively an input - output chamber ( ioc ) with a 25 wafer capacity , a cvd reactor and a sputter deposition chamber ( sdc ). each of these chambers was individually pumped by a turbo molecular pump except for sdc and cvd reactor . the sdc was pumped by a cryogenic pump and the cvd reactor was pumped by a combination of cryogenic pump and mechanical pump boosted by a roots blower . silicon wafers 5 inches in diameter and with a & lt ; 100 & gt ; orientation having a 1000 å thermal oxide layer were cleaned with a sulfuric acid / h 2 o 2 5 : 1 mixture at 115 ° c . before loading into the ioc . the ioc was then evacuated . at a total pressure in the ioc of 3 × 10 - 4 pa or below , the isolating gate valve that connected the ioc to the whc opened . the robotic arm in the whc transferred a wafer from the ioc to the whc . a mild increase of pressure from 2 × 10 - 5 pa to 6 × 10 - 5 pa in the whc occurred . the isolating gate valve was then closed and the pressure in the whc quickly returned to 2 × 10 - 5 pa . the gate valve that separated the sdc from the whc was then opened and the robotic arm delivered the wafer into the sdc . the sdc pressure increased from 3 × 10 - 6 pa to 2 × 10 - 5 pa . the gate valve was then closed after the robotic arm retreated and the pressure in the sdc quickly returned to 3 × 10 - 6 pa . a mixture of argon and nitrogen gas ( 7 : 3 by volume ) was used for sputtering with a high purity titanium target to form a tin film . both the argon and the nitrogen were individually controlled by a mass flow controller . the gases were premixed before entering the sdc . a total flow rate of 30 standard cubic centimeters per minute was used . with the full pumping speed of a 6 inch cryogenic pump , a pressure of 50 pa resulted . the sputtering was accomplished with a dc magnetron unit and with a 10 inch diameter target . the power level was 2 kilowatts and the sputtering duration was 55 seconds . no bias voltage or heating was applied to the wafer . a tin layer of 900 å thickness resulted . the film was golden in color with a resistivity of 70 microohm - centimeter . rutherford backscattering analysis indicated that the tin film was stoichiometric with undetectable impurity . after the sputter deposition , the gas flow was terminated and the pressure in the sdc returned to the 10 - 6 pa range in seconds . the gate valve between the sdc and the whc opened and the wafer was transferred by the robotic arm to the whc and then to the cvd reactor which was opened to the whc during the time the sputter deposition of tin was taking place . the cvd reactor was a batch process type reactor with a capacity of 25 wafers . the robotic arm was capable of loading a wafer into any desired slot location of the reactor by coordinating with the cassette location control of the reactor . after one wafer was loaded into the cassette in the reactor , another wafer was prepared in the manner described above . after all 25 wafers were prepared with a tin nucleation layer and loaded into the cvd reactor , the reactor was isolated from the whc . the wafers were allowed to sit in the reactor for 20 minutes to come to thermal equilibrium while the reactor was being purged with purified hydrogen . the reactor included a stainless steel tube which was heated with a 5 - zone resistant heating element . triisobutyl aluminum ( tiba ) was introduced into the reactor in gaseous form by first passing through an evaporator . the tiba gas flow was regulated by controlling the tiba liquid entering the evaporator and by the temperature of the evaporator . the deposition time was about 35 minutes as defined by the starting and stopping time of tiba gas flow . this starting and stopping was achieved by a gate valve between the reactor and the evaporator . the tiba liquid flow rate was 40 ml / min , and the evaporator was set at 45 ° c . the pressure in the reactor was maintained at a pressure that yields a growth rate of about 140 å / min . an aluminum film of about 5000 å thickness was produced . this film exhibited a nominal reflectivity of 60 % relative to an aluminum mirror . the reflectivity was measured with a nanospec at 400 nm wavelength using an objective that has a 0 . 45 numerical aperture . the thickness was measured with a balance to determine the weight of the wafer before and after cvd deposition . the film resistivity was similar to that of a bulk pure aluminum metal as measured with a 4 - point probe . this film was examined under a scanning electron microscope ( sem ). both surface profile and cross - section were examined carefully . upon examining about 200 locations on the surface at a magnification of 5000 x , no pin - holes were detected . for cross - section examination , the magnification was set at 7000 x , and the entire cross - section of a 6 mm wide sample was carefully scanned . no voids were detected under this condition . it is therefore assumed that as grown , aluminum film had no pin - holes ( or had pin - hole density less than 3 × 10 3 per square cm ) or voids ( or had a void density less than 5 × 10 4 per square cm ). | 7 |
the present invention will be described in reference to a fuel nozzle assembly vane 22 that is represented in fig4 with a cross - sectional view similar to the prior art vane 22 of fig3 . as such , the vane 22 is a component of a fuel nozzle assembly of a gas turbine engine , and may be similar or equivalent to any one of the vanes 22 of the fuel nozzle assembly 10 represented in fig1 , 2 and 3 . although the invention is described herein with reference to the vane 22 of a fuel nozzle assembly , it will be appreciated that other applications are foreseeable and within the scope of the invention . for example , the present invention is generally applicable to resizing holes whose cross - sectional areas are desired to be carefully controlled , particularly in complex devices where resizing of interior holes can be expensive and time consuming , as well as various types of assemblies in which resizing of holes using a welding technique or other high temperature operation could pose a risk to whose braze joints used to join components of the assembly together . in addition , it is foreseeable that the present invention is further generally applicable to build up of any flow path surface that is part of a controlled flow gap between mating parts , for example , concentric cylinders , to improve clearances required for efficient flows . as represented in fig4 , the vane 22 includes a pair of radially spaced outer premix fuel supply holes 42 through one wall 36 of the vane 22 and a single outer premix fuel supply hole 42 through the opposite side wall 38 of the vane 22 . the vane 22 is formed of a metal or alloy which can be diffusion coated with aluminum . preferably , the vane 22 is a nickel -, cobalt - or iron - based superalloy . the supply holes 42 are represented as being the result of resizing pre - existing holes 24 in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention . as previously discussed , the pre - existing holes 24 may have become oversized due to wear or a mistake in original orifice dimensions which can leave the vane 22 unusable . in order to reduce the inner diameter of the pre - existing holes 24 , an adherent diffusion aluminide coating 50 is represented as having been formed on the interior surfaces of the holes 24 , as represented in fig4 . as the thickness of the coating 50 increases , the final diameters of the holes 42 decrease . this allows the holes 24 to be selectively entirely closed or have their inner diameters reduced . if the holes 24 are closed entirely , the desired resized holes 42 may be drilled by conventional means known in the art . however , according to a preferred aspect of the invention , the thickness of the coating 50 deposited in each hole 24 can be controlled to controllably reduce its cross - sectional area ( diameter , if its cross - sectional shape is round ) to a desired size , thereby avoiding any additional processing of the holes 42 to attain their desired cross - sectional areas . the preferred formation of the coating 50 as a method of resizing the holes 24 has the advantage of not requiring conventional techniques such as welding which may be difficult to perform without potentially distressing or cracking the base material of the vane 22 . according to a preferred aspect of the invention , the coating 50 is an outward - type coating , that is , a coating that is formed under conditions that promote an outward diffusion of a metal from the substrate , for example , nickel , into a deposited aluminum - containing composition to form an additive layer , and also reduce the inward diffusion of aluminum from the deposited aluminum - containing composition into the substrate , resulting in a relatively thick additive layer above the original surface of the substrate . more specifically , the aluminum - containing composition includes an aluminum alloy with a melting temperature that is higher than aluminum , so that the majority of the gaseous aluminum species forms at temperatures sufficiently high for metal constituents within the substrate of the vane 22 to be actively diffused outward . this produces an acceptable balance of inward and mostly outward diffused coating . at a temperature of 760 ° c . or more substantially pure aluminum ( as most slurry coating compositions contain ) would diffuse into the surfaces of the holes 24 , prior to diffusion of metal constituents within the substrate out of the vane 22 . if the vane 22 is nickel - based , the inward diffused aluminum would react with the nickel to form a diffusion area within near - surface substrate regions of the vane 22 that contains nickel aluminide intermetallic compounds . in contrast , with preferred aluminum - containing compositions used with the present invention , which intentionally contain one or more aluminum alloys with a melting temperature that is higher than aluminum , gaseous aluminum species form at temperatures ( e . g ., greater than or equal to 1065 ° c . ( about 1940 ° f .)) that promote the majority of coating formation to be outward from the interior surfaces of the holes 24 . the nickel moves into the precursor coating where it reacts and combines with the gaseous aluminum species to form an outward - type diffusion coating . since the majority of the coating formation is outward from the interior surfaces of the holes 24 , the properties of the underlying vane 22 remains relatively unchanged . as previously stated , the aluminum - containing composition comprises an aluminum alloy with a higher melting temperature than aluminum ( melting point of about 660 ° c .). particularly suitable compositions include metallic aluminum alloyed with chromium , cobalt , iron , and / or another aluminum alloying agent with a sufficiently higher melting point so that the alloying agent does not deposit during the diffusion process , but instead serves as an inert carrier for the aluminum of the composition . the aluminum alloy ( al - m , wherein m is a metallic element such as chromium , cobalt , iron , etc .) of the aluminum - containing composition can have a concentration of about 20 wt % to about 70 wt % al , preferably about 30 wt % to about 60 wt % al , and more preferably about 35 wt % to about 50 wt % al ( the balance m and incidental impurities ). the aluminum - containing composition is preferably in the form of a slurry or gel . in this situation , the aluminum alloy can be in the form of a powder having various particle sizes . for example , all particles of the powder can have a size ( as measured along a major axis ) of less than or equal to about 125 micrometers , preferably about 30 micrometers to about 120 micrometers , more preferably about 40 micrometers to about 80 micrometers , and most preferably about 40 micrometers to about 60 micrometers . the aluminum - containing composition contains one or more activators that facilitate the liberation of the aluminum , that is , the separation of the aluminum from the alloy and the formation of gaseous aluminum species therefrom , at a temperature greater than or equal to the temperature that facilitates the majority of the coating formation to be outward from the interior surfaces of the holes 24 . possible activators include halides such as aluminum chloride ( nh 4 cl ), aluminum fluoride ( nh 4 f ), and ammonium bromide ( nh 4 br ), which produce an aluminum halide as the gaseous aluminum species , though the use of other halide activators is also believed to be possible . the activator may suitably serve as a binder capable of adhering the aluminum - containing composition to the interior surfaces of the holes 24 . alternatively or in addition , the aluminum - containing composition can further comprise one or more binders for this purpose . suitable additional / alternative binders preferably consist essentially or entirely of alcohol - based or water - based organic polymers . a preferred aspect of the invention is that any additional binder present in the aluminum - containing composition is able to burn off entirely and cleanly at temperatures below that required to vaporize and react the halide activator , with the remaining residue being essentially in the form of an ash that can be easily removed . preferred slurry or gel compositions contain the aluminum alloy powder and the activator in an amount of about 10 to about 80 weight percent , with the balance being the additional binder . particularly suitable slurry compositions for use with this invention contain , by weight , about 35 to about 65 % aluminum alloy powder , about 25 to about 60 % binder , and about 1 to about 25 % activator . more preferred ranges are , by weight , about 35 to about 65 % aluminum alloy powder , about 25 to about 50 % binder , and about 5 to about 25 % activator . these ranges allow the slurry to be applied to the interior surfaces of the holes 24 by a variety of methods . in order to apply the slurry or gel to the hole 24 , the vane 22 must first be removed from the fuel nozzle assembly . the slurry or gel may then be applied by any means known in the art . suitable examples include , but are not limited to , manual application with a brush , spatula , eye dropper , swab , or needle , as well as application by submersion , air brush , or other spraying means . once coated with the aluminum - containing composition , the vane 22 is heated and held at an elevated temperature until the coating 50 has achieved a desired thickness . a sufficient time and temperature for the diffusion process will depend on the aluminum - containing composition used ; however , a temperature greater than or equal to about 1065 ° c . ( about 1940 ° f .) is preferable for vanes 22 composed of materials such as nickel , cobalt , and / or iron . at about this temperature , the activator preferably reacts with the aluminum alloy of the aluminum - containing composition to form a gaseous aluminum species and the nickel , cobalt , and / or iron from the superalloy is sufficiently diffused outward . this environment at the surface then reacts to reform and deposit an aluminide on the interior surfaces of the holes 24 . by forming the coating 50 in the above described manner , the decrease in the inner diameter of the holes 24 can be tailored by adjusting the composition or thickness of the aluminum - containing composition and / or adjusting the time and / or temperature of the heating of the vane 22 . for example , fig5 is a scanned image showing a cross - section of a coating on an inconel 625 , a well - known solid solution - strengthened nickel - base superalloy , combustion fuel nozzle passage that was applied using a method in accordance with an aspect of this invention . a gel slurry comprising 60 % alloy , 10 % activator and 30 % gel binder was applied to the passage by a small brush . subsequently , the vane was held at 2050 ° f . ( about 1120 ° c .) for about 2 hours to facilitate both aluminum gas formation and outward nickel diffusion . this controlled thickness could further be increased by increasing the content of the alloy and / or the activator in the gel slurry or by increasing the heat treatment temperature . the resulting increase in thickness of the coating is believed to be dependent to the superalloy being coated . in addition , where holes are reduced in size such that the resulting flows are lower than desired , the holes may be slightly increased in diameter using precision reamers ( tolerance of +/− 0 . 0005 inches ( about 13 micrometers )) to achieve the desired flow . according to an alternative embodiment of the present invention , fig6 is end and side views representing a component 62 comprising two concentric cylinders , a first cylinder 52 and a second cylinder 54 , with a flow path 56 therebetween . the component 62 further comprises the coating 50 formed on an interior surface 58 of the first cylinder 52 and on an exterior surface 60 of the second cylinder 54 . similar to the holes 24 of the vane 22 described above , the thickness of the coating 50 on the component 62 may be adjusted to re - size the flow path 56 . the coating 50 may be applied to the interior surface 58 , the exterior surface 60 , or both surfaces 58 and 60 as shown in fig6 . while the invention has been described in terms of specific embodiments , it is apparent that other forms could be adopted by one skilled in the art . for example , the physical configuration of the holes could differ from that shown , and materials and processes other than those noted could be used . in addition , the use of an outwardly grown aluminide coating can add thickness to the exterior surface of a superalloy component . by this means gaps or channels can also be tailored or repaired to meet flow requirements . therefore , the scope of the invention is to be limited only by the following claims . | 5 |
fig1 shows a communications system consisting of two network elements 1 and 2 connected by a wavelength multiplexed bidirectional optical connection 3 . the network element 2 transmits at the wavelength λ l , and the network element 1 transmits at the wavelength λ r . since the connection is wavelength - divided , it is possible to transmit communications signals from 1 to 2 while transmitting from 2 to 1 . in practical systems , the connection 3 is an optical fiber which subjects the transmitted signals from both 1 and 2 to attenuation through the fiber . if the system is to be used over great distances , it is necessary to insert one or more amplifiers in the connection 3 . if there is one or more locations on the connection 3 where the signals , which are transmitted from both 1 and 2 , have traveled such a great distance through the optical fiber as makes it necessary to amplify them , then a router is inserted so that a single traditional unidirectional amplifier may be used transmitted from both 1 and 2 for amplifying signals transmitted from both 1 and 2 . the router 10 has two bidirectional ports 5 and 6 and two unidirectional ports 7 and 8 . an amplifier 9 is inserted between the two unidirectional ports 7 and 8 . the input of the amplifier is connected to the unidirectional port 7 , and the output of the amplifier is connected to the unidirectional port 8 . on the ports 5 and 6 , the router 10 is connected to two optical fibers 3 ′ and 3 ″ which are connected to the ports 5 and 6 , respectively . the router 10 is arranged such that a signal transmitted at the wavelength λ l into the router through the port 5 has maximum power on the port 7 and minimum power on the port 8 . correspondingly , a signal transmitted at the wavelength λ r into the router through the port 6 has maximum power on the port 7 and minimum power on the port 8 . the amplifier may therefore amplify the signals at both λ r and λ l . the amplified signals are transmitted via the same router 10 through the port 8 . the amplified signal at λ r is transmitted out through the port 5 , and , correspondingly , the amplified signal at λ l is transmitted out through the port 6 . such a router 10 thus ensures that a traditional unidirectional amplifier may be used for amplifying bidirectional signals . in the figure , a unidirectional amplifier 9 is connected to the unidirectional output port 9 of the router 10 and the unidirectional input port 8 of the router 10 . fig3 shows how a known router 10 is constructed . the router comprises four wavelength multiplex couplers 15 , 16 , 17 and 18 . the wavelength multiplex couplers are also called wdm couplers . the wavelength multiplex coupler 15 is connected to the wavelength multiplex coupler 17 via an optical connection 11 . the wavelength multiplex coupler 16 is connected to the same wavelength multiplex coupler 17 via an optical connection 12 . the wavelength multiplex coupler 17 subsequently optically connected to the port 7 . the wavelength multiplex coupler 15 filters such that the optical signal λ l , received on the port 5 via the connection 11 , is fed to the wavelength multiplex coupler 17 , while the wavelength multiplex coupler 16 filters such that the optical signal λ r , received on the port 6 via the connection 12 , is fed to the wavelength multiplex coupler 17 . the complete signal consisting of λ r and λ l is thus fed to the port 7 , which may subsequently be connected to an optical amplifier capable of amplifying the complete received signal from the fiber 3 ′ and 3 ″, respectively . subsequently , an input port 8 feeds the complete amplified signal to the wavelength multiplex coupler 18 , which separates the received amplified optical signal again into two amplified signals consisting of λ r and λ l , respectively , which are fed via the connections 14 and 13 to the wavelength multiplex coupler 15 and the wavelength multiplex coupler 16 , respectively , which subsequently feed the amplified signals at λ r and λ l , respectively , out to the ports 5 and 6 connected to them . the shown router 10 of the invention comprises two 3 db couplers 21 and 22 . the coupler 21 comprises ports a , a ′, d and d ′, and the coupler 22 comprises ports b ′, b , c ′ and c . the ports a ′ and b ′ are interconnected optically by a delay device 23 that may include a pair of electrodes 24 according to an example embodiment of the invention , and also the ports d ′ and c ′ are interconnected optically . the central aspect of the invention is the transmission matrix t of the optical 3 db coupler . with reference to fig4 an optical field e 1 ( λ 1 ) at the wavelength λ 1 applied to the port a and a second field e 2 ( λ 2 ) at the wavelength λ 2 applied to the port d of an ideal 3 db coupler will give rise to an optical field on the port a ′, d ′. [ e ⇀ a ′′ e ⇀ d ′ ] = 1 2 [ 1 ⅇ j π 2 ⅇ j π 2 1 ] [ e ⇀ 1 ( λ 1 ) e ⇀ 2 ( λ 2 ) ] where the transmission matrix t 1 of the 3 db coupler is defined : t 1 = [ 1 ⅇ j π 2 ⅇ j π 2 1 ] without loss of generality , losses in the transmission a ′ to b ′ and d ′ to c ′ and the absolute time delay in the transmission may be disregarded . the only important parameter in the transmission is therefore the difference in distance δ l between the two optical connections a ′ to b ′ and d ′ to c ′. the transmission matrix t 2 for the four - port a ′, b ′, c ′, d ′ may be written : t 2 = [ ⅇ - j 2 π λ n δ l 0 0 1 ] since b ′, c ′ in fig4 are connected to another ideal 3 db coupler , the transmission matrix t 3 for the port b ′, c ′, b , c is known , since t 3 = t 1 . the overall transmission matrix t s for the port a , d , b , c may be written and the fields on the ports b and c may thereby be calculated [ e ⇀ b e ⇀ c ] = ( 1 2 ) 2 [ 1 ⅇ j π 2 ⅇ j π 2 1 ] [ ⅇ - j 2 π λ n δ l 0 0 1 ] [ 1 ⅇ j π 2 ⅇ j π 2 1 ] [ e ⇀ 1 ( λ 1 ) e ⇀ 2 ( λ 2 ) ] owing to the symmetry of the optical circuit , the transmission matrix t s may also be used for calculating the fields which will occur on the ports a and d as a function of the fields applied to the ports b and c , i . e . the opposite way back through the router . it is noted that , ideally , no field is applied to b but just to the port c according to the invention . as another object of the invention is the extinction of the field on the port c caused by the fields on the port a and d , the conditions of this extinction are made in the light of the transmission matrix t s e ⇀ c = e 1 ( λ 1 ) ( ⅇ - j 2 π λ 1 n δ l + ⅇ j π ) + e ⇀ 2 ( λ 2 ) ( ⅇ - j 2 π λ 1 n δ l + ⅇ j π ) for this field to be extinguished , the coefficients of e 1 ( λ 1 ) and e 2 ( λ 2 ) must be zero . this is satisfied if δl is selected so that 2 π λ 1 n δ l = p 2 π 2 π λ 2 n δ l = p 2 π + π this means that the fields e 1 ( λ 1 )+ e 2 ( λ 2 ) are transmitted out of the port b with full amplitude , and that the fields will be extinct on the port c , thereby allowing a unidirectional amplifier to be used between the terminals b and c . if the field e b is amplified and coupled on the port c , the transmission matrix t s may be used for calculating the field which occurs on the port a and d as a consequence of the amplified field on the port c . the fields on the ports a and d caused by the field applied to the port c are calculated relatively to the field on the port c : e ⇀ a = - e ⇀ 2 ( λ 2 ) ⅇ j π 2 this means that the field received e . g . on the port a at the wavelength λ b may be amplified and transmitted out of the port d , and a field received on the port d at the wavelength λ r may be amplified with the same amplifier and transmitted out of the port a . a power consideration illustrates how an mzi router may directionally couple several channels at various wavelengths in each direction . this is possible , provided that complete extinction of the fields on the port c is not necessary . this may be achieved particularly when optical insulators are used in connection with the two terminals of the optical amplifier . if it is defined that e 2 ( λ 2 )= 0 on the port d and e 1 ( λ 1 ) on the port a have the power p 1 , the resulting power and p b and p c on the port b and the port c , respectively , may be calculated p b = 1 2 p 1 ( 1 + cos ( 2 π f c n δ l ÷ π ) ) p c = 1 2 p 1 ( 1 + cos ( 2 π f c n δ l ) ) where frequency is substituted for wavelength . it will be seen that the two power transfer functions are offset with respect to each other and are period with the period δf = fsr , the free spectral range fig5 shows a first channel coupling characteristic for an mzi router . the figure shows a first example of how two frequency multiplexed channels in each direction may be allocated in relation to the power transfer function . the power transfer function of the mzi router has two minima / maxima in a specific frequency band at λ r and λ l , respectively . the four channels are positioned two by two in terms of frequency so that the two wavelengths λ r1 and λ r2 associated with λ r are positioned on each side of minima / maxima λ r and so that the two wavelengths λ 11 and λ 12 associated with λ l are positioned on each side of minima / maxima λ l . it is noted that the shown allocation windows δr1 , δr2 and δ11 , δ12 indicate the wavelengths which may be selected for each of the above - mentioned four channels λ r1 , λ r2 , λ 11 and λ 12 . in the shown embodiment , one boundary of the allocation window is selected in consideration of the fact that the difference between the transmission of the power transfer function from a to d and vice versa must be at least 10 db . it is noted that this boundary may vary from application to application . the other boundary of each allocation window is selected in consideration of the fact that there should be a certain minimal spacing between the channels on each side of λ r and a l , respectively , since there is a certain tolerance on the laser sources used for each channel . fig6 shows another channel coupling characteristic for an mzi router . the figure shows another example of how two channels in each direction may be allocated in relation to the power transfer function . the power transfer function of the mzi router has four minima / maxima in a specific frequency band in which the four channels are positioned . the allocation windows δr1 , δr2 and δ11 , δ12 may be selected in this case separately in consideration of the fact that the difference between the transmission of the power transfer function from a to d and vice versa must be at least 10 db . it should be noted that this limit may vary from application to application . | 6 |
the structural attributes of the present invention may be incorporated into existing stent delivery systems . for that reason , the features of the stent delivery systems disclosed in u . s . pat . nos . 6 , 773 , 446 and 6 , 939 , 352 , each of which share the assignee with the present application , are incorporated herein by reference as an examples of stent delivery systems that can be modified to include the attributes within the ambit of this disclosure . however , the present invention need not be bound to the specific features and embodiments of these particular patent disclosures . in any event , fig1 illustrates a conventional stent delivery system of the kind disclosed in u . s . pat . no . 6 , 773 , 446 . fig2 presents a perspective view of the present invention , in which spring stent stop 10 is shown at a position along the inner shaft member 100 of a stent delivery device . specifically , the spring stent stop 10 is depicted at a position on the inner shaft member 100 that is proximal to distal tip 115 of delivery system . here , the distal tip is shown in fig1 and 2 , though upon consideration of the entirety of the disclosure , it shall be evident that the affixing of the distal tip 115 to the inner shaft member 100 can take place prior to assembly or affixed after the spring stent stop is positioned proximal of the stent . the spring stent stop 10 is constructed of finger elements 30 , wherein the whole or part of such elements can be seen in fig2 and 3 . the finger elements 30 extend distally from base portion 20 . stop 10 can be made from any number of materials known in the art , including metals such as nitinol , stainless steel , or highly radio - opaque material such as platinum , gold , tantalum or polymers , including radio - opaque filled polymers . providing a radio - opaque stop is advantageous and can aide in positioning the stent within the target lesion during deployment within a vessel . the stop of the present invention is compressible preferably in a radially inward direction when a sufficient compressive force is applied , and will expand to its original non - compressed state when such force is removed . the stop provides a rigid surface 110 located at the distal end of the stop that is positioned to contact the proximal stent end when the stop is deployed on the inner shaft . in other words , when the stent is positioned upon the inner shaft of the stent delivery system during deployment of the stent , the rigid surface of the stop contacts the stent , maintaining the position of the stent during deployment . this function is advantageous as the outer sheath 200 is retracted ( i . e ., moved proximally ) during deployment , an action that but for the presence of the stop , could urge the stent to also move proximally . in assembling the device , the spring stent stop and distal tip , which previously are affixed to the inner member , is loaded through the crimped stent within the outer member and positioned proximal of the stent . upon passing through the crimped stent , the spring stop takes its position proximal to the crimped stent . thus the crimped stent , and outer sheath portion of the shaft , reside between the spring stop and the distal tip . after the spring stop 10 passes through the crimped stent , the spring like features of the stent , and biasing action associated therewith , cause the fingers 30 to open to a diameter that is substantially the same as the inside diameter of the outer member 200 . the spring like action of the stop creates a frictional engagement to shaft 10 . when the distal fingers of the spring stop expand after passing through the crimped stent , the diameter of stop 10 is large enough to make sufficient contact with the proximal end of stent 50 . the frictional contact with the outer sheath 200 does not adversely affect stent deployment . as explained above , stop 10 helps to maintain the relative position during deployment , by preventing the stent from being deployed proximal of target lesion . the radio - opaque stop 10 also aides in positioning the stent within the target lesion during deployment within a vessel , as is described below . one of the advantages provided by the present invention is that the separate distal component in the form of a wire lumen can be eliminated . that is , the delivery device can instead be constructed of only one inner shaft , thereby eliminating a separate wire lumen assembly as the tip can be affixed onto the inner member distal sheath , and therefore , the inner shaft can extend further than in heretofore known arrangements . thus , the distal tip can be overmolded to the inner shaft with the spring stent stop already in place , which is yet another advantage offered by the present inventive stop construction . to illustrate the advantages of the inventions disclosed herein , consider that with the present spring stop arrangement , the stent is crimped and loaded into the outer sheath . the inner shaft assembly is then slid through the crimped stent and outer sheath and positioned with the spring stent stop proximal of the crimped stent and the distal tip engaging the distal end of the outer sheath . the spring stent stop is moved to its location proximal to the crimped stent by passing the spring stent stop through the crimped stent , possibly by riding a tube , as explained above . the stent fingers , exhibiting spring - like movement in the radially inward direction ( yet biased radially outward ), are thus moved radially inward and retained in that position as the stop passes through the crimped stent . after the entire spring stop passes through the crimped stent , the fingers spring radially outward to their uncompressed position , with the fingers extending into a position that substantially abuts the proximal end of the crimped stent . completing the delivery system construction , the distal tip is positioned to engage the distal outer member and the proximal inner member is joined ( for example , by overmolding or adhesive bonding ) to the handle to maintain alignment of the spring stent and distal tip relative to the stent . it will be understood that this disclosure , in many respects , is only illustrative . changes may be made in details , particularly in matters of shape , size , material , and arrangement of parts without exceeding the scope of the invention . accordingly , the scope of the invention is as defined in the language of the appended claims . | 0 |
the stem 10 shown in fig1 is available in a number of different sizes to match the size to which the medullary canal 12 has been reamed or broached . the shaft of the stem 14 is designed to contact the previously reamed or broached medullary canal 12 and extend into the remaining humerus to prevent any undesired movement of the stem 10 . the stem 10 may be prevented from rotating by the use of fins 16 located at the neck of the stem 10 . these fins 16 are wedged into the proximal position of the humerus to prevent any undesired movement of the stem 10 and offer some additional support to the face 18 of the stem 10 . the face 18 of the stem 10 fits onto the previously prepared face of the humerus 20 , and is designed so that the angle of the face 18 is roughly equal to that of the anatomic neck of the humerus . coassigned u . s . patent application ser . no . 08 / 946 , 758 , filed oct . 8 , 1997 , and pct international patent application no . us97 / 18207 , filed oct . 8 , 1997 , both by michel mansat et al disclose a shoulder prosthesis with fins , and are incorporated herein by reference . the humeral head 22 is designed to articulate with the scapula or glenoid prosthesis ( not shown ). the head 22 replaces the articulating surface of the humerus and is largely hemispherical in shape . a variety of sizes of head 22 are provided to complement the patient &# 39 ; s scapula or glenoid prosthesis . the articulating surface of the head 22 is highly polished to reduce friction , hence wear , on the scapula or glenoid prosthesis . based on proximal humeral morphology , the humeral head center of the preferred embodiment is generally medialized and offset posteriorly from the humeral canal . in fact , there is about a 3 mm posterior offset in an average individual . in order to provide optimal proximal humeral bone coverage , it is useful to provide the surgeon with the option of using an eccentric head 200 , shown in fig1 . as with a traditional humeral head , eccentric humeral head 200 is also designed to articulate with the scapula or glenoid process . however , instead of having a centered mating portion , head 200 according to the preferred embodiment has an eccentric mating portion 202 . eccentric mating portion 202 is not coaxial with the head , i . e ., it is offset from the center of the humeral head articular radius . this eccentricity helps to align the proximal humeral stem with the glenoid , providing a shift in the normal anatomy . eccentric humeral head 200 is shown as having a female taper that is offset from the center of the humeral head articular radius . it should be understood , however , that mating portion 202 may be any connecting structure , such as a male mating portion , a tapered mating portion ( whether or not male ), and the like . the essence of the invention is that the humeral head itself displays eccentricity . this eccentricity may range from 1 mm to 5 mm . if eccentric head 200 is used in conjunction with an intermediate connecting member , it allows the surgeon to achieve more options to fit various patient geometries . the variation in patient anatomy , inclination angle , retroversion , and posterior offset of the humeral head necessitate the need for a multitude of intra - operative adjustments . eccentric head 200 allows the surgeon during surgery to adjust for inclination , retroversion , and / or eccentricity . during intra - operative trialing , which the surgeon performs in order to place the correct amount of tension on the soft tissue and supporting tendons , the proper humeral head size ( height and diameter ) is initially selected . the eccentric humeral head 200 enables the surgeon to adjust the humeral head prosthesis in order properly to position the humeral head in an optimum position with respect to the glenoid articular surface , as well as with respect to the tuberosity attachment site . the ability to adjust the eccentricity in the plane of the selected inclination angle along with the ability to adjust retroversion is a distinct advantage in achieving optimal joint balancing and increased range of motion . for example , if the surgeon wishes to vary the inclination angle or provide an offset of the head with respect to the stem , use of an intermediate connecting member , described below , can help achieve this configuration . however , if the surgeon wishes to alter the retroversion angle of the center of the head with respect to the glenoid , the use of eccentric head 200 helps achieve this configuration . an eccentric head used in conjunction with an intermediate stem member allows the surgeon to vary inclination , retroversion , eccentricity and offset , providing the surgeon with an increased range of usability and possibilities to fit various patient features or irregularities . of course , eccentric head 200 may be employed with or without an intermediate connecting member . in other words , the eccentric head described herein may be used coupled directly to the humeral stem . it may also be used in conjunction with an intermediate connecting member that has an offset , that provides an angle , or a combination of both or neither . additionally , eccentric head 200 may be used as an actual implant or as part of a trialing system or method . an exemplary trialing method is described in copending provisional application u . s . ser . no . 60 / 201 , 503 to hartdegen filed may 3 , 2000 , incorporated herein by reference . in a further embodiment , as shown in fig1 , eccentric head 200 has a female mating portion and trench 204 or groove defining mating portion 202 . trench 204 is any groove , indentation , or removed portion that may be milled , molded or otherwise formed . it is located circumferentially around and substantially surrounds or otherwise defines mating portion 202 . trench 204 may extend the entire circumference of the inside of the humeral head , or it may be divided by distraction slots 206 as shown in fig1 and 18 . trench 204 preferably extends to the edge of the modular humeral head . trench 204 may be any depth , but preferably extends to the bottom of the taper , approximately ten millimeters , though it is possible to provide a shallower trench 204 . it is preferred that trench 204 extend to the depth at which the head and stem engage when in use . put another way , trench 204 should extend to the depth where modular humeral head fully cooperates with the end of intermediate connecting member or stem when in use . providing a trench 204 on eccentric head 200 imparts a number of advantages . it provides increased distraction forces , so that when the surgeon impacts the head on the stem , the head provides superior locking forces with respect to the stem taper or intermediate connecting portion . it should be noted that trench 204 may achieve the described advantages if provided on either eccentric head 200 or on a traditional humeral head . it should also be noted that any head having a trench 204 may be used with or without an intermediate connecting member . for purposes of this document , reference to head 22 also includes a reference to eccentric head 200 , a head with a trench 204 ( whether traditional or eccentric ), or both . in use , it is believed that trench 204 allows the female taper to expand , creating hoop stress , which are tensile stresses along circumference of taper / lock interface . the increased tensile stresses help hold the two tapers together and thereby increase distraction forces between the two mating surfaces . without limitation to any theory , it is believed that the trench 204 allows taper to receive and seat further the portion with which it connects ( whether it be the connecting surface of intermediate connecting member or the stem ). as the taper expands , the portion with which it connects can seat even further and deeper into the taper , providing increased locking forces . to the contrary , a solid head not having trench 204 does not provide this benefit because there is no room for the taper to expand . trench 204 on head 200 strengthens the attachment of the head to a corresponding component . currently , other device manufacturers offer only eccentric heads . however , consideration must be given to the locking device when the center line of the morse tapers are not co - axial . the ability of the eccentric head to provide a substantial lock with respect to the stem taper or intermediate member has not been considered in current designs . this invention provides , in preferred embodiments , a superior locking means by the presence of a trench 204 , which provides an increase in taper locking strength . the addition of the trench 204 provides the opportunity to provide up to at least 5 mm of eccentricity , an option that no other system currently provides . because of the increased distraction forces that are required to remove the head from the stem , eccentric head 200 is shown having distraction slots 206 . distraction slots 206 provide an opening , which allows the surgeon to use an osteotome or other instrument to apply a lever - type motion to more easily remove the head from the stem . an intermediate connecting member 24 as shown in fig1 has first and second male tapers 26 and 28 of the “ morse taper ” type . once pushed together two morse taper parts tend to stay together . the first taper 26 is designed to connect with the stem 10 and the second taper 28 with the head 22 . the tapers 26 and 28 are aligned in generally opposite directions for mating with a female taper 30 of the stem 10 and a female taper 32 of the head 22 . the first male taper 26 may also be held onto the female taper 30 of the stem 10 by means of a locking screw 34 , which fits into a counter - bored hole 36 in the intermediate connecting member 24 . the axis of this counter - bored hole 36 is aligned along the central axis of the taper 26 and the screw fits into this counter - bored hole 36 and locates into a threaded hole 38 in the stem 10 . the male tapers 26 , 28 of the intermediate connecting member 24 can be securely connected with the respective female tapers 30 , 32 of the stem 10 and head 22 , which are also of the morse taper type and match the tapers of the intermediate connecting member 24 by applying an external force , to form an interference fit between the mating tapers 24 and 30 , and 26 and 32 , as shown in fig2 . the first and second male tapers 26 and 28 constitute one embodiment of the first and second connecting surfaces of the intermediate connecting member 24 . alternatives include other connecting or mating parts that define the relative orientation and position of the head 22 and the intermediate connecting member 24 or the stem 10 and the intermediate connecting member 24 . for example , the first and / or second male tapers 26 and 28 could be replaced by female tapers ( not shown ) and the female tapers 30 and 32 of the stem 10 and / or head 22 replaced by male tapers ( not shown ). there can be a large variety in the shape , size and orientation of human humeral bones and therefore it is desirable to tailor the humeral prosthesis to suit each individual case . the various designs of intermediate connecting members of the present invention provide a considerable range of different head positions and orientations relative to the humeral stem that can be selected and connected inter - operatively . the position of the head 22 can be varied by using different intermediate connecting members 24 as are appropriate in each individual case . various designs of intermediate connecting members 24 a - a are illustrated in fig3 to 7 . in each of these cases the intermediate connecting member 24 a - e has the same elements and is joined to the stem 10 and head 22 as described above . one configuration of an intermediate connecting member 24 a is illustrated in fig3 . in this configuration , the first male taper 40 and the second male taper 42 are axially aligned with minimum separation or “ neck length ” 44 between them . the design of this intermediate connecting member 24 a matches the anatomical . design of some patients &# 39 ; original humerus . for other patients , a larger separation between the head 22 of the humeral prosthesis and a fixed point on the stem 10 is more appropriate . to meet this requirement , the intermediate connecting member 24 b of fig4 is used . in this design , a portion of the intermediate connecting member 24 b between the two tapers 50 and 52 is available in a number of incrementally different sizes to allow the surgeon to select the appropriate separation or “ neck length ” 54 between the tapers 50 and 52 , and hence the separation between the head 22 and stem 10 of the prosthesis . the anterior or posterior offset can be simulated using the design of intermediate connecting member 24 c as shown in fig5 to mimic offsets 66 that can naturally occur in the humerus . in this design , the central axes of the first and second male tapers 60 and 62 are parallel and offset from one another as illustrated at 66 . the second male taper 62 is counter - bored at an off - center position ( e . g ., compare bore 68 or fig5 with bores 48 and 58 of fig3 and 4 ). this allows the head 22 to be attached on a parallel but not coincident axis to the first male taper 60 , and thus to the female taper 30 of the stem 10 . again , this design is available in a number of incrementally different offsets 66 so the surgeon can select the most appropriate intermediate connecting member 24 c for each individual patient inter - operatively . the angle of inclination α of the humeral head relative to the axis of the humeral stem can vary from patient to patient . the intermediate connecting member 24 d can simulate this orientation . the design shown in fig6 comprises a portion of the intermediate connecting member 24 d that has a generally wedge shaped design . the surgeon will be able to select the wedge - shaped intermediate connecting member 24 d from a range of intermediate connecting members 24 d having incremental difference in the inclination angle a as shown in fig6 , to best fit each individual patient . due to the wedge - shape , the central axes of the first and second male tapers 70 and 72 of this design are offset from parallel by an angle equal to the inclination angle α . any of the features of intermediate connecting members 24 a - d illustrated in fig1 to 6 can be combined to provide the desired variation in neck length 44 , 54 , 84 anterior or posterior offset 66 , 86 or angular inclination a to best suit each individual patient &# 39 ; s anatomy . fig7 shows an intermediate connecting member 24 e that includes a combination of the angular inclination α as described in fig6 , the anterior / posterior offset 86 as depicted in fig5 , and the taper separation 84 as illustrated in fig4 . in the above embodiments , the male members of the two connecting surfaces are provided by the intermediate connecting member 24 a - e . in an alternative embodiment one or both - of the two connecting surfaces provided by the intermediate connecting member may comprise female portions . for example , fig8 illustrates a second embodiment of the modular humeral prosthesis 100 of the invention similar in many respects to the first embodiment shown in fig1 - 7 . differences include the provision of a male tapered connecting portion 102 on the stem 104 , and a female tapered connecting portion 106 on the intermediate connecting member 108 . male connecting portion 102 and female connecting portion 106 are designed for substantially self - locking mating , and preferably have a circular cross section the self - locking function may be accomplished by providing a “ morse taper ” on the male and female connecting portions 102 and 106 . the female connecting portion 106 constitutes a second embodiment of the first connecting surface of the intermediate connecting member 108 . optionally , a fastener 110 may be inserted through a bore 112 through the intermediate connecting member 108 and into engagement with a bore 114 in the stem 104 to further secure the female connecting portion 106 of the intermediate connecting member 108 on the stem 104 . t fastener 110 and the bore 114 are provided with interlocking threads . as an alternative embodiment , the male and female connecting portion 102 and 106 could be provided with a non - self - locking configuration ; in which case the fastener 110 or another locking mechanism would take on a greater importance . as is the case with the first embodiment , the head 114 of the second embodiment is provided with a female connecting portion 116 , and the second connecting surfaces of the intermediate connecting member 108 comprises a male connecting portion 118 . the female and male connecting portions 116 and 118 are also preferably provided with a self - locking tapered configuration , i . e ., a morse taper . fig9 - 13 illustrate various intermediate connecting members 108 a - a for use in the prosthesis 100 . fig9 and 10 illustrate two intermediate connecting members 108 a and 108 b providing two different separations 120 and 122 . in this respect , intermediate connecting member 108 a is similar to intermediate connecting member 24 a of the first embodiment ( fig3 ) due to the minimal separation 120 or 44 , and intermediate connecting member 108 b is similar to intermediate connecting member 24 b of the first embodiment ( fig4 ) due to the greater separation 122 or 54 . both intermediate connecting member 108 a and 108 b show a zero inclination angle and a zero offset . fig1 illustrates another intermediate connecting member 108 c having , like member 108 a , minimal separation . intermediate connecting member 108 c , however , has a non - zero offset 124 . this non - zero offset 124 is accomplished by displacing or offsetting the central axis or axis of rotation of the female locking portion 126 relative to the central axis of axis of rotation of the male locking portion 128 by the offset 124 . in this respect , the intermediate connecting member 108 c is similar to the intermediate connecting member 24 c of the first embodiment ( fig5 ). fig1 illustrates yet another intermediate connecting member 108 d having , like member 108 a , minimal separation and zero offset . intermediate connecting member 108 d , however , has a non - zero inclination angle β . inclination angle β is similar in function and preferred magnitude to the inclination angle α discussed with respect to the first embodiment ( e . g ., fig6 ). fig1 illustrates an intermediate connecting member 108 e having a non - zero separation 130 , a non - zero offset 132 and a non - zero inclination angle β . in this respect , intermediate connecting member 108 e is similar to intermediate connecting member 24 e of the first embodiment ( fig7 ). fig1 - 16 are various intermediate connecting members corresponding to fig1 - 13 , but showing the tapered locking portions in more detail . one consequence of the design of the second embodiment of the prosthesis is that the male connecting portion 118 may have a length extending into the intermediate connecting member , e . g ., 108 a , a distance sufficient that it is received both in the intermediate connecting member 108 a and the void defined by the female connecting portion 116 of the head 114 . this is accomplished without any direct engagement between the male connecting portion 118 of the stem 104 and the female connecting portion 116 of the head 114 . other embodiments , which are not illustrated in the drawing , include ( 1 ) the first connecting surfaces comprising a male connecting portion and the second connecting surfaces to comprising a female connecting portion , and ( 2 ) both the first and second connecting surfaces comprising female portions . in summary , at least one advantage of providing an eccentric humeral head along with an intermediate connecting member having an angulation and / or inclination is that although the intermediate connecting member can change the medial offset ( offset from glenoid to humeral canal ), the eccentric head helps align the humeral head with the glenoid ( to account for natural offset in anatomy .) in other words , even though the intermediate connecting member can change the retroversion angle , the humeral head may still not be in center of glenoid . the eccentric head helps provide this alignment . put another way , the intermediate connecting member provides the ability to adjust the inclination angle and retroversion angle . the addition of eccentric head 200 provides the surgeon with ability to adjust for the posterior offset ( i . e ., eccentricity ) of the humeral head in the plane of the adjusted humeral head . as various changes could be made in the above constructions and methods without departing from the scope of the invention as defined in the claims , it is intended that all matter contained in the above description or shown in the accompanying drawings be interpreted as illustrative and not in a limiting sense . | 0 |
fig1 shows an image area 2 covered with capsules 1 containing dyes . the variant according to fig1 a shows a random , that is to say substantially statistical , distribution of the colour capsules 3 , whereas the other variants according to fig1 b to fig1 d show linear 4 , meandering 5 or circular 6 arrangements of the capsules containing dyes . lastly , fig1 e demonstrates a superimposition of a static distribution with a microlettering 7 . all of these variants of the dye distribution in capsules can be produced by printing methods and can be used as starting material for the execution of the proposed method . a capsule 1 according to the invention is a small ball containing a small quantity of liquid dyes or dispersed pigments advantageously of relatively uniform size , typically having a diameter from 2 μm to 15 μm , in particular 5 to 10 micrometers . the balls each contain colour bodies formed from a quantity of two , three or more different colours of the selected dye system . in fig7 a , such closed capsules 30 are illustrated in a detail from a corresponding data carrier . between the capsules 30 is the material of the substrate , which is provided here with the reference sign 35 . the capsules 30 all have a casing 31 , in which the dispersed pigments or the liquid dye 32 , 33 or 34 is enclosed . in fig7 a and 7 b , a dye 32 is illustrated by means of hatching pointing upwardly to the left , a dye 33 is illustrated by means of hatching pointing upwardly to the right , and a dye 34 is illustrated by means of horizontal hatching . the casing 31 seals the dye 32 , 33 or 34 with respect to the surrounding environment , whereby it not only masks the dye visually for the human eye , but also protects it against bleaching , and is slightly transparent so as to be able to determine from the outside by means of the charting method the colour of the contained dye . the casing 31 of the capsule 30 has a uniform outer colour , for example white , so as to be able to easily identify the content by means of spectroscopy and so as to also be able to easily set a white colour tone as the colour of the substrate . the capsules 30 with their hard casing and their dye content are preferably produced by means of pearl polymerisation or suspension polymerisation , but also by coacervation or a centrifugation method . suspension polymerisation is a method that has long been known ( see also the series “ chemie , physik and technologie der kunststoffe in einzeldarstellungen ” ( chemistry , physics and technology of plastics in individual presentations ), hrg . k . a . wolf , springer publishing house ). with this method , colour bodies and the monomers required for the polymerisation are in an oil phase and radical starters for initiating the polymerisation are in the aqueous phase of the oil - in - water system . the polymerisation takes place at the interface between the two phases and leads to microencapsulated dyes in the desired size in accordance with the composition of the suspension and the reaction conditions . in the case of coacervation , the microcapsules are produced in a colloidal system , wherein the precipitation is initiated for example by a suitable ph shift . the microcapsules produced are typically dried in a further step by means of a spray - drying method and are therefore brought into a form that can be further processed . an application of the method is , for example , the production of pressure - sensitive microcapsules for self - copy papers . a method described in u . s . pat . no . 2 , 712 , 507 is based on an aqueous salt water of a colloidal material , for example gelatine , which , in an oil phase suspended therein , for example consisting of trichlorodiphenyl , contains a dye . in the case of the above - mentioned disclosure , the microcapsules were formed by casting the heated coacervate mixture into a cooler salt solution . in a further processing sequence , the capsules are separated , cured and dried . lastly , the production of microcapsules can also be implemented using a centrifugal method , which for example is similar to spin - coating , which is suitable for the application of thin , very uniform films ( see k . norrman , a . ghanbari - siahkali and n . b . larsen , annu . rep . prog . chem ., sect . c : phys . chem ., 2005 , 101 , 174 - 201 ), but , by contrast thereto , does not form planar layers , but casing structures , that is to say microcapsules . successful practical application of such a method is the production of the chromophoric elements for what is known as e - paper . here , different type of capsules 30 can be used , which can withstand the subsequent lamination of the substrate . they can advantageously also convey the adhesion of the laminate . due to an embodiment of the casing 31 in such a way that the casing 31 of the capsules 30 bursts at a predetermined laminate pressure and a predetermined temperature , this leads to a further difficulty for imitators to produce such a pressure product . since the capsules 30 have been applied to or introduced over a pressure area , in particular in a single layer , they can then be further processed . the casings 31 of the capsules 30 in particular may be single - shelled , that is to say may consist of a single layer that surrounds the colour material and contains said colour material internally in the capsule 30 . in other embodiments , multi - shelled capsules are also possible , but are more complex to produce . the single - shelled capsule material is preferably not porous , that is to say it contains no absorbing substances acting specifically on the individual colour types , but the capsules 30 are designed identically for all at least two , in particular three , colour types . fig2 a is an abstract and schematic illustration of an image area that in this case 25 consists of surface elements 22 envisaged theoretically to a certain extent , which each contain just one capsule with liquid dye . in this example , the dyes comprise the three primary colours cyan [ c ] 20 , magenta [ m ] 21 , and yellow [ y ] 19 in a statistical distribution , but with only one corresponding dye in each area element . fig2 b shows the profile of a laser beam 23 having a specific beam diameter 24 . after passing a focusing element 25 , this laser beam is focused to a diameter that allows complete irradiation of a dye - filled capsule 1 and of which the focus diameter is sufficiently small in order to open just one capsule 1 in each case , but irradiates said capsule substantially completely over the entire effective cross section . fig2 c shows the constriction of the laser beam 23 after diffraction when passing the focusing element 25 in the focal plane to a smallest diameter 27 . fig3 a and 3 b illustrate the difference between the macroscopic consideration or effect in fig3 a of an image 8 , which has been produced over the image area 2 in accordance with a method of this invention , and microscopic consideration in fig3 b , which allows the pigment structure to be viewed using a magnifying device 9 . the microscopic consideration of a selectively controlled pigment distribution allows verification of precisely this pigment distribution , since this distribution is combined with the actual individualising information of the image , that is to say , in a synergy , thus combines the fingerprint effect of the pigment distribution with the individualising information such that a considerable increase in the security standard is produced . in practice , this pigment distribution may also be a special raster , that can be assessed using a device ( illustrated in the drawing as a magnifying glass ), which can determine the colour effect through the capsule wall . a combination of a special raster with a random background distribution is also possible , such that the special raster can be verified without reference to a database , and the random background distribution can be verified by retrieving the corresponding identification information in a database . the microscopic structure can thus be checked both in a simple verification method ( special raster ) and in a superior security - relevant verification method ( retrieval of the random distribution from the database ). the drawings fig4 a and fig4 b demonstrate the two key method steps a and b , and optionally c , of this invention , consisting of the local and spectral analysis of the capsules 30 with the dyes with use of reflected light with the aid of a white light source 11 and a photoreceiver 12 , which can be positioned with a two - path linear displacement unit 10 accurately to the micrometer above the sample or the image field ( fig4 a , step a ), and also consisting of a laser system 17 , which decouples a laser beam 23 such that , in accordance with the data obtained from the apparatus according to fig4 a , said laser beam can contact each individual capsule with perfect precision ( fig4 b , step b ). alternatively to the movement shown here of the white light source and of the photoreceiver and also of the laser optic , the substrate can also be moved by means of a two - path displacement unit . this alternative is not illustrated in fig4 a / 4 b . it should also be mentioned with the illustration of the photoreceiver 12 , that the structure of the photoreceiver has been illustrated in a simplified manner . it is not illustrated that the detector in the case of a white light excitation consists of a plurality of colour - specific components , which for example may consist of a plurality of photodiodes provided with differently coloured filters , or that the detector for example may also be a ccd sensor or a cmos sensor with upstream multi - coloured filter ( for example a beyer filter ), wherein , in the case of a foveon cmos sensor , it is possible to dispense with a colour filter . furthermore , with the embodiment shown in the drawing of the exciting light source 11 in fig4 a , it is not illustrated that , in the case of an excitation in chronological sequence with light in different colours , the excitation light is generated by a plurality of differently coloured , narrow - band light sources , and the exciting light source therefore consists of a plurality of components . furthermore , when focusing the laser beam in fig4 b , it should be noted that the diameter of the laser beam 24 is collimated by the focusing element 25 much more strongly to the smallest diameter 27 than illustrated in fig4 b , that is to say the drawing is not to scale . likewise , an expansion of the laser beam after decoupling from the laser resonator is not illustrated separately , but is part of the laser system 17 . the entire workflow of the method in accordance with this invention is illustrated in fig5 . the key steps are the detection of the location and colour of the content of each individual capsule 13 , production of the colour chart 14 , storage of the data thus obtained in the form of a colour chart in a database 15 , supply of the data or of the control protocol for the laser controller 51 in order to open the capsules , which in turn controls the process of the capsule opening 52 by means of the laser system 17 , and supply of the data or of the control protocol for the laser controller 53 , which in turn controls the process of the selective laser bleaching 54 by means of a uv laser system . the colour chart in the database is also used as a signature for a subsequent authentication of the security document via the image data thereof . here , the production of the colour chart 14 can be used both to open the capsules and to bleach the capsules if the substrate therebetween has not shifted . otherwise , the corresponding data have to be transformed . if the bleaching is not carried out by the same light source , in particular the same uv laser , the further light source or the further light sources , where a number of bleaching light sources are used , is / are then advantageously coupled into the charting scanning optic in order to approach these positions accurately in a simple manner ; however , as can be seen in fig7 a and 7 b , the colour elements are then distributed either as suspended colours or as distributed colour pigments over a relatively large area 42 . the residues of the destroyed capsule casings 41 are also present in this area 42 . if , after opening one or more capsules 30 of the same colour ( as in fig7 b ) or of different colours ( as not illustrated in the figures ), a bleaching process is carried out , there are a number of possibilities for carrying out this step 54 . on the one hand , the colour charting 14 can be used directly and the capsules 30 opened based on this can be irradiated . only parts of the colour bodies existing around the destroyed casing 41 are therefore bleached . this can be limited to the space of the open capsule or to a predetermined radius . a further possibility is the use of the knowledge concerning the charting and the distances between individual colour capsules . a calculation method can then be stored in the controller , said calculation method calculating approximately the colour distribution after destruction of a capsule ; this distribution of the colour bodies is dependent on the type of colour bodies and the suspended capsule content can be predicted over the diffusion time . again , two sub - cases are possible . on the one hand , bleaching can also be carried out directly , also dependently of the opening of the capsules 30 , such that the predetermined capsules are not initially opened as in fig5 and the possible other predetermined capsule contents are then bleached , but the dye still distributing can be bleached directly in the surrounding environment of the casing capsule 41 , such that the then partly bleached dye distributes itself . the other option is to wait for all distribution processes of the dye from an opened capsule for the areas 41 and the bleaching around the location of the previous capsule 30 . the remaining colour value can then be calculated from the known capsule content and the bleaching intensity at the location of the capsule with the knowledge of unbleached portions of the colour bodies far away from the destroyed capsule . a third possibility for bleaching consists on the whole in appending a further charting step in order to chart the areas 42 in predetermined resolution so as to then , after this charting step , fully or partially bleach the entire or at least approximate area 42 with regard to the intensity of the bleaching , which may lead to a slightly more uniform colour image because substantially the complete colour area is processed . in this regard , these above - presented approaches correspond in reverse sequence to a remapping for defined bleaching , a calculation of the colour area distribution after the maturing time , that is to say the distribution of the colour bodies , or an execution of the bleaching process at the location of the burst capsule immediately or in a delayed manner in order to bleach a predefineable quantity of the colour . the drawings according to fig6 a and 6 b explain a possible application of this technology for portrait production on a card - shaped data carrier 26 . the portrait produced in accordance with this invention additionally also contains additional data that are stored in the image field 2 on the basis of the colour and pigment distribution achieved by the printing of the capsules . this data for example may be personal data concerning the document owner ( as illustrated in fig6 b ), which are used in order to identify the document owner or , for example , provide possibilities for authenticating the document via a serial number or information concerning the statistical distribution of the particles in a specific area , etc . the balls 30 of the desired colour tone are made to burst or crack , addressed individually , with the aid of an excitation beam , in particular a focussed light beam , for example of a laser , wherein this may be an infrared wavelength for example . this is illustrated in fig7 b such that a destroyed casing 41 is provided , from which the dye 42 has escaped . the spherical casing 31 itself or the dye content 32 are so intensely heated by the light beams or excited by an acoustic wave that the addressed capsules 30 burst and the dye ( here the dye 32 ) runs out and , in the case of the three burst capsules , fills the hatched area 42 . the heating may contribute to a rise of the surface tension , such that the capsule tears at the casing similarly to an inflated balloon and the content thus exits . the propagation of the liquid dye is limited upwardly and downwardly with respect to the drawing plane , normally with respect to a base substrate below and a laminate film above . the surrounding environment of the capsules 30 , this being a binder or paper ( not illustrated in fig7 ), and the outer casing 31 of the capsules 30 are designed such that the dye 32 distributes there effectively in a capillary manner or as a result of the mechanical pressure present . this process taking place over a period of time then leads to the embodiment illustrated in fig7 b , specifically the fact that the dye 32 can reach in a capillary manner at least half the distance to the capsule 30 of the same colour . in addition , it will wet and dye its own capsule casing 41 open in the meantime . the excitation and destruction of a number of capsules 30 of a predetermined dye type ( here 32 ) would thus allow a virtually complete area fill 42 with this colour tone , wherein the capsules of other dyes ( here the horizontally hatched capsules with the dye 34 surrounded on almost all sides ) still remain closed and themselves produce a white impression . the advantage of the encapsulation , besides the possibility of producing intensive tones , also lies in the fact that it is sufficient to be able to use favourable light sources . however , for specific focusing for example to 2 μm , it is still advantageous to use coherent or monochromatic light . favourable light sources is to be understood to mean the use of a single laser in contrast to the three lasers in the methods according to the prior art . the aforementioned bursting of the capsules can also take place within a laminate . in this way , the area internally in the laminate can also be filled completely with a colour . if , in such a case , all capsules 30 , for example in the cym system , are opened , an area that is deep black in principle is produced . accordingly , the mixed colours can also be produced directly in full tone . the method is applied in order to personalise security documents for example , and it provides an additional possibility for significantly increasing the level of protection against forgery . in this exemplary application , the precise detection of the colour regions is therefore no longer merely used as in the previous application to improve the printing method in terms of the technical deficiencies thereof . the colours can also be arranged in a random pattern , alternating from blank to blank , since this can be identified by the corresponding control unit . a blank can therefore only then be printed if , before the exposure with the laser , the method according to a . has been used , since otherwise a false - colour image would be produced . blanks would therefore be unusable for counterfeiting unless the counterfeiter were to use a microscopic analysis according to method a . a particular possibility of making a fake document immediately identifiable to the eye of the untrained observer lies in additionally changing for example in the case of personal papers the regularity of the pseudo - statistical rearrangement of the colour pattern for example in the region in which the face of the portrait is normally arranged , in such a way that the false colour representation changes and for example the word “ fake ” is legible in colour unless the precise microposition of the colour pattern is taken into account . in accordance with document wo - a - 0115910 , it is possible to selectively produce the colour effect of pigment mixtures , consisting of yellow , cyan - coloured and magenta - coloured pigments , by irradiating them with the wavelengths of a laser complimentary to the pigment colour and thus bleaching them . a red , green and blue laser are therefore necessary for complete exposure . with this method , a plurality of pigment grains of different colouration are always located within the focus of the laser beam , which simultaneously corresponds to the desired pixel size , that is to say for example 50 μm for a resolution of 500 dpi , since these pigment grains are much smaller , which may be advantageous when bleaching in order to achieve mixed tones . however , only precisely those pigments that absorb the laser radiation of the respective used wavelength are bleached . yellow pigments therefore absorb the blue wavelength and are bleached . the other cyan - coloured and magenta - coloured pigments retaining their colouration mix with one another when viewed under reflecting light subtractively to give blue . blue irradiation thus produces a blue shade . the red and green laser radiation behaves similarly when it contacts the same pigment mixture . in this embodiment , the particle sizes of the pigments are in the region of 10 μm . the position of the pigments can therefore be detected accurately to 2 μm in the same manner as described there using a microscopic scanning method . their diameter is also suitable to address them individually with a uv laser beam having a focus of approximately 10 μm , since said mechanical linear displacement units with location accuracy to 2 μm can be purchased ( heinrich wolf , eutin ). all 3 types of colours can be bleached with just one wavelength in uv ( typically 355 nm ). this embodiment therefore provides the possibility of working with just one laser instead of with 3 lasers , since the individual colour components of the pigments are no longer addressed via the wavelength of the light , but via the location . a significant cost reduction of the technical system is therefore achieved as a result of the transition to just one wavelength . in accordance with a development of the embodiment described in fig7 , it is likewise possible to release the dyes 32 , 33 and 34 in the capsules 30 at different times . a distinction is therefore made between the bleaching of the dyes over the time axis by different , yet individually controllable , exposure times ( fig8 ), which leads to a further possibility for influencing the printed image . as a result of the local selection of the capsules 30 , that is to say the previous spectroscopic analysis of the colour present at a specific location , a decision is made to open predetermined capsules in a single process step . after a specific period of bleaching of dye that has already been released , a further , second colour component is bleached by laser irradiation at a location already released from the destroyed capsule 40 , whereas colour components still located in other capsules 30 at the same location are protected against the bleaching process by the casings 31 of the capsules 30 . steps b and c during the image production process are carried out in practice in nested form to a certain extent . as already mentioned above , the bleaching can be undertaken by including a focusing of the bleaching beam matched to the discharge regions or a broader beam for the processing of larger portions of the area 42 , the intensity of said beam then being insufficient however to destroy other capsules . in one embodiment , a predetermined bleaching light energy is thus fed , which is still insufficient to carry out the bleaching in the end state . this is because , once this first bleaching energy has been fed , a second excitation energy is diverted onto this location and , in a combined process step , immediately thereafter with amended focus size opens another capsule 30 comprising a different dye component located at this location and then again with adapted focus size further bleaches the dyes , which have already escaped , of a capsule 30 opened earlier . the dye of the capsule opened first is thus subsequently bleached by means of this capsule opening energy for a second capsule 30 . in the case of a multi - colour system , these steps can then be applied again a third or fourth time in order to open further capsules 30 . as these further capsules 30 are opened , the irradiated energy will simultaneously further bleach the used dyes of the previously opened capsules , wherein the bleaching energy behaves in a cumulative manner . the dyes 32 , 33 , 34 present at this location will then reach the ultimately necessary degree of bleaching once all provided capsules 30 have been opened and the dyes 32 , 33 and 34 contained therein have been bleached and in particular bleached to different degrees . capsule opening and bleaching are therefore intermittent processes , which follow one another directly a number of times , wherein the focus size of the laser , the power thereof and , lastly but not necessarily , the frequency thereof has to be adapted in each case . the practical significance of this staggered bleaching process is that , for the production of a natural image , colour tones from the entire colour space have to be represented . this is only possible with exposure times of different length of a colour body . since a plurality of colour bodies are always present at the same time in the focus of the laser beam , this is advantageously achieved in that the colour body to be bleached to the greatest extent is released first . this is followed by the colour body that has to be bleached to the second greatest extent , and so on ( see fig8 ). this approach will be explained on the basis of an example . at a specific location , the colour tone having the coordinates 38 , 253 , 107 in the rgb system is to be represented . this corresponds to a green . in the cym system , the colour vector as ( 117 , 148 , 2 ) would ensue ( 255 * 0 . 459 ; 225 * 0 . 58 ; 255 / 0 . 008 ) in accordance with a known conversion formula . in order to simplify the calculation , the energy value is scaled in bit values and not in joules , and it is assumed that two dyes escaping from capsules shadow one another by 50 % at an identical location ; by contrast , three dyes shadow one another by 66 %. these assumptions correspond to the setting of calculation constants and can be adapted in accordance with colour . in the cym system , c would then have to be bleached from full tone with 255 − 117 = 138 energy values . y would have to be bleached from full tone with 255 − 148 = 107 energy values . m would lastly have to be bleached from full tone with 255 − 2 = 253 energy values . in total , ( 138 + 107 + 153 =) 498 energy values would therefore have to be introduced . the capsules that contain the m dye would have to be opened first at this location , because these have to be bleached to the greatest extent ; followed by the capsules provided with the c dye and lastly by the capsules containing the dye y . if the individual dye could be bleached by an above - mentioned bit value within a nanosecond , which is assumed here by way of example for simple calculation purposes , the energy flow can be divided as follows . the opened magenta capsules first receive bleaching light for ( 253 − 138 ) nanoseconds = 115 nanoseconds . the cyan capsules are then to be opened and the dye is to be left for a certain period of time so as to distribute in a capillary manner . after the distribution , it is mixed with the magenta dye , which has already been bleached beforehand . the two dyes shadow one another in accordance with the above assumption by 50 %. they must therefore be bleached jointly for ({ 138 − 107 nanoseconds }* 2 =) 62 nanoseconds . the magenta dye is then bleached by 115 + 62 / 2 = 146 colour tone values , whereas the cyan dye is bleached by 62 / 2 = 31 colour tone values . lastly , the capsules to be bleached to the smallest extent , specifically the yellow capsules , are opened . these are to be bleached for 107 nanoseconds * 3 = 321 nanoseconds , because the dyes then shadow one another by two thirds and the time therefore has to be trebled . after adding the bleaching effect of said third bleaching step , m is then bleached for 115 + 62 / 2 + 321 / 3 = 253 stages , c is then bleached for 62 / 2 + 321 / 3 = 138 stages , and y is lastly then bleached for 321 / 3 = 107 stages . the above - mentioned original requirements for the selected green dye are therefore provided . in total , 115 + 62 + 321 = 498 nanoseconds of exposure should therefore be applied . the general formula is as follows : t 3 = k1 ( b 3 − b 2 ); t 2 = k 2 ( b 2 − b 1 ); t 1 = k 3 * b 1 , wherein t is the time , b is the necessary bleaching value , and the index 3 / 2 / 1 stands for the component to be bleached to the greatest extent / middle extent / weakest extent . in a simple exemplary embodiment , the scaling constant k can be selected as k 1 = 1 * k , k 2 = 2 * k and k 3 = 3 * k . if the laser that is used for bleaching ( a uv laser in the presented exemplary embodiment ) is also intended to open the capsules ), it should possibly be ensured that either the dye in the undestroyed capsules is not also bleached beforehand during the bleaching process of the dyes already released , or that the capsule wall 31 is designed such that it protects the internally arranged dyes 32 , 33 and 34 . the casing residues 41 and the dead - bleached colour bodies tend in some circumstances to remain as yellowish artefacts . here , tio 2 nanoparticles may in the meantime be brought into contact with the substrate , since such tio 2 nanoparticles behave as a semiconductor under the action of energy - rich light ( the uv proportion in sunlight is generally sufficient for this ) and thus have a high redox potential . this effect is used for example in a solar cell , what is known as a grätzel cell , produced commercially by g24 innovations , or has been proposed for wastewater purification ( for example see d . meissner , photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical wastewater purification , 4 th ulmer electrochemical days , 1997 ). the redox potential is sufficient in order to lighten the residues , having a yellowish effect , of bleached dyes of the areas 42 or the capsule residues 41 . the photocatalytic effect with titanium dioxide in order to increase the whiteness of the background forms part of the aforementioned “ finishing ” process . here , the tio 2 nanoparticles can be applied for example to a drum , over the lateral surface of which the substrate is drawn under a specific bias . with a light source acting on this contact area between the substrate and lateral surface with uv light , the proportion , having a yellowish effect , of bleached colour areas 42 and of burst casing elements 41 can be whitened . since the tio 2 nanoparticles do not remain in the substrate , the produced product remains light - resistant . a variant that is more efficient from a photochemical point of view is the insertion of the titanium dioxide nanopowder into the printing ink containing colour capsules , wherein , in this case but after the activating exposure of the tio 2 with uv light , the developed pattern , sign , symbol or image has to be covered by an efficient uv filter , preferably in the form of a laminate film , such that the oxidative effect of the tio 2 in sunlight can no longer take place and a disadvantageous premature fading of the image caused by this chemical process is avoided . 6 region with regular distribution of the capsules , circular arrangements 13 detection of the capsules containing dye as a colour element as a function of the spatial coordinates 14 storage of the data in the form of a colour chart 19 area element comprising capsule and yellow primary colour dye 20 area element comprising capsule and cyan primary colour dye 21 area element comprising capsule and magenta primary colour dye | 1 |
turning first to fig1 there is illustrated a door panel molding installation machine 8 of the present invention . the machine 8 has a tubular steel frame 10 , which forms the structural support for the entire machine . there is a pair of forklift tubes 12 by which the machine 8 can be lifted and moved . however once the machine is properly located , it is intended to remain stationary . the machine is designed to receive a car door inner panel 9 , which is securely held in place by several panel supports 16 and clamps 18 . the operator of the machine 8 positions the door panel 9 on the supports 16 and locks the panel to the frame 10 at the beginning of the installation cycle and unlocks the panel upon completion of the cycle . on the top of the frame 10 is mounted a reversible electric motor 20 . an electric control panel 21 provides the controls and power to the motor 20 to operate it at the proper times and in the correct direction . the output shaft of the motor is connected to a coupling 22 , which in turn is connected to a shaft , which passes through a bearing 24 . this in turn is connected to a screw drive 26 which has its end supported in an end bearing 28 . the screw drive is a one inch diameter ball bearing screw shaft . there is a push block 30 mounted at the motor end of the screw drive 26 . the push block 30 has a threaded passageway that receives the screw drive 26 . the screw drive rotates four turns to move the push block 30 one inch . a guide block 32 is mounted on the top of the frame 10 near the end bearing 28 , which is also located above where the door panel is mounted . spacer tubes or pipes 34 connect the guide block 32 and push block 30 to each other . the spacing between the push block 30 and guide block 32 can be adjusted by adjusting the length of the spacer tubes . thus as the push block 30 is driven by the screw drive 26 , the guide block 32 is simultaneously driven a like distance . the push block 30 and guide block 32 rest on a block rail 36 , which is mounted to the top of frame 10 . the block rail 36 can be of many designs but it is important that it maintains the push block 30 and guide block 32 in a straight line while allowing the blocks to move freely along their travel in either direction . in the preferred embodiment the block rail 36 has a pair of ball bearing block assemblies mounted on it . the push block 30 and guide block 32 are mounted on the ball bearing block assemblies so that they can move freely . as seen in fig2 a pair of limit switches 38 and 40 control the length of travel of the push block 30 by sending signals to the control panel 21 when tripped by the movement of the push block 30 and guide block 32 . the exact length of travel , location of stopping and reversing of the push block 30 and guide block 32 can be adjusted by adjusting the point where the limit switches are activated . turning to fig3 which is and end view of the machine 8 , one can see the narrow profile of the entire machine . the machine 8 does not take up a great deal of manufacturing space in an assembly plant . there is also illustrated a parts tray 42 mounted above the frame 10 on which the operator can place molding strips or other parts as necessary . there is also shown a safety shield 44 that covers the area where the moldings are actually installed . this is to keep the operator &# 39 ; s hands out of the area where the moldings are slid onto the door panels and to keep the operator &# 39 ; s hands away from the screw drive . there are electrical interlocks connected to the safety shield that disconnect the drive and render it inoperative when the safety shield is opened during the installation process or not closed at the beginning of the cycle . there is a molding strip rail 46 also mounted to the top of the frame 10 . the strip rail 46 extends substantially the entire distance from the push block 30 to the guide block 32 . it is designed to receive a molding strip 48 that is to be installed onto the door panel . as seen in fig4 which is an enlarged view of the push block 30 , the strip rail 46 has an upstanding tongue 50 that positions and supports the molding strip 48 in the proper orientation for installation . the push block 30 also has a groove or channel 52 cut in its underside along its entire length . the groove 52 is dimensioned to receive the tongue 50 as the push block 30 moves along the block rail 36 . the push block 30 engages the molding strip 48 and pushes it along the strip rail 46 and onto the door panel . as seen in fig5 and 6 , the guide block 32 is located just behind the molding strip rail 46 . a cam follower 51 ( fig6 ) is located at the front and bottom of the guide block 32 . there is a track 53 on the top of the frame 10 that extends from the point of beginning to the end of the guide block &# 39 ; s 32 travel . the cam follower 51 follows the track 53 , which will be more fully described later . there is a guide post 54 mounted to the frame 10 in front of the molding strip rail 46 . the molding strip 48 is received between the guide post 54 and the strip rail 46 with a top edge of the molding folded over the upstanding tongue 50 . the folded top edge of the molding strip 48 extends over the tongue 50 . this is the portion of the molding that is wrapped around the door panel with the vinyl or cloth material firmly captured between the folded top edge of the molding and the door panel . the folded top edge of the molding strip 48 catches on a lip on the door panel to lock the molding strip 48 to the door panel . the details of the guide block 32 are more clearly illustrated in fig7 through 13 . the guide block 32 is made from a main block 56 that has a square channel 58 cut perpendicularly from one side to the other . there is a pair of arms 60 extending forward from and on either side of the main block 56 . a back or end plate 61 is affixed to the rear of the block 56 . fig8 illustrates a t - shaped actuator 62 which is assembled from a square shaft 64 affixed to a moveable plate 66 . the shaft 64 has a central circular passageway 68 as seen in fig9 . a spring ( not illustrated ) is positioned within the central passageway 68 . a cover plate 70 ( fig1 ) is adapted to be mounted to the top of the main block 56 . fig1 illustrates how the t - shaped actuator 62 is received within the main block 56 . the square shaft 64 is slidably received within the square channel 58 . the shaft 64 can be lubricated to allow it to slide more easily . a square shaft is used to restrain any circular movement of the shaft 64 thus allowing the moveable plate 66 to move in only one axis . the spring in the passageway 68 pushes against the back plate 61 which forces the moveable plate 66 forward away from the main block 56 . the moveable plate 66 has a recess 72 . a finger holder 74 is securely mounted in the recess 72 . as seen in fig1 , the finger holder is made up of two components , a top block 76 and a bottom block 78 . as seen in fig1 , there are two mounting screws 80 , that pass through holes 99 in the blocks 76 and 78 to fasten the finger holder 74 to the recess 72 in the moveable plate 66 . it can also be seen in fig1 that the top block 76 is mounted to the bottom block 78 by means of a long screw 82 that passes through the top block 76 and is received in a threaded passageway in the bottom block 78 . sandwiched between the top and bottom blocks 76 and 78 is a finger 84 . the finger 84 is semi - rigid but will allow some flexing at its tip 86 when a downward pressure is exerted . the amount of pressure exerted by the finger 84 onto a door panel molding can be adjusted by tightening or loosening the long screw 82 . the tip 86 is bent slightly upward to allow the molding strip 48 to be slid under the tip 86 for installation to the door panel . the machine 8 is easy to operate . the operator first takes a door panel , locates it on the supports 16 , and secures it to the frame by means of the clamps 18 as seen in fig1 . the molding strip 48 is placed on the molding strip rail 46 with the leading edge of the strip 48 slid under the tip 86 of the finger 84 . the screw drive is started and the push block 30 begins pushing the molding strip 48 to the left ( as seen in fig1 ). at the same time the guide block 32 begins moving to the left along the top of the door panel . the moveable plate 66 is forced away from the main block 56 due to the t - shaped actuator being forced out as a result of the spring pushing against the back plate 61 . the moveable plate 66 is guided away from the main block 56 by the cam follower 51 following the track 53 which is configured to move the plate 66 approximately ½ inch forward and away from the main block 56 during the first few inches of travel of the guide block 32 . the movement of the moveable plate 66 toward the front of the machine 8 causes the plate 66 to apply a horizontal pressure against the vinyl or cloth material on the door panel . at the same time , the finger 84 applies a vertical force or pressure to the vinyl or cloth . the pressures are applied to the material at a point just in front of the leading edge of the molding strip 48 . the combination of forces and the location where they are applied is critical to the success of the process . if the forces are applied too far forward of the leading edge of the molding strip , the material will ball or bunch up in front of the leading edge . this keeps the leading edge of the molding strip from sliding over the material and instead the molding strip will tear the material . thus the material must be compressed in front of the leading edge as the strip is forced over the door panel . when the guide block 32 reaches the end of its travel , the molding strip 48 will have been installed along the entire length of the door panel . the clamps 18 are released and the door panel is removed . the push and guide blocks return to their original position and the cycle is repeated . the machine 8 illustrated in fig1 is designed for applying a molding strip on one of the inside door panels . a mirror image machine is needed to install the molding strip to the opposite door panel . in this manner the molding strips are always installed along the door panel in the same relative direction and in the same manner . thus there has been provided a method and apparatus for installing a molding strip to a door panel that fully satisfies the objects and advantages as set forth above . it is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the particular embodiment disclosed . obvious modifications or variations are possible to those skilled in the art in light of the above teachings . all such modifications and variations are within the broad scope of the invention as determined by the appended claims . | 1 |
according to one preferred embodiment , the dihydroperimidine squarylium dyes used as an antihalation or acutance dye , have the nucleus : ## str4 ## wherein r 1 , r 2 , r 3 , r 4 , r 5 , r 6 , r 7 , and r 8 each independently represent hydrogen , an alkyl group having from 1 - 20 carbon atoms , a cycloalkyl group having from 1 - 20 carbon atoms , an aryl group having up to 14 carbon atoms , an aralkyl group , or r 1 and r 2 , and / or r 3 and r 4 , and / or r 5 and r 6 and / or r 7 and r 8 ; or r 2 and r 3 and / or r 6 and are bonded together to form a 5 -, 6 -, or 7 - membered ring . according to another preferred embodiment , the dihydroperimidine squarylium dyes used as antihalation or acutance dyes , have the general formula : ## str5 ## wherein r 1 , r 2 , r 3 , and r 4 each independently represent hydrogen , an alkyl group having from 1 - 20 carbon atoms , a cycloalkyl group having from 1 - 20 carbon atoms , an aryl group having up to 14 carbon atoms , an aralkyl group , or r 1 and r 2 , and / or r 3 and r 4 , or r 2 and r 3 are bonded together to form a 5 -, 6 -, or 7 - membered ring . according to one especially preferred embodiment r 1 and r 4 are hydrogen and r 2 and r 3 independently represent an alkyl group having from 1 - 20 carbon atoms , a cycloalkyl group having from 1 - 20 carbon atoms , an aralkyl group , an aryl group , or r 2 and r 3 taken together form a 5 -, 6 -, or 7 - membered ring . representative , non - limiting dyes according to this preferred embodiment are : ## str6 ## according to yet another preferred embodiment r 3 and r 4 are taken together to form a cycloalkyl group having 1 - 20 carbon atoms , r 2 is an aryl group and r 1 is hydrogen . a preferred but non - limiting example includes : ## str7 ## according to yet a third preferred embodiment , r 3 and r 4 are taken together to form a lactam group , r 2 is an alkyl or an aryl group and r 1 is h . representative dyes according to this embodiment are : ## str8 ## other examples of embodiments of dyes suitable for use as near infrared antihalation or acutance dyes may include dyes wherein r 1 and r 2 as well as r 3 and r 4 are taken together to form cycloalkyl groups . dyes of this type can be prepared by reaction of a ω , ω - dihaloketone with a 1 , 8 - diaminonaphthalene , followed by condensation with squaric acid . still other examples of embodiments of dyes suitable for use as antihalation or acutance dyes may include , dyes wherein r 1 and r 2 are taken together to form a lactam group , while r 3 and r 4 are taken together to form a cycloalkyl group . dyes of this type can be prepared by reaction of a ω - halo - keto - carboxylic ester with a 1 , 8 - diaminonaphthalene , followed by condensation with squaric acid . selection of the appropriate substituent groups , r 1 - r 4 may enable one to shift the peak absorption wavelength . for example , dyes of the type exemplified by structures 3a - 3d have wavelength absorptions shifted 10 - 15 nm to shorter wavelengths from those exemplified by structures 1a - 1f . the squarylium dyes exemplified by structures 1a - 1f may be prepared by condensing a ketone or an aldehyde with a 1 , 8 - diaminonaphthalene in the presence of an acid catalyst , in a solvent such as toluene , under reflux conditions , with removal of the water from the reaction mixture as it is formed . the resultant dihydroperimidine product is typically isolated by distillation . the dihydroperimidine , is then heated at reflux with squaric acid , [ also known as 3 , 4 - dihydroxy - 3 - cyclobutene - 1 , 2 - dione ] in a mixture of toluene and n - butanol , again with removal of the liberated water as it is formed . the product , isolated by addition of petroleum ether and filtration , can be purified by chromatography and / or recrystallization . the preparation of dyes of this type is shown in scheme 1 . ## str9 ## dyes in which r 3 and r 4 form a carbocyclic ring are similarly prepared . thus , condensation of a ω - halo - ketone with a 1 , 8 - diaminonaphthalene gives a ring fused dihydroperimidine . reaction of this material with squaric acid gives dyes exemplified by structure 2a . the preparation of dyes of this type is shown in scheme 2 . in scheme 2 , n is an integer which represents the number of methine groups necessary to complete a 5 -, 6 -, or 7 - membered ring . ## str10 ## dyes in which r 3 and r 4 form a lactam are prepared by condensing a keto - carboxylic acid derivative ( typically a keto - ester ) with a 1 , 8 - diaminonaphthalene to give a lactam fused dihydroperimidine . reaction of this material with squaric acid gives dyes exemplified by structures 3a - 3d . the preparation of dyes of this type is shown in scheme 3 . in scheme 3 , m is an integer which represents the number of methine groups necessary to complete the 5 -, 6 -, or 7 - membered ring . ## str11 ## the dihydroperimidine squarylium dye may be used in an antihalation coating for photothermography or photography or it may be used as an acutance or filter dye . the type of photothermographic element used in the invention is not critical . examples of suitable photothermographic elements include dry silver systems ( see , for example u . s . pat . nos . 3 , 457 , 075 and 5 , 258 , 274 , both incorporated herein by reference ) and diazo systems . when used for antihalation purposes , the dihydroperimidine squarylium dye is usually coated together with an organic binder as a thin layer on a substrate and is present in a layer separate from the light - sensitive layer . the antihalation layer may be positioned above , below , or both above and below the light - sensitive layer , and if the support is transparent , an antihalation layer may be positioned on the surface of the support opposite the light - sensitive layer . when positioned above the light sensitive layer the antihalation layer may alternatively be called a filter layer . when used for acutance purposes , the dihydroperimidine squarylium dyes are incorporated within the light - sensitive layer according to conventional techniques . whether used as an antihalation , acutance , or filter dye , in photographic or photothermographic elements , it is preferred to incorporate dyes in an amount sufficient to provide an optical density of from 0 . 05 to 3 . 0 , more preferably from 0 . 1 to 2 , absorbance units at λ max of the dye . the coating weight of the dye is generally from 0 . 001 to 1 g / m 2 , preferably 0 . 001 to 0 . 05 g / m 2 . when used in a separate layer , a wide variety of polymers are suitable for use as the binder . non - limiting examples of these polymers include cellulose acetate butyrate , polyvinyl butyral , poly ( vinylidene chloride ), cellulose acetate , and various acrylic polymers . in certain situations , absorption at a variety of wavelengths may be desirable . if so , more than one dye can be used . the dyes may be incorporated into the photosensitive element in any known configuration . for example , each dye may be in an independent antihalation layer , more than one dye may be contained in one antihalation layer , one dye may be an acutance dye while the other is used in an antihalation layer , etc . the dyes of the present invention do not contribute undesirable coloration to the photosensitive articles in which they are used . although a tint may be seen , it is typically a neutral color , frequently grayish to grayish brown . thus , these dyes are useful on clear as well as tinted substrates . all materials for which preparation procedures are not given were obtained commercially , many from aldrich chemical co ., milwaukee , wis . synthesized compounds were characterized such as by their 1 h and 13 c nmr , and ir spectra . the following additional terms and materials were used . acryloid ™ a - 21 is a poly ( methyl methacrylate ) available from rohm and haas , philadelphia , pa . antimottle agent - 1 is a terpolymer of n - ethyl - perfluorooctanesulfonamidoethyl methacrylate , hydroxyethyl methacrylate , and acrylic acid , and is disclosed in applicants &# 39 ; assignees u . s . patent application ser . no . 08 / 104 , 888 ( filed aug . 10 , 1993 ). antistatic agent - 1 is disclosed in u . s . patent application ser . no . 08 / 183 , 058 ( filed jan . 18 , 1994 ). butvar ™ b - 76 and butvar ™ b - 79 are poly ( vinyl butyral ) resins available from monsanto company , st . louis , mo . cab 171 - 15s and cab 381 - 20 are cellulose acetate butyrate resins available from eastman kodak co . permanax wso is 1 , 1 - bis ( 2 - hydroxy - 3 , 5 - dimethyl - phenyl )- 3 , 5 , 5 - trimethylhexane [ cas rn = 7292 - 14 - 0 ] and is available from vulnax international , ltd . it is also known as nonox . syloid 74 - x 6000 is a silica available from w . r . grace . thdi is desmodur ™ n - 3300 , a biuretized hexamethylene diisocyanate available from mobay chemical co . a stirred mixture of 26 . 05 g of 1 , 8 - diaminonaphthalene , 32 . 66 g of 2 - tridecanone , 55 mg of p - toluenesulfonic acid monohydrate , and 250 ml of toluene was heated to reflux under a nitrogen atmosphere using a dean - stark trap to remove the water evolved from the reaction for 5 hr . the mixture was then washed with saturated sodium bicarbonate solution , dried over anhydrous potassium carbonate , filtered , and the solvent removed under reduced pressure . the product was distilled to yield 48 . 86 g of dihydroperimidine intermediate , bp 192 °- 213 ° c . at 0 . 3 to 0 . 4 torr . a stirred mixture of 8 . 00 g of the dihydroperimidine intermediate prepared above , 1 . 48 g of squaric acid , 64 ml of n - butanol , and 64 ml of toluene was heated to reflux under a nitrogen atmosphere using a dean - stark trap to remove the water evolved from the reaction for 3 hr . the mixture was filtered , poured into 600 ml of petroleum ether ( bp 35 °- 60 ° c . ), and kept at 5 ° c . for 18 hr . the product filtered off , washed with petroleum ether , and air dried to give 6 . 45 g of dye ( 1a ). the dye could be further purified by recrystallization from tetrahydrofuran ( thf )/ petroleum ether mixtures . the absorption maximum in ethyl acetate was at λ max = 802 nm ( ε = 1 . 8 × 10 5 ). in a similar manner , dye 1b was prepared using 3 - pentanone as the ketone to prepare the dihydroperimidine intermediate . the absorption maximum of dye 1b in methyl ethyl ketone was at λ max = 810 nm ( ε = 2 . 0 × 10 5 ). in a similar manner , dye 1c was prepared using 5 - nonanone as the ketone to prepare the dihydroperimidine intermediate . the absorption maximum of dye 1c in methyl ethyl ketone was at λ max = 813 nm ( ε = 1 . 8 × 10 5 ). in a similar manner , dye 1d was prepared using 6 - undecanone as the ketone to prepare the dihydroperimidine intermediate . the absorption maximum of dye 1d in methyl ethyl ketone was at λ max = 813 nm ( ε = 1 . 8 × 10 5 ). in a similar manner , dye 1e was prepared using 4 - acetyl biphenyl as the ketone to prepare the dihydroperimidine intermediate . the absorption maximum of dye 1e in methyl ethyl ketone was at λ max = 816 nm ( ε = 7 . 3 × 10 4 ). in a similar manner , dye 1f was prepared using 4 - t - butylcyclohexanone as the ketone to prepare the dihydroperimidine intermediate . the absorption maximum of dye 1f in methyl ethyl ketone was at λ max = 812 nm ( ε = 1 . 4 × 10 5 ). a stirred mixture of 1 . 411 g of 1 , 8 - diaminonaphthalene , 1 . 629 g of 4 - chlorobutyro - phenone , 3 mg of p - toluenesulfonic acid monohydrate , and 10 ml of toluene was heated to reflux under a nitrogen atmosphere using a dean - stark trap to remove the water evolved from the reaction for 10 hr . the mixture was filtered to remove unreacted starting material , partioned between ethyl acetate and 5 % sodium hydroxide solution , dried over anhydrous magnesium sulfate , filtered , and concentrated in vacuo to give 2 . 04 g of crude product . this was further purified by chromatography on silica gel , eluting with 1 : 1 diethyl ether / petroleum ether , and collecting the initial band to yield 0 . 719 g of dihydroperimidine intermediate . 1 ml of n - butanol and 67 mg of squaric acid were heated to reflux under a nitrogen atmosphere . when all of the squaric acid had dissolved , 0 . 335 g of the dihydroperimidine intermediate prepared above , and 3 ml of toluene were added and the stirred mixture heated to reflux under a dean - stark trap with water removal for 6 . 3 hr . the mixture was cooled , 10 ml of petroleum ether added , and let sit for 18 hr . the precipitated solid was filtered off , washed with petroleum ether , and air dried to yield 0 . 353 g of dye 2a . the absorption maximum in ethyl acetate was at 820 nm . a stirred mixture of 1 . 193 g of ethyl 4 - oxotetradecanoate ( prepared by the general procedure of patrick and erickson , organic syntheses , collective volume 4 , 430 - 432 ( 1963 )), 0 . 749 g of 1 , 8 - diaminonaphthalene , 3 mg of p - toluenesulfonic acid monohydrate , and 7 ml of toluene was heated to reflux under a nitrogen atmosphere using a dean - stark trap to remove the water evolved from the reaction for 4 . 7 hr . the solvent was removed in vacuo , and the residue chromatographed on silica gel eluted with 3 : 1 diethyl ether / petroleum ether to yield 1 . 366 g of lactam dihydroperimidine intermediate as the initial band . a stirred mixture of 1 . 366 g of lactam dihydroperimidine intermediate prepared above , 0 . 210 g of squaric acid , 5 ml of n - butanol , and 15 ml of toluene were heated at reflux under nitrogen using a dean - stark trap to remove the water evolved from the reaction for 1 hr . petroleum ether was added to give a total volume of 100 ml , and the precipitated dye , 3a , 0 . 634 g , filtered off , washed with petroleum ether , and air dried . the absorption maximum in ethyl acetate was 792 nm ( ε = 2 . 7 × 10 5 ). in a similar manner , dye 3b was prepared using ethyl 4 - oxopentanoate as the ketone to prepare the lactam dihydroperimidine intermediate . the absorption maximum of dye 3b in ethyl acetate was at λ max = 785 nm ( ε = 5 . 9 × 10 4 ). in a similar manner , dye 3c was prepared using ethyl 5 - phenyl - 5 - oxopentanoate as the ketone to prepare the dihydroperimidine intermediate . the absorption maximum of dye 3c in ethyl acetate was at λ max = 795 nm ( ε = 6 . 9 × 10 4 ). in a similar manner , dye 3d was prepared using ethyl 4 - phenyl - 4 - oxobutyrate as the ketone to prepare the dihydroperimidine intermediate . the absorption maximum of dye 3d in tetrahydrofuran was at λ max = 800 nm ( ε = 1 . 2 × 10 5 ). the following sample was prepared with no squarylium dye present as either an antihalation or acutance material . it serves as a control . a core - shell - type silver halide emulsion was prepared as described in applicants &# 39 ; assignees u . s . patent application entitled &# 34 ; photothermographic element with core - shell type silver halide grains &# 34 ; ( attorney docket file no . 49685 usa 7a , filed feb . 22 , 1994 ). to a first solution ( solution a ) having 50 - 100 g of phthalated gelatin dissolved in 1500 ml of deionized water , held at a temperature between 30 °- 38 ° c ., were simultaneously added ; a second solution ( solution b ) containing potassium bromide and potassium iodide , and a third solution ( solution c ) which was an aqueous solution containing 1 . 4 to 1 . 8 moles silver nitrate per liter . pag was held at a constant value by means of a pag feedback control loop as described in research disclosure no . 17643 , u . s . pat . nos . 3 , 415 , 650 ; 3 , 782 , 954 ; and 3 , 821 , 002 . after a certain percentage of the total delivered silver nitrate was added , the second halide solution ( solution b ), was replaced with solution d which contains potassium bromide ; and solution c was replaced with solution e . in this manner a core of silver bromide / silver iodide with a shell of silver bromide was obtained . the size of the emulsion grains was adjusted by controlling the addition rates , silver nitrate concentration , gelatin concentration in the kettle , and the kettle temperature . the procedure for the preparation of 2 moles of emulsion is shown below . ______________________________________solution a was prepared at 30 ° c . as follows : gelatin 50 gdeionized water 1500 ml0 . 1m kbr 6 mladjust to ph = 5 . 0 with 3n hno . sub . 3solution b was prepared at 25 ° c . as follows : kbr 27 . 4 gki 3 . 3 gdeionized water 275 . 0 gsolution c was prepared at 25 ° c . as follows : agno . sub . 3 42 . 5 gdeionized water 364 . 0 g______________________________________ solutions b and c were jetted into solution a over 9 . 5 minutes . ______________________________________solution d was prepared at 25 ° c . as follows : kbr 179 . gdeionized water 812 . gsolution e was prepared at 25 ° c . as follows : agno . sub . 3 127 . gdeionized water 1090 . g______________________________________ solutions d and e were jetted into solution a over 28 . 5 minutes . the emulsions were washed with water and then desalted . the average grain size was 0 . 035 μm . silver halide grain size was determined by scanning electron microscopy ( sem ). a silver halide / silver organic salt dispersion was prepared as described below . this material is also referred to as a silver soap dispersion or emulsion . 1 . preformed silver halide core - shell type emulsion prepared above -- 0 . 22 mole at 700 g / mole in 1 . 25 liter h 2 o at 42 ° c . 2 . naoh 89 . 18 g in 1 . 50 liter h 2 o 3 . agno 3 364 . 8 g in 2 . 5 liter h 2 o 4 . fatty acid 131 g ( humko type 9718 ) [ available from witco . co ., memphis , tenn .] 5 . fatty acid 634 . 5 g ( humko type 9022 ) [ available from witco . co ., memphis , tenn .] 6 . hno 3 19 ml in 50 ml h 2 o 1 . dissolve ingredients # 4 and # 5 at 80 ° c . in 13 liter of h 2 o and mix for 15 minutes . 2 . add ingredient # 2 to step 1 at 80 ° c . and mix for 5 minutes to form a dispersion . 3 . add ingredient # 6 to the dispersion at 80 ° c ., cooling the dispersion to 55 ° c . and stirring for 25 minutes . 4 . add ingredient # 1 to the dispersion at 55 ° c . and mix for 5 minutes . 5 . add ingredient # 3 to the dispersion at 55 ° c . and mix for 10 minutes . 6 . wash until wash water has a resistivity of 20 , 000 ohm / cm 2 . a preformed silver fatty acid salt homogenate was prepared by homogenizing 200 g of pre - formed soap , prepared above , in solvent and butvar ™ b - 76 poly ( vinyl butyral ) according to the following procedure . 1 . add 200 g of preformed soap to 350 g of toluene , 1116 g of 2 - butanone , and 33 g of butvar ™ b - 76 . 2 . mix the dispersion for 10 minutes and hold for 24 hours . ______________________________________charge material wt % ______________________________________a preformed photothermographic soap 78 . 37b pyridinium bromide perbromide 0 . 04b methanol 0 . 20c calcium bromide dihydrate 0 . 03c methanol 0 . 20d sensitizing dye 1 0 . 01d 2 - mercapto - 5 - methylbenzimidazole 0 . 05d 2 -( 4 - chlorobenzoyl ) benzoic acid 0 . 58e polyvinylbutyral ( butvar ™ b - 79 ) 12 . 98f 2 - tribromomethyl - sulfonyl quinaldine 0 . 36g permanax wso 3 . 39h desmodur n 3300 0 . 09i phthalazine 0 . 33i tetrachlorophthalic acid 0 . 011 100 . 00 % ______________________________________ a 700 g batch of coating material was prepared as follows : under red safelight conditions , charge a was added to a 1200 ml beaker equipped with baffles and a stirrer . the beaker was placed in a constant temperature bath maintained at 70 ° f . ( 21 . 1 ° c .) and stirred at 600 rpm . charge b was prepared and added to charge a . stirring was maintained for 60 minutes . charge c was prepared and added to the reaction mixture . stirring was maintained for 30 minutes . the safelights were changed to infrared safelights . charge d was prepared and added to the reaction mixture . stirring was maintained for 60 minutes . the constant temperature bath was changed to 55 ° f . ( 12 . 7 ° c .) and the mixture held for 30 minutes . charge e was prepared and added to the reaction mixture . the reaction mixture was stirred for 30 minutes . charge g was added to the reaction mixture . the reaction mixture was stirred for 15 minutes . charge h was prepared and added to the reaction mixture . the reaction mixture was stirred for 15 minutes . charge i was added and the reaction mixture stirred for 15 minutes . the mixture was ready for coating . a cellulose acetate butyrate premix ( a &# 39 ;) solution was prepared in the following manner : ______________________________________charge material wt % ______________________________________1 2 - butanone 76 . 052 methanol 8 . 953 eastman cellulose acetate 15 . 00 butyrate ( cab 171 - 15s ) 100 . 00 % ______________________________________ a 2500 g batch of coating material was prepared as follows : charges 1 and 2 were added to a gallon jar . the jar was placed in a g . k . heller type 12p - 3223 mixer and controller and stirred at 2000 rpm . charge 3 was added and the solution stirred for 2 hours . ______________________________________charge material wt % ______________________________________1 &# 39 ; cellulose acetate butyrate 90 . 32 solution from above2 &# 39 ; pfizer superflex sf 200 caco . sub . 3 9 . 68 100 . 00 % ______________________________________ a 300 g batch of premix was prepared as follows : charge 1 &# 39 ; was placed in a 32 oz stainless steel waring blendor container equipped with cover . the container was placed onto a waring laboratory blendor ( waring products division , dynamics corporation of america ) equipped with a variac adjustable power supply . the variac was set to 30 and stirring was begun . charge 2 &# 39 ; was added , the variac was set to 40 , and the mixture dispersed for 45 minutes . ______________________________________charge material wt % ______________________________________a &# 39 ; cellulose acetate butyrate 90 . 32 solution from aboveb &# 39 ; sf 200 premix from above 48 . 65c &# 39 ; 2 - butanone 43 . 02d &# 39 ; methanol 5 . 16e &# 39 ; rohm and haas acryloid a - 21 0 . 30f &# 39 ; 4 - methylphthalic acid 0 . 27g &# 39 ; tetrachlorophthalic anhydride 0 . 14h &# 39 ; antimottle agent - 1 0 . 51 100 . 00______________________________________ a 600 g batch of finished topcoat solution was prepared as follows : charges a &# 39 ;, b &# 39 ;, c &# 39 ;, and d &# 39 ; were added to a 32 oz jar . the jar was placed in a g . k . heller type 12p - 3223 mixer and controller and stirred at 1500 rpm charge e &# 39 ;, f &# 39 ;, g &# 39 ;, and h &# 39 ; were added in order , and the mixture stirred for 30 minutes . the solution was ready for coating . all coatings were carried out under infrared safelight conditions , using a dual knife coater . the base was 7 mil ( 178 μm ) thick 10 inch ( 25 . 4 cm ) wide 3m scotchpar ™ polyester film . this base has a blue tint . the coating knife for the photothermographic emulsion was set at 4 . 1 mil ( 104 μm ) above the base . the coating knife for the topcoat was set at 5 . 6 mil ( 142 μm ) above the base ). the coatings were dried for 4 minutes at 175 ° f . ( 79 . 4 ° c .) in a blue m ™ oven . the following sample was prepared with a dihydroperimidine squarylium dye used in an antihalation construction of this invention . ______________________________________charge material wt % ______________________________________1 2 - butanone 87 . 282 eastman cellulose acetate 12 . 55 butyrate ( cab 381 - 20 ) 3 goodyear vitel ™ pe - 200 polyester 0 . 17 100 . 00 % ______________________________________ a 2500 g batch of premix was prepared as follows : charge 1 was added to a gallon jar . the jar was placed in a g . k . heller type 12p - 3223 mixer and controller and stirred at 2 , 000 rpm with a propeller blade . charges 2 and 3 were added and the solution stirred for 2 hours . ______________________________________charge material wt % ______________________________________1 &# 39 ; 2 - butanone 99 . 622 &# 39 ; w . r . grace syloid 74 - x 6000 0 . 38 100 . 00______________________________________ a 2500 g batch of premix was prepared as follows : charges 1 &# 39 ; and 2 &# 39 ; were slurried in a gallon jar . the slurry was homogenized one pass at 4 , 000 psi in a homogenizer . ______________________________________charge material wt % ______________________________________a cellulose acetate butyrate 78 . 67 ( cab 381 - 20 ) premixb squarylium dye 1a 0 . 09b 2 - butanone 7 . 87c syloid x6000 / butanone premix from above 7 . 87d antistatic agent - 1 1 . 57d 2 - butanone 3 . 93 100 . 00______________________________________ the finished antihalation solution was prepared as follows : charge b was placed in a 4 oz jar and sonicated until it dissolved . charge a was added and the solution shaken well . charge c was added to the jar and shaken well . charge d was added to the jar and the solution shaken well . the solution was ready to coat . the antihalation solution was coated onto the backside of a sample of film prepared in example 4 . coating was carried out under infrared safelight conditions , using a single knife coater . the coating knife was set at 3 . 0 mil ( 76 . 2 μm ) above the base . the coating was dried for 4 minutes at 175 ° f . ( 79 . 4 ° c .) in a blue m ™ oven . the following sample was prepared with a dihydroperimidine squarylium dye as an acutance dye in a photothermographic article . ______________________________________charge material wt % ______________________________________a squarylium dye 1a 0 . 01b 2 - butanone 2 . 17c photothermographic coating 97 . 8 mixture from example 1 100 . 00 % ______________________________________ a 100 g batch of coating materials was prepared as follows : charges a and b were placed in an 8 oz jar and sonicated until a solution formed . charge b was added to the jar and the mixture shaken well . the solution was ready to coat . a topcoat solution was prepared as described in example 4 above . the photothermographic emulsion was coated in a manner identical to that of example 4 . a photothermographic coating and topcoat was prepared as described in example 1 . however , in this example the substrate was 7 mil ( 178 μm ) clear polyester film . the color of the coating was gray . this sample serves as a control . a photothermographic coating , topcoat , and antihalation layer was prepared as described in example 2 . however , in this example the substrate was 7 mil ( 178 μm ) clear polyester film . the color of the coating was grayish - brown . a photothermographic coating , topcoat , and antihalation layer was prepared as described in example 2 . however the antihalation dye used was perimidine squarylium dye 1f . in addition , in this example the substrate was 7 mil ( 178 μm ) clear polyester film . the color of the coating was grayish - brown . samples of the coatings of examples 4 - 9 were cut into 3 . 5 cm × 21 . 5 cm strips . the strips were exposed through a laser sensitometer at 811 nm . the exposed strips were processed for 15 seconds at 250 ° f . ( 121 ° c .) in a hot roll processor . sensitometry measurements were made on a custom - built , computer - scanned densitometer and are believed to be comparable to measurements obtainable from commercially available densitometers . sensitometric results include dmin , dmax , speed , and contrast . the following results were obtained : ______________________________________ex . dmin dmax speed 2 speed 3 ac - 1 ac - 3______________________________________4 0 . 26 4 . 22 1 . 90 1 . 50 4 . 62 3 . 865 0 . 24 4 . 26 1 . 72 1 . 32 4 . 39 3 . 946 0 . 26 4 . 17 1 . 66 1 . 23 4 . 39 3 . 057 0 . 11 4 . 12 1 . 69 1 . 30 4 . 44 4 . 018 0 . 11 4 . 08 1 . 52 1 . 11 4 . 27 4 . 219 0 . 11 4 . 00 1 . 53 1 . 10 4 . 15 3 . 57______________________________________ d . sub . min is the average of eight lowest density values on the exposed side of the fiducial mark . d . sub . max is the highest density value on the exposed side of the fiducia mark speed 2 is log 1 / e + 4 corresponding to a density of 1 . 00 above d . sub . min ( e is in ergs / cm . sup . 2 ) speed 3 is log 1 / e + 4 corresponding to a density of 2 . 90 above d . sub . min ( e is in ergs / cm . sup . 2 ) ac1 is the slope of the line joining the density points 0 . 60 and 2 . 00 above d . sub . min . ac1 stands for average contrast1 . ac3 is the slope of the line joining the density points 2 . 40 and 2 . 90 above d . sub . min . ac3 stands for average contrast3 . the uv , visible , and near infrared absorbance of the samples were measured on a hitachi u - 3110 spectrophotometer . the absorbance at 805 nm was measured . ______________________________________ absorbance at 805 nmexample absorbance absorbance due to dye______________________________________4 0 . 18 -- 5 0 . 77 0 . 596 0 . 27 0 . 097 0 . 18 -- 8 0 . 84 0 . 669 0 . 81 0 . 63______________________________________ image sharpness was measured by exposing a test pattern ( known as a universal test pattern ) on 8 inch × 11 inch pieces of the coatings prepared in examples 4 - 9 . the device used to generate the images was a 3m model 969 laser imager using a high powered 802 nm laser diode in place of the standard laser diode . the coatings were exposed to achieve a density of 3 . 10 . samples were developed for 15 seconds at 250 ° f . ( 121 ° c .) on a hot roll processor . the images on the samples prepared in examples 4 - 9 were examined visually by inspection of the alphanumeric characters and appearance of the image details . samples prepared from examples 5 , 6 , 8 , and 9 appeared distinctly sharper than examples 1 and 7 , the samples containing no dihydroperimidine squarylium dye . the samples were also evaluated using a microdensitometer to measure the vertical bar pattern of the universal test pattern image . the bar pattern has various regions containing line pairs of varying frequency , known as line pairs / mm . a sharpness transfer function modulation ( stf ) value was calculated from the maximum and minimum density values using the following formula : ## equ1 ## it is customary to plot spatial frequency ( in line pairs / mm ) along the x axis vs the value of stf along the y axis . the closer the plot is to a straight line , the sharper the image . the higher the modulation value , the sharper the image . a plot of the values shown below , indicates that the stf values for examples 5 , 6 , 8 , and 9 are &# 34 ; flatter &# 34 ; than those of examples 4 and 7 , the samples containing no squarylium dye . ______________________________________modulation vs spatial frequencyspatial frequency ( lp / mm ) example 0 . 61 1 . 53 2 . 0 3 . 0 6 . 0______________________________________4 0 . 82 0 . 79 0 . 74 0 . 65 0 . 295 0 . 87 0 . 86 0 . 86 0 . 83 0 . 386 0 . 86 0 . 84 0 . 81 0 . 76 0 . 347 0 . 83 0 . 77 0 . 72 0 . 60 0 . 248 0 . 89 0 . 89 0 . 88 0 . 84 0 . 359 0 . 89 0 . 87 0 . 86 0 . 82 0 . 33______________________________________ dye / binder antihalation coating solutions were prepared and coated onto 7 mil ( 178 μm ) clear polyester film . the λmax and absorbance for each coating were measured . each coating solution contained the following : ______________________________________component wt . ______________________________________dye 0 . 0237 gcellulose acetate butyrate 1 . 0037 g ( eastman cab 381 - 20 ) polyester resin 0 . 0014 g ( goodyear vitel ™ pe - 200 ) 2 - butanone 6 . 9824 g______________________________________dye λmax nm absorption______________________________________1a 812 2 . 251b 804 2 . 91c 812 2 . 811d 814 2 . 71e 814 0 . 581f 812 2 . 093a 798 1 . 68______________________________________ reasonable modifications and variations are possible from the foregoing disclosure without departing from the spirit or scope of the present invention as defined in the claims . | 6 |
the present invention provides a process for preparing a compound of formula ( i ): ## str1 ## wherein r is an amino - protecting group , x is -- ch 2 --, o or ## str2 ## wherein n is 0 , 1 or 2 ; r 1 is a carboxy - protecting group ; and r 2 is hydrogen , c 1 - c 6 alkyl , c 2 - c 6 alkenyl , c 2 - c 6 alkynyl , c 1 - c 6 substituted alkyl , c 2 - c 6 substituted alkenyl , c 2 - c 6 substituted alkynyl , c 1 - c 6 alkoxy , c 1 - c 6 alkylthio , c 2 - c 6 alkenyloxy , c 2 - c 6 alkenylthio , c 2 - c 6 alkynyloxy , c 2 - c 6 alkynylthio , c 1 - c 6 substituted alkoxy , c 1 - c 6 substituted alkylthio , c 2 - c 6 substituted alkenyloxy , c 2 - c 6 substituted alkenylthio , c 2 - c 6 substituted alkynyloxy , and c 2 - c 6 substituted alkynylthio ; which comprises subjecting a compound of formula ( ii ) ## str3 ## to ultraviolet radiation , wherein r , r 1 and r 2 are as defined above . the term &# 34 ; amino - protecting group &# 34 ; as used in the specification refers to substituents of the amino group commonly employed to block or protect the amino functionality while reacting other functional groups on the compound . examples of such amino - protecting groups include the formyl group , the trityl group , phenoxyacetyl , benzoyl , substituted benzoyl , such as methylbenzoyl , chlorobenzoyl , nitrobenzoyl , and the like , trimethylsilyl , the acetyl group , the phthalimido group , the trichloroacetyl group , the chloroacetyl , bromoacetyl and iodoacetyl groups , urethane - type blocking groups such as benzyloxycarbonyl , 4 - phenylbenzyloxycarbonyl , 2 - methylbenzyloxycarbonyl , 4 - methoxybenzyloxycarbonyl , 4 - fluorobenzyloxycarbonyl , 4 - chlorobenzyloxycarbonyl , 3 - chlorobenzyloxycarbonyl , 2 - chlorobenzyloxycarbonyl , 2 , 4 - dichlorobenzyloxycarbonyl , 4 - bromobenzyloxycarbonyl , 3 - bromobenzyloxycarbonyl , 4 - nitrobenzyloxycarbonyl , 4 - cyanobenzyloxycarbonyl , 1 , 1 - diphenyleth - 1 - yloxycarbonyl , 1 , 1 - diphenylprop - 1 - yloxycarbonyl , 2 - phenylprop - 2 - yloxycarbonyl , 2 -( p - toluyl ) prop - 2 - yloxycarbonyl , cyclopentanyloxycarbonyl , 1 - methylcyclopentanyloxycarbonyl , cyclohexanyloxycarbonyl , 1 - methylcyclohexanyloxycarbonyl , 2 - methylcyclohexanyloxycarbonyl , 2 -( 4 - toluylsulfonyl ) ethoxycarbonyl , 2 -( methylsulfonyl ) ethoxycarbonyl , 2 -( triphenylphosphino ) ethoxycarbonyl , 9 - fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl (&# 34 ; fmoc &# 34 ;), 2 -( trimethylsilyl ) ethoxycarbonyl , allyloxycarbonyl , 1 -( trimethylsilylmethyl ) prop - 1 - enyloxycarbonyl , 5 - benzisoxalylmethoxycarbonyl , 4 - acetoxybenzyloxycarbonyl , 2 , 2 , 2 - trichloroethoxycarbonyl , 2 - ethynyl - 2 - propoxycarbonyl , cyclopropylmethoxycarbonyl , 4 -( decyloxy ) benzyloxycarbonyl , isobornyloxycarbonyl , 1 - piperidyloxycarbonyl , and the like ; the benzoylmethylsulfonyl group , the 2 -( nitro ) phenylsulfenyl group , the diphenylphosphine oxide group , and like amino - protecting groups . the species of amino - protecting group employed is not critical so long as the derivatized amino group is stable to the process herein and can be removed without disrupting the remainder of the molecule . preferred amino - protecting groups are the allyloxycarbonyl , the acetyl , t - butoxycarbonyl , and the trityl groups . typical amino - protecting groups used in the cephalosporin , penicillin and peptide art are also embraced by the above terms . further examples of groups referred to by the above terms are described by j . w . barton , &# 34 ; protective groups in organic chemistry &# 34 ;, j . g . w . mcomie , ed ., plenum press , new york , ny , 1973 , chapter 2 , and t . w . greene , &# 34 ; protective groups in organic synthesis &# 34 ;, john wiley and sons , new york , ny , 1981 , chapter 7 . the related term &# 34 ; protected amino &# 34 ; defines an amino group substituted with an amino - protecting group discussed above . the term &# 34 ; carboxy - protecting group &# 34 ; as used herein refers to one of the ester derivatives of the carboxylic acid group commonly employed to block or protect the carboxylic acid group while reactions are carried out on other functional groups on the compound . examples of such carboxylic acid protecting groups include methyl , trimethylsilylethyl , 4 - nitrobenzyl , 4 - methoxybenzyl , 3 , 4 - dimethoxybenzyl , 2 , 4 - dimethoxybenzyl , 2 , 4 , 6 - trimethoxybenzyl , 2 , 4 , 6 - trimethylbenzyl , pentamethylbenzyl 3 , 4 - methylenedioxybenzyl , benzhydryl , 4 , 4 &# 39 ;- dimethoxybenzhydryl , 2 , 2 &# 39 ;, 4 , 4 &# 39 ;- tetramethoxybenzhydryl , t - butyl , t - amyl , trityl , 4 - methoxytrityl , 4 , 4 &# 39 ;- dimethoxytrityl , 4 , 4 &# 39 ;, 4 &# 34 ;- trimethoxytrityl , 2 - phenylprop - 2 - yl , trimethylsilyl , t - butyldimethylsilyl , phenacyl , 2 , 2 , 2 - trichloroethyl , β -( trimethylsilyl ) ethyl , β -( di ( n - butyl ) methylsilyl ) ethyl , p - toluenesulfonylethyl , 4 - nitrobenzylsulfonylethyl , allyl , cinnamyl , 1 -( trimethylsilylmethyl ) prop - 1 - en - 3 - yl , and like moieties . the species of carboxy - protecting group employed is not critical so long as the derivatized carboxylic acid is stable to the process herein and can be removed without disrupting the remainder of the molecule . preferred carboxylic acid protecting groups are the allyl , methyl , and trimethylsilylethyl . similar carboxy - protecting groups used in the cephalosporin , penicillin and peptide arts can also be used to protect a carboxy group substituent . further examples of these groups are found in e . haslam , &# 34 ; protective groups in organic chemistry &# 34 ;, j . g . w . mcomie , ed ., plenum press , new york , ny , 1973 , chapter 5 , and t . w . greene , &# 34 ; protective groups in organic synthesis &# 34 ;, john wiley and sons , new york , ny , 1981 , chapter 5 . in the above formulae , c 1 - c 6 alkyl refers to straight and branched chain alkyl groups such as methyl , ethyl , n - propyl , isopropyl , n - butyl , t - butyl n - pentyl , n - hexyl , 3 - methylpentyl , and like alkyl groups . c 1 - c 6 substituted alkyl refers to the same c 1 - c 6 alkyl residues , further substituted by one or more groups selected from a group consisting of cyano , fluoro , bromo , chloro , iodo , carboxy , nitro , hydroxy , or amino . the terms c 1 - c 6 alkylthio , c 1 - c 6 alkoxy , c 1 - c 6 substituted alkylthio , and c 1 - c 6 substituted alkoxy refer to like c 1 - c 6 alkyl or substituted alkyl groups attached to the substrate via an oxygen or sulfur atom . as used herein , the term c 2 - c 6 alkenyl refers to straight and branched olefins . examples of the term c 2 - c 6 alkenyl include ethenyl , 1 - propenyl , 2 - propene - 1 - yl , 1 - butene - 1 - yl , 2 - butene - 1 - yl , 3 - butene - 1 - yl , 1 - pentene - 1 - yl , 2 - pentene - 1 - yl , 3 - pentene - 1 - yl , 4 - pentene - 1 - yl , 1 - hexene - 1 - yl , 2 - hexene - 1 - yl , 3 - hexene - 1 - yl , 4 - hexene - 1 - yl , 5 - hexene - 1 - yl , isoproprene - 1 - yl , isobutenyl , isopentenyl , isohexenyl , and the like . the term c 2 - c 6 substituted alkenyl refers to a c 2 - c 6 alkenyl group substituted by one or more chlor , bromo , iodo , fluoro , hydroxy , nitro , cyano , carboxy , or amino groups . the terms c 2 - c 6 alkenylthio , c 2 - c 6 alkenyloxy , c 2 - c 6 substituted alkenylthio , and c 2 - c 6 substituted alkenyloxy refer to the same c 2 - c 6 alkenyl or substituted alkenyl groups attached to the substrate via an oxygen or sulfur atom . as used herein , the term c 2 - c 6 alkenyl refers to straight and branched acetylenic groups . examples of the term c 2 - c 6 alkynyl include ethynyl , 1 - propyne - 1 - yl , 2 - propyne - 1 - yl , 1 - butyne - 1 - yl , 2 - butyne - 1 - yl , 3 - butyne - 1 - yl , 1 - pentyne - 1 - yl , 2 - pentyne - 1 - yl , 3 - pentyne - 1 - yl , 4 - pentyne - 1 - yl , 1 - hexyne - 1 - yl , 2 - hexyne - 1 - yl , 3 - hexyne - 1 - yl , 4 - hexyne - 1 - yl , 5 - hexyne - 1 - yl , 2 - methyl - 2 - propyne - 1 - yl , 2 - methyl - 4 propyne - 1 - yl , 2 - methyl - 3 - pentyne - 1 - yl , 2 - methyl - 3 - butyne - 1 - yl , and the like . the term c 2 - c 6 substituted alkynyl refers to a c 2 - c 6 alkynyl group substituted by one or more chloro , bromo , hydroxy , or nitro . the terms c 2 - c 6 alkynylthio , c 2 - c 6 alkynyloxy , c 2 - c 6 substituted alkynylthio , and c 2 - c 6 substituted alkynyloxy refer to the same c 2 - c 6 alkynyl or substituted alkynyl groups attached to the substrate via an oxygen or sulfur atom . the process of the invention may be carried out in an inert solvent at a temperature between about 0 ° c . and about 80 ° c . inert solvents are commonly used solvents which do not interfere in the desired reaction . the choice of solvent is not highly critical , so long as the solvent is of sufficient polarity so as to maintain the substrate of formula ( ii ) ( above ) in solution . such solvents include ( but are not limited to ) dimethylformamide , ch 3 cn / h 2 o , methanol / h 2 o , acetic acid , ch 2 cl 2 , ch 3 cn , ch 3 cn / ch 3 oh , acetone , tetrahydrofuran , ethyl acetate , and chcl 3 . the time necessary for completion of the reaction is , of course , dependent primarily upon intensity of the uv light source . typically , the reaction is complete in 0 . 5 to 24 h . in the process of the present invention , the light source may be generated from commercially available ultraviolet lamps . in the examples which follow , either a rayonet ® or hanovia ® lamp was utilized . the rayonet ® model rpr - 100 2537 å lamp is advertised to emit primarily 2537 å light with some emittance of 1849 å light . while the primary bandwidth emitted from this rayonet ® lamp is 2537 å there is a considerable amount of ultraviolet radiation of both higher and lower frequency . the hanovia ® lamp emits a much broader spectrum of uv radiation . further , as one skilled in the art of photochemistry will appreciate , it is often the case that certain filters attached to said uv source will be advisable and at times even necessary to limit the spectrum of uv irradiation to an approximate desired bandwidth . in this regard , preferred filters include the corex ®, pyrex ®, vycor ®, or quartz filters . by using a combination of filters , more narrow desired bandwidths of uv irradiation may be obtained . further , monochromatic uv light sources of a preferred frequency may be utilized . it is also sometimes desirable to use an ultraviolet sensitizer such as thiophene , acetic anhydride , 10 % acetone , 4 - phenylbenzophenone , 2 - acetylnaphthalene , hexafluoroacetophenone , benzil , acetophenone , pyrene , benzophenone , or anthracene in the above reaction . it will further be appreciated by one skilled in the art of photochemistry that use of a sensitizer may , in some cases , result in a successful transformation for a given substrate when the same reaction would not occur without said sensitizer when utilizing a given solvent , catalyst , and uv bandwidth combination . finally , it is also sometimes desirable to utilize a catalyst such as nahco 3 , acetic acid , triethylamine , dmba ( dimethoxybenzoic acid ), dimethyl imidazole , p - toluenesulfonic acid , methylamine , aniline , nahco 3 / h 2 o , morpholine , or nh 4 oh . the process is carried out in a suitable uv transparent reaction vessel with an external source of uv radiation such as a uv lamp . alternatively , an immersible uv source such as an immersible uv lamp may be inserted in the reaction solution . the uv source , if desired , is suitably equipped with a filter . the reaction mixture is preferably stirred during irradiation and , as noted above , may contain a sensitizer and a catalyst . the progress of the reaction can be monitored by removing an aliquot of the mixture from time to time and assaying the sample , for example , via high performance liquid chromatography . the 3 - exomethylenecepham ester product ( i ) is recovered from the reaction mixture by conventional isolation methods . for example , the reaction mixture may be evaporated to dryness and the product mixture chromatographed over silica gel or other material to separate the 3 - exomethylenecepham ester . alternatively , the reaction mixture may be washed with an appropriate acid or base to remove an acidic or basic sensitizer or catalyst from the reaction mixture prior to chromatography . examples of amino - protected 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylic acid esters ii which may be employed in the process are t - butyl 7β -( t - butyloxycarbonylamino )- 3 - methyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate , benzyl 7β - allyloxycarbonylamino - 3 - methyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate , diphenylmethyl 7β - benzyloxycarbonylamino - 3 - methyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate 1 - oxide , p - methoxybenzyl 7β -( t - butyloxycarbonylamino - 3 - methyl - 1 - carba ( dethia )- 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate , 2 , 2 , 2 - trichloroethyl 7β - propionylamino - 3 - ethyl - 1 - oxo ( dethia )- 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate , 2 -( trimethylsilyl ) ethyl 7β - ethoxycarbonylamino - 3 - methoxymethyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate - 1 , 1 - dioxide , methyl 7β - acetylamino - 3 - allyloxymethyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate , t - butyl , 7β - benzamido - 3 - ethoxymethyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate , benzyl 7β -( 2 , 6 - dimethoxybenzamido )- 3 - methyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate , and like amino - protected and carboxy - protected 3 - cephem compounds . preferred 3 - cephem esters for use in the process are represented by formula ( i ) wherein x is sulfur and r 2 is hydrogen or c 1 - c 6 alkyl , and the sulfoxide ( n = 1 ) and sulfone ( n = 2 ) derivatives thereof . further preferred 3 - cephem esters are represented by formula ( ii ) wherein r 2 is hydrogen and r is a substituted benzamido group , especially methyl substituted benzamido . in a preferred embodiment of the process , methyl 7β - acetylamino - 3 - methyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate is dissolved in acetonitrile and a catalytic amount of acetic acid is added to the solution . the solution is irradiated at room temperature for about 1 h with uv radiation ( 2537 å ) from a rayonet ® lamp , model rpr - 100 . the reaction mixture is evaporated to dryness under vacuum and the residue chromatographed over silica gel to provide methyl 7β - acetylamino - 3 - exomethylenecepham - 4 - carboxylate . the 3 - exo esters provided by the process ( formula i ) are useful as intermediates to known antibiotic compounds . for example , when r 2 is hydrogen and x is sulfur , the amino - protecting group is removed to provide the 7 - amino - 3 - exomethylenecepham - 4 - carboxylic acid ester described by chauvette , u . s . pat . no . 3 , 932 , 393 . this nucleus ester is useful in the preparation of antibiotics such as those described by chauvette in u . s . pat . nos . 3 , 917 , 588 and 3 , 925 , 372 . as noted above , the process of the present invention is carried out by exposing the substrate to ultraviolet light . preferably , the ultraviolet light is of a wavelength ( λ ) of from about 220 nm to about 280 nm . a further preferred bandwidth is from about 240 nm to about 270 nm . an even more highly preferred bandwidth is from about 250 nm to about 265 nm . the most highly preferred ultraviolet radiation is that occurring at about 260 nm . as a further aspect of the present invention , there is provided compounds of formula ( ii ) ## str4 ## wherein r is an amino - protecting group , x is -- ch 2 --, o , or ## str5 ## wherein n is 0 , 1 or 2 ; r 1 is a carboxy - protecting group ; and r 2 is c 1 - c 6 alkoxy , c 1 - c 6 alkylthio , c 2 - c 6 alkenyloxy , c 2 - c 6 alkenylthio , c 2 - c 6 alkynyloxy , or c 2 - c 6 alkynylthio . such compounds are useful as intermediates and may be isomerized to the corresponding δ 3 cephem to provide compounds of formula ( i ). compounds of formula ( i ) wherein r is phenoxyacetyl or t - butoxycarbonyl are preferred . the following examples are set forth to further illustrate the present invention but are in no manner to be construed as limiting the scope thereof . a 27 mg ( 0 . 1 millimole ) sample of methyl 7β - acetylamino - 3 - methyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate was dissolved in 15 ml of ch 3 cn and subjected to ultraviolet radiation using a 450 - watt hanovia ® lamp for approximately 1 . 5 h . high performance liquid chromatography of the reaction mixture indicated an 18 % conversion to the title compound . preparative thin layer chromatography resulted in a small amount ( 0 . 5 % yield ) of the title compound . * nmr of final product : ( 300 mhz , cdcl 3 ) δ : 2 . 0 , s ; 3 . 45 , q ; 3 . 75 , s ; 5 . 1 , s ; 5 . 25 , d ; 5 . 4 , d ; 5 . 65 , q ; 6 . 45 , d . examples 2 to 35 below further illustrate the photochemical conversion of methyl 7β - acetylamino - 3 - methyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate to methyl 7β - acetylamino - 3 - methenyl - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate , using a 450 - watt hanovia ® uv lamp : __________________________________________________________________________examplesolvent filter sensitizer catalyst % yld exo hplc % yld chrom__________________________________________________________________________2 dmf corex none nahco . sub . 3 7 2 hrs3 ch . sub . 3 cn -- h . sub . 2 o corex none nahco . sub . 3 6 2 hrs4 meoh -- h . sub . 2 o corex none nahco . sub . 3 3 . 5 2 hrs5 hoac cores none ( hoac ) 3 . 3 2 hrs6 ch . sub . 2 c1 . sub . 2 corex none et . sub . 3 n 0 . 3 2 hrs7 ch . sub . 2 c1 . sub . 2 corex none dmba 0 . 5 2 hrs8 ch . sub . 2 c1 . sub . 2 corex thiophene none 0 . 4 2 hrs9 ch . sub . 3 cn corex acetic anhydride none 1 . 5 2 hrs10 ch . sub . 3 cn corex none none 0 . 6 2 hrs11 ch . sub . 3 cn -- meoh corex none none 0 . 7 2 hrs12 ch . sub . 3 cn -- meoh corex none dimethyl imidazole 2 . 9 2 hrs13 ch . sub . 2 c1 . sub . 2 corex none none 2 . 3 2 hrs14 ch . sub . 2 c1 . sub . 2 -- meoh corex none none messy 2 hrs15 ch . sub . 3 cn pyrex none none 0 . 03 2 hrs16 ch . sub . 3 cn pyrex none dimethyl imidazole 0 . 1 2 hrs17 thf pyrex none none 0 . 0 2 hrs18 thf pyrex none dimethyl imidazole 0 . 0 2 hrs19 ch . sub . 2 c1 . sub . 2 pyrex none none 0 . 0 2 hrs20 ch . sub . 2 c1 . sub . 2 pyrex none dimethyl imidazole 0 . 0 2 hrs21 ch . sub . 3 cn pyrex none none 0 . 3 22 hrs22 ch . sub . 3 cn pyrex none dimethyl imidazole 3 . 3 22 hrs23 acetone pyrex none none 0 . 0 22 hrs24 acetone pyrex none dimethyl imidazole 0 . 0 22 hrs25 etoac pyrex none none 0 . 3 22 hrs26 etoac pyrex none dimethyl imidazole 0 . 0 22 hrs27 ch . sub . 3 cn vycor none none 0 . 0 24 hrs28 meoh vycor none none 0 . 0 24 hrs29 thf vycor none none 0 . 0 24 hrs30 ch . sub . 3 no . sub . 3 vycor none none 0 . 1 24 hrs31 ( meo ). sub . 3 p vycor none none 0 . 0 24 hrs32 chcl . sub . 3 vycor none none 0 . 0 24 hrs33 ch . sub . 3 cn vycor none dimethyl imidazole 0 . 0 24 hrs34 chcl . sub . 3 vycor none dimethyl imidazole 1 . 0 24 hrs35 ch . sub . 3 cn vycor none p - tsoh 0 . 0 24 hrs__________________________________________________________________________ examples 36 to 56 illustrate the same conversion as in examples 1 to 35 , except that a rayonet ® lamp model rpr - 100 2537 å was used as the light source : __________________________________________________________________________examplesolvent filter sensitizer catalyst % yld exo hplc % yld chrom__________________________________________________________________________36 ch . sub . 3 cn none none none 20 . 2 2 hrs37 ch . sub . 3 cn none none dimethyl imidazole 2 . 3 2 hrs38 ch . sub . 3 cn none 10 % acetone none 17 . 3 2 hrs39 ch . sub . 2 cl . sub . 2 none none none 5 . 5 2 hrs40 ch . sub . 3 cn none none none 8 . 3 19 hrs41 ch . sub . 3 cn none none dimethyl imidazole 1 . 6 19 hrs42 ch . sub . 3 cn none none none 25 . 6 75 min43 ch . sub . 3 cn corex none none 2 . 5 2 hrs44 ch . sub . 3 cn pyrex none none 0 . 0 2 hrs45 ch . sub . 3 cn 3500 ang none none 0 . 0 3 hrs46 ch . sub . 3 cn none none none 9 . 4 1 hr47 ch . sub . 3 cn none none dimethyl imidazole 10 . 3 1 hr48 ch . sub . 3 cn none 10 % acetone none 7 . 3 1 hr49 ch . sub . 3 cn none none dimethyl analine 10 . 4 1 hr50 ch . sub . 3 cn none none hoac 4 . 2 1 hr51 ch . sub . 3 cn none none none 9 . 6 1 hr52 ch . sub . 3 cn none none menh . sub . 2 17 . 8 1 hr53 ch . sub . 3 cn none none aniline 12 . 8 1 hr54 ch . sub . 3 cn none none aq nahco . sub . 3 22 . 3 1 hr55 ch . sub . 3 cn none none morpholine 5 . 7 1 hr56 ch . sub . 3 cn none none nh . sub . 4 oh 13 . 8 1 hr__________________________________________________________________________ a 1 . 0 g ( 1 . 89 mmoles ) sample of benzhydryl , 7β - toluamido - 3 - methyl - 1 , 2 - dioxo - 3 - cephem - 4 - carboxylate was dissolved in about 350 ml of degassed anhydrous diethyl ether : tetrahydrofuran ( 3 : 1 ) and was irradiated for about 1 . 0 h with a 450 watt hanovia ® mercury arc lamp through a pyrex immersion well that was water cooled . the solvent was removed in vacuo and purified by preparative thin layer chromatography on silica gel ( ether elution ). yield = 120 mg ( 12 %). nmr : ( cdcl 3 , 90 mhz ) δ : 2 . 33 ( s , 3h ); 3 . 62 ( bs , 2h ); 5 . 1 ( d , 1h , j = 5 hz ); 5 . 24 ( 5 , 1h ); 5 . 38 ( s , 1h ); 5 . 53 ( s , 1h ); 6 . 2 ( dd , 1h , j = 5 and 10 hz ); 6 . 78 ( s , 1h ); 7 . 25 ( m , 14h ). | 2 |
in one embodiment of the present invention , a schematic diagram of a transceiver 200 is shown in fig3 . in this example , the transceiver 200 is of the xfp form factor , and is designed to support enhanced transmission over multimode fiber using an electronic dispersion compensation ( edc ) integrated circuit ( ic ) 202 connected to a receiver optical subassembly ( rosa ) 204 in the receive path via data lines 205 . the rosa 204 can incorporate a linear response transimpedance amplifier ( tia - not shown ) which is desirable to provide a usable signal to the edc circuitry . a limiting amplifier of the type commonly used in unequalized links will destroy much of the information the edc circuitry relies on to recover the transmitted signal . the transmit path of the transceiver consists of a transmit clock data recovery ( cdr ) 206 , a laser driver 208 and a transmitter optical subassembly ( tosa ) 210 . during normal operation , the cdr 206 can receive differential transmission signals tx + and tx − from differential transmission terminals 211 , and transmit the signals to the laser driver 208 , which can condition the differential signals for proper optical transmission using tosa 210 . the edc ic 202 in this case , also incorporates the retiming function for the receive path , so no external receive cdr is required . the edc ic 202 can generate differential receive output signals rx + and rx − on differential receive terminals 217 based on optical signals received by rosa 204 . the transceiver 200 can also have voltage supplies such as , for example , vcc provided on terminal 219 , and ground provided on terminal 221 . the transceiver 200 also contains a microcontroller 212 , which is used for a number of functions . these include setup , control and temperature compensation of various elements of the transmit and receive paths , and implementation of diagnostics functions . in this embodiment , the microcontroller 212 is further connected to the host system through a 2 wire serial interface that includes a clock line 216 ( scl ) and data line 214 ( sda ). additionally , an interrupt pin , 218 , as defined in the xfp msa standard , can also be connected to the host system . the microcontroller 212 can also handle all low speed communications with the end user . these low speed communications concern , among other things , the standardized pin finctions such as a loss of signal ( los ) 213 , and the transmitter disable input ( tx disable ) 215 , also sometimes referred to as “ txd .” the los indicator 213 is set to assert a digital signal when the received power at the transceiver falls below a predetermined limit indicating that it is likely that the received data is not usable . in this embodiment , the microcontroller 212 is connected by a serial data path 220 to the edc ic 202 . the edc ic 202 is designed such that the current state of the edc equalizer tap weights can be reported on this serial connection 220 as digital values . in this embodiment , the microcontroller 212 can then perform a number of calculations with this data . in the simplest form , one calculation compares the tap weights with the known limits of those values for this edc ic 202 , and determines how close the ic 202 is to the limits of its equalization capability . the resulting value is then compared to preset thresholds . if the tap weights are beyond a given point corresponding to inadequate margin , then the transceiver 200 will set a warning flag , which would be accessible to the host in a predefined memory location , analogous to other such flags defined in the xfp msa . further , the microcontroller 212 would set an interrupt to alert the host system of the warning condition . effectively , this warning would be an indication that the overall fiber link is too close to the limits of equalization . this information could be used by the host system for a variety of purposes . first , the host system could inform the operator of the system ( through the host system operating system or a front panel indication ) to choose a different multimode fiber connection ( presumably done at system setup ). second , the host system could inform the operator to choose a different optical launching technique . for example , in a transceiver designed with a single mode output connection , an operator could first attempt to make a useable connection directly to the multimode fiber ( simplest , lowest cost ). however , if the connection is inadequate , the operator could add a mode conditioning patchcord , for example , as referenced in the ieee 802 . 3z standard for 1000 base - lx . finally , the host system could automatically switch the link to a lower transmission rate ( e . g ., from 8 gb / s to 4 gb / s ) where the link would have much more margin . other diagnostics functions can be provided in the embodiment described above . for example , an alarm flag and associated interrupt could be set if the edc tap weights indicate that the link is beyond the limits of the edc ic ( for example , if a number of tap weights were set at their maximum possible value ). finally , the ic could directly provide the data on the tap weights to the host system . as an alternative or additional function , the microcontroller 212 could calculate a metric of the optical channel quality from the tap weights or other parameters of the equalizer state . one useful example of such a metric is the power penalty for an ideal decision feedback equalizer ( pie - d ) or an ideal linear equalizer . in the exemplary embodiment , the value of this metric could be provided to the host at a predetermined memory location ( i . e . a memory mapped location ). alternately , this information could be provided to a register and accessed by a register based interface . in still other alternative embodiments , the information can be accessed through a command interface . as is done for other values in prior art digital diagnostics implementations , the transceiver could also provide limit values for the above metric corresponding to warning and alarm flag levels . as an alternate embodiment or an additional feature , the transceiver could have one or more indicator lights on the visible front surface . these are indicated as 222 and 224 in fig3 . the microcontroller 212 could activate these lights 222 , 224 to indicate the above mentioned warning or alarm states . these indicator lights could be leds mounted on the front surface , or light pipes which channel lights from leds mounted on a pcb within the transceiver . one alternate embodiment of the indicator lights is illustrated in fig4 , which shows a module 300 having indicators 302 and 304 . in other alternate embodiments , the diagnostics information can include information on the time variation of a quality of the optical channel . alternately , the diagnostics information can include a measure of the worst state of the channel over a period of time . the diagnostics information could also be derived from a measure of a quality of the equalized received signal . in still other embodiments , the diagnostics information could further include a digital representation of the impulse response of the optical channel . still further embodiments could include a digital representation of the frequency response of the optical channel . in other alternate embodiments , the diagnostics information can include the maximum usable data rate on the connected channel . those skilled in the art will realize that many other specific data measurements could be utilized , either alone or in combination with the specific examples provided above . the specific embodiments illustrated here are for the purpose of illustration only , and are not meant to limit the invention in any way . the present invention may be embodied in other specific forms without departing from its spirit or essential characteristics . the described embodiments are to be considered in all respects only as illustrative and not restrictive . the scope of the invention is , therefore , indicated by the appended claims rather than by the foregoing description . all changes which come within the meaning and range of equivalency of the claims are to be embraced within their scope . additionally , with respect to any document incorporated by reference in this application , in any case of conflicting data or standards , the information contained in this specification shall be deemed to have priority . | 7 |
the present invention provides for a minimally invasive surgical implantation method and apparatus for cervical spine implants that preserves the structure and to a limited degree the function of the spine . in addition to stabilization by instrumentation , embodiments of the invention provide for introduction of graft material at or near the facet joint for promotion of joint fusion . two facet joints are formed between each pair of adjacent vertebrae of the human spine . each vertebra has two superior articulating facets and two inferior articulating facets , with each superior facet of a lower vertebra meeting and aligning with an inferior facet of an upper vertebra to form one facet joint on each side of the spine . in the cervical spine , the upward inclination of the superior articular surfaces of the facet joints allows for considerable flexion and extension , as well as for lateral mobility . each facet joint is covered by a dense , elastic articular capsule that is lined by a synovial membrane that secretes synovial fluid to lubricate the facet joint . the exterior of the joint capsule is surrounded by a capsular ligament that must be cut or displaced as part of some embodiments of the presently disclosed method for fusing the facet joints . fig1 depicts the neck region of a patient 100 indicating the position of the dermal incision 101 for lateral approach . with reference to fig2 and 7 , after initial incision a kirschner wire or k - wire 57 is inserted past the medial or posterior scalenes or trapezius muscle , depending on the particular cervical vertebra to be fused , to reach the intended facet joint . the k - wire 57 is inserted into the facet joint within medial plane of the joint in which the articular cartilage typically resides . the orientation of the medial plane of the joint will vary depending on the vertebral position in along the spine . the k - wire 57 may be smooth walled or , preferably threaded as depicted in fig7 to provide greater holding power within the join . a trocar end is also preferred . the k - wire is used to facilitate alignment of instruments at the facet without impingement on the surrounding structures . the spinal accessary nerve is the only critical structure in the area that should be avoided . injury to the nerve will cause paralysis of the scapula muscles . particular care should be taken where threaded k - wire is utilized in order to avoid damage to the nerve . the location of the k - wire in relation to the facet joint is monitored and verified by medical imaging techniques such as x - ray imaging . most desirably surgical direct semiconductor detection is used to provide real time monitoring . once the k - wire 57 is in position a cannulated drill bit 52 with drill guide and stop is inserted over the wire and advanced to the bone surface . in a preferred embodiment the cannulated drill bit 52 includes an integral tap portion to simultaneously tap the interior surface of the pilot hole as the drill is advanced . in an alternate embodiment a separate cannulated tap may be advanced over the k - wire to tap the pilot hole after removal of the cannulated drill bit . a surgical drill is used to drive the bit while the drill guide and stop limits the depth of the pilot hole to slightly less than the ultimate length of the screw ( from the bottom of the head ) ( as described below ) and in any event less than the opposing faces of the facet joint so as not to penetrate entirely through the joint . the bit diameter is preferably 1 mm smaller than the minor diameter of the bone screw 7 ( fig3 ) such that where , for example , 4 . 5 mm and 5 . 5 mm diameter bone screws are contemplated for use at varying points along the spinal column , 3 . 5 mm and 4 . 5 mm bit diameters would be utilized , respectively . after drilling of the pilot hole the drill guide and stop are removed and a calcar type bone planer is advanced over the cannulated drill bit 52 which preferably remains in place to stabilize the joint and maintain a centered position in the pilot hole . in an alternate embodiment the bit may be removed and the planer advanced over the k - wire only or advanced over the k - wire prior to utilization of the bit to prepare the pilot hole . the planer is advanced to the bone surface and used to prepare a flat area in the cortical layer for seating of the staple as described below . the diameter of the plane should be approximately equal to or slightly greater than the length of the staple bridge 5 ( see fig4 ), also as described below . the planer is removed . if not already completed simultaneous with the drilling step , a cannulated tap may be advanced over the k - wire to tap the hole ( after removing the cannulated drill bit ) and thereafter remain in place on the k - wire as a centered guide . a bone staple 1 , as depicted in fig4 and 5 , is inserted over the facet joint via a staple guide 40 ( fig6 ). the bone staple 1 includes at least first and second legs 4 joined by and extending from the lower surface of a bridge 5 that joins them at or near their proximal end . the legs each terminate at their distal end in a bevel or point 6 that is able to penetrate cortical bone . in the depicted embodiment the legs 4 extend through and above the upper surface of the bridge 5 to form pins 11 terminating in annularly enlarged heads 8 . it should be noted that while legs 4 are depicted as contiguous members extending both above and below the bridge 5 ( from tip to head ), the legs need not be so limited . that is to say , the pins 11 extending from the upper surface of the bridge may be offset from the legs 4 extending downward from the lower surface of the bridge . further , the pins 11 may be entirely separate members positioned on the upper surface of the bridge without regard to the position of the legs on the lower surface . a hole or aperture 3 is provided from the upper surface of the bridge 5 to the lower surface . the relative position of the aperture with respect to the pins 11 or edges of the bridge 5 ( depending on the embodiment ) is critical to proper loading and deployment of the staple in and by the staple guide 40 as described below . the position of the legs 4 with respect to the aperture is less critical and , in as much as the staple is intended to span the facet joint , it is sufficient that at least one leg be provided on either side of the aperture so as to penetrate both adjacent vertebra . preferably , as seen in fig4 , both legs are defined by a plurality of annular or outwardly oriented notches 2 formed with beveled walls defining a serrated outer surface that resist withdrawal from the bone once inserted . legs 4 are preferably from 4 mm to 8 mm in length , more preferably 5 mm 7 mm , and from 2 mm to 4 mm in diameter , more preferably 2 mm . pins 11 extend to and terminate in enlarged heads 8 which are preferably flat . the heads 8 may be provided with a slightly conical upper surface or , preferably , a small protrusion ( as depicted ) to serve as a standoff from the surface of the staple guide and detent when loaded therein as described below . alternately , the heads 8 may be with a ball , dome or other form for cooperative engagement with the staple guide 40 . the bridge 5 is a planar member that has its maximum length along a major axis that is greater than or equal to its length along a perpendicular minor axis . in a preferred embodiment pins 11 are symmetrically positioned along the major axis on either side of an aperture 3 that is also centered on the major axis . the aperture 3 extends from the upper surface of the bridge 5 to its lower surface and may be provided at its perimeter with a recess for countersinking the head 14 of the bone screw 7 ( described below ) into the bridge 5 for greater resistance to lateral movement of the staple 1 . alternately , the upper surface of the bridge 5 may be flat to engage the underside of the head 14 as depicted . in the preferred embodiment the legs 4 , like the pins 11 , are symmetrically positioned along the major axis on either side of the aperture 3 but , as noted , it is not critical that this be so . the bridge 5 is preferably rectilinear in form having side edges parallel to the major axis and joined by rounded or arcuate ends , as depicted in fig8 . the bridge 5 may alternately be elliptical in shape ( as depicted in fig5 ), having length along its major axis equal to or greater than that along the minor axis , or any other planar form . the bridge 5 is preferably from 10 mm to 16 mm in length and pins 11 are preferably approximately 7 mm to 12 mm on - center and more preferably 9 mm on center . legs 4 , pins 11 and bridge 5 are preferably constructed of durable , surgically , implantable material such as titanium or stainless steel . bridge 5 may alternately be constructed of peek and may be integrally formed or connected via known manufacturing techniques including welding , compression and mechanical integration . with reference to fig6 a - d and 12 a - f , the staple guide 40 is a cannulated rod preferably approximately 100 mm in length characterized by a central longitudinal void 41 extending though its length to a distal end 42 , the void 41 being preferably but not necessarily centered within the cross section of the guide . the distal tip 42 of the guide 40 is provided with a structure to selectively capture and release the heads 8 of the staple 1 by relative rotation of the staple and guide . in a preferred embodiment an annular channel 43 is provided in the distal end 42 of the guide 40 encircling a point of rotation . it is preferred that the point of rotation be the center of the guide 40 cross section and it is further preferred that the point of rotation be concentric with the longitudinal void 41 . those skilled in the art may observe that where the annular channel is not concentric about the longitudinal void , it will be sufficient that the aperture 3 be aligned with the longitudinal void when captured in the staple guide 40 . the inner and outer walls of the channel 43 are each provided with an annular protrusion 44 such that the channel 43 cross section has a necked form that will capture the enlarged heads 8 of the pins 11 of the staple 1 . the size and spacing of heads 8 are chosen for cooperative engagement within the channel 43 , as depicted in fig6 d or 12 d . in order to be able to start the heads 8 into the channel 43 lateral openings 48 are provided by removing a segment of the channel 43 on opposing side of guide 40 and thereby creating flat sides 49 on the guide 40 . the cord length of the opposing circular segments removed from the staple guide cross section are chosen to tangentially intersect the inner wall of the channel 43 . to load the staple 1 into the guide 40 the major axis of the staple is oriented perpendicular to the flat sides 49 of the guide 40 ( as in fig6 c ) and the flat sides advanced and positioned between the heads 8 of staple . the staple can then be rotate 90 degrees ( as in fig6 d so that the pins 11 and heads 8 enter the channel 43 via the lateral openings 48 , the enlarged heads being engaged by the annular protrusions 44 to retain the staple in place until the rotation is reversed to release the pins and staple after implantation . a dimple 47 may be provided within the channel 43 to receive the small protrusion provided the top of head 8 to act as a detent securing the staple 1 in the guide . in this loaded position the aperture 3 of the staple is necessarily concentrically aligned with void 41 of the guide 40 . with reference to fig7 , the void 41 of the guide 40 is sized slide over the cannulated drill bit 52 which , as stated , remains in the pilot hole during portions of the procedure as a centering guide . in an alternate embodiment in which the bit has been removed and a separate tap has been used to prepare the inner surface of the pilot hole , the guide would be sized to slide over the tap which would remain in place to serve as a guide in lieu of the bit . the loaded staple guide 40 is positioned over the k - wire 57 and cannulated bit 52 and advanced to the bone surface such that the distal tips 6 of the legs 4 engage the surfaces of the vertebrae , one on either side of the facet joint . in this way the aperture 3 of the bridge 5 is necessarily aligned with the pilot hole in the joint which remains supported and aligned by the drill bit . the legs 4 of the staple 1 are then driven into the bones by force . force may be applied by manually by the surgeon or by surgical bone hammer , slide hammer integral to the staple guide 40 , or other known surgical technique . with the staple secured across the facet joint the k - wire and cannulated drill bit are removed from the pilot hole via the central void 41 of the staple guide 40 which remains in place and engaged to the staple 1 . a bone screw 7 is delivered via the now vacant central void 41 of the staple guide 40 , as depicted in fig7 and 13 a - d , and rotationally driven through the aperture 3 of the staple bridge 5 into the pilot hole in the bone by a cooperative driving tool engaging screw head 14 . the driving tool ( not pictured ) is advanced through the void 41 of the guide 40 . after the staple 1 is secured in place by the screw 7 the staple guide 40 is rotated about is longitudinal axis to release the heads 8 of the pins 11 from the channel 43 via lateral openings 48 , thus permitting the staple guide 40 to be removed . in an alternate embodiment , the pins 11 and heads 8 of the staple 1 are omitted altogether as is the inner wall of the arcuate channel 43 at the distal end 42 of the guide 40 . in such an embodiment staple is loaded into the guide by inserting the bridge 5 between the outer walls of the arcuate channel and rotating as described above such that the arcuate ends of the bridge are captured between the outer walls of the arcuate channel which are provided with an annular protrusion as described above . in yet another alternate embodiment , the lateral openings 48 are omitted by failing to remove the opposing segments of the channel 43 in favor of distal openings . distal openings are formed by omitting a portion of the lateral protrusions at opposing positioned around the arcuate channel such that the heads 8 of the pins 11 can be advanced into the channel from a distal position before being rotated into the channel and captured . bone screw 7 may be any known bone screw but is preferably a screw having a cylindrical , externally shank 9 topped at one end by a head 14 adapted to be engaged by a fastener - driving tool as depicted in fig3 , 4 and 5 . the shank 9 of the screw 7 may be hollow along some or all of its length and is further preferably provided with one or more perforations 10 positioned along the linear axis of the shank 9 and extending through the shank 9 perpendicular to its linear axis are provided to allow bone growth through the screw in order to fuse the joint into which it is driven and secure the screw in place . the distal tip of the screw may be blunt or may be tapered to a sharp point 12 . with reference to fig8 and 9 , after the staple 1 is secured in place in the facet joint by screw 7 a cap 50 is placed over the visible portions of the staple . the cap 50 is cooperatively formed to envelope the exposed surface of the bridge 5 and screw 7 . the cap 50 is provided with resilient members on its inner surface which engage the heads 8 of the pins 11 by snap fit or friction fit so as to removeably secure the cap 50 in place over the staple 1 . a loop 58 on the outer surface of the cap 50 is provided to which bone graft material may be secured . in a preferred embodiment an envelope 59 containing bone graft material may be sutured to the loop 58 and positioned between the transverse processes of the affected vertebrae or directly on the surface of the inferior vertebral lamina depending on the location of the site along the spine . the envelope is preferably made of woven polyethylene or polyester fabric and may contain allograft , autograft or synthetic graft material , with or without human osteogenic growth factors , such as bone morphogenetic proteins , transforming growth factor , and platelet - derived growth factor . fusion at the transverse process or lamina by only graft serves to further secure and support stability of the facet joint . after the graft material is secured in position the incision is closed . fig1 depicts the location of bone screw 7 and staple 1 after implantation to stabilize the right c 5 - c 6 facet joint 101 . the cap 50 and bone envelope 59 are omitted for clarity . fig1 is an abstraction of the c 5 - c 6 vertebra indicating the position of the screw 7 and staple 1 in the facet joint 102 . it should be noted that the c 5 - c 6 facet joint here is referenced by way of illustration and the present method may be utilized at other cervical and non cervical joints . the above - described lateral approach to facet fusion and related devices can be equally applied to other areas of the spine including the lumber and thoracic regions . although the staple 1 , screw 7 and cap 50 have particular utility for the lateral approach to facet fusion , one skilled in the art will understand that the present invention can be equally applicable to other approaches to facet fusion and to fusion or fixation of other skeletal structures . having now fully set forth the preferred embodiments and certain modifications of the concept underlying the present invention , various other embodiments as well as certain variations and modifications of the embodiments herein shown and described will obviously occur to those skilled in the art upon becoming familiar with said underlying concept . it is to be understood , therefore , that the invention may be practiced otherwise than as specifically set forth in the appended claims . | 0 |
fig1 shows a multi - bit microprocessor configuration of a reconfigurable processing device , which has been constructed and programmed according to the principles of the present invention . a two - dimensional array of basic functional units 100 are located in a programmable interconnect 101 . five of the bfus 100 and the portion of the reconfigurable interconnect connecting the bfus have been configured to operate as a microprocessor 102 . each of the bfus 100 preferably has addressable memory resources and logic resources , such as an 8 - bit arithmetic logic unit ( alu ). one of the bfus 100 , denoted alu , utilizes its logic resources to perform the logic operations of the microprocessor 102 and utilizes its memory resources as a data store and / or extended register file . another bfu operates as a function store f that controls the successive logic operations performed by the logic resources of the alu . two additional bfus , a and b , operate as further instruction stores that control the addressing of the memory resources of the alu . a final bfu , pc , operates as a program counter for the various instruction bfus f , a , b . as shown in fig2 the same reconfigurable processing array , however , may be reprogrammed to function as a simd system , and as described below , this reconfiguration can occur on a cycle - by - cycle basis . the functions of the program counter pc and instruction stores a , b and f have been again assigned to different bfus 100 , but the alu function has been replicated into 12 bfus . each of the alus is connected via the reconfigurable interconnect 101 to operate on globally broadcast instructions from the instruction stores a , b , f . these same operations are performed by each of these alu , or common instructions may be broadcast on a row - by - row basis . fig3 shows how wider data paths can be constructed in the programmable device . this 32 - bit microprocessor configured device has the same instruction stores a , b , f and program counter as described in connection with fig1 . four bfus , however , have been assigned an alu operation , and the alus are chained together to act as a single 32 - bit wide microprocessor in which the interconnect 101 supports carry - in and carry - out operations between the alus . fig4 shows how the device can be configured to operate as a very long instruction word ( vliw ) system . the various instruction stores a , b , f are defined to encompass multiple bfus 100 to accommodate the desired instruction word width . fig5 shows the configuration of the present system to operate as a multiple instruction multiple data ( mimd ) system . the 8 - bit microprocessor configuration 102 of fig1 is replicated into an adjacent set of bfus to accommodate multiple , independent processing units within the same device . of course , wider data paths could also be accommodated by chaining alus of each processor 102 to each other . fig6 shows the moderately coarse grain , preferably 8 - bit , bfu core . primarily , the bfu core has memory block 110 , basic alu core 120 , and configuration memory 105 . the main memory block 110 is a 256 word × 8 bit wide memory , which is arranged to be used in either single or dual port modes . in dual port mode , the memory size is reduced to 128 words in order to be able to perform the two simultaneous read operations without increasing the read latency of the memory . the memory mode is controlled by control logic 114 accessed through a memory / mux function port 112 , and the write enable can be controlled either through the memory / mux function port 112 or by the control logic 134 accessed through alu function port 132 . control logic is hardwired and also controls the alu functions . in single port mode , the memory 110 uses the a_adr port for an address and outputs the selected value to both a_port and b_port . in dual port mode , the a_adr port selects a value for a_port only , and b_adr port selects a value for the b_port . in either mode the read operation takes place during the first half of the clock cycle , and the values are latched for the rest of the cycle . write operations take place on the second half of the cycle via the data memory port . writes are always done to the current a_adr address . a feedback path 118 shown as a dashed line may be used . the bfu core performs “ a op b → a ” in one cycle . two cycles are needed to perform “ a op b → c ” operations . in this case , the feedback is performed by the normal level - 1 network described in more detail later . the configuration memory 105 stores configuration words that control the configuration of the interconnect . it also stores configuration information for a control architecture . optionally , it can also be a multi - context memory that receives a globally broadcast 2 - bit global context selecting signal . the memory is addressed via network port a 122 and receives data from port b 124 . the write enable we is issued by the control logic 114 . the alu 120 is a basic 8 - bit arithmetic logic processing unit . the following operations are supported : input invert — prior to performing any of the following operations either , or both of the alu inputs , a_in or b_in , can be inverted . pass — passes either a_in or b_in to out . with the input inversion , this operation can be a not . nand — performs bitwise operation : ( a nand b ). with input inversions this can be an or . nor — performs bitwise operation : ( a nor b ). with input inversions this can be a and . xor — perform bitwise operation : ( a xor b ). with input inversions this can be a xnor . add — performs ( a + b + c_in ). c_in can be selected from 0 , 1 , or c_out of an adjacent cell . combined with the input inversion a subtract can be made : ( a − b )=( a +{ overscore ( b )}+ 1 ). multiply — performs ( a * b ). can also perform ( a * b + x ) and ( a * b + x + y ), where x and y are special inputs . these operations are needed to create pipelined multiply structures . multiply operations require two cycles to fully complete . the low byte is available on the first cycle and the high byte is available on the second . the two network ports 122 , 124 feed addresses to memory ports a_adr and a_adr . data is feed to the memory 110 from network port b via the memory data port . a data multiplexor 126 selects either the feedback back path 118 or the network port b output . network ports a and b 122 , 124 outputs can feed directly to the alu 120 by configuring alu input multiplexors 128 , 130 . the memory function port 112 controls the operation of the data and alu input multiplexors 126 , 128 , 130 via the control logic 114 . the bfu core is designed to be smoothly chained to other bfus to form wider - word alu structures by properly configuring the control logic 134 via the alu function port fa . in order to accomplish this , the user must specify the carry - chain of each of datapath element as it travels through multiple bfus by setting the following bits in each of the bfus : rightsource — specifies the direction to the next least - significant - byte , which can also be set to receive a carry from another source . leftsource — specifies the direction to the next most - significant - byte , which can also be set to receive a carry from another source . in addition , pipeline stages can be inserted into the carry chain by specifying carrypipeline to be “ 1 ”. this will register the incoming carry prior to its being used . this is important for addition operations , because the carry - chain is limited by the clock period and the speed of the adder . based on this local information , the actual shift and add operations of the alu 120 have different effects . there are two main shift functions : left and right . left shift moves the bits towards the msb , and right shifts move the bits towards the lsb . normally , the carry - in value is used to fill the newly - created opening , but if the cell is an lsb or msb , the new bit is determined by additional information contained the chosen shift instruction . for left shifts , the lsb position will be different , while for the right shifts it will be the msb position . the options are : force carry — this option will override the lsb / msb setting and force the shift to use the carry - in from its designated source ( left / rightsource ). this is useful for shift - rotations . skip bit — this option will keep the same lsbit / msbit , essentially duplicating the low / high bit of the shifted number . insert 0 — this will insert a zero into the lsbit / msbit . insert 1 — this will insert a one into the lsbit / msbit . there are three addition functions : add , add - 0 , and add - 1 . add will perform a normal add - with - carry ( a + b + c_in ), in all cases . add - 0 will perform a normal add - with - carry , except that the carry - in of the lsb block will be forced to zero . add - 1 is similar , except that the lsb carry - in is forced to one . note that a “ normal ” addition operation is usually performed with the add - 0 function . the basic add operation is primarily intended for performing “ block serial ” addition in which addition is performed over multiple cycles on the same set of bfus . the sequence would be an add - 0 , followed by however many adds are needed to complete the addition . subtractions are performed using the add - 1 operation and inverting the b input value b , i . e ., a 2 &# 39 ; s complement subtract . there are four multiplication functions : mult , mult - add , mult - add - add and mult - cont . the first three initiate a multiply operation , performing a * b , a * b + x , or a * b + x + y , respectively . the low byte of the product is available at the end of the current cycle . mult - cont is then issued in order to output the high byte . mult - cont does not have to be issued but must immediately follow a mult , mult - add , or a mult - add - add . the inputs to the multiply are latched on the cycle the mult , mult - add or mult - add - add is issued , so that the inputs to the bfu 100 may be changed during the mult - cont function , without affecting the final value . the source for x and y , if used , is special . there are two configuration bits associated with these inputs : madd 1 source and madd 2 source . if these are set to “ 0 ”, the x and y inputs are hardwired for use in pipelined multipliers . in this case the x input is connected to the nearest north neighbor ( l 1 _n 1 ), and the y input is hardwired to the output of the northwest neighbor ( l 1 _nw ) of the previous clock cycle . if the maddsource bits are set to “ 1 ” they allow floating port fp 1 and floating port fp 2 ( described later ) to select x and y , respectively . multiple - bfu multiplication operations are more complex than multi - bfu addition or shifting , and will be treated as an application . the network that joins the bfu cores into a complete array is a three - level interconnect structure , incorporating regular neighbor mesh , longer switchable lines , and long broadcast lines . fig7 illustrates the connectivity provided by the level - 1 network structure . the output of every bfu core is passed to its nearest neighbors in all directions north , south , east , west , north - east , south - east , south - west , and north - west and its neighbors 2 cells away in the cardinal directions . as a result every cell receives 12 level - 1 inputs . this network is intended to provide fast connections between tightly packed cells . fig8 shows the level - 2 network structure . this level provides length - 4 broadcast lines between rows and columns of cells 200 containing a 5 × 5 array of bfu &# 39 ; s 100 . blocks 213 represent two level - 2 network drivers . each line shown is a 2 - directional broadcast line where the starting drivers 213 are the source of the broadcast . level - 2 drives operate in two modes : source and pass . each switch 213 takes in the local bfu output , a byte from the control logic , the level - 1 and level - 3 network lines , as well as other level - 2 lines and selects one . in source mode , this data is then registered and broadcast on the line on the next cycle . the register is used to add a pipeline stage in network . in pass mode , the data is broadcast without the pipeline stage . this allows longer chains of network lines . at some point , a pipeline stage must be inserted ( by using a source - mode switch ) to keep the clock period small . the possible number of links in these chains depends on particular implementations of this design as well as the internal clock speed . the two types of switches 136 on this network ( vertical and horizontal broadcast ) are arranged in a checkerboard pattern of bfus , so that the same pattern can be found by moving north , east , south , or west two steps . this is important to consider for creating macrocell designs . the level - 3 network is intended to carry data long distances as rapidly as possible . it consists of 4 shared network lines spanning every row and column . each bfu cell gets to drive up to 4 inputs onto the level - 3 network . in addition , every bfu has access to every level - 3 line crossing it . the delay across level - 3 is also one clock cycle per step , except that steps at this level are up to a full - chip long . thus it is possible to get from any bfu to any other bfu in the array in 2 clock cycles . the control logic for the level - 3 bus line is located at the perimeter of the device &# 39 ; s core . the select is broadcast down columns , then a next cycle the value broadcast is used to control the line . fig9 illustrates the bfu cell 100 , which is the smallest logic unit from which more complex processing units can be built . it provides the switching system that controls that data flow between bfus on the reconfigurable interconnect . four switches , address / data a and b ada , adb , alu function fa , and memory function fm , feed data into the bfu core via the network ports 122 , 124 , alu function port 132 , and memory / mux function port 112 , respectively , shown in fig1 . four other switches , floating port switches fp 1 fp 2 , and network switches n 1 , n 2 , feed data into the level - 2 and - 3 network drivers 136 . when not being used as network selectors , floating ports fp 1 and fp 2 can serve to control the dynamic switching capability of the address / data a , b and network switches . each switch / port selects from its inputs to produce a single byte of output . each type of switch / port , however , uses a slightly different mechanism for selecting this byte . also shown is c / r logic i and ii 202 , 203 and or plane 210 . these sections are part of a control architecture that generates a control byte 215 that may be selected as the output of the switches or a control bit 217 that is used to change the configuration bytes controlling the switches &# 39 ; functionality as part of local context control . fig1 shows the architecture for each of the two function switches fa and fm that control , respectively , a bfu &# 39 ; s alu 120 and memory / multiplexors . the switches fa , fm take in 30 byte - sized values from the network at port multiplexor 150 . these include the local bfu &# 39 ; s output 118 , all local level - 1 lines , all crossing level - 2 and level - 3 lines , and the single control byte 215 that is generated by the or plane 210 . the selected output of the port multiplexor 150 is provided to a value / source multiplexor 152 which is used to select either the output of the port multiplexor or a static value determined by configuration . the port multiplexor 150 and value / source multiplexor 152 are controlled by a 9 bit configuration word . this word is interpreted one of two ways based upon the value of its 9th bit , which controls the value / source multiplexor 152 . in static - value ( constant ) mode , the lower eight bits of the configuration word are passed directly to the bfu via the value / source multiplexor 152 . this allows the port &# 39 ; s value to be pre - programmed . in the other mode , static - source , the lower 5 bits of the configuration word control the port multiplexor 150 to select from the 30 incoming lines and the value on this line is propagated to the bfu 100 through the value / source multiplexor 152 . the port takes in two configuration words , a and b , and uses a local control bit generated by the distributed compare / reduce logic 203 to select between the words at a local context multiplexor 156 . this allows the control architecture to control the operation of the switch to operate in one of two locally generated contexts . finally , the output of the port passes through a register 154 clocked by a global clock . this provides the implicit pipeline stage of the architecture , i . e ., entering a bfu constitutes a single pipeline stage . fig1 illustrates the architecture of the address / data and network switch ports ada , adb , n 1 , and n 2 . the architecture is very similar to the function port fa , fm that is described in connection with fig1 , except that in addition to static - value and static - source modes , it also provides a dynamic - source mode in which a floating port output fpout may be used to control the port multiplexor 158 . in more detail , the mode of the switch ada , adb , n 1 , n 2 is determined by configuration word a or configuration word b from the configuration memory 105 based upon the control bit 217 . the control bit is received at a selector port of local context multiplexor 166 . one bit of the selected configuration word is received at the selector port of dynamic / static multiplexer 160 . if this multiplexor selects the output of the associated floating port fpout , the port will function in a dynamic mode in which one of the 30 byte - sized values , a local output , 12 level - 1 , 8 level - 2 , 8 level - 3 and the control byte 215 from the or plane 210 of the distributed pla , will be controlled dynamically by the floating port . alternatively , however , the selection performed by the port multiplexor 158 can be determined by the selected configuration word ; this is termed static source mode because the selected value is determined by configuration . finally , the select bit can also control the value / source multiplexor 160 to pass a value determined by configuration . that is , instead of selecting the output of the port multiplexor 158 , the value / source multiplexor 160 can select 8 bits determined by the selected configuration word . thus , the switch &# 39 ; s value can be fixed by the configuration word , come from a fixed source or come from a source that can be selected on a cycle - by - cycle basis . which floating port fp 1 or fp 2 is the source of fpout depends on the switch port involved . floating port 1 fp 1 controls network switch 1 n 1 and address / data a ada ; floating port 2 fp 2 controls network switch 2 n 2 and address / data b adb . the register 162 on the output again provides the implicit pipelining for the address / data ports , but is not used for the network ports . fig1 shows the floating port architecture fp 1 , 2 , which is functionally similar to the function ports fa , fm . the floating ports fp 1 and fp 2 can be programmed to serve a number of different roles . first of all , they can serve as additional switching for the higher - level ( levels 2 and 3 ) network . they can also serve to control the dynamic source for the address / data ports ada , adb and the network switches n 1 , n 2 . finally , they can also provide input to the or plane 210 of the control architecture . these ports fp 1 , fp 2 are physically identical to the function ports described above in connection with fig1 . a port multiplexor 168 selects from the 30 inputs based upon configuration data . a fixed value may be selected by value / source multiplexor 170 . a local context multiplexor 172 selects the source of the 9 bit configuration word between words a and b based upon the control bit from the compare / reduce logic 203 or the or plane 210 . different from the function ports fa , fm , however , there is no register on the output . this allows this port &# 39 ; s output to be used by other ports immediately without pipeline delay , which is important if the floating port is providing dynamic control to another port . fig1 shows the level - 1 driving network that distributes the bfu output out from the alu 120 to the near neighbors as shown in fig7 . in an effort to conserve power , it is possible to turn off network wires that are not being used in a particular user &# 39 ; s design . each cardinal direction north , south , east and west has its own driver 174 , 176 , 178 , 180 , respectively , which can be disabled independently from other drivers via n -, s -, e -, and w - enable signals . the diagonals are joined with their clock - wise neighbor : north - west with north , north - east with east , south - east with south , and south - west with west . the level - 1 drivers 174 - 180 for each direction are preferably not tri - state , but instead pull each line to ground when disabled . fig1 shows an exemplary level - 2 driver 136 for a single level - 2 network wire . the level - 2 driver 136 is more complicated because there are four switches ( n 1 , n 2 , fp 1 , fp 2 ) that can drive to the line via the multiplexor 182 . one of the four switches fpi , fp 2 , n 1 , and n 2 is selected to drive each line by the multiplexor 182 . in the event that the line is not used , it can be completely disabled in the same way as the level - 1 lines by turning - off or disabling the buffer amplifier 184 . finally , the level - 2 network driver contains an optional register 186 , which sets the source / pass mode of this l 2 cell . fig1 shows a level - 3 driver 137 , which is similar to the level - 2 version . a multiplexor 188 determines which of the floating ports or network switches fp 1 , fp 2 , n 1 , and n 2 drives the line through buffer amplifier 190 . the level - 3 network drivers are tristate , and are controlled globally . the register 192 is mandatory here . each bfu cell 100 contains two level - 2 drivers 136 ( as shown previously in fig8 ) and eight level - 3 drivers . fig1 shows a modification to the input registers 154 , 162 of the function , network and address / data switches shown in fig1 and 11 to incorporate optionally a time - switching capability . if the basic configuration bit in each bfu , tsenable , is set to “ 1 ”, then a globally - broadcast 4 bit word 192 selects which step the chip is on . if the broadcasted value 192 matches a 4 - bit configuration word 194 , comparison logic 198 controls the register 162 , 154 to latch its values on that cycle in response to a one bit enable signal . otherwise the register 162 , 154 does nothing . this architecture can be used to time - multiplex use of the network wires . in total , each bfu 100 requires 8 of these 4 - bit configuration words . these registers control ports 122 , 124 , 134 , and 112 of the bfu core along with : control c / r , control fp 1 , control fp 2 , write enable , madd - 1 , and madd - 2 . time - switched control of the write enable means that write - enable only happens if we is asserted ( by whichever port is currently responsible ) and if the global step matched the configured ts word . the control architecture of the embodiment of the invention is designed to be a general - purpose structure that can be programmed to fit the control requirements of a user &# 39 ; s application . there are two main types of control : a fast reduction operation and a distributed pla . both will be described below . the bit - level details of these modules are listed in appendix c . referring back to fig9 the output of the bfu core out first passes through compare / reduce logic 202 before being received by the level - 1 network drivers for distribution to the level - 1 network . fig1 shows the reduction logic 202 in the control architecture , which serves as general - purpose “ condition codes ” for the outputs of a bfu . the 9 - bit output of the bfu 100 ( data plus carry - out ) is compared to one of two programmed configuration words : word 1 , word 2 . the control context select , which is part of the alu function , determines which word is used . these words can contain “ don &# 39 ; t care ” bits , so it is possible to test any part of the bfu output . for example , a zero - detect function would test all of the data bits for zeros , but ignore the carry , while a sign - check would look only at the 8th ( high ) bit of the data and ignore the rest . the result of this comparison 202 is passed to all the bfu &# 39 ; s neighbors in the same style as the level - 1 network shown in fig7 i . e ., all adjacent bfus and bfus one removed along the cardinal directions . the compare / reduce ( c / r ) process continues on the all the incoming local c / r values . fig1 shows an example of a multi - bfu reduction . the reduction logic 1 202 outputs of bfus i and ii are passed to bfu ii , where another c / r operation is performed in the bfu ii &# 39 ; s receiving reduction logic ii 203 . the final result is the local control bit 217 which is used to change the functionality of bfu ii &# 39 ; s ports and switches via the multiplexors 156 , 166 , 172 ( see fig1 - 12 ). note that there is a delay of one cycle for the level - 1 network connection provided by registers 200 , just as data is delayed one cycle across the level - 1 network . referring back to fig9 each of the bfus also has an or - plane 210 which performs a logic operation defined by the data stored in the configuration memory 105 . the or plane receives , as an input , the 8 - bit output from each of the floating ports fp 1 , 2 . the logic operation of the or plane is applied to this output to generate the control byte that is received by each of the port multiplexors 150 , 158 , 168 of the function switches fa , fm , address / data switches ada , adb , the floating ports fp 1 , 2 , and the network switches n 1 , n 2 ( see fig1 - 12 ). the or plane 210 may also be used to generate the control bit that is also received by the switches , instead of the c / r logic 203 . fig1 shows the use of a distributed programmable logic array ( pla ) of or planes 210 for more complex control operations that can not be handled by the c / r logic 202 , 203 . in the example , the bfu output from bfu i gets passed to an or plane 210 a , which is half of a pla . the fact that a floating port fp 1 , 2 is used to switch bfu output allows any of the other floating port &# 39 ; s inputs to serve as the initial data source . the register 212 after the floating port provides the necessary pipeline stage if the data used is coming off a long network line . the or plane 210 a serves as one stage of a multi - level logic function . therefore , its eight outputs 214 can be thought of as product - terms of a standard pla . these product terms are then passed to a level - 2 or level - 3 , network as the control byte input to a floating port fp 1 , 2 , or network switch n 1 , n 2 . after the one cycle delay from crossing the network via a second register 216 , one of bfu ii &# 39 ; s floating ports fp 1 , 2 switches the product terms to its or plane 210 b . this plane 210 b performs the second stage of the multi - level logic function . if more stages were required to achieve the desired logic operations , the 8 new product terms 215 could be sent to another bfu to continue the operation . in the example shown , only two levels from bfu i and bfu ii are required . in the distributed pla model of the control logic , there are two final results . the first is the same as the c / r logic 202 : the local control bit 217 . however , the pla 210 b can also output a control byte 215 , which can be inserted into a bfu port via address / data switches ada , adb or function switches fa , fm or network switch . this allows the control logic to generate specific constants . note that the distributed pla control requires three cycles to complete a two - level logic operation indicated by registers 212 and 216 on the paths from the floating ports fp and between bfus , respectively . the pla 210 , however , is capable of performing complex logic operations as well as distributing this control across large portions of a bfu array via the level - 2 and level - 3 network spans . on the other hand , the c / r 202 logic operates in a single cycle , but is limited in functional complexity and distance . fig2 shows the complete control logic for a single bfu to illustrate the interoperability of the c / r logic 202 , 203 and the or plane 210 . the comp / reduce i 202 is performed as described above where the result is simply passed to neighboring level - 1 bfus , while the comp / reduce ii 203 is linked with the or plane 210 . this connection allows these two types of control logic to be mixed . for example , the neighborhood comp / reduce can be used as an input to the or plane 210 , or the outputs of the floating ports fp 1 , 2 can used in the comp / reduce ii operation . in order to reduce the size of these reduction operations , a number of pre - selections are made on the incoming data . comp / reduce ii 203 operates on all 13 c / r inputs from the neighbor c / r logic registered at 200 , but can only include one of the floating port values selected by multiplexor 218 . the or plane 210 takes in both floating ports fp 1 , 2 to enable logic combination of the outputs . only 4 bits of the c / r inputs are received via selector 220 , which can select any 4 . one final bit of configuration selects the source of the control bit , either c / r ii 203 or or plane 210 at the multiplexor 219 . the selection of the multiplexors 218 , 219 and the select 4 logic 220 is set by the configuration data in configuration memory 105 . optionally , the reconfigurable processing device may be adapted to have a global context selection in the style of dynamically programmable gate arrays ( dpga ) described in u . s . patent application ser . no : 08 / 386 , 851 , having common inventors with this application and entitled “ dynamically programmable gate array with multiple contexts ”, the teachings of which are incorporated herein by this reference in their entirety . as described in connection with fig1 - 12 , each of the switches fa , fm address / data a , b , and network ports n 1 , n 2 receive a control bit 217 that determines local context selection between configuration word a and b . as a modification , each of the bfus 100 could be additionally provided with a 2 - bit globally broadcast context signal . as shown in fig2 , the configuration memory 105 is divided into 4 contexts , two of which are programmable 472 , 474 and two of which are hardwired 476 , 478 . the two bit global context select signal selects which portion of this configuration memory 105 is active and the active context determines the configuration words a , b . the two programmable contexts 472 , 474 are user programmable . hardwired contexts 476 , 478 may not be changed , however . these are most useful in a power up situation to ensure that the device is initially in a known state such as boot strapping . fig2 shows a core 6 × 6 array 300 of bfus 100 surrounded by 12 i / o ports , 3 to a side . this exact number of bfus in the core 300 may change for different embodiments , but the structures described here will still apply . also the number of i / o ports may change in different implementations along with the ratio of bfus to i / o ports . the following description concerns the switching logic that connects the core array 300 to the i / o ports n 0 - 2 , s 0 - 2 , e 0 - 2 , w 0 - 2 and vice - versa . throughout this section “ output ” refers to data leaving the chip , and “ input ” refers to data entering the chip . for simplicity , the remainder of this section will describe the north - side boundary , i . e . output signals going north , input signals going south . the chip boundary is symmetrical so that each of the other sides is an exact , but rotated , duplicate of the north side . any exceptions to this will be noted . the ports will numbered clockwise , so the west - most port on the north side is port n 0 , the east - most is port n 2 , and similarly for the remaining sides . fig2 shows the architecture of an input / output ( i / o ) port n 0 , for example . the port n 0 supports an 8 - bit i / o databus 310 and two i / o control bits 312 , 314 . the data bus 30 , and the two bits 312 , 314 are controlled by independent output enable signals data_ 0 e , bit 0 _ 0 e , and bit 1 _ 0 e that control separate buffer amplifiers 320 - 330 , which change the port , and the pads , from input to output mode . all data , in or out is registered using i / o registers 332 - 342 . note that in output mode , the i / o input value will be the same as the i / o output value , after two cycles of delay . the input data , for example , propagates through i / o register 332 to i / o register 334 . the i / o registers 332 - 342 are designed to help synchronize internal signals to an external system . the chip takes in a master clock and uses that clock to generate all its internal clocking . one of those internal clocks is a pad clock , which is a half - frequency version of the master clock , one phase of the master clock delayed . this pad clock is used to synchronize the input and output data at the pads . note that the chip runs internally at twice the rate of data i / o . fig2 shows how the i / o registers 332 - 342 work . a standard d flip - flop 350 latches on the rising edge of the master clk . the latching is enabled with either the pad clock or its inversion in dependence on the configuration bit received at multiplexor 352 . this allows a user to latch the signal on either edge of the pad clk . the selection is controlled by a user - programmed bit . in the hard - wired programming contexts , this is set so that the input registers trigger when pad clk is high , and the output registers trigger when pad clk is low . this is equivalent to the rising and falling edges , respectively , of sync clk the clock used to signal the external system . fig2 is a block diagram of a programmable logic array ( pla ) 360 that is used to provide a customizable interface with any or most external systems . this fully programmable logic array ( pla ) is placed next to each i / o port n 0 - 2 , s 0 - 2 , e 0 - 2 , w 0 - 2 . the pla takes in 38 bits of data and the data &# 39 ; s inverses and performs a selective and in and plane 362 , generating 45 product terms . these product terms are then selectively ored in or plane 364 to generate 15 final outputs . eight of these output bits are registered 366 and fed back into the input of the pla 362 to be used as state bits for an up - to 256 - state machine . the input bits include the 8 state bits , a special pla input byte , the i / o input data byte from the i / o port , the compare / reduce bits that arrive at the north edge of the core and the two special bits from the i / o port . the special pla input data is a byte selected from all the network lines arriving at the north edge of the core . this byte is selected in the same manner as the i / o port data outputs described below . the registers 368 , 370 on the pla in data and the c / r output bits are necessary because of the distance those bits must travel in order to get to the pla . the output bits of the pla 360 include an 8 - bit value 372 used as state bits to implement a finite state machine , a special pla output byte used to feed data into the core or both . in addition , the pla outputs 2 bits 374 to be used as inputs to the c / r network in the core , 2 bits 376 to be output as the i / o port &# 39 ; s special bits , and the 3 i / o output enable bits 378 . note that there are pipeline stages on the pla out data and c / r in bits , but these registers will be included in the input switching . fig2 shows a block diagram of how data from the bfu core gets off - chip . eight databuses 380 arrive at an output multiplexor 384 from the edges of every one of the columns 382 of bfus . the eight databuses 380 include 2 level - 1 lines , 2 level - 2 lines , and 4 level - 3 lines . diagonal lines are ignored here because the chip side will be viewed as a whole , and the diagonals are simply duplicates of the level - 1 lines . for a 6 column - wide core , this totals 48 byte - sized signals that are vying for 3 i / o ports 386 , and 3 input bytes to plas 360 . in order to ensure generality , each of these values will be selected from all 48 , plus the 3 outputs of the plas for the i / o port inputs . this selection is performed in a manner similar to the level - 3 network lines . an output selector 388 for each of these 6 outputs is located at the center of the edge . the selector takes in the outputs of the 2 center bfu &# 39 ; s columns 382 and the inputs from the i / o ports and plas and chooses one ( or a constant ) to control which of the 48 core outputs is to be driven on to that output wire . fig2 shows one of these selector switches 388 . the output selection may come from either of the two center columns via multiplexor 410 or be set by the configuration via multiplexor 414 . the register 412 on the output of the multiplexor 410 is used to synchronize the output selection byte to the actual output data , which is registered at a tri - state buffer shown in fig2 . fig2 is a block diagram illustrating how data enters the bfu core from off - chip . at each bfu column 382 , 4 values may be inserted : l 1 _n 1 , l 1 _n 2 , l 2 _n 1 , and l 2 _n 2 , from the perspective of the top - most bfu in the column 382 . from the point of view of a core bfu , these signals will appear to be coming from another bfu in the appropriate position , i . e ., the perimeter position is transparent to the bfus in the core . the diagonal connections assume this logical position , i . e ., the nw input of a bfu is the same as the n 1 input to its west neighbor . the only exception is the ne input on the east - most bfu . this position has its own switch . note that the nw input to the west - most bfu will be handled by the west - side switching logic . each of these 4 values can select from 6 incoming data bytes : one from each of the i / o ports 386 and one from each of the plas 360 . this selection is made using the input selector switch 420 . fig3 details the input selector 420 . note the pipeline register 422 on the output of the multiplexor 424 is controlled by the three bit configuration word . fig3 shows the architecture for switching the c / r inputs to core . one - bit versions 430 of the input selector switches 420 , described previously , are used . the c / r selectors 430 can select from any of the 6 c / r inputs from the plas . the level - 3 network lines are also controlled on the perimeter of the chip . the level - 3 controllers select which bfu or i / o line drives the line on a given cycle ( all 6 input / pla lines , on both sides of the chip , can feed the level - 3 network ). there is one controller per level - 3 line arranged so that there are two controllers at both ends of the rows / columns . on the north and east sides , controller 1 controls the v 0 or h 0 lines , while controller 2 controls the v 1 and h 1 lines . on the south and west sides , controller 1 controller v 2 or h 2 , while controller 2 controls v 3 or h 3 . these controller switches are similar to the address / data and network switches in the bfu , in that they operate in constant value , static source , and dynamic source modes . fig3 shows one of these switches 462 . the multiplexor 450 takes in all of the data outputs arriving at the edge of the that column : 2 level - 1 , 2 level - 2 and level - 3 lines , the 6 input / pla lines , as well as the diagonal connections from neighboring columns except at the comers where those lines do not exist . multiplexor 452 determines whether the 5 bits of the configuration word sets the output through register 454 . the dynamic control for these switches comes from a switch that is shared between the pairs of controller at each end of the column . fig3 shows the arrangement at one end of one column in which a dynamic control switch 460 controls adjacent three level - 3 controllers 462 . the dynamic control switches are shown in fig3 . these switches are essentially static - source only versions of the level - 3 controller switches . for illustrative purposes , various convolution implementations are shown on the device for a convolution task as follows : given a set of k weights { w 1 , w 2 , . . . w k } and a sequence of samples { x 1 , x 2 , . . . } compute a sequence of results { y 1 , y 2 , . . . } according to : fig3 shows an eight - weight ( k = 8 ) convolution of 8 - bit samples accumulating a 16 - bit result value . the top row simply carries sample values through the systolic pipeline . the middle row performs an 8 × 8 multiply against the constants weights , w &# 39 ; s , producing a 16 - bit result . the multiply operation is the rate limiter in this task requiring two cycles to produce each 16 - bit result . the lower two rows accumulate y i , results . in this case , all datapaths are wired using static source mode . the constant weights are configured as static value sources to the multiplier bfus . alu operations are set in static value mode . add operations are configured for carry chaining to perform the required 16 - bit add operation . for a k - weight filter , this arrangement requires 4k cells and produces one result every 2 cycles , completing , on average , k 2 in practice the horizontal level - two bypass lines can be used for pipelining the inputs , removing the need for the top row 510 of bfus simply to carry sample values through the pipeline . the horizontal and vertical level - two by - pass lines re - time the data flowing through the add pipeline so that only a single bfu adder is needed per filter tap stage . three instruction - stores and a program counter ( pc ) ( not shown ) control the operation of the multiply and add bfus , as well as the advance of samples along the sample pipeline . the k - weight filter can be implemented with only 2k + 4 cells in practice . fig3 shows a microcoded convolution implementation . the k coefficient weights are stored in the register - file memory of the bfu 100 configured to function as the alu 520 . registers 1 through k hold the coefficient weights and the last k samples are stored in a ring buffer constructed from registers 65 through 64 + k . six other memory location ( rs , rsp , rw , rwp , rl , and rh ) are used to hold values during the computation . the a and b ports of alu bfu 520 are set to dynamic source mode . the memory blocks of surrounding bfus are assigned to feed data to alu 520 . bfus 522 , 524 control the source of the a and b input to the alu ( two i stc memories ). the values fed into the a and b inputs of the alu are provided by bfus 526 and 528 , respectively ( i a , i b ) bfus 530 and 532 provide the memory function ( i mf ) and the alu function ( i alu ). the program counter bfu pc 534 is a bfu setup to increment its output value or load an address from its associated memory . the implementation requires 8 bfus and produces a new 16 - bit result every 8k + 9 cycles . the result is output over two cycles on the alu &# 39 ; s output bus . the number of weights supported is limited to k ≦ 61 by the space in the alu &# 39 ; s memory . longer convolutions ( larger k ) can be supported by deploying additional memories to hold sample and coefficient values . fig3 shows a vliw - style implementation of the convolution operation that includes application - specific dataflow . the sample pointer ( xptr ) and the coefficient pointer ( wptr ) are each assigned to bfus 540 , 542 . separate alus are used for the multiply operation and the summing or add operation bfu 546 . this configuration allows the inner loop to consist of only two operations , the two - cycle multiply in parallel with the low and high byte additions . pointer increments are also performed in parallel . most of the i - stores used in this design only contain a couple of distinct instructions . with clever use of the control pla and configuration words , the number of i - stores can be cut in half making this implementation no more costly than the microcoded implementation . as shown , the implementation requires 11 bfus and produces a new 16 - bit result every 2k + 1 cycles . as in the microcoded example the result is output over two cycles on the alu output bus . the number of weights supported is limited to k ≦ 64 by the space in the alu &# 39 ; s memory . fig3 shows a simd / vliw hybrid implementation based on the control structure from the vliw implementation . as shown in the figure , six separate convolutions are performed simultaneously sharing the same vliw control developed to perform a single convolution , amortizing the cost of the control overhead . to exploit shared control in this manner , the sample data streams must receive data at the same rate in lock step . a bfu &# 39 ; s basic configuration consists of lsb ( 1 bit ), msb ( 1 bit ), rightsource ( 3 bits ), leftsource ( 3 bits ), carrypipeline ( 1 bit ), tsenable ( 1 bit ), madd 1 source ( 1 bit ), and madd 2 source ( 1 bit ) bits . the following tables describe the bit - setting of this configuration in more detail : bits & lt ; 3 : 0 & gt ; alu operation . see table below : note that opcode 11 is essentially unused , but if accidently issued will generate an add - 1 function . for shift and pass operations , the invert - a , and invert - b controls have special functions : for shift , invert - a is used to select the shift direction ( left or right ) and invert - b is used to select the shift source ( a input or b input ). in the current model , there is no way to perform an inversion during a shift operation . for pass , invert - a is used to invert the pass value and invert - b is used to select the pass source ( a or b input ). the configuration word used by the switch / ports is either a 9 or 10 bit value . the 9th bit determines whether or not the port has a constant value . the 10th bit , if it exist determines whether the source selection ( if used ) is static or dynamic . therefore , in the 9 bit case ( used by the function and floating ports ): and in the 10 bit case ( used by the address / data and level - 2 network ports ): the constant value of a port is determines by the lower 8 bits of configuration ( bits & lt ; 7 : 0 & gt ;). the source selection is performed by the lower 5 bits of configuration ( or fpout in the dynamic source case ). the selection is the same for all ports : on the level - 2 network , “ 1 ” and “ 2 ” lines are defined as the distance to the broadcasting l 2 switch , divided by 2 . therefore the “ 1 ” line could either come from 1 or 2 cells away , and the “ 2 ” line could come from either 3 or 4 cells away . on the level - 3 network , vertical is defined as north - south and horizontal is defined as east - west . because they apply uniformly to the entire chip , the numbering ( from 1 - 4 ) is arbitrary , except that the vertical - 4 lines are the ones used for programming . the constant values are a way of inserting constants into bfu , without changing the port configuration . in most cases these insert data values of zero and one . for the fa ( alu ) port , c 0 is a plain a 13 pass and c 1 is a plain b_pass . for the fm ( memory ) port , both c 0 and c 1 cause the bfu to ignore its memory and simply pass the inputs to the alu . the only difference between them is the direction of the carry - in ( c 0 is from the north — vertical carry chain , c 1 is from the east — horizontal carry chain ). thus the c 0 and c 1 port inputs effectively amount to no - operation instructions . the level - 1 driver control consists simply of 4 enables : north ( including nw ), east ( including ne ), south ( including se ), and west ( including sw ). when these bit are set to “ 1 ”, these drivers drive . when set to “ 0 ” the network lines are set to ground . the level - 3 drivers require only the two bits of switch select information . the register enable is unused ( always enabled ) and the driver enables come from the perimeter logic ( see section 6 ). the switch selectors on the level - 2 and level - 3 drivers use a two - context configuration , similar to the network switches . the driver enables are single context . there are 2 level - 2 and 8 level - 3 drivers in every bfu . the reduction logic configuration is the word that will be compared to the comp / reduce block &# 39 ; s input . in this word , each bit - position can take four states : zero , one , don &# 39 ; t care , or fail . a 0 succeeds in the zero state , while a 1 succeeds in the one state . when an incoming bit is compared to a don &# 39 ; t care , it always succeeds . conversely , when the bit is compared to a fail it always fails . thus , each bit - position of the comparison word must be represented by 2 bits . the first ( low ) bit is the output of the bit - position if the input is a 0 , the second is the output if the input is 1 . this is outlined in the following table : based on this , the two comp / reduce block configurations are 18 bits for c / r i and 42 bits for c / r ii . the bit - positions for c / r i match the bit - positions of the bfu output , where the carry is the high 9th bit . note that there are actually two 18 bit words associated with c / r i — one for each of the control contexts ( see fig1 ). the breakdown for the c / r ii inputs are as follows : the or plane has 20 inputs and 9 outputs . each of the 20 inputs is inverted and both polarities are used in the array . each output therefore requires 40 bits of configuration . each bit of these words selects one input ( in positive or inverted form ) to be in the or operation . each of these 40 - bit words is arranged as follows : the first ( lower ) of each of these pairs of bits controls the positive input , while the second controls the inverted input . the configuration for the selection of compare / reduce inputs to the or plane consists of 4 4 - bit numbers . each number selects one of the 4 inputs . the c / r line selected is given on the following table : there are two multiplexors in the control logic , labeled as follows : each of these selects consists of one bit and have the following effects : each i / o register has a single configuration bit which defines which edge of the pad clk ( sync clk ) the register uses to latch its data . the and plane of a port pla has 38 inputs and 45 outputs ( product terms ). each of the 38 inputs is inverted and both polarities are available in the array . therefore each output of the and plane is specified by 76 bits of data . the bit pairs are arranged as follows : each bit represents an input bit , and its inverse , in that order . the or plane of a port pla has 45 inputs ( the product terms ), and 15 outputs . unlike for the and plane , the inputs are not inverted , so that each of the 15 outputs is specified by 45 bits , one for each product term . the outputs are in the following order : each of the 3 i / o port outputs has 51 possible drivers . the 3 pla inputs each have 48 possible drivers ( they don &# 39 ; t get the pla outputs ). a 6 - bit output control bus selects one of these , according to the following tables : note : the s 1 and s 2 designations refers to what those signals would be if seen by an extra bfu at the end of the column . the switch that determines this output selection is a constant value / static source switch . it takes a 7 - bit configuration word , where the 7th bit switches between constant value (“ 0 ”) and static source “ 1 ”. the remaining 6 bits either provide the selection word directly , or choose one of the following static sources : each of the bfu column input switches takes in 6 possible values . this is controlled by a static 3 - bit configuration word . the following table describes the selection : the c / r inputs are also selected using a 3 - bit configuration word : the output of each level - 3 network controller determines which level - 3 driver drives that particular line . the selection is performed by a 5 - bit selector : the level - 3 controller switch used to select the source is a constant value , static source , or dynamic source switch . its takes a 7 - bit configuration word , where the top two bits control the switch mode . see the table in appendix b . 1 . the remaining 5 bits serve as the constant value , or select the static source as follows : the dynamic control switch for the level - 3 controllers is a fully static source version of the level - 3 controller described above . it takes a 4 bit configuration word and uses that as the static source selector in the manner described by the table above . this section will detail the address space of the configuration memories of a the chip . the address space is 15 bits wide ( the 16th programming address bit selects between the configuration and main bfu memories ). of these 15 bits the high bit selects between the core (“ 0 ”) and the perimeter (“ 1 ”). the breakdown of the remaining 14 bits is shown in fig2 . row address and column address are the position of the bfu where bfu ( 0 , 0 ) is at the sw comer of the chip . there are two parts to a bfu &# 39 ; s configuration : the main bfu configuration and the or plane configuration . they are separated because while the main bfu configuration has two global contexts ( see section ?? ), the or plane does not . the bfu configuration address is an 8 - bit word . the 8th bit selects between context 2 (“ 0 ”) and context 3 (“ 1 ”). as mentioned above , this does not apply to the or plane — it is addressed on both settings . the 7th bit selects between the main bfu configuration (“ 0 ”) and the or plane configuration (“ 1 ”). the remaining 6 bits are described below . note : the “ sd ” in entries such as f_port_sd refers to the static / dynamic selection bits for that particular port . & lt ; 4 bits unused , high 2 bits of c / r i ( bit position 8 )- & lt ; 6 bits unused , high 2 bits of c / r ii ( bit position 20 )& gt ; l 2 _ 1 is the driver for either the north or east level - 2 line , and l 2 _ 2 is the driver for either south or west level - 2 line , depending on the bfu position . the or plane is configured by a bit stream which is simply the concatenation of vectors for each output . section c describes these bit vectors . the bit stream is into 8 - bit chunks , and addresses in sequence . because each output vector is 40 bits long , this divides evenly . the whole stream consists the or 0 output through the or 8 output , where or 07 control byte outputs and or 8 is the control bit output . there are a total of 45 full bites in the stream ( 5 for each output ). the side configuration address is 12 bits long . with this much space , it is possible to sparsely encode the data for easy decoding . any addresses not mentioned here unused . the high bit (& lt ; 11 & gt ;) is used to select between the pla &# 39 ; s (“ 1 ”) and the rest of the perimeter logic (“ 0 ”). like the bfu or planes , the and and or planes of the perimeter plas are specified by bit streams , which are concatenation of the bit vectors for each output . the and plane has 45 outputs ( product terms ), each of which is specified by a 76 - bit long vector . each vector is broken into 10 bytes , where the final byte has 4 unused bits . the vectors are arranged in order , so that pterm 0 is first and pterm 44 is last . the or plane has 15 outputs , each of which is specified by a 45 - bit vector . each vector is broken into 6 bytes , where the final byte has 3 unused bits . all this logic , except the i / o registers , have two contexts . these contexts are selected via bit & lt ; 7 & gt ;, where 0 = context 2 and 1 = context 3 . there are only three bytes of data associated with the i / o registers , on for each port ( 0 , 1 and 2 , addressed accordingly ). the bits are arranged as follows : each output switch is controlled by a 7 - bit word . these words are treated as bytes with the high bit ignored , and addressed as follows : each input switch is controlled by a 3 - bit word . these words are treated as bytes with the high 5 bits ignored . bits & lt ; 5 : 3 & gt ; of the address are treated as a row or column address ( depending on the side ). bits & lt ; 2 : 0 & gt ; address the specific switches : note : the switches listed here are for the north side of the chip . other sides are symmetric . the lines are labeled at the north - most bfu of the column sees them . each c / r input switch is also controlled by a 3 - bit word . like the inputs switches , above , these words are treated as bytes with the high 5 bits ignored . bits & lt ; 5 : 3 & gt ; of the address are treated as a row or column address ( depending on the side ). bits & lt ; 2 : 0 & gt ; address the specific switches as shown in the table above . the level - 3 controller switches are each controlled by a 7 - bit word . the level - 3 dynamic controller switches are each controlled by a 4 - bit word . these words are each treated as bytes with the high bit ( or 4 bits ) ignored . bits & lt ; 5 : 3 & gt ; of the address are treated as a row or column address ( depending on the side ). bits & lt ; 1 : 0 & gt ; address the specific switches : note that bit & lt ; 2 & gt ; isn &# 39 ; t used for the level - 3 controllers so that the row / column address is in the same position as the input switches . while this invention has been particularly shown and described with references to preferred embodiments thereof , it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and detail may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims . for example , while the alu 120 and memory block 110 are described as being associated with each other in the bfu , they could be distributed from each other with the interconnect handling all memory - to - alu communication . also , in some implementations , the described processing device could be associated with memory or a larger conventional microprocessor as an accelerator , for example . | 6 |
the process steps and structures described below do not form a complete process flow for manufacturing integrated circuits . the present invention can be practiced in conjunction with integrated circuit fabrication techniques currently used in the art , and only so much of the commonly practiced process steps are included as are necessary for an understanding of the present invention . the figures representing cross - sections of portions of an integrated circuit during fabrication are not drawn to scale , but instead are drawn so as to illustrate the important features of the invention . referring to fig1 an integrated circuit device is formed in and on a substrate 10 . an insulating layer 12 , such as a reflow glass or other oxide layer as known in the art , is formed over the substrate 10 . layer 12 typically has a thickness on the order of approximately 6000 - 12 , 000 angstroms . a contact via 14 is formed through the oxide layer 12 using a mask and an isotropic etching technique as known in the art . via 14 is shown as making contact with substrate 10 in fig1 but may be formed over a lower interconnect layer as known in the art . a barrier metal layer 16 , such as a refractory metal , refractory metal nitride , refractory metal silicide , or combination thereof , is deposited over the surface of the device as known in the art . layer 16 is relatively thin , typically approximately 500 - 2000 angstroms thick , and is deposited conformally to cover the bottom and sidewalls of contact opening 14 . referring to fig2 an aluminum layer 18 is deposited over the surface of the device . when the aluminum layer 18 is deposited using the process conditions described below , the layer 18 actually completely fills in the via 14 as shown in fig2 . this occurs because the preferred process conditions enhance the surface migration of the deposited aluminum atoms , so that aluminum formation in the bottom of the via 14 occurs preferentially to formation on the oxide layer 12 near the edges of the via 14 . this ensures a high quality , reproducible contact within the via 14 , greatly minimizing the problems caused by incomplete filling of the via 14 . fig3 and 4 illustrate preferred conditions for deposition of the aluminum layer 18 in order to provide an improved contact . graph 30 illustrates the deposition rate , in angstroms per second , as a function of the deposition temperature in degrees celsius . the preferred region 32 lies between 400 ° c .- 500 ° c ., with the maximum deposition rate lying below a line extending from a rate of about 30 angstroms per second at 400 ° c . to 100 angstroms per second at 500 ° c . when aluminum is deposited within this preferred region 32 , its surface migration characteristics are enhanced over metal deposited under other conditions . for example , depositing aluminum at temperatures higher than 500 ° c . tends to form large grains , so that blocking of the contact opening occurs as described earlier . if the deposition rate is too high , the deposited aluminum is not able to migrate quickly enough into the via to completely fill it . therefore , the region 32 depicted in fig3 outlines , approximately , a preferred pairing of processing conditions under which deposited aluminum migrates into the contact via and fills it while minimizing the formation of voids and uneven regions . process conditions can be varied slightly from that shown in fig3 without departing from the teachings of the present invention . for example , temperatures a little below 400 ° c . can be used , as long as the deposition rates are not too high . as the temperature decreases , the mobility of the deposited aluminum atoms goes down , so that incomplete filling of the via occurs if the deposition rates are too high . fig4 includes four graphs illustrating preferred processes by which an aluminum interconnect layer can be formed . all of these processes utilize , to a greater or lesser degree , processing which occurs within the preferred region 32 . each of the curves 40 , 42 , 44 , 46 illustrates a variation in the aluminum deposition rate with time . each curve 40 - 46 illustrates an alternative process utilizing the concepts of the present invention . each of the four processes shown in fig4 preferably uses approximately the same set of initial conditions . in the prior art , it is common to deposit a very thin layer of small grain aluminum at a relatively cold temperature , typically below 350 ° c ., and then stop the deposition process . the wafer on which the integrated circuit device is located is then preheated to the required deposition temperature , over 500 ° c ., by bathing the wafer with a stream of preheated argon gas . once the wafer has reached the deposition temperature , deposition of the aluminum is resumed at such elevated temperature . in the present technique , aluminum is preferably deposited on the device continuously while the device is being heated . thus , a small amount of aluminum is deposited on the device while the wafer is at or below 350 ° c . as the wafer gradually heats to the desired deposition temperature , aluminum deposition continues . this gives a layer of aluminum which is deposited with very small grain sizes , tending to minimize grain size growth at later stages . the deposition temperature is between 400 ° c . and 500 ° c ., and is typically reached in about 40 seconds . fig4 shows deposition rate curves for four alternative deposition techniques . for all of the curves in fig4 the initial temperature of the wafer is assumed to be approximately 350 ° c ., with the final deposition temperature being 450 ° c . heating the wafer to 450 ° c . takes approximately 40 seconds . it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that different deposition temperatures may be used . once the wafer has heated to the deposition temperature , the temperature remains constant . curve 40 in fig4 ( a ) depicts a deposition process in which the deposition rate stays constant during the entire course of depositing the aluminum layer 18 . deposition begins when heat is first applied to the wafer in the chamber , and continues while the wafer heats to 450 ° c . and remains there . at a rate of 40 angstroms per second , an 8000 angstrom thick aluminum layer will take approximately 200 seconds to deposit . fig4 ( b ) shows an alternative deposition process in which the deposition rate is performed at 40 angstroms per second for the first 20 seconds , and 60 angstroms per second thereafter . the temperature is increasing toward the 450 ° c . point during the entire deposition step at 40 angstroms per second , and for the first 20 seconds at 60 angstroms per second . for an 8000 angstrom layer , the process curve 42 will result in an aluminum layer formation process which takes approximately 140 seconds . curve 44 shows a process in which the initial deposition rate is 40 angstroms per second , followed by an increase to 80 angstroms per second after 20 seconds . after approximately one - third of the entire thickness of the aluminum layer has been deposited , the deposition rate is changed to 30 angstroms per second . this rate is maintained for the deposition of approximately another one - third of the entire layer thickness , followed by an increase of the deposition rate back to 80 angstroms per second . the process depicted by curve 44 will take approximately 160 seconds to deposit an 8000 angstrom layer of aluminum . this assumes that 2400 angstroms are deposited during each of the 80 angstrom per second segments , and during the 30 angstrom per second segment . the process of fig4 ( c ) provides for an initial fast deposition of aluminium , followed by a slow deposition period in which deposited aluminium is given the opportunity to migrate into the contact opening . the 30 angstrom deposition period will last for approximately 80 seconds , in order to deposit 2400 angstroms . curve 46 in fig4 ( d ) starts in the same manner as curve 44 , but ends with a higher deposition rate . processing time is saved by the faster deposition near the end of the process . by this point in the deposition process , the contact opening has been mostly filled , and the possibility of voiding in the via has been greatly decreased . thus , there is no harm to depositing aluminum at a rate which falls outside of the preferred region 32 . it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the processes shown in fig4 are illustrative and not definitive . other variations are possible . the precise combination of deposition temperatures and deposition rates can be varied to suit the requirements and restrictions of the particular processes at hand . for example , if large contact openings only are used , faster deposition rates can be made as the voiding problem is not so critical . for processes such as those illustrated by curves 44 and 46 , it is not necessary to adhere to a one - third thickness deposition at each rate . these rates and times may be varied to suit the requirements of a production process while still taking advantage of the concepts of the invention . it is also possible to use the technique of depositing aluminum within the preferred area 32 without continuously depositing aluminum while the wafer temperature is ramping up to the deposition temperature . as is done on the prior art , a thin layer of aluminum can be deposited at relatively cold temperatures , preferably below 350 ° c . deposition is then stopped while the wafer is brought to a temperature between 400 ° c . and 500 ° c . deposition is then resumed at a rate within the preferred region 32 , and completed using the teachings set forth above . for example , any of the curves in fig4 can be used , with a difference that the initial 40 angstroms per second deposition rate is omitted . use of the continuous layer formation while the wafer is being heated , combined with deposition at rates and temperatures within the preferred region 32 , results in small deposited aluminum grain size and very good filling of the via . this is caused both by the good electromigration characteristics of the deposited aluminum layer at the temperatures and deposition rates involved , and by the fact that very small initial grain sizes result in smaller final grain sizes , having less tendency to block off the via before it is completely filled . while the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to a preferred embodiment , it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and detail may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention . | 7 |
fig1 and 2 show one representative mobile telephone 12 within which the present invention may be implemented . it should be understood , however , that the present invention is not intended to be limited to one particular type of mobile telephone 12 or other electronic device . for example , the present invention can be incorporated into a combination personal digital assistant ( pda ) and mobile telephone , a pda , an integrated messaging device ( imd ), a desktop computer , and a notebook computer . the mobile telephone 12 of fig1 and 2 includes a housing 30 , a display 32 in the form of a liquid crystal display , a keypad 34 , a microphone 36 , an ear - piece 38 , a battery 40 , an infrared port 42 , an antenna 44 , a smart card 46 in the form of a universal integrated circuit card ( uicc ) according to one embodiment of the invention , a system clock 43 , a card reader 48 , radio interface circuitry 52 , codec circuitry 54 , a controller 56 and a memory 58 . individual circuits and elements are all of a type well known in the art , for example in the nokia range of mobile telephones . the communication devices may communicate using various transmission technologies including , but not limited to , code division multiple access ( cdma ), global system for mobile communications ( gsm ), universal mobile telecommunications system ( umts ), time division multiple access ( tdma ), frequency division multiple access ( fdma ), transmission control protocol / internet protocol ( tcp / ip ), short messaging service ( sms ), multimedia messaging service ( mms ), e - mail , instant messaging service ( ims ), bluetooth , ieee 802 . 11 , etc . the present invention provides for an open interface that enables the configuration of a vpn gateway that is collocated with an igd . vpn parameters can be provisioned to vpn clients via upnp messages . additionally , another igd can be configured with a vpn gateway in order to establish a gateway - gateway vpn . the service of the present invention enables the control , monitoring and configuration of a vpn gateway for unmanaged network space , namely residential and small office lans . the present invention focuses on the core elements required for setting up a vpn gateway , configuring / provisioning the vpn clients , and diagnosing and monitoring usage problems . the present invention simplifies the setup experience and provides the framework for diagnosing and monitoring problems on the vpn gateway . the present invention enables a number of different functions . for example , the present invention allows for the remote setup and configuration of security parameters of an ipsec tunnel accepted by the vpn gateway , through the use of an encryption algorithm and hash functions . the present invention also permits for the remote setup and configuration of an authentication mode accepted by the vpn gateway through the use of shared keys and certificates . the remote configuration and provisioning of vpn client settings , as well as remote diagnostics and monitoring of a vpn tunnel , are also enabled . fig3 is a representation of an internet gateway device 100 and its relationship to other devices in a local area network and a wide area network . the internet gateway device 100 comprises a plurality of wan devices 110 and a plurality of lan devices 120 . the plurality of lan devices 120 are capable of connecting to a plurality of client devices 130 , which are located within one or more local area networks 140 . the plurality of wan devices 110 are capable of connecting to various internet service providers ( isps ) 150 that are located within the internet 160 or another wide area network . this overall arrangement permits the internet gateway device 100 to serve as a conduit between the client devices 130 and individual isps 150 . fig4 describes a scenario where a mobile telephone 12 with a built - in igd control point supporting a vpn configuration service of the present invention is used to configure the igd device 100 having vpn gateway support . the mobile telephone 12 is connected within a home network 170 via a lan interface of the igd device 100 . an application in the mobile telephone 12 can edit the vpn configuration in order to adjust the required security protocols , the authentication and privacy parameters of the security protocols , and the session time - outs . after the configuration step is finished , the mobile telephone 12 , now a vpn client , can start using the new configuration . the following is one representative system for provisioning vpn parameters to a vpn client according to one embodiment of the present invention . in this situation , the mobile telephone 12 possesses a vpn client application . the built - in igd control point is used to connect the igd with the vpn gateway via the lan interface . the built - in igd control point reads the vpn gateway parameters and configures itself when it acts as the mobile telephone . parameters needed to configure the gateway include , but are not limited to , the ip address ( es ) of the vpn gateway , security protocols , and authentication and privacy parameters specific to the security protocols . later , and as depicted in fig5 , when the mobile telephone 12 is in a remote location and away from the home network 170 , the vpn client application can create a vpn tunnel 190 with the home vpn gateway , as the vpn client application possesses all of the necessary parameters . the present invention can also be used to configure another vpn gateway in order to create a gateway - gateway vpn . for example , a situation may arise where a user a is visiting a user b and desires to access a number of media files that are stored in a personal video recorder 200 ( pvr ) located in user a &# 39 ; s home network 210 and view the files on a television 220 in user b &# 39 ; s home network 230 . to accomplish this task , and as shown in fig6 , an igd - igd vpn tunnel 235 is created between a home network a igd 240 and a home network b igd 250 so that the two home networks 210 and 230 are essentially merged into a single virtual home network . in this arrangement , it is assumed that the igd control point in user a &# 39 ; s mobile telephone 12 has all the information needed about its home vpn gateway ( which is the home network a 240 ). the next step involves the connection of the mobile telephone 12 to the home network b igd 250 with vpn gateway support via a lan interface . the mobile telephone 12 transmits the necessary information to the vpn gateway for establishing the vpn tunnel . this information includes , but is not limited to , the ip address ( es ) of the vpn gateway , security protocols , and authentication and privacy parameters specific to the security protocols . the following is a process for implementing one particular embodiment of the present invention . before proceeding , a number of assumptions are made concerning the devices and networks involved . first , it is assumed that the user &# 39 ; s home network includes an always - on connection at the user &# 39 ; s home . this connection can comprise a broadband connection or a connection of some other sort . it is also assumed that the devices involved are upnp capable , and that the vpn products involved ( i . e . the vpn gateway and the vpn client ) are tested according to standards promulgated by the virtual private network consortium ( vpnc ). these standards can be found on the internet . furthermore , it is assumed that the igd with a vpn gateway includes a upnp igd vpn configuration service . in this situation , a user purchases a new internet gateway device . the feature list for the internet gateway device indicates support for remote access . the user plugs the internet gateway device into the home network , and installs the setup software . a setup wizard is used to configure the internet gateway device . the setup software is used to configure the security protocols , as well as the authentication and privacy parameters for the security protocols . the setup software also binds the vpn gateway to specific wan interfaces . the setup software includes a built - in upnp igd control point . at this point , the igd with a vpn gateway is ready for use . regarding advanced functionality , the vpn provides ip addresses from the home network pool to remote devices . for remote access on a particular device , such as a mobile telephone , the user installs a new software package in the mobile telephone that enables remote access . later , the user , when leaving his or her office , decides that he or she would like to have an activity initiated on a device within the home network . the user can then have the mobile telephone connect to the home network via remote access to initiate the activity . a situation where a gateway - gateway vpn may be created can be discussed as follows . a first user and a second user can each have their own home network , referred to as a first home network and a second home network , respectively . in the event that the first user is in the vicinity of the second home network and wants the second user to have access to the first home network , the first user can use his or her own mobile telephone to configure the second user &# 39 ; s internet gateway for remote access to the first network . the first user can therefore grant temporary access to the internet gateway of the second home network and initiates the connection , creating a gateway - gateway vpn . the present invention is described in the general context of method steps , which may be implemented in one embodiment by a program product including computer - executable instructions , such as program code , executed by computers in networked environments . generally , program modules include routines , programs , objects , components , data structures , etc . that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types . computer - executable instructions , associated data structures , and program modules represent examples of program code for executing steps of the methods disclosed herein . the particular sequence of such executable instructions or associated data structures represents examples of corresponding acts for implementing the functions described in such steps . software and web implementations of the present invention could be accomplished with standard programming techniques with rule - based logic and other logic to accomplish the various database searching steps , correlation steps , comparison steps and decision steps . it should also be noted that the words “ component ” and “ module ” as used herein , and in the claims , is intended to encompass implementations using one or more lines of software code , and / or hardware implementations , and / or equipment for receiving manual inputs . the foregoing description of embodiments of the present invention have been presented for purposes of illustration and description . it is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the present invention to the precise form disclosed , and modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of the present invention . the embodiments were chosen and described in order to explain the principles of the present invention and its practical application to enable one skilled in the art to utilize the present invention in various embodiments and with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated . | 7 |
the embodiments described below overcome the problems with existing glare screens by providing a rail with sections configured to deflect to allow for the quick insertion of a glare - blocking member into the rail . fig1 illustrates an exemplary glare - blocking system 100 . shown are glare - blocking members 110 and a rail 105 . the rail 105 is fastened to a barricade 115 , such as a concrete traffic barrier , via a fastener 120 . the fastener 120 may be a self - tapping bolt or a different type of fastener . the rail 105 may have a length of about 12 feet or a different length . in an exemplary implementation , the glare - blocking members 110 are spaced along the rail 105 in a longitudinal direction at an interval of about 14½ inches . however , the spacing may be different . as illustrated in fig2 , the rail 105 includes a set of grooves / cutouts 205 ab across the width of the rail 105 for receiving a lower edge 210 of a glare - blocking member 110 . the gap width of each groove 205 ab is sized to provide a snug fit with a glare - blocking member 110 . for example , the width may be about 0 . 188 inches . fig3 a and 3b , illustrate , respectively , a top view of a first rail embodiment 305 , and a top view of the first rail embodiment 305 with a glare - blocking member 110 inserted therein . in this embodiment , the grooves / cutouts 205 ab are arranged to block headlight glare from oncoming traffic that is to the left of the driver . in one implementation , the grooves 205 ab extend at an angle 307 of about 22 degrees with respect to a line that is perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the rail 305 . fig3 c and 3d , illustrate , respectively , a top view of a second rail embodiment 310 , and a top view of the second rail embodiment 310 with a glare - blocking member 110 inserted therein . in this embodiment , the grooves / cutouts 205 ab are arranged to block headlight glare from oncoming traffic that is to the right of the driver . fig3 e , illustrates a top view of a third rail embodiment 315 that includes two sets of grooves / cutouts ( 320 ab and 325 ab ) arranged to block headlight glare when the traffic flows in either situation described above . that is , the glare - blocking member 110 can be inserted into a first pair of grooves / cutouts 325 ab to block headlight glare from oncoming traffic that is to the left of the driver , or into a second pair of grooves / cutouts 325 ab to block headlight glare from oncoming traffic that is to the right of the driver . in this implementation , one set of grooves 320 ab may extend at an angle 307 of about 22 degrees with respect to a line that is perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the rail 305 . the other set of grooves 325 ab may extend at an angle 307 of about − 22 degrees with respect to a line that is perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the rail 305 . fig4 illustrates a cross - section of the rail 105 and a side view of a portion of glare - blocking member 110 . the rail 105 includes a first set of left and right projecting contours 405 ab that project in an upward direction toward the glare - blocking member 110 and a second set of left and right projecting contours 410 b arranged adjacent to the first set of contours 405 ab , respectively , that project in an upward direction toward the glare - blocking member 110 . the rail 105 also includes left and right lateral side portions 415 ab adjacent to the second set of contours 410 ab that extend in a generally upright / vertical direction away from a line 412 that passes through lower edge portions of the rail 105 , and left and right side protrusions 420 ab that extend from respective ends of the left and right lateral portions 415 ab . the left and right side protrusions 420 ab slope in a downward direction towards the middle of the rail 105 . in an exemplary implementation , the protrusions 420 ab slope downward at an angle 421 of about 22 degrees . however , the downward angle may be different . the grooves 205 ab may be formed in the first set of left and right projecting contours 405 ab . the grooves 205 ab extend in a downward direction within the contours 410 ab to a point that is below or at the apex of the second set of contours 410 b when measured from the lower edge of the rail 105 . the second set of contours 410 ab function as a stop to limit the insertion depth of the glare - blocking member 110 within the grooves 205 ab . in some implementations , the rail member may not include the second set of contours 410 ab . in this case , the groove depth of the first projecting contours 405 ab , the location of the recesses 425 ab in the glare - blocking member 110 , and the location of the protrusions 420 ab may be selected to provide a tight fit between the glare - blocking member 110 and the rail 105 . the glare - blocking member 110 is generally rectangular and includes first and second longitudinal edges 430 ab and a lower edge 435 . in an exemplary implementation , the glare - blocking member 110 may be about 24 inches high and six inches wide . however , the dimensions may be different . as can be seen from a top view ( see fig3 b ), the glare - blocking member may define first and second end sections 307 ac , and a middle section 307 b therebetween . the first and second end sections 307 ac are configured to engage the rail 105 at angle of about 90 degrees with respect to the longitudinal axis of the rail 105 . the first and second end sections 307 ac may be offset from one another so that that middle section 307 b forms an angle of about 22 degrees with respect to the longitudinal axis of the rail 105 . returning to fig4 , first and second recesses 425 ab are formed in the first and second longitudinal edges 430 ab , respectively , near the lower edge 435 of the glare - blocking member 110 . the lower edge 435 defines beveled corners 440 ab . the angle of the beveled corners 440 ab may be selected to complement the downward angle of the protrusions 420 ab . in some implementations , the glare - blocking member 110 may include another pair of recesses ( not shown ) formed in the first and second longitudinal edges 430 ab , respectively , proximate a top edge ( not shown ) of the glare - blocking member 110 . the top edge may define beveled corners . the dual placement of these features facilitates reversing the orientation of the glare - blocking member 110 to facilitate insertion of the glare - blocking member 110 into the various rails illustrated in fig3 a - 3e . fig5 illustrates exemplary operations for insertion of the glare - blocking member 110 into the rail 105 . the rail 105 may be initially fastened to a barrier 115 via a bolt 120 or a different fastener . in a first operation 500 , the glare - blocking member 110 is positioned so that the lower edge partially enters a first groove / cutout 205 b and a recess 425 b of a first edge of the glare - blocking member 110 is hooked into a first protrusion 420 b of the rail 105 . in a second operation 505 , the glare - blocking member 110 is rotated about the hooked edge until the opposite edge contacts the second protrusion 420 a . as illustrated in a third operation 510 , continued application of rotational force on the glare - blocking member 110 causes the second protrusion 420 a to deflect in an outward direction and the second protrusion 420 a to ride over the beveled corners 440 a of the glare - blocking member 110 . as illustrated in fourth operation 515 , the second protrusion 420 a snaps into second recess 425 a . in an alternative implementation , the glare - blocking member 110 may be positioned over the grooved section of the rail 105 and then pushed down towards the rail 105 until the lower edge 435 of the glare - blocking member 110 enters both grooves 205 ab and the beveled corners 440 ab of the glare - blocking member 110 engage the protrusions 420 ab of the rail 105 . the force applied by continued downward pressure causes the protrusions 420 ab to deflect in an outward direction and the protrusions 420 to ride over the beveled corners 440 ab of the glare - blocking member 110 and to snap into the recesses 425 ab of the glare - blocking member 110 . fig6 illustrates an exemplary tool 500 that facilitates removal of a glare - blocking member 110 from a rail 105 . the tool 500 includes a handle section 510 , an extension section 515 , and hook 520 . in operation , that tool 500 is positioned adjacent to a glare - blocking member 110 to be removed . the tool 500 is rotated so that hook 520 engages a first protrusion 420 b of the rail 105 . after engagement , the tool 500 is rotated in an opposite direction until the extension section 515 reaches a lateral portion 415 ab of the rail 105 . continued rotation causes the protrusion 420 b to deflect out of the recess 425 b of the glare - blocking member 110 . once the protrusion 420 b is removed from the recess 425 b , the glare - blocking member 110 may be rotated out of the rail 105 with little effort . while various embodiments of the embodiments have been described , it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that many more embodiments and implementations are possible that are within the scope of the claims . for example , the various dimensions , angles , etc . described above are merely exemplary and may be changed as necessary . accordingly , it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that many more embodiments and implementations are possible that are within the scope of the claims . therefore , the embodiments described are only provided to aid in understanding the claims and do not limit the scope of the claims . | 4 |
referring to fig1 , there is provided a schematic block diagram of a template generation system 107 incorporating therein a method of processing samples to generate templates for the purposes of storage , enrollment , or matching in accordance with the present invention . a biometric characteristic 100 is presented to a scanning device 102 , which acquires a biometric sample 101 , or identifiable biometric data , in the form of an image or recording 103 . the image or recording 103 is enhanced and filtered 105 , and distinctive characteristics extracted and encoded 106 , through a process 104 which results in the generation of a biometric template 108 . the template 108 can be used to enroll or match a user or can be stored for subsequent system usage . the same identifiable biometric data 103 , or an identical copy thereof , is enhanced and filtered 110 , and distinctive characteristics extracted and encoded 111 , through a second specific process 109 , which results in the generation of a second biometric template 112 . the template 112 can be used to enroll or match a user or can be stored for subsequent system usage . referring to fig2 , in order to address the need in the marketplace for interoperability across devices , a method is presented through which a reference profile is used to generate system - specific identifiable images , which allow for automated creation of system - specific templates . this process improves on the traditional biometric acquisition method 101 by processing the enhanced image 201 through a system - specific reference profile 202 , which encapsulates key characteristics of the enhanced image such as dimension , resolution , grayscale , shape , and orientation . the reference profile generates 203 a second identifiable image 204 from which system - specific templates can be generated for enrollment , matching , and storage in biometric systems . referring to fig3 , data contained in the reference profile 302 is used to enable an image quality processor 303 and an image cropping component 304 . these work in conjunction 301 to produce system - specific images 305 . referring to fig4 , the standard biometric template matching process is leveraged wherein a reference template 401 stored on file and a match template 402 are compared through a template matching process 400 . this template matching process leads to a matching result 403 . referring to fig5 , in the traditional authentication process , a biometric characteristic 501 is converted through template extraction 107 into a system - specific template 502 . this template is compared 400 against a reference template stored in a template database 503 leading to a match result 504 . referring to fig6 , the proposed system improves on the fig5 process by enabling authentication when the reference template is not stored in the template database 503 . after system - specific match template creation 104 form the identifiable image 601 , both the extracted match template and the identifiable biometric data or sample are temporarily retained 602 . the reference database is queried 603 to determine the presence of a reference template from the same system as the match template created in 104 . if one or more reference templates from the individual providing data 601 are in the database , the standard authentication process occurs 400 , 611 . if the reference template is not in the database 503 then an enrollment template from a different biometric system , and associated with the individual providing data , is retrieved from the database 604 . the reference profile 605 corresponding to the system whose template is on file 604 is used to process 300 the identifiable biometric data initially retained 602 . the resultant images 305 are used to create match templates 104 which are compared 400 against the retrieved enrollment templates 604 . if the two templates match 606 , then the initial match template generate through the biometric system 104 is stored 608 , 609 in the database 503 as a reference template and associated with the individual providing data , thereby expanding the range of biometric devices on which an individual can authenticate . the results of this successful match can be transmitted 610 such that the individual is authenticated 612 based on the legacy enrollment 604 . if the templates do not match 611 the transaction reverts to an error state 607 . referring to fig7 , there is provided a schematic block diagram of a template generation system 107 incorporating therein a method of processing samples to generate templates for the purposes of storage , enrollment , and matching in accordance with the present invention . a biometric characteristic 100 is presented to a scanning device 102 , which acquires a biometric sample 101 , or identifiable biometric data , in the form of an image or recording 103 . the image or recording 103 is enhanced and filtered 105 , and distinctive characteristics extracted and encoded 106 , through a specific process 104 , which results in the generation of a biometric template 108 . the template 108 can be used to enroll , verify , or identify a user or can be stored for subsequent system usage . the same identifiable biometric data 103 is enhanced and filtered 110 , and distinctive characteristics extracted and encoded 110 , through a second specific process 109 , which results in the generation of a second biometric template 112 . the template 112 can be used to enroll , verify , or identify a user or can be stored for subsequent system usage . the templates are stored in template database 113 . a requesting authority 114 sends a request for a biometric match from a requesting authority along with a match template 115 , wherein the request identifies a given record identifier . the template database 113 locates from a plurality of storage units a reference template associated with the record identifier compatible with the match template . a template comparison is performed 116 and the result is transmitted to the requesting authority 114 . referring to fig8 , a process is presented 800 by which a biometric sample is stored for the purpose of generating system - specific templates subsequent to request ( s ) by an authorized authority . in this process , a biometric characteristic 100 is acquired through a scanning device 102 . this sample is transmitted 801 to a biometric storage component 802 . at this point the biometric sample is available for usage by template requesters . a template requester 803 transmits a template request identifier along with a template algorithm id . this template algorithm id defines the algorithm through which a match template is to be generated for the template requester . a biometric template service 804 routes request packages in order to retrieve one or more biometric samples 805 from biometric storage 802 . the biometric sample is transmitted along with the template algorithm id 806 in order to retrieve the necessary system profile from the reference profile database and template generation databases 807 . once the reference profile and the template generation algorithm are selected 808 from the system profile database 807 , the sample can be processed through the multiple algorithm processing sequence 809 , as per fig3 , in order to generate a compatible reference template 810 . the reference template 810 can then be transmitted to the template requester for validation . | 6 |
the principles and operation of a local area network according to the present invention may be better understood with reference to the drawings and the accompanying description . fig5 is a block diagram of a representative sic 500 for use in control applications . a first line interface 502 is a first port for connecting to the previous sic to receive incoming electrical power and local area network data over electrically - conducting medium 503 , which may optionally be connected to an electrical power main 501 , so that sic 500 may be powered from electrical power main 501 . line interface 502 may include the connector , fuse , lightning arrester and other protection such as noise filters , etc . the incoming power / data signal is fed to a first power / data splitter / combiner 504 , which de - couples the ( high frequency alternating current ) data signal from the power . such a power / data splitter / combiner 504 ( denoted for brevity in fig5 as “ p / d s / c ”) can be implemented by methods well - known in the art , such as using a center - tap transformer , or alternatively with active components . the data signal is fed to a first modem 506 allowing bidirectional communication , while the power is fed to a power supply 520 . the above scheme assumes that both power and data are carried by the same network wires ( line - powering ). fig5 illustrates the case where the sic is line - powered by alternating current ( for example , by the electrical power main ), in which case power / data splitter / combiner 504 is an ac power / data splitter / combiner , which separates a low - frequency alternating current power from the higher - frequency data signal . otherwise , in the case where the sic is line - powered by direct current , power / data splitter / combiner 504 is a dc power / data splitter / combiner , which separates direct current power from the data signal . in some cases the line - powering method is not used . for example , power can be carried by dedicated lines routed in conjunction with the data wiring . alternatively , the sic can be locally powered by a local power - supply . in both cases , the power / data splitter / combiner is not required , and the power lines are directly connected to the sic power - supply , while the data connects directly to the modems . parts of the sic are shown optionally housed within an electrical outlet 524 , such that connections to the local area network as well as to the electrical power mains may be made from electrical outlet 524 . electrical power from electrical outlet 524 can be fed to an optional electrical appliance 525 . in addition , sic 500 contains an optional electrical power main feed 505 which can also power electrical appliances or other devices . power - supply 520 provides the required voltages for the sic and payload operation , and also outputs the power to a second power / data splitter / combiner 510 , for coupling to the next sic . communication with the next ( fed ) sic is performed via a second modem 512 connected to a second line interface 514 via power / data splitter / combiner 510 , similar to power / data splitter / combiner 504 as previously described . line interface 514 feeds to electrically - conducting medium 515 , which connects to the next sic . modems 506 and 512 can be standard rs - 485 , rs - 232 , or any simple similar data interface transceiver . alternatively , a complex transceiver can be used for achieving long ranges or high - speed operation . cpu and firmware contained in a control block 522 control and monitor the unit operation and communication , as well as control the payload through a payload interface 508 interfacing with a payload illustrated by a sensor / actuator 509 . for example , interface 508 can implement a 4 - 20 ma standard interface . in a similar way , sic 500 can be used for communication over the power line . to do this , payload interface 508 is replaced by a communication port and sensor / actuator 509 will be replaced by a dte . a sic for use in data communications as shown in fig6 is substantially similar to that used in control applications as shown in fig5 , but has some specific differences as noted . also illustrated in fig6 is the case where the local area network data is carried over electrically - conducting media which are part of the telephone wiring of a building . a sic 600 has a first line interface 602 as a first port for connecting to the previous sic to receive incoming power , local area network data , and telephony data via an electrically - conducting medium 603 . line interface 602 may include the connector , fuse , lightning arrester and other protection such as noise filters , etc . the incoming power / telephony / data signal is fed to a first telephony / data splitter / combiner 604 ( denoted for brevity in fig6 as “ t / d s / c ”), which de - couples the local area network data from the power and telephony data . such a telephony / data splitter / combiner 604 can be implemented by methods well - known in the art , such as using a high - pass / low pass filter , or alternatively with active components . the local area network data signal is fed to a first modem 606 allowing bidirectional communication , while the power ( dc ) is fed to a power supply 620 , and the telephony data is fed to power / telephone interface 624 . power - supply 620 provides the required voltages for the sic and payload operation , and also outputs the power to a second telephony / data splitter / combiner 610 , for coupling to the next sic . communication with the next ( fed ) sic is performed via a second modem 612 connected to a second line interface 614 via telephony / data splitter / combiner 610 , similar to telephony / data splitter / combiner 604 as previously described . line interface 614 connects to an electrically - conducting medium 615 , which connects to the next sic . modems 606 and 612 can be standard rs - 485 , rs - 232 or any simple similar data interface transceiver . alternatively , a complex transceiver can be used for achieving long ranges or high - speed operation . cpu and firmware contained in a control block 622 control and monitor the unit operation and communication , as well as control the payload through a payload interface 608 interfacing with a payload 609 , which may include sensors and actuators . for example , interface 608 can implement a 4 - 20 ma standard interface . sic 600 also includes an optional power / telephone interface 624 , contained for example in a telephone outlet 625 , as well as one or more communications interfaces , such as a communication interface 626 connected to a dte 628 . in the case of dc line feeding , the power supply may be equipped with a line reversal function ( for example , a diode - based bridge ) in order to accommodate a possible wire reversal . note that a sic can be implemented as single device with all component parts contained within one enclosure , but does not necessarily have to be so implemented . in the case of a sic used for data communications or control applications , the hardware may be optionally divided between the sic module and the dte / payload units . in the case of a sic used for telephone applications , the hardware may optionally be divided between the sic , the dte payload unit , and the telephone outlet , such as telephone outlet 625 , which allows connections to both telephone services ( such as through a telephone 623 ) and the local area network ( such through dte 628 ). telephone outlet 625 may be a wall outlet or jack . all or part of the sic may be housed within a telephone outlet such as telephone outlet 625 , if desired . furthermore , for sic &# 39 ; s used only as repeaters , a payload interface is not necessary . power / data splitter / combiner 510 ( fig5 ) can use various techniques known in the art . coupling can be implemented , for example , as disclosed in u . s . pat . no . 4 , 745 , 391 to gajjar . power - supply 520 ( fig5 ) can be connected to the network using dedicated adapter or via specific sic . the payload can also be connected using standard ethernet or other lan interface , hence emulating the network using the sic &# 39 ; s . this configuration makes use of standard interfaces , but operates at higher throughput and data - rates than a conventional lan . a sic can include an address . addresses of sic &# 39 ; s on the network can be assigned via automatic assignment by the local area network itself by algorithms known in the art , for example as disclosed in u . s . pat . no . 5 , 535 , 336 to smith et al . addresses can also be assigned via manual assignment , such as by the setting of mechanical switches on the sic unit . addresses can also be determined by the dte connected to the sic , either by means of higher layers as done in most lan systems , or physically be means of the connection to the sic ( such as by address lines ). a sic can receive electrical power locally , via a power source located near the sic . however , one power source may be used to power some or all the sic &# 39 ; s in the local area network using dedicated power lines . these lines can be routed with the data communication wires . alternatively , the same electrically - conducting media ( the data communication wires ) can be used to carry both electrical power and local area network data to the sic &# 39 ; s , by means of techniques well - known in the art , for example as in telephone systems . in such a case , a unit is required for coupling the power supply to the local area network . this can make use of a sic ( such as sic 706 in fig7 ) or in a specific dedicated module . since electrical power is typically distributed at low frequencies ( e . g ., 60 hertz ), whereas local area network data is typically at a much higher frequency , electrical power can be combined with local area network data using frequency - domain multiplexing . a sic can therefore be powered from the electrical power mains , and can also deliver electrical power , as illustrated in fig5 and detailed herein above . the dte &# 39 ; s , sensors , and actuators connected to the sic &# 39 ; s can also be locally powered from the sic &# 39 ; s , or can use the same power resources via the same channels as the sic &# 39 ; s . part or all of a sic can be housed within an electrical outlet so that the electrical outlet allows connection to the local area network as well as to electrical power . although mainly intended to be used as communication network , the system according to the present invention can also be used as a platform to implement a sensing , control , and automation system . this is achieved by adding to one or more of the sic &# 39 ; s interfaces to sensors or actuators . the signals received by the sensors are transmitted over the network via logic contained in the sic &# 39 ; s or in the dte &# 39 ; s , which thereupon operate the relevant actuators . this automation function can be monitored by one or more of the dte &# 39 ; s . the operation of the control may be associated with data communicated over the network ( for example , sensing the availability of power to a dte ) or may be independent of it , to allow control decisions to be made locally . the dte interface can be a proprietary interface or any standard serial or parallel interface , such as itu - t v . 35 , itu - t v . 24 , etc . in addition , a telephone interface ( pots ) or isdn may be used . this can suit intercom or pbx applications . the sic topology described above can be modified to allow for single failure correction . in such a case , the sic &# 39 ; s are connected in a network with redundant paths , such as a circular topology as shown in fig8 . in this example , a sic 800 is connected to a sic 802 , which is in turn connected to a sic 804 , which is in turn connected to a sic 806 , which is in turn connected to sic 800 . when connected in such configuration , any single failure in any conductor , such as in conductor pair 810 , will not effect the system operation , as data routing from any sic to any other sic can be achieved via an alternate path . the term “ circular topology ” herein denotes the topology of any local area network of sic &# 39 ; s according to the present invention which contains at least two communication paths between two different sic &# 39 ; s . for example , in fig8 , there are two communication paths from sic 800 to sic 804 : one communication path is from sic 800 to sic 802 to sic 804 , and the other path is from sic 800 to sic 806 to sic 804 . circular topology provides redundant communication paths that increase the immunity of the local area network to communication faults . it should be noted that the circular topology according to the present invention , as shown in fig8 , differs significantly from the well - known “ token ring topology ” of the prior art , as discussed following although circular topology as defined herein can be superficially similar to the token ring topology , there are major differences between them . one difference is in the data framing . the token ring uses the same frame structure throughout all communication links in the network , and this requires that the same framing must be recognized by all the cells in the network . in the sic network according to the present invention , however , each communication link ( between any two connected sic &# 39 ; s ) is totally independent from all other network communication . hence , a first sic can communicate with a second sic using one type of frame structure and protocol , while the same first sic can communicate with a third sic using a different type of frame structure and protocol . in addition , in a token ring network , there is single direction of data flow at any given time from a single transmitter to one or more receivers , and usually , the direction of data flow is constant . the sic network according to the present invention , however , does not impose any limitation on the data flow in any of the communication links . full duplex , half duplex or unidirectional communication is possible , and can even vary from link to link throughout the network . this allows the sic network to support two independent communication routes simultaneously , provided different segments are used . in fig8 , for example , sic 800 can communicate with sic 802 while sic 804 simultaneously communicates different data with sic 806 . this capability is not supported by any of the other network configurations . the above differences affect , for example , the vulnerability of the respective networks to faults . in case of single break or short - circuit anywhere in the medium , the token ring network will collapse , disabling any further communication in the system . as another example , in the network disclosed in u . s . pat . no . 4 , 918 , 690 to markkula et al . ( hereinafter referred to as “ markkula ”), this fault affects the physical layer by disabling the media &# 39 ; s signal - carrying capability . the token ring network will not function at all since the data layer functionality based on unidirectional transmission will not be supported . in contrast , however , a sic network according to the present invention , will continue to function fully , except for the specific faulty link itself . all other links continue to function normally . furthermore , the ability to localize the fault is not easily performed either in a token ring network or in the markkula network . in the sic network according to the present invention , however , it is simple and straightforward to trace the fault to the affected link . an important configuration for a network according to the present invention uses the electrical power wiring of a building as a communication media . this can be used , for example , to implement an inexpensive ‘ home lan ’. typical house mains have a connection to single feeder with numerous distribution points and outlets . the principles according to the present invention specify a sic to be located within each outlet and at each distribution point . this will allow sic - based communications network , where communication takes place between each pair of sic &# 39 ; s connected via the wiring . in such a case it is also expected that the mains will also be used to power the sic &# 39 ; s . aside from using the same wiring media , the electrical distribution and the communication system sharing the same mains can be totally decoupled . another configuration involves adding the sic to the mains wiring at points distinguished from the mains outlets . the preferred embodiment , however , consists of using the outlets points for both the electrical supply and the dte connection points . this involves replacing all electrical outlets and distribution points with ‘ smart ’ outlets , having both electrical connections and a communications jack . in addition , such unit may include visual indicators ( e . g . led &# 39 ; s ) to show the communication status , and may also include switches or other means to determine the outlet address . such a communication system could be used for applications associated with power distribution , as for example to control the load connected to a specific outlet , for remote on / off operation of appliances , timing of operations , delayed start , disconnection after pre - set time period , and so forth . such a communication system could also be used to monitor the power consumed by specific outlets , such as for demand side management ( dsm ) or automatic meter reading ( amr ), allowing remote meter reading . the above described topology may also apply to existing wiring . one common example may be power wiring to consumers located in different locations . such wiring typically relies on bus topology with taps . in order to use sic technology , the wiring must be broken , and a sic installed between both ends . in a similar manner , a communication network employing the electrical power wiring of vehicles and vessel can be implemented , such as for aircraft , ships , trains , buses , automobiles , and so forth . in this application , existing telephone wiring ( either pots or isdn ) is used as the electrically - conducting media for the local area network , and is used for both local area network data communication and for telephony . the term “ telephony ” herein denotes any telephone or telephonic communication , including both including voice ( pots ) and data ( isdn ). telephone outlets are usually connected in point - to - point topology without a distribution point . to set up a network , each outlet is replaced with sic - based outlet . if there are distribution points , these distribution points must also be sic equipped . this configuration results in a high - performance lan between the telephone outlets . aside from sharing the same media , the local area network can be decoupled from the telephone system . alternatively , the local area network and the telephone system can be combined , such that telephony is digitally integrated into the local area network data . the outside telephone service can be treated according to one of the following alternatives : 1 . no telephone support . in this configuration , the connection to the network ( usually to the public network ) is cut , and the network is fully internal , with no external telephone service . 2 . telephone as payload . in this configuration , the telephone capability is retained , and telephony data may be integrated into the data communication of the local area network . one of the sic &# 39 ; s ( usually the one closest to a public telephone network interface ) or other dedicated module interconnects ( via the communication interface for example ) to the network interface ( ni ). this unit emulates a telephone interface to the ni , so that public network operation is transparent and continues to perform as normal . however , the signals associated with the telephone interface , either the voice itself and the control / signaling ( on hook / off hook , ringing , etc .) are digitized and transmitted in the network as data stream , as part of the communication taking place in the network . in the sic &# 39 ; s interfaced to telephones , these signals are converted back to analog ( or in any original form ) and thus can be used with standard telephones . in this case , telephone functionality is fully retained . however , failure in the communication network may result in loss of the telephone service . this can be improved by means of a system which disconnects the sic &# 39 ; s circuitry and restores the original wiring routing ( this can be easily implemented by relays , which bypass the sic &# 39 ; s upon failure detection , manual intervention , or other relevant occasion ). 3 . communication over pots or isdn . in this method , the electrically - conducting media interconnecting sic &# 39 ; s is the telephone wiring of a building . this method involves the known mechanism ‘ pots splitting ’, currently used in conjunction with xdsl technologies . this requires a filter which separates the low - frequency portion of the spectrum ( usually carrying the pots associated signals and power ) from the high - frequency portion of the spectrum ( used for communication ). in such an application , the ac / dc units in the sic are replaced with such pots splitter modules . the low - frequency band ( pots related ) is passed transparently ( similar to the power pass ), and branched to the telephone jack . the high - frequency band is used for the communication between the sic &# 39 ; s . this combining of high - frequency local area network communication on the same electrically - conducting media with low - frequency telephony data is a form of frequency - domain multiplexing . in the latter two alternatives , each in - wall telephone outlet is replaced with a sic based outlet having both a telephone jack and one ( or more ) communication jacks . the sic network can be used as a computer bus extender , such as an ‘ isa bus extender ’, as illustrated in fig1 . in this configuration , a sic 1006 is equipped with a computer bus connector 1004 which is connected , for example , to one of the isa bus slots in a computer 1002 , to transport data between the local area network and computer 1002 . another sic 1010 , remotely located , also has a computer bus connector 1012 , such as an isa bus extender . this allows for a transparent isa bus capability , where the isa bus data will be transported in both directions over electrically - conducting medium 1008 . the ellipses ( . . . ) indicate that additional sic &# 39 ; s and electrically - conducting media may be present in the local area network between sic 1006 and sic 1010 . shown as an example , a video frame grabber card 1014 is plugged into computer bus connector 1012 , and a video camera 1016 is connected to video frame grabber card 1014 . normally , video frame grabber card 1014 is plugged directly into an isa bus slot , such as in computer 1002 . here , however , the local area network acts as a bus extender so that video frame grabber 1014 and video camera 1016 can be located remotely from computer 1002 . the normal software driver for the isa bus slot in computer 1002 can used , since computer 1002 is unaware of the fact that only isa emulation is taking place . this way , the capability of having general remote pc components and peripherals can be easily achieved . this configuration features the above - described advantages , and this method can be used to attain various goals , such as fault protection . similarly , this method can be used to connect several units remotely to a computer , using different ports in the computer . a network of sic &# 39 ; s may be used to implement a multiplexer or a pabx / pbx functionality , as illustrated in fig9 . in this example , a sic 900 is connected to a high data rate connection , such as pcm bus 916 , while sic 902 and sic 906 are connected to telephones 908 , 910 , and 912 . sic 904 functions as a repeater in this example . in this example , the local area network functions as a multiplexer , wherein the bandwidth of the high data rate connection ( pcm bus 916 ) is multiplexed through sic 900 to sic 902 and sic 906 , each of which may use a different portion of the bandwidth of the high data rate connection ( pcm bus 916 ). moreover , by the addition of telephones 908 , 910 , and 912 , the local area network of fig9 functions as a voice multiplexer . a number of applications of the present invention have been discussed above . additional applications include , but are not limited to : intercom , pabx / pbx , security systems , video surveillance , entertainment broadcasting services , time ( clock ) distribution , and audio / video signal distribution . the networks implemented by the present invention can extend locally within a single building or over a neighborhood . while the invention has been described with respect to a limited number of embodiments and applications , it will be appreciated that many variations , modifications and other applications of the invention may be made . | 7 |
the pneumatic system comprises two compressed air networks 1 , 2 , which are connected to a control system that controls them . the first network 1 comprises six compressors c 1 - c 6 with their controllers a 1 - a 6 , a pressure tank 11 connected to three compressors c 2 - c 4 , four secondary treatment units 12 - 15 , a place of consumption 16 and piping systems 17 - 19 for their interconnection . the second network 2 correspondingly comprises one compressor c 7 with its controller a 7 , a secondary treatment unit 21 , a place of consumption 22 and a piping system 23 for their interconnection . in addition , both networks are provided with pressure sensors pi 1 - pi 5 , of which pi 1 is connected to the pressure tank piping 17 between compressor c 1 and secondary treatment unit 12 , pi 2 to the pressure tank , 11 , pi 3 to the piping 19 between compressors c 5 , c 6 and secondary treatment unit 14 , 15 , pi 3 and pi 4 to the place of consumption 16 and pi 5 to the piping 23 between compressor c 7 and secondary treatment unit 21 as well as to the place of consumption 22 , and of pneumatic station controllers as 1 - as 3 , of which as 1 is connected to sensors pi 2 , pi 4 , pi 1 and to secondary treatment unit 13 , as 2 is connected to controllers a 5 , a 6 and sensor pi 3 , while as 3 is connected to sensors pi 5 . the above - described controllers and sensors are connected via three serial communication buses 30 - 32 common to both devices to a serial port 33 of the control unit 3 and further to the control computer 34 , which comprises a display and a user interface 35 . the user interface is provided with a user interface program , and the control computer is provided with a group control program and a controller unit . via the user interface 35 , the user can observe the operation of the pneumatic system , configure the control and monitoring system and output reports concerning the functioning of the system . the control program regulates and controls the pneumatic system via the pneumatic station controllers and compressor controllers , based on the information obtained by means of the data communication devices and programs and on the instructions given by the user . the pneumatic station controller as 1 - as 3 reads pneumatic station - specific data , such as pressure and alarm data from the pneumatic system . the compressor controller a 1 - a 7 reads data regarding the compressor and the control commands sent by the control program via the data communication bus 30 - 32 and executes the commands , such as start , stop and load . the number of compressors can be given as parameters to the group control program . the control program need not be altered in any way when compressors are added or removed . this is because , as far as the compressors are concerned , the program has been constructed according to a modular design such that each compressor c 1 - c 7 is an embodiment of its category that , depending on the parameter given , is either commissioned or decommissioned . each compressor c 1 - c 7 can be configured via the user interface 35 as any compressor type by means of one parameter given . therefore , when the control system is being configured for the first time or when an individual compressor type is later changed , the control system need not be tailored at all . this is due to the fact that , by means of a single parameter , the above - described embodiments of compressor category can be configured as any basic compressor type . these are two - stage , three - stage and five - stage modulating control and kinetic machine control . it is possible to connect to the control system a required number of pressure sensors pi 1 - pi 5 to read the delivery pressure of each compressor and the desired network pressures . this makes easier to control the compressors and gives a general view of the state of the pneumatic network . any one of the pressure sensors can be configured to indicate the delivery pressure of any one of the compressors , and any of the pressure sensors can be configured to function as the control pressure of the entire system . the number of pressure sensors can be configured with one value , which is input via the user interface 35 . the addition or removal of pressure sensors does not involve any changes in the control program . each pressure data item also contains information as to how large a volume it pertains to and what is the rate of change of the pressure . based on these data , it is possible to calculate the exact change in the amount of compressed air for the volume in question . by computing the change in the amount of air for each volume and combining this information with the data regarding the state of all the compressors , real - time actual consumption of compressed air is obtained . this method considerably improves the accuracy and reacting capability of the control . the control system can control and monitor several separate pneumatic systems 1 , 2 . this makes it possible to select any one of the pressure sensors pi 1 - pi 5 connected to the system as a control pressure sensor for each compressor c 1 - c 7 , and in addition any one of the compressors can be set via the user interface to be controlled according to a pressure sensor value selected in accordance with separate pressure settings . for each compressor c 1 - c 7 and for the pneumatic system , maximum and minimum pressure limits can be set . when these values are exceeded , control of the compressors is handed over to their own control system . the order in which the compressors c 1 - c 7 are started and loaded is determined by an operating sequence table . the compressors can be set to work in accordance with as many operating sequence tables as desired . this is possible because each individual operating sequence is an embodiment of its category that can be commissioned or decommissioned by changing a program parameter determining the number of embodiments . therefore , the program need not be altered at all when operating sequences are added or removed . the manner of changing the operating sequence is selected by changing one control parameter . the operating sequence can be changed e . g . on the basis of a weekly calendar , stoppage of compressors or an automatic arrangement . automatic alternation is based on continuous computation of the required idling power for all compressor combinations possible , which , combined with the observation of the required compressors c 1 - c 7 to be kept active and free selection of the observation interval , results in automatic selection of the most effective operating sequence possible . the method of starting and stopping a compressor c 1 - c 7 can be selected via the user interface . these are pulse starting and stopping and pulse duration , continuous starting and stopping , run - on stopping or stopping based on allowed numbers of starts . the starting , loading and deloading delays for each compressor c 1 - c 7 can be adjusted separately . this allows correct operation of the method in every situation regardless of the pneumatic system &# 39 ; s own dynamics . the information regarding compressor states and pressure values received by the control program via the data communication means 30 - 32 is continuously stored on a mass storage medium ( in the control computer 34 ). the state of operation and pressure level of the compressors can be presented in the same diagram so that they can be viewed in a graphic form from instant to instant . this enables the pneumatic system to analyzed in real time or afterwards . the control program calculates the total output and power input of the pneumatic system on a continuous basis . these data are stored on a mass storage medium . in the user interface , these data can be presented in the same diagram so that they can be viewed in a graphic form from instant to instant . in addition , the user interface calculates the average consumption and power over a selected period of time . moreover , the points of the diagram can be printed to a file with a desired time interval . the report thus produced allows verification of the actual benefit yielded by the control system and continuous measurement of performance even over a long period . the compressor controller a 1 - a 7 reads information from the compressor and transmits it to the control program , reads the control commands from the group control program and executes them in accordance with its own control program while also monitoring the validity of the commands and the condition of the data communication bus and the programs . the compressor program is a compressor type and model - specific program . as an example , consider a pressure - switch - controlled model that is stopped and started by a run - on timer . about 50 % of all compressors are of this type . about 5 different compressor controller models cover about 95 % of the entire compressor capacity . in current solutions , even a single non - standard compressor model to be incorporated under the control system requires relatively extensive tailoring of the control programs . this problem is now limited to the tailoring of a simple compressor controller program . even this tailoring work will be reduced when this solution gains ground , because it will be easy to form a library of compressor controller programs . the basic architecture of the method allows the use of a device of any manufacturer in the compressor controller . this makes it possible to utilize the invention in many cases in which it has not been possible before . when a disturbance , e . g . a connection fault , occurs in any part of the system , the compressor controller hands over the control to the compressor &# 39 ; s own control system . this guarantees disturbance - free production of compressed air in almost all situations . the operation of the compressor controller can be tested either by means of a group controller or any device that is capable of writing the run and load commands to the controller . this is made possible by the structure of the controller program , in which the outward interface can be kept as simple and standard as possible regardless of compressor type and model . only the run / stop commands and the desired load factor are written via the interface . it is obvious to the person skilled in the art that different embodiments of the invention are not limited to the examples described above , but that they may be varied within the scope of the following claims . | 5 |
with reference to fig1 , the standard architecture of an electroluminescent device according to the invention comprises a transparent glass or plastic substrate 1 , an anode of indium tin oxide 2 and a cathode 4 . the electroluminescent layer according to the invention is layer 3 between anode 2 and cathode 4 . in addition to layer 3 , a separate hole transporting layer and / or an electron transporting layer may be provided . although not essential , a layer of organic hole injection material ( not shown ) between the anode 2 and the electroluminescent layer 3 may be desirable . examples of organic hole injection materials include conducting polymers such as poly ( ethylenedioxythiophene ) ( pedt / pss ) as disclosed in ep 0901176 and ep 0947123 , or polyaniline as disclosed in u . s . pat . no . 5 , 723 , 873 and u . s . pat . no . 5 , 798 , 170 . electroluminescent layer 3 comprises a polymer having light emitting dopant groups bound to the polymer either as side - groups or as units within the polymer backbone . the monomers used to form the polymer are preferably soluble , but form an insoluble polymer . a solution - processing technique , such as spin - coating , ink - jet printing , dip - coating meniscus or roller coating , or other printing or coating technique , or thermal - transfer method may be used to deposit the monomer ( s ) to be polymerised . the monomers may be polymerised by any suitable technique including heat treatment , chemical initiation and radiation , in particular uv radiation . one particularly suitable class of polymers are thiol - ene polymers . where the monomer used in the method of the invention according to the invention comprises a reactive unsaturated carbon - carbon bond , this bond may be , for example , a non - aromatic group with carbon - carbon double or triple bonds . when used with a thiol , these materials form a thioether linkage . for steric reasons , the most reactive unsaturated carbon - carbon bonds are often located at a terminal position in the chain or branch . preferably , the polymerisation is initiated by exposure to actinic radiation in an inert atmosphere to avoid the formation of chemical initiators such as peroxy groups in the polymer . following washing or developing of the film , the film may be dried or undergo other post - patterning treatment . photolithographic patterning of the light - emitting layer is achieved by use of a suitable photo - mask . a film that is capable of emitting a first colour is deposited , patterned and developed to form pixels capable of emitting a first colour . at this stage , since the film of the first colour is insoluble , it allows a film of a material that is capable of emitting a second colour to be deposited without disrupting the first colour film . this second film is patterned and developed to form pixels capable of emitting the second colour . the process can be repeated to deposit a material capable of emitting a third colour . if present , it may be appropriate to pattern a charge - transporting layer , and this can be done using the same masking technique . polymers such as thiol - ene polymers are formed by free - radical induced polymerisation . optionally , the free - radical induced polymerisation can take place in the presence of a radical initiator . the insolubility of the resultant polymer in a solvent allows un - reacted monomers to be washed away . insolubility is preferably achieved by polymerisation to produce a crosslinked polymer network . under the correct conditions , thioether and alkene groups react to form a thioether linkage . the reaction proceeds by a step growth mechanism , as outlined in jacobine , radiat . curing polym . sci . technol ., 1993 , 3 , 219 - 68 . the reaction is illustrated in the scheme below wherein a is a light - emitting dopant and b is a core through which the thiol functional groups are bound . if each monomer has two functional groups ( n = m = 2 ) then a linear polymer can be formed . if at least one of n or m is greater than 2 then a crosslinked polymer can be formed . in order to incorporate the host material into the polymer shown above , a host material comprising at least two reactive unsaturated carbon - carbon bonds may be added to the monomers . although the host material and light emitting dopant are described above as monomers with alkene reactive units , it will be appreciated that they could either or both have thiol reactive units . furthermore , a monomer may comprise at least one thiol group and at least one reactive unsaturated carbon - carbon bond . the monomers shown above produce a polymer wherein both groups a and b are located within the backbone of the polymer , however it will be appreciated that the monomers may be modified such that one or both of a and b are present as substituents pendant from the polymer backbone . an example of such a monomer is illustrated below : wherein n is at least 2 and c represents a spacer group which may suitably be selected from the set of spacer groups described below . similarly , the double bonds may be replaced by thiol groups and / or the light emitting dopant a may be replaced by a charge - transporting moiety . in principle , as many x groups as y groups should be present for complete reaction to occur , if one group is in excess then the excess will remain un - reacted . however , as is well known , in a polymerisation reaction of multi - functional monomers assuming unlimited mobility not all functional groups react ( p . j . flory , j . am . chem . soc . 1947 , 69 , 2893 ), so it is not thought to be critical that the number of x and y groups is balanced . where a thiol - ene polymer is used , it is preferred for there to be a spacer chain between the light - emitting moiety and the polymerisable thiol or the reactive unsaturated carbon - carbon bond . such a spacer improves the film forming properties of the material , allowing good quality films to be deposited from solution . the spacer also aids the polymerisation process . the spacer should not contain any carbonyl groups ( including those in the form of esters , amides etc .). the spacer can comprise alkyl , ether , thioether , aryl , siloxane , amine or unsaturated groups , or heteroatoms such as silicon , boron or phosphorus . synthetic routes to form thiol - containing materials including those starting from thiourea , thiosulfate ions , thiol esters and dithiocarbamates can be found in s . patai , chapter 4 , the chemistry of the thiol groups , john wiley & amp ; sons , london 1974 . a synthetic route to alkene materials that have an ether linkage between the reactive unsaturated carbon - carbon bond and the rest of the molecule , is via a nucleophilic substitution in the presence of base as shown in fig2 ( the step from compound 10c to compound 10 ). synthesis of ethers , houben - weyl , methoden der organische chemie , v 1 / 3 , georg thieme verlag , stuttgart 1965 . thiol - ene mixtures can be easily thermally - polymerized and photo - polymerised . photo - polymerization has the advantage that good resolution patterned films can be obtained and hence photo - polymerization is preferred for oled applications . the reactive unsaturated carbon - carbon bonds are preferably electron - rich or they form part of a strained ring system . in this later case , reaction of the unsaturated carbon - carbon bond with a thiol will then release the ring strain . the reactive unsaturated group consists preferably of a norbornyl or vinylether moiety , other useful enes consist of allylether , or unsaturated cyclic systems . for the thiol - ene systems there are suitable initiators for activation by either uv light or visible light . for successful initiation , it is generally preferable to use a wavelength of light that is absorbed by the initiator but not strongly absorbed by the other components of the film . in this way the initiator functions well and photo - degradation of the film is minimised . the thiol - ene systems mentioned here do not contain any carbonyl groups therefore no quenching of luminescence is observed . the light emitting dopant of the invention is preferably an optionally substituted metal complex of formula ( v ): wherein m is a metal ; each of l 1 , l 2 and l 3 is a coordinating group ; q is an integer ; r and s are each independently 0 or an integer ; and the sum of ( a . q )+( b . r )+( c . s ) is equal to the number of coordination sites available on m , wherein a is the number of coordination sites on l 1 , b is the number of coordination sites on l 2 and c is the number of coordination sites on l 3 . the metal complex may be based on a relatively light element that produces fluorescence , for example an aluminium complex , most particularly alq 3 as disclosed in j . appl . phys . 65 , 3610 , 1989 . alternatively , the complex may be based on heavy elements m that induce strong spin - orbit coupling to allow rapid intersystem crossing and emission from triplet states ( phosphorescence ). suitable heavy metals m include : lanthanide metals such as cerium , samarium , europium , terbium , dysprosium , thulium , erbium and neodymium ; and d - block metals , in particular those in rows 2 and 3 i . e . elements 39 to 48 and 72 to 80 , in particular ruthenium , rhodium , pallaidum , rhenium , osmium , iridium , platinum and gold . suitable coordinating groups for the f - block metals include oxygen or nitrogen donor systems such as carboxylic acids , 1 , 3 - diketonates , hydroxy carboxylic acids , schiff bases including acyl phenols and iminoacyl groups . as is known , luminescent lanthanide metal complexes require sensitizing group ( s ) which have the triplet excited energy level higher than the first excited state of the metal ion . emission is from an f - f transition of the metal and so the emission colour is determined by the choice of the metal . the sharp emission is generally narrow , resulting in a pure colour emission useful for display applications . the d - block metals form organometallic complexes with carbon or nitrogen donors such as porphyrin or bidentate ligands of formula ( vi ): wherein ar 4 and ar 5 may be the same or different and are independently selected from optionally substituted aryl or heteroaryl ; x 1 and y 1 may be the same or different and are independently selected from carbon or nitrogen ; and ar 4 and ar 5 may be fused together . ligands wherein x 1 is carbon and y 1 is nitrogen are particularly preferred . each of ar 4 and ar 5 may carry one or more substituents . particularly preferred substituents include fluorine or trifluoromethyl which may be used to blue - shift the emission of the complex as disclosed in wo 02 / 45466 , wo 02 / 44189 , us 2002 - 117662 and us 2002 - 182441 ; alkyl or alkoxy groups as disclosed in jp 2002 - 324679 ; carbazole which may be used to assist hole transport to the complex when used as an emissive material as disclosed in wo 02 / 81448 ; bromine , chlorine or iodine which can serve to functionalise the ligand for attachment of further groups as disclosed in wo 02 / 68435 and ep 1245659 ; and dendrons which may be used to obtain or enhance solution processability of the metal complex as disclosed in wo 02 / 66552 . other ligands suitable for use with d - block elements include diketonates , in particular acetylacetonate ( acac ); triarylphosphines and pyridine , each of which may be substituted . main group metal complexes show ligand based , or charge transfer emission . for these complexes , the emission colour is determined by the choice of ligand as well as the metal . a wide range of fluorescent low molecular weight metal complexes are known and have been demonstrated in organic light emitting devices [ see , e . g ., macromol . sym . 125 ( 1997 ) 1 - 48 , u . s . pat . no . 5 , 150 , 006 , u . s . pat . no . 6 , 083 , 634 and u . s . pat . no . 5 , 432 , 014 ], in particular tris -( 8 - hydroxyquinoline ) aluminium . suitable ligands for di or trivalent metals include : oxinoids , e . g . with oxygen - nitrogen or oxygen - oxygen donating atoms , generally a ring nitrogen atom with a substituent oxygen atom , or a substituent nitrogen atom or oxygen atom with a substituent oxygen atom such as 8 - hydroxyquinolate and hydroxyquinoxalinol - 10 - hydroxybenzo ( h ) quinolinato ( ii ), benzazoles ( iii ), schiff bases , azoindoles , chromone derivatives , 3 - hydroxyflavone , and carboxylic acids such as salicylato amino carboxylates and ester carboxylates . optional substituents include halogen , alkyl , alkoxy , haloalkyl , cyano , amino , amido , sulfonyl , carbonyl , aryl or heteroaryl on the ( hetero ) aromatic rings which may modify the emission colour . suitable fluorescent blue emitters are e . g . stilbenes , coumarins , anthracences ( kodak u . s . pat . no . 5 , 972 , 247 ( 1999 ). toshio et al ( toyo ink ) ep 0765106 ( 1996 )) and perylenes ( so et al ( motorola ) u . s . pat . no . 5 , 853 , 905 ( 1997 ). lee et al ( motorola ) u . s . pat . no . 5 , 747 , 183 ( 1996 )). also suitable are blue - emitting aluminium complexes ( bryan et al ( kodak ) u . s . pat . no . 5 , 141 , 671 . van slyke et al ( kodak ) u . s . pat . no . 5 , 150 , 006 )). suitable green emitters are alq 3 ( chen and tang , macromol . symp . 1997 , 125 , 1 - 48 ), coumarins ( chen et al ( kodak ) u . s . pat . no . 6 , 020 , 078 ) and quinacridone ( shi et al ( kodak ) u . s . pat . no . 5 , 593 , 788 ). suitable red emitters are dcm and its derivatives ( chen et al , u . s . pat . no . 5 , 908 , 581 ). the fluorescent material can be a molecular or dendritic species . for examples of suitable fluorescent dendrimers see for example wo 99 / 21935 . where the light - emitting dopant is phosphorescent , it is necessary for the host to possess a higher t 1 energy level than the dopant . examples of suitable host materials are those comprising triarylamine units ( for examples see shirota , j . mater . chem ., 2000 , 10 , 1 - 25 ) or carbazole units , in particular poly ( vinylcarbazole ). the host material may also have charge transporting properties . hole transporting host materials are particularly preferred such as the hole - transporting arylamine having the following formula : wherein ar is an optionally substituted aromatic group , such as phenyl , or and ar 1 , ar 2 , ar 3 and ar 4 are optionally substituted aromatic or heteroaromatic groups ( shi et al ( kodak ) u . s . pat . no . 5 , 554 , 450 . van slyke et al , u . s . pat . no . 5 , 061 , 569 . so et al ( motorola ) u . s . pat . no . 5 , 853 , 905 ( 1997 )). ar is preferably biphenyl . in the current invention at least two of ar 1 , ar 2 , ar 3 and ar 4 are bonded to either a thiol group , x , or a group containing a reactive unsaturated carbon - carbon bond , y . ar 1 and ar 2 , and / or ar 3 and ar 4 are optionally linked to form a n containing ring , for example so that the n forms part of a carbazole unit e . g . charge transport / host materials may be bipolar , i . e . capable of transporting holes and electrons . suitable bipolar materials preferably contain at least two carbazole units ( shirota , j . mater . chem ., 2000 , 10 , 1 - 25 ). the concentration of the fluorescent or phosphorescent light - emitting dopant in the host material should be such that the film has a high photoluminescent and electroluminescent efficiency . if the concentration of the emissive species is too high , quenching of luminescence can occur . a concentration in the range 0 . 01 - 49 molar %, is generally appropriate . the oled may comprise further semiconducting layers in addition to the electroluminescent layer . in particular , charge transporting and / or blocking layers may be used . materials suitable for forming hole - transporting / electron blocking layers are π - electron rich , in particular triarylamines ( for examples see shirota , j . mater . chem ., 2000 , 10 , 1 - 25 ) and those amine and carbazole containing compounds described above as host materials . if the light emitter is phosphorescent , it is particularly beneficial that either an electron - transporting layer is present that also functions as a hole - blocking layer , or that a hole - blocking layer is present between the light - emitting layer and an electron - transporting layer . electron - transporting materials contain π - electron deficient moieties . examples of suitable π - electron deficient moieties are oxadiazoles , triazines , pyridine , pyrimidine , quinoline , and quinoxaline ( thelakkat , schmidt , polym . adv . technol . 1998 , 9 , 429 - 42 ). specific examples include alq 3 [ aluminium tri ( 8 - hydroxyquinoline )], taz ( 3 - phenyl - 4 -( 1 - naphthyl )- 5 - phenyl - 1 , 2 , 4 - triazole ) and oxd - 7 ( 1 , 3 - bis ( n , n - t - butyl - phenyl )- 1 , 3 , 4 - oxadiazole ). a layer of electron transporting and / or hole blocking material ( not shown ) may be provided between the electroluminescent layer 3 and the cathode layer 4 . as with the hole transporting or injecting layer , an electron transporting and / or hole blocking material is not essential . cathode 4 is selected from materials that have a workfunction allowing injection of electrons into the electroluminescent layer or electron transporting layer , if present . other factors influence the selection of the cathode such as the possibility of adverse interactions between the cathode and the electroluminescent material . the cathode may consist of a single material such as a layer of aluminium . alternatively , it may comprise a plurality of metals , for example a bilayer of calcium and aluminium as disclosed in wo 98 / 10621 , elemental barium disclosed in wo 98 / 57381 , appl . phys . lett . 2002 , 81 ( 4 ), 634 and wo 02 / 84759 or a thin layer of dielectric material to assist electron injection , for example lithium fluoride disclosed in wo 00 / 48258 or barium fluoride , disclosed in appl . phys . lett . 2001 , 79 ( 5 ), 2001 . a typical electroluminescent device comprises an anode having a workfunction of 4 . 8 ev . accordingly , the homo level of the hole transporting material , if any , is preferably around 4 . 8 - 5 . 5 ev . similarly , the cathode of a typical device will have a workfunction of around 3 ev . accordingly , the lumo level of the electron transporting material , if any , is preferably around 3 - 3 . 5 ev . electroluminescent layer 3 may comprise the host material and light emitting material according to the invention alone or one or more additional materials . in particular , layer 3 may comprise the host material and light emitting material blended with one or more of a hole transporting polymer and an electron transporting polymer as disclosed in wo 99 / 48160 . electroluminescent devices may be monochrome devices or full colour devices ( i . e . formed from red , green and blue electroluminescent materials ). the compound of formula ( 1 ) was synthesised according to the scheme shown in fig2 : phosphorus tert - butyl phosphine ( 880 mg , 4 . 35 mmol ) in toluene ( 88 ml ) was added under nitrogen to a deoxygenated mixture of carbazole ( 11 . 9 g , 71 . 0 mmol ), 4 , 4 ′- dibromobiphenyl ( 10 . 0 g , 32 . 11 mmol ), sodium tert - butoxide ( 23 . 2 g , 241 mmol ) and palladium acetate ( 324 mg , 1 . 34 mmol ) in toluene ( 50 ml ) and the resulting mixture was heated at reflux under nitrogen for 10 days . the reaction mixture was cooled to room temperature and then diluted with more toluene ( 200 ml ). the reaction mixture was filtered to removes sodium salt and the filtrate was removed all traces of the product . the filtrate was concentrated to dryness to give the crude product as a pale brown solid . the crude product was purified first by chromatography on silica using dichloromethane as the eluent followed by recrystallisation from toluene . the material was then sublimed at 280 - 281 ° c . at 10 − 6 mm hg to give the product 4 , 4 ′- bis ( carbazol - 9 - yl ) biphenyl as an off - white solid with melting point 280 - 281 ° c . ( lit . m . p . 281 ° c .). phosphorus oxychloride ( 13 ml , 21 . 5 g , 140 mmol ) was added dropwise to a stirring mixture of n , n - dimethylformamide ( 5 . 40 ml , 5 . 10 g , 69 . 7 mmol ) and 4 , 4 ′- bis ( carbazol - 9 - yl ) biphenyl ( 7 . 72 g , 16 . 0 mmol ) and the resulting mixture was stirred at room temperature for 5 minutes then heated to 90 ° c . for 24 h . ( nb reaction mixture was followed by tlc using 5 % ethanol / dichloromethane as the eluent ). the reaction mixture was poured into water ( 800 ml ) and this beaker was placed in the ultrasonic bath for 2 hours to break up the material . the mixture was stirred for a further 2 hours then filtered . the residue was washed with water and then hexane and dried in vacuo for 2 hours . the crude product was heated with acetone ( 3 × 400 ml ) and filtered . the product was insoluble in most organic solvent . the impurities were removed by washing with acetone . the product , 4 , 4 ′- bis ( 3 - formyl - carbazol - 9 - yl ) biphenyl , ( 7 . 92 g , 87 %) was obtained with melting point 295 ° c . ( dec .). found : c , 81 . 74 ; h , 4 . 71 ; and n , 4 . 45 . c 38 h 28 n 2 o 2 . ( ch 3 ) 2 co requires c , 82 . 25 ; h , 5 . 05 ; n , 4 . 68 %. 1 h n . m . r . ( 300 mhz , me 2 so ): δ 10 . 09 ( 2 h , s , cho ); 8 . 88 ( 2 h , d , j 0 . 88 hz , aromatic h ); 8 . 41 ( 2 h , d , j 7 . 61 hz , aromatic h ); 8 . 41 ( 4 h , d , j 8 . 49 hz , aromatic h ); 8 . 00 ( 2 h , dd , j 8 . 49 , 1 . 46 hz , aromatic h ); 7 . 83 ( 4 h , d , j 8 . 49 hz , aromatic h ); 7 . 38 - 7 . 61 ( 8 h , m , aromatic h ). λ max ( ch 2 cl 2 ): 215 nm ( ε / lmol − 1 cm − 1 9163 ), 241 ( 68 488 ), 272 ( 65 928 ), 294 ( 67 194 ) 328 ( 42 620 ). ft - ir ( solid ): 3045 , 2825 , 2730 , 1682 , 1623 , 1591 , 1505 , 1456 , 1438 , 1365 , 1319 , 1275 , 1230 , 1180 , 802 , 745 cm − 1 . sodium borohydride ( 2 . 40 g , 63 . 4 mmol )) was added to the 4 , 4 ′- bis ( 3 - formylcarbazol - 9 - yl ) biphenyl ( 3 . 42 g , 6 . 33 mmol ) in thf ( 1 . 2 l ) and the resulting suspension was stirred at room temperature for 24 h . the reaction was followed by tlc using 5 % ethanol / dichloromethane as the eluent . once the reaction was complete , the mixture was slowly poured into water ( 400 ml ) and the mixture was left to stir at room temperature for a further 30 min . the reaction mixture was acidified to ph 1 with hydrochloric acid ( 5m ). the product was extracted with dichloromethane ( 3 × 300 ml ). the combined organic phase was washed with water ( 400 ml ) and brine ( 400 ml ), dried ( mgso 4 ), filtered and the filtrate evaporated to dryness . the crude product , was purified by chromatography on silica using 50 % thf / toluene as the eluent . the product was recrystallised from ethanol to give 4 , 4 ′- bis ( 3 -( hydroxymethyl ) carbazol - 9 - yl ) biphenyl as a pale yellow solid ( 3 . 22 g , 94 %) with m . p . 268 ° c . ( dec .). found : c , 82 . 51 ; h , 4 . 64 ; and n , 4 . 86 . c 38 h 28 n 2 o 2 . etoh requires c , 81 . 33 ; h , 5 . 80 ; n , 4 . 74 %. 1 h n . m . r . ( 300 mhz , me 2 so ): δ 8 . 23 ( 2 h , d , j 7 . 61 hz , aromatic h ); 8 . 18 ( 2 h , s , aromatic h ); 8 . 06 ( 4 h , d , j 8 . 19 hz , aromatic h ); 7 . 75 ( 4 h , j 8 , 19 hz , aromatic h ); 7 . 38 - 7 . 50 ( 8 h , m , aromatic h ), 7 . 29 ( 2 h , m , aromatic h ); 5 . 25 ( 2h , t , j 5 . 58 hz , oh ); 4 . 68 ( 4h , d , j 5 . 56 hz , ch 2 ). λ max ( ch 2 cl 2 ): 216 nm ( ε / lmol − 1 cm − 1 177 455 ), 240 ( 57 873 ), 271 ( 56 595 ), 294 ( 55 330 ) 329 ( 37 758 ). ftir ( solid ): 3343 , 1604 , 1500 , 1485 , 1455 , 1362 , 1330 , 1230 , 803 , 745 cm 1 . dmso was dried over calcium hydride , then distilled under vacuum and stored over molecular sieves . potassium hydroxide ( 2 . 07 g , 36 . 9 mmol ) was added to dmso ( 20 ml ) and was stirred under nitrogen at room temperature for 15 min . the diol ( 2 . 39 g , 4 . 39 mmol ) in dmso ( 20 ml ) was then added , followed by allyl bromide ( 2 ml , 2 . 80 g , 21 . 7 mmol ) and the resulting mixture was stirred at room temperature under nitrogen overnight . the reaction mixture was poured into water ( 200 ml ) and the product was extracted into dichloromethane ( 3 × 50 ml ). the organic phases were combined and were washed with water ( 5 × 150 ml ), brine ( 200 ml ) and dried over magnesium sulfate . the mixture was filtered and the filtrate was evaporated to dryness . the material was purified by chromatography on silica using dichloromethane as the eluent . the relevant fractions were combined and the solvent removed under reduced pressure . the product was triturated from dichloromethane and hexane to give the product as a pale yellow solid with melting point 118 - 120 ° c . ( found : c , 82 . 51 ; h , 4 . 64 ; and n , 4 . 86 . c 38 h 28 n 2 o 2 . etoh requires c , 81 . 33 ; h , 5 . 80 ; n , 4 . 74 %). 1 h n . m . r . ( 300 mhz , me 2 so ): δ 8 . 13 - 8 . 20 ( 4 h , m , aromatic h ); 7 . 87 - 7 . 93 ( 4 h , m , aromatic h ); 7 . 65 - 7 . 72 ( 4 h , m , aromatic h ); 7 . 40 - 7 . 65 ( 8 h , aromatic h ); 7 . 27 - 7 . 35 ( 2 h , m , aromatic h ); 5 . 93 - 6 . 09 , ( 2h , m , ch ═ ch ), 5 . 30 - 5 . 39 ( 2h , m , ch ═ ch ); 5 . 20 - 5 . 29 ( 2h , m , ch ═ ch ); 4 . 74 ( 4h , s , ch 2 ); ( 8h , m , ch 2 — ch ═ ch 2 ). λ max ( ch 2 cl 2 ): 241 nm ( ε / lmol − 1 cm − 1 88 506 ), 296 ( 40 331 ), 319 ( 29657 ). ft - ir ( solid ): 3047 , 2852 , 1604 , 1500 , 1455 , 1359 , 1331 , 1230 , 1074 , 915 , 807 , 759 cm − 1 . the compound of formula ( 2 ) was prepared in a two - step synthesis starting from tetraallylpentaerythritol as disclosed in nouguier r , mchich m , j . org . chem . 1985 , 50 , ( 3296 - 3298 ). 2 . 0 g ( 6 . 74 mmol ) of tetraallylpentaerythritol was added to a 10 ml round bottomed flask fitted with a stirrer . the reagent was cooled on an ice - bath where 4 . 11 g ( 53 . 98 mmol ) of freshly distilled thiolacetic acid was added in 1 ml portions . after the addition was complete 5 mg of aibn was added and the reaction mixture stirred for 15 mins . when the aibn had dissolved the reaction mixture was heated at 60 ° c . for 12 hours , the reaction being followed by t . l . c . the product of the reaction had an r f of 0 . 05 in dichloromethane ( dcm ) on silica and an r f of 0 . 9 in ethanol . the excess thiolacetic acid was removed from the reaction mixture under vacuum and the residue applied to a short silica column in the minimum volume of dcm . the column was eluted with 500 ml of dcm followed by 500 ml of ethanol . the ethanol fraction was collected and the solvent removed . 2 . 9 g ( 71 . 5 % yield ) of tetrathioacetylpropylpentaerythritol was isolated as a pale yellow oil . 1 h nmr ( cdcl 3 ) ppm : 3 . 41 ( triplet , 8h ) 3 . 34 ( singlet , 8h ) 2 . 92 ( triplet , 8h ) 2 . 32 ( singlet , 12h ) 1 . 80 ( quintet , 8h ) i . r ( cm − 1 ): 2866 , 1686 , 1354 , 1099 , 953 1 . 8 g ( 2 . 99 mmol ) of tetrathioacetylpropylpentaerythritol was added to 10 ml of anhydrous thf in a 100 ml round bottomed flask and the mixture was degassed with stirring . the reaction vessel was purged with nitrogen and 12 . 3 ml of 1m lialh 4 in thf was added dropwise . the reaction was allowed to stir at room temperature for 18 hours , the reaction being monitored by t . l . c . ( dichloromethane ). when the reaction was complete the mixture was acidified to ph 3 with 0 . 1m hcl and 50 ml of dcm added . the organic phase was collected , the aqueous phase extracted with 2 × 50 ml of dcm . the organic phases were combined and extracted with 4 × 100 ml brine and 2 × 50 ml of water . the organic phase was dried over sodium sulphate , filtered and the solvent removed . the product was isolated as a pale yellow oil with a mass of 0 . 92 g ( 71 . 2 % yield ). the product was distilled on kugelrohr apparatus to yield a mobile colourless oil , b . p 230 ° c . @ 10 − 4 mbar . 1 h nmr ( cdcl 3 ) ppm : 3 . 47 ( triplet , 8h ) 3 . 34 ( singlet , 8h ) 2 . 60 ( quartet , 8h ), 1 . 84 ( quintet , 8h ) 1 . 38 ( triplet , 4h ) i . r ( cm − 1 ): 2864 , 1368 , 1101 3 - styrylboronic acid ( 5 ) was synthesised by the method of dondoni et al . ( j . org . chem ., 1998 , 63 , 9535 ). the analytical data for ( 5 ) was in agreement with that reported by rush et al . ( j . org . chem ., 1962 , 27 , 2598 ). a suspension of 4 ( 0 . 582 g , 0 . 717 mmol ) in toluene ( 90 cm 3 ) was treated with a solution of 5 ( 0 . 294 g , 1 . 79 mmol ) in ethanol ( 40 cm 3 ), a solution of aqueous sodium carbonate ( 0 . 9 cm 3 , 1 . 79 mmol ) and water ( 30 cm 3 ). the mixture was bubbled with nitrogen gas for 75 mins . against a flow of nitrogen , solid tetrakis ( triphenylphosphine ) palladium ( 0 . 040 g , 0 . 036 mmol ) was added to the mixture . the mixture was then heated to reflux under nitrogen . on reaching reflux the suspension clarified , turning from a yellow suspension to an orange mixture . the mixture was kept at reflux under nitrogen for 14 . 5 hrs and then cooled to room temperature . on cooling the reaction mixture to room temperature both phases were clear . the mixture was treated with dichloromethane ( 100 cm 3 ) and the organic phase was separated . the aqueous phase was washed with dichloromethane ( 2 × 50 cm 3 ). the combined organic extracts were washed with water ( 40 cm 3 ). the combined organic extracts were then dried with magnesium sulfate , filtered and concentrated in vacuo . the crude product was purified by chromatography on silica gel , eluent 1 : 1 dichloromethane / hexane . the product was isolated as a yellow powder ( 0 . 560 g , 90 %). 1 h nmr ( 300 mhz , cdcl 3 ): 8 . 1 - 7 . 4 ( 16h , m ), 7 . 4 - 7 . 3 ( 4h , m ), 7 . 2 - 7 . 1 ( 2h , m ), 7 . 0 - 6 . 7 ( 10h , m ), 5 . 79 ( 2h , d , j = 18 hz ), 5 . 30 ( ch 2 cl 2 ), 5 . 25 ( 2h , d , j = 11 hz ). es - ms : 860 . 20 ( mh + ). ea : found c , 63 . 55 ; h , 4 . 17 ; n , 4 . 97 ; irc 49 h 36 n 3 . ch 2 cl 2 requires c , 63 . 62 ; h , 4 . 06 ; n , 4 . 45 ; host material 1 ( 8 mg ), phosphorescent dopant 3 ( 8 wt %) and thiol 2 ( 1 . 8 mg ) were dissolved in 1 . 5 ml pure chloroform ( total concentration 5 - 7 mg ml − 1 ). an emissive layer was formed by spinning the solutions onto ito coated glass substrates ( previously cleaned by ultrasonication in commercial detergent and thorough rinsing with deionised water and plasma - treated in an emitech k1050x plasma unit ( process gas oxygen , 100 w , 2 min )). solutions were spun onto the substrates at 2000 rpm with acceleration 500 rs − 1 for a total of 30 s giving an emissive layer of thickness ca 50 nm . films were then photopolymerized under an inert atmosphere ( n 2 ) using a hanovir uva 250w uv source . the films were irradiated for 6 - 8 minutes through a 5 ″× 5 ″ glass photo mask ( cut - off 360 nm ) giving a rectangular exposed area 15 mm × 20 mm . the photopolymerized films were developed by rinsing with pure toluene , dried under a stream of dry nitrogen and transferred to the evaporator ( kurt j lesker ) for completion of the oled by evaporation of a 50 nm thick electron transporting layer / hole blocking layer tpbi ( illustrated below ) and a top electrode ( cathode ) of a bilayer of lif ( 1 . 2 nm ) and aluminium ( 100 - 150 nm ). the overlap between the anode and the cathode define active areas consisting of 6 pixels measuring 4 mm × 5 mm . for the purpose of comparison , an identical device was made except that 7 wt % of ir ( ppy ) 3 ( 3 ) was used in place of polymerisable material ( 6 ). operat - max . cie ing turn - on luminance coor - efficiency efficiency voltage voltage ( cd / m 2 ) dinates dopant ( cd / a ) ( lm / w ) ( v ) ( v ) (@ v ) ( x , y ) 3 8 . 22 3 . 49 7 . 4 5 . 2 911 0 . 33 , ( 10 . 0 ) 0 . 61 6 22 . 6 12 . 5 5 . 7 4 . 4 2311 0 . 34 , ( 10 . 0 ) 0 . 61 as can be seen from these results , the device made in accordance with the method of the invention shows dramatic improvement in many aspects of performance . without wishing to be bound by any theory , it is believed that the advantage of the invention derives from the light emitting group being immobilised on the polymer chain which prevents it from being washed out of the host matrix . furthermore , fixing both the emitter and host material within a polymer backbone may contribute to improved efficiency due to the emitter and host material being set at a fixed distance from each other . furthermore , the present inventors have found that good resolution can be achieved by use of a thiol - ene photo - patterned polymer . although the present invention has been described in terms of specific exemplary embodiments , it will be appreciated that various modifications , alterations and / or combinations of features disclosed herein will be apparent to those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the following claims . | 8 |
when a copper foil is made by a process which involves a high reduction ratio or formation of fine grains to produce a developed cube texture , the foil &# 39 ; s flex fatigue property is improved , but its softening temperature becomes too low . however , judicious control of trace constituents in the material to raise the softening temperature will enable the resulting copper foil to have an adequate softening temperature . the expression “ adequate softening temperature ” as used herein may be defined by two conditions : ( 1 ) while the tensile strength of an as - rolled copper foil is in the range of 400 - 500 n / mm 2 , the foil should retain a tensile strength of not less than 300 n / mm 2 after standing at 30 ° c . for one year . ( 2 ) the copper foil should soften upon heat treatment either after roughing plating and cutting into the desired size , or at the time of adhering to the resin substrate . the temperature corresponds to the range of 120 - 150 ° c . in terms of the half - softening temperature obtained by annealing for 30 minutes ( the annealing temperature at the point where the tensile strength is intermediate between that before the annealing and that at complete softening ). the present inventors have now found that ag is the most suitable element for controlling ingot fabrication by melting so that the tough - pitch copper foil manufactured by a process which imparts excellent flex property can have a softening temperature within the target range . the reasons will be explained in more detail below . ( 1 ) elements less noble than cu oxidize upon addition to the latter and their concentrations can hardly be controlled in a stable manner . on the other hand , ag is more noble than cu and its concentration is easier to control . ( 2 ) elements added to cu show much greater softening - inhibiting effects in the state of solid solutions than in the state of precipitates . for example , in the case of an element such as s whose solubility in solid cu is low and is widely variable with temperature , annealing causes a solid solution / precipitation reaction of the added element , and the reaction materially influences the softening property of the product . in order to control the softening temperature , therefore , it is necessary to adjust not only the amount of the element to be added but also the solid solution / precipitation reaction . the solubility of ag in cu is high , on the order of 0 . 1 wt % at 200 ° c ., and , even if it is added in a considerable amount , ag remains in the form of a solid solution in cu . this means that adjusting only the amount to be added makes it possible to control the softening temperature . ( 3 ) generally the electrical conductivity of cu is decreased by the addition of an element . ag is exceptional in that its addition does not lower the conductivity of cu . ( 4 ) some elements , when added to cu , hamper the development of a cube texture upon annealing and thereby deteriorate the flex fatigue property of the product . ag , even when added in an amount of as much as several hundred parts per million , does not inhibit the cube texture development . as stated above , the present invention is primarily aimed at controlling the softening temperature of the resulting foil within a suitable range through the addition of ag to ordinary tough - pitch copper . more precise control of the softening temperature is made possible by restricting the contents of impurities other than ag in the tough - pitch copper below predetermined levels . the grounds on which various limitations are specified for the rolled copper foil according to the invention will be explained below . under the invention the rolled copper foil is intended to retain a tensile strength of not less than 300 n / mm 2 continuously at room temperature . more desirably the foil is intended to possess a tensile strength of not less than 300 n / mm 2 even after storage for one year at 30 ° c . here 30 ° c . corresponds to a temperature above the average annual temperature in japan . the expression “ continuously ” used for the storage period before the copper foil is fabricated into fpcs means that the foil is usually stored continuously , for one 2 year at the most . with a tensile strength of 300 n / mm or more , the copper foil has no wrinkling or other trouble during fabrication . there is practically no problem , therefore , when the copper foil is capable of retaining a tensile strength of not less than 300 n / mm 2 when allowed to stand at 30 ° c . for one year . such softening property corresponds , in terms of the half - softening temperature obtained by annealing for 30 minutes , to a temperature of 120 ° c . or upwards . however , when the half - softening temperature by 30 - minute annealing exceeds 150 ° c ., the copper foil is sometimes not softened by the heat treatment either after the roughing plating and cutting into a desired size , or at the time of adhering to the resin substrate . that is why the half - softening temperature by 30 - minute annealing is specified to be in the range of 120 - 150 ° c . if the resulting fpc is to have an enhanced flex fatigue property , the copper foil must itself have an enhanced flex fatigue property . the copper foil is incorporated in a recrystallized state in the fpc , and if the cube texture as a recrystallization texture of pure cu is allowed to develop , the copper foil attains an improved flex fatigue property . the degree of development of the cube texture that produces satisfactory flex fatigue property is specified to be such that the intensity of the ( 200 ) plane determined by x - ray diffraction of the rolled surface is i / i 0 & gt ; 20 , preferably i / i o & gt ; 40 . 0 , with respect to the x - ray diffraction intensity ( i o ) of the ( 200 ) plane of fine copper powder . here the annealing at 200 ° c . for 30 minutes is conducted to recrystallize the copper foil for the measurement of its x - ray diffraction intensity . the ag content is specified to be 0 . 0100 - 0 . 0400 wt % in order to raise the half - softening temperature of the copper foil to an appropriate range , which half - softening temperature has fallen in the course of manufacture for developing its cube texture , to an appropriate range . if the ag concentration is less than 0 . 0100 wt %, the half - softening temperature falls below 120 ° c ., whereas a concentration beyond 0 . 0400 wt % raises the temperature above 150 ° c . s , as , sb , bi , se , te , pb , and sn are impurities usually contained in tough - pitch copper , with relatively large effect upon its half - softening temperature . when the half - softening temperature is controlled by the addition of ag , the control is made easier by restricting the concentrations of these impurities within low levels . since these impurities mostly originate from the electrolytic copper used as the material for tough - pitch copper foil , the impurity content of the electrolytic copper should be adjusted so as to control the impurity concentrations in the product . it is desirable that the amount in total of one or more elements selected from the group consisting of s , as , sb , bi , se , te , pb , and sn should not be more than 0 . 0030 wt %. if the amount exceeds 0 . 0030 wt %, the half - softening temperature will vary greatly , even when the ag concentration remains the same . the half - softening temperature can rise above 150 ° c . depending on the ag concentration . oxygen - free copper of ordinary purity is known to have a remarkably higher softening temperature than tough - pitch copper because of its lower oxygen concentration . excess oxygen contained in tough - pitch copper forms an inclusion of cu 2 o . according to the invention , the oxygen concentration is confined within the range of 0 . 0100 - 0 . 0500 wt %, since the addition of ag where the oxygen concentration is less than 0 . 0100 wt % boosts the half - softening temperature beyond 150 ° c ., and since the addition of ag where the oxygen concentration is in excess of 0 . 0500 wt % increases the cu 2 o inclusion , and thereby lowers the flex fatigue property of the product . as for the thickness of a copper foil , the thinner the foil the better the flex fatigue property because of the lower strain produced around the bend . if the foil is more than 50 microns thick , the desired flex fatigue property will not be attained even when cube texture is developed . conversely , if the thickness is less than 5 microns , the foil becomes difficult to handle since insufficient strength can cause rupture or other failure . hence the specified foil thickness range is 5 - 50 microns . the copper foil according to the present invention is finished as such by cold rolling to a reduction ratio in excess of 90 . 0 %, following recrystallization annealing under conditions that produce a mean grain diameter of not greater than 20 microns . if the mean diameter upon the annealing that precedes the rolling is more than 20 microns , or if the reduction ratio is less than 90 . 0 %, then i / i o & lt ; 20 , and a favorable flex fatigue property will not be achieved . the annealing before the final cold rolling may be combined with hot rolling , in which case it is desirable to adjust the foil grain size as hot rolled to a value not greater than 20 microns . [ 0039 ] fig1 is a schematic view of a flex tester used to determine the flex fatigue life of test foils ; and [ 0040 ] fig2 is a graph showing the relation between ag concentration and half - softening temperature . the invention will be more fully described below as embodied in example nos . 1 - 18 . copper ingots of the compositions shown in table 1 , each measuring 200 mm thick and 600 mm wide , were made and then hot rolled to a thickness of 10 mm each . annealing and cold rolling were then repeated and sheets of to mm thickness as rolled were obtained . the sheets were annealed and recrystallized and , after the removal of oxide scale , they were cold rolled to a desired thickness of t mm . the reduction ratio r by the final cold rolling is given by after the annealing before the final cold rolling the annealed grain diameter was determined by counting the intercept of straight line at the grain boundary on the transverse cross section . with test specimens of copper foils thus produced under varied process annealing conditions and at varied final rolling reduction ratios , their properties were evaluated as below . each specimen was heated at 200 ° c . for 30 minutes , and the integrated value of intensity ( i ) of the ( 200 ) plane as determined by x - ray diffraction of the rolled surface was found . the value was divided by the predetermined integrated value of intensity ( i o ) of the ( 200 ) plane of a fine copper powder to calculate the i / i o . the integrated value of peak intensity was measured using a co x - ray tube within the range of 2θ = 57 ˜ 63 ° ( θ = diffraction angle ). each specimen was heated at 200 ° c . for 30 minutes for recrystallization , and then its flex fatigue life was determined using a flex tester illustrated in fig1 . the tester comprises a vibration drive unit 4 and a vibration transmitting member 3 connected to the drive unit . a test foil 1 is fixed in place at a total of four points indicated by arrows ; at the ends of screws 2 and at the lower end of the member 3 . as the vibrating member 3 is driven up and down , intermediate portions of the foil 1 are bent like hairpins at a given radius of curvature r . in the test under review , the number of flex cycles to failure was counted by repeating the bending under the following conditions : the width of test specimen = 12 . 7 mm ; length of specimen 200 mm ; sampling direction = each specimen was cut off so that its length was parallel to the direction of rolling ; radius of curvature r = 2 . 5 mm ; vibration stroke = 25 mm ; and vibration speed 1500 vibrations / min . when the flex fatigue life exceeded 30 , 00 flex cycles , the specimen was deemed to have an excellent flex fatigue property . the test was an accelerated test , conducted under conditions more severe than when the fpcs are actually in service . test specimens were annealed for 30 minutes at varied temperatures and then tested for tensile strength . the annealing temperature at which the tensile strength value was intermediate between the as - rolled tensile strength and the tensile strength of the specimen completely softened by annealing at 300 ° c . for 30 minutes was determined . when a specimen showed a half - softening temperature in the range of 120 - 150 ° c . it was judged to possess adequate softening property . test materials as rolled were stored in a thermostat kept at 30 ° c . they were tested for tensile strength monthly after the start of storage , and the periods in which their tensile strength values declined below 300 n / mm 2 were determined . the evaluation was performed up to a total period of 12 months . table 2 summarizes the histories of working and properties of the copper foils tested . the rolled copper foils according to the invention exhibited i / i o values of greater than 20 owing to the development of cube texture by annealing . consequently they showed an excellent flex fatigue life of more than 30 , 000 flex cycles . their softening temperatures came within the target range of 120 - 150 ° c ., and their tensile strength values after one - year storage at room temperature ( 30 ° c .) were still in excess of 300 n / mm 2 . on the other hand , the specimens of comparative example nos . 1 and 2 with low ag concentrations of less than 0 . 0100 % had low half - softening temperatures below 120 ° c . when they were stored at 30 ° c ., their tensile strength values decreased below 300 n / mm 2 within one year . the specimens of comparative example nos . 3 to 5 showed , respectively , a high ag concentration above 0 . 0400 wt %, a total content of impurities , i . e ., s , as , sb , bi , se , te , pb , and sn , exceeding 0 . 0030 wt %, and an oxygen concentration below 0 . 0100 wt %. the specimens , therefore , had half - softening temperatures of higher than 150 ° c . and posed a serious possibility of not being recrystallized during the course of fpc fabrication . comparative example no . 6 , with an oxygen concentration exceeding 0 . 0500 wt % and an increased cu 2 o inclusion , showed a low flex fatigue property of fewer than 30 , 000 flex cycles despite a well developed cube texture . comparative example no . 7 had a pre - rolling grain diameter of over 20 microns and comparative example no . 8 had a rolling reduction ratio of less than 90 . 0 %. both specimens , therefore , had i / i o values on the ( 200 ) plane of less than 20 . 0 , and a short flex life of less than 30 , 000 flex cycles . moreover , because the plastic strains built up by rolling are limited , their half - softening temperatures were in excess of 150 ° c . comparative example no . 9 had a thickness greater than 50 microns and therefore , despite a developed cube texture , the number of flex cycles was less than 30 , 000 . in fig2 is graphically represented the relation between the ag concentration and half - softening temperature of example nos . 1 - 7 of this invention and comparative example nos . 2 - 3 , all made by the same process with the same composition except that the ag concentration was varied . it can be seen that the larger the ag concentration , the higher the half - softening temperature , and that the ag concentration range of 0 . 0100 - 0 . 04000 wt % allows the target half - softening temperatures of 120 - 150 ° c . to be attained . the rolled copper foil for flexible printed circuits according to the present invention possesses an excellent flex fatigue property and also has an adequate half - softening temperature . since it does not soften while in storage or upon annealing , the rolled copper foil is desirably workable for fabrication into flexible printed circuits . needless to say , the copper foil is suitable as well for applications other than fpcs , such as electrodes of lithium ion secondary batteries . | 8 |
the present invention is directed generally to compositions and their use in the therapy and prevention of abnormal cellular proliferative disorders , such as cancer , ( i . e . lung and colon cancer ), restenosis ( following angioplasy , vascular stent placement , coronary artery stent placement , periphaeral artery stent placement , or cerebral artery stent placement ), pulmonary hypertension ( primary or secondary ), and pulmonary fibrosis . the administration of therapeutic levels of the o - acylated heparin derivatives result in a decrease , cessation , or prevention of the abnormal cellular proliferation . as described further below , compositions useful in the present invention include , but are not restricted to , o - acylated heparins , particularly o - hexanoylated heparin derivatives and o - butanoylated heparin derivatives . o - acylated heparins are prepared using any of a variety of well known synthetic and / or recombinant techniques , an example of which is further described below . furthermore , o - acylated heparins , useful in the present invention , have been described in barzu et al ., j . med . chem , 1993 , 36 , 3546 - 3555 and u . s . pat . no . 4 , 990 , 502 ( lormeau et al .). the structure of the o - acylated heparin derivatives used in the present invention are shown in fig3 . preferably , the major disaccharide units ( m ) vary from about 4 to about 14 . most preferably the major disaccharide units ( m ) vary from about 7 to about 9 . in the o - hexanoylated derivative , r ═ ch 3 ( ch 2 ) 4 - in the o - butanoylated derivative , r ═ ch 3 ( ch 2 ) 2 - . low - molecular weight heparins ( lmwhs ) are fragments of conventional heparin . lmwhs were developed to provide more selective inhibition of enzyme function and reduce adverse effects . heparin fragmentation produces products which maintain activity against factor x a and release antithrombotic factors , but have significantly less activity against factor ii a . as a result , treatment with lmwhs provides antithrombotic effects with less anticoagulant effect , lessening the risk of hemorrhage . however , in the generic sense , lmwhs have not proven beneficial in the treatment of cancer due to their high anticoagulant activity . the heparins of the present invention can be administered via any medically acceptable means which is suitable for the compound to be administered , including oral , rectal , topical , parenteral ( including inhaled , subcutaneous , intramuscular and intravenous ) administration , or by coated stent , coated graft , or coated catheter . effective doses for heparin - like substances are well known to those of skill in the art . generally , for heparin - like substances , an effective dose is that which maintains the anti - x a level between 0 . 5 and 1 . 0 units / ml . this range has been shown to optimize antithrombotic activity while avoiding adverse effects . the total daily dose may be given as a single dose , multiple doses , e . g ., two to six times per day , or by intravenous infusion for a selected duration . dosages above or below the range cited above are within the scope of the present invention and may be administered to the individual patient if desired and necessary . if discrete multiple doses are indicated , treatment might typically be 4 - 6 , 000 units of a compound given 4 times per day or if given continuously , as is more often the case , then a loading dose of 80 units / kg followed by 18 units / kg / hr ( rascke r a , reilly b m , guidry j r , et al . the weigh based heparin dosing nomogram compared with a “ standard care ” nomogram : a randomized control trial . ann int med 119 : 874 - 81 , 1993 ). the compounds described above are preferably administered in a formulation including an o - acylated heparin and / or an o - acylated heparin - together with an acceptable carrier for the mode of administration . any formulation or drug delivery system containing the active ingredients , which is suitable for the intended use , as are generally known to those of skill in the art , can be used . suitable pharmaceutically acceptable carriers for oral , rectal , topical or parenteral ( including inhaled , subcutaneous , intraperitoneal , intramuscular and intravenous ) administration are known to those of skill in the art . the carrier must be pharmaceutically acceptable in the sense of being compatible with the other ingredients of the formulation and not deleterious to the recipient thereof . formulations suitable for parenteral administration conveniently include sterile aqueous preparation of the active compound which is preferably isotonic with the blood of the recipient . thus , such formulations may conveniently contain distilled water , 5 % dextrose in distilled water or saline . useful formulations also include concentrated solutions or solids containing the compound which upon dilution with an appropriate solvent give a solution suitable for parental administration above . for enteral administration , a compound can be incorporated into an inert carrier in discrete units such as capsules , cachets , tablets or lozenges , each containing a predetermined amount of the active compound ; as a powder or granules ; or a suspension or solution in an aqueous liquid or non - aqueous liquid , e . g ., a syrup , an elixir , an emulsion or a draught . suitable carriers may be starches or sugars and include lubricants , flavorings , binders , and other materials of the same nature . a tablet may be made by compression or molding , optionally with one or more accessory ingredients . compressed tablets may be prepared by compressing in a suitable machine the active compound in a free - flowing form , e . g ., a powder or granules , optionally mixed with accessory ingredients , e . g ., binders , lubricants , inert diluents , surface active or dispersing agents . molded tablets may be made by molding in a suitable machine , a mixture of the powdered active compound with any suitable carrier . a syrup or suspension may be made by adding the active compound to a concentrated , aqueous solution of a sugar , e . g ., sucrose , to which may also be added any accessory ingredients . such accessory ingredients may include flavoring , an agent to retard crystallization of the sugar or an agent to increase the solubility of any other ingredient , e . g ., as a polyhydric alcohol , for example , glycerol or sorbitol . formulations for rectal administration may be presented as a suppository with a conventional carrier , e . g ., cocoa butter or witepsol s55 ( trademark of dynamite nobel chemical , germany ), for a suppository base . alternatively , the compound may be administered in liposomes or microspheres ( or microparticles ). methods for preparing liposomes and microspheres for administration to a patient are well known to those of skill in the art . u . s . pat . no . 4 , 789 , 734 , the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference , describes methods for encapsulating biological materials in liposomes . essentially , the material is dissolved in an aqueous solution , the appropriate phospholipids and lipids added , along with surfactants if required , and the material dialyzed or sonicated , as necessary . a review of known methods is provided by g . gregoriadis , chapter 14 , “ liposomes ,” drug carriers in biology and medicine , pp . 287 - 341 ( academic press , 1979 ). microspheres formed of polymers or proteins are well known to those skilled in the art , and can be tailored for passage through the gastrointestinal tract directly into the blood stream . alternatively , the compound can be incorporated and the microspheres , or composite of microspheres , implanted for slow release over a period of time ranging from days to months . see , for example , u . s . pat . nos . 4 , 906 , 474 , 4 , 925 , 673 and 3 , 625 , 214 , and jein , tips 19 : 155 - 157 ( 1998 ), the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference . in one embodiment , the o - acylated heparin can be formulated into a liposome or microparticle which is suitably sized to lodge in capillary beds following intravenous administration . when the liposome or microparticle is lodged in the capillary beds surrounding ischemic tissue , the agents can be administered locally to the site at which they can be most effective . suitable liposomes for targeting ischemic tissue are generally less than about 200 nanometers and are also typically unilamellar vesicles , as disclosed , for example , in u . s . pat . no . 5 , 593 , 688 to baldeschweiler , entitled “ liposomal targeting of ischemic tissue ,” the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference . preferred microparticles are those prepared from biodegradable polymers , such as polyglycolide , polylactide and copolymers thereof . those of skill in the art can readily determine an appropriate carrier system depending on various factors , including the desired rate of drug release and the desired dosage . in one embodiment , the formulations are administered via catheter directly to the inside of blood vessels . the administration can occur , for example , through holes in the catheter . in those embodiments wherein the active compounds have a relatively long half life ( on the order of 1 day to a week or more ), the formulations can be included in biodegradable polymeric hydrogels , such as those disclosed in u . s . pat . no . 5 , 410 , 016 to hubbell et al . these polymeric hydrogels can be delivered to the inside of a tissue lumen and the active compounds released over time as the polymer degrades . if desirable , the polymeric hydrogels can have microparticles or liposomes which include the active compound dispersed therein , providing another mechanism for the controlled release of the active compounds . the formulations may conveniently be presented in unit dosage form and may be prepared by any of the methods well known in the art of pharmacy . all methods include the step of bringing the active compound into association with a carrier which constitutes one or more accessory ingredients . in general , the formulations are prepared by uniformly and intimately bringing the active compound into association with a liquid carrier or a finely divided solid carrier and then , if necessary , shaping the product into desired unit dosage form . the formulations can optionally include additional components , such as various biologically active substances such as growth factors ( including tgfβ , basic fibroblast growth factor ( bfgf ), epithelial growth factor ( egf ), transforming growth factors alpha and beta ( tgfα and tgfβ ), nerve growth factor ( ngf ), platelet - derived growth factor ( pdgf ), and vascular endothelial growth factor / vascular permeability factor ( vegf / vpf ), antivirals , antibacterials , antiinflammatories , immunosuppressants , analgesics , vascularizing agents , cell adhesion molecules ( cam &# 39 ; s ), and anticoagulants other than heparin or heparin - like substances . in addition to the aforementioned ingredients , the formulations may further include one or more optional accessory ingredient ( s ) utilized in the art of pharmaceutical formulations , e . g ., diluents , buffers , flavoring agents , binders , surface active agents , thickeners , lubricants , suspending agents , preservatives ( including antioxidants ) and the like . finally , compositions of the compound are presented for administration to the respiratory tract as a snuff or an aerosol or solution for a nebulizer , or as a microfine powder for insufflation , alone or in combination with an inert carrier such as lactose . in such a case the particles of active compound suitably have diameters of less than 50 microns , preferably less than 10 microns , more preferably between 2 and 5 microns . the present invention further provides an intravascular implant coating . the coating includes a therapeutically effective amount of an o - acylated heparin . the coating can be used in any type of implant . these include balloon catheters , stents , stent graphs , drug delivery catheters , atherectomy devices , filters , scaffolding devices , anastomothic clips , anastomotic bridges and suture materials . the coating can also include a polymer matrix , with the polymer being a resorbable polymer selected from the group consisting of poly - α hydroxyl acids , polyglycols , polytyrosine carbonates , starch , gelatins , cellulose , and blends and copolymers thereof . examples of suitable poly - α hydroxyl acids include polylactides , polyglycol acids , and blends and co - polymers thereof . according to the present invention , a coating for an intravascular implant is provided . the coating can be applied either alone , or within a polymeric matrix , which can be biostable or bioabsorbable , to the surface of an intravascular device . the coating can be applied directed to the implant or on top of a polymeric substrate , i . e . a primer . if desired , a top coat can be applied to the therapeutic coating . it should be noted that the present invention relates to a combinatorial therapy for delivery of more than one agent through a coating on any intravascular implant . as used herein , implant means any type of medical or surgical implement , whether temporary or permanent . delivery can be either during or after an interventional procedure . non - limiting examples of intravascular implants now follow . the outside surface of a balloon catheter may be coated with the coating according to the present invention and could be released immediately or in a time dependent fashion . when the balloon expands and the wall of the vessel is in contact with the balloon , the release of the o - acylated heparin can begin . the surface of a stent may be coated with the combination of agents and the stent is implanted inside the body . the stent struts could be loaded with several layers of the agents or with just a single layer . a transporter or a vehicle to load the agents on to the surface can also be applied to the stent . the graft material of the stent graft can also be coated ( in addition to the stent or as an alternative ) so that the material is transported intravascularly at the site of the location of the injury . the drug delivery catheters that are used to inject drugs and other agents intravascularly can also be used to deliver the o - acylated heparins . other intravascular devices through which the transport can happen include atherectomy devices , filters , scaffolding devices , anastomotic clips , anastomotic bridges , suture materials etc . the present invention envisions applying the coating directly to the intravascular implant . however , the coating can be applied to a primer , i . e . a layer or film of material upon which another coating is applied . furthermore , the o - acylated heparins can be incorporated in a polymer matrix . polymeric matrices ( resorbable and biostable ) can be used for delivery of the therapeutic agents . in some situations , when the agents are loaded on to the implant , there is a risk of quick erosion of the therapeutic agents either during the expansion process or during the phase during which the blood flow is at high shear rates at the time of implantation . in order to ensure that the therapeutic window of the agents is prolonged over - extended periods of time , polymer matrices can be used . these polymers could be any one of the following : semitelechelic polymers for drug delivery , thermo responsive polymeric micelles for targeted drug delivery , ph or temperature sensitive polymers for drug delivery , peptide and protein based drug delivery , water insoluble drug complex drug delivery matrices polychelating amphiphilic polymers for drug delivery , bioconjugation of biodegradable poly lactic / glycolic acid for delivery , elastin mimetic protein networks for delivery , generically engineered protein domains for drug delivery , superporbus hydrogel composites for drug delivery , interpenetrating polymeric networks for drug delivery , hyaluronic acid based delivery of drugs , photocrosslinked polyanhydrides with controlled hydrolytic delivery , cytokine - incuding macromolecular glycolipids based delivery , cationic polysaccharides for topical delivery , n - halamine polymer coatings for drug delivery , dextran based coatings for drug delivery , fluorescent molecules for drug delivery , self - etching polymerization initiating primes for drug delivery , and bioactive composites based drug delivery . one embodiment of the present invention discloses an implant , e . g ., a stent for implantation into a body , e . g ., blood vessel . the implant comprises a coating of o - acylated heparin or o - acylated heparin in combination with one or more compounds selected from the group consisting of ( but not limited to ) a polymer , fiber polymer , polyurethane , silicone rubber elastomer , drug , hydrogel , or other acceptable compound or carrier known to those of skill in the art . methods of coating an implant such as a stent with heparin or heparin in combination with one or more of the compounds listed above , are known to those of skill in the art and are further described below and in the examples . alternatively , o - acylated heparins of the present invention may be coated alone or in combination with the above polymer , fiber polymer , polyurethane , silicone rubber elastomer , drug , hydrogel , or other acceptable compound or carrier known to those of skill in the art onto a bypass graft . the implant , e . g ., graft or stent may be used in the treatment of peripheral artery atherosclerosis disease ( pad ). whereas the polymer of the coating may be any compatible biostable material capable of being adhered to the stent material as a thin layer , hydrophobic materials are preferred because it has been found that the release of the biologically active species can generally be more predictably controlled with such materials . preferred materials include silicone rubber elastomers and biostable polyurethanes . heparin - loaded polymer can be applied by spraying or by dipping the stent graft into a solution or melt , as disclosed , for example , in u . s . pat . nos . 5 , 383 , 922 , 5 , 824 , 048 , 5 , 624 , 411 and 5 , 733 , 327 . additional methods for providing a drug - loaded polymer are disclosed in u . s . pat . nos . 5 , 637 , 113 and 5 , 766 , 710 , where a pre - fabricated film is attached to the stent . other methods , such as deposition via photo polymerization , plasma polymerization and the like , are also known in the art and are described in , e . g ., u . s . pat . nos . 3 , 525 , 745 , 5 , 609 , 629 and 5 , 824 , 049 and in the below examples . u . s . pat . no . 5 , 549 , 663 discloses a stent graft having a coating made of polyurethane fibers which are applied using conventional wet spinning techniques . prior to the covering process , a medication is introduced into the polymer . alternatively , a metallic stent cam be coated with a polymeric material and load the polymeric material with a drug . the figures have not been drawn to scale , and the dimensions such as depth and thickness of the various regions and layers have been over or under emphasized for illustrative purposes . referring to fig2 a and 23b , a stent 10 is formed from a plurality of struts 12 . struts 12 are separated by gaps 14 and may be interconnected by connecting elements 16 . struts 12 can be connected in any suitable configuration and pattern to form an a tubular body . while a strut configuration is illustrated , any known stent configuration may be used . stent 10 is illustrated having an outer surface or sidewall 18 ( tissue - contacting surface ) and an inner surface 20 ( blood - contacting surface ). a hollow , central bore 22 extends longitudinally from a first open end 24 to a second end 26 of stent 10 . fig2 illustrates stent 10 coated in accordance with the present invention . the stent may have a first coating 28 containing an o - acylated heparin on inner surface 20 and / or a second coating 32 containing an o - acylated heparin formed on outer surface 18 of stent 10 . the coatings can be of any suitable thickness . the thickness of second coating 32 can be from about 0 . 1 - 15 microns , more narrowly from about 3 microns to about 8 microns . by way of example , second coating 32 can have a thickness of about 4 microns . in another embodiment of the present invention , methods are disclosed for the treatment and or prevention of cancer . therapeutic amounts of o - acylated heparin , particularly o - hexanoylated heparin derivatives and o - butanoylated heparin derivatives are given to a patient alone or in combination with other cancer therapies , known to those of skill in the art . compounds may be administered before , at the same time as , or after the administration of other conventional cancer therapies . o - acylated heparins of the present invention may be given prior to the diagnosis of cancer , such as in the case of a patient having a high - risk of developing cancer , or after the successful treatment of cancer ( ie . remission ). the compounds of the present invention may also be administered with the goal of reducing metastases . examples of tumors which may be inhibited , but are not limited to , lung cancer ( e . g . adenocarcinoma , small cell , and including non - small cell lung cancer ), pancreatic cancers ( e . g . pancreatic carcinoma such as , for example exocrine pancreatic carcinoma ), colon cancers ( e . g . colorectal carcinomas , such as , for example , colon adenocarcinoma and colon adenoma ), prostate cancer including the advanced disease , hematopoietic tumors of lymphoid lineage ( e . g . acute lymphocytic leukemia , b - cell lymphoma , burkitt &# 39 ; s lymphoma ), myeloid leukemias ( for example , acute myelogenous leukemia ( aml )), thyroid follicular cancer , myelodysplastic syndrome ( mds ), tumors of mesenchymal origin ( e . g . fibrosarcomas and rhabdomyosarcomas ), melanomas , teratocarcinomas , neuroblastomas , gliomas , benign tumor of the skin ( e . g . keratoacanthomas ), breast carcinoma ( e . g . advanced breast cancer ), kidney carcinoma , ovary carcinoma , bladder carcinoma and epidermal carcinoma . for the treatment of the above conditions , the compound of the invention may be advantageously employed in combination with one or more other medicinal agents such as anti - cancer agents . for example , o - acylated heparins of the invention may be given in combination with one or more compounds selected from platinum coordination compounds for example cisplatin or carboplatin , taxane compounds for example paclitaxel or docetaxel , camptothecin compounds for example irinotecan or topotecan , anti - tumor vinca alkaloids for example vinblastine , vincristine or vinorelbine , anti - tumor nucleoside derivatives for example 5 - fluorouracil , gemcitabine or capecitabine , nitrogen mustard or nitrosourea alkylating agents for example cyclophosphamide , chlorambucil , carmustine or lomustine , anti - tumor anthracycline derivatives for example daunorubicin , doxorubicin or idarubicin ; her2 antibodies for example trastzumab ; and antitumor podophyllotoxin derivatives for example etoposide or teniposide ; and antiestrogen agents including estrogen receptor antagonists or selective estrogen receptor modulators preferably tamoxifen , or alternatively toremifene , droloxifene , faslodex and raloxifene , or aromatase inhibitors such as exemestane , anastrozole , letrazole and vorozole . the methods of the present invention can be used to treat disorders wherein smooth muscle cells abnormally proliferate . such conditions include , but are not limited to , restenosis ( following angioplasy , vascular stent placement , coronary artery stent placement , peripheral artery stent placement , or cerebral artery stent placement ), pulmonary hypertension , and pulmonary fibrosis . we have shown that heparin can inhibit fibroblast proliferation ( dahlberg et al . am rev . respir . dis . 143 : a357 , 1993 ) and can inhibit pulmonary fibrosis in the rat in response to bleomycin . we also have unpublished data showing hexanoylated and butanoylated heparins , which have virtually no anticoagulant property , can also inhibit fibroblast proliferation and thus may offer a potent therapeutic agent for human pulmonary fibrosis . the methods of the invention provide for the treatment ( reduction or cessation ) or prevention of disorders wherein smooth muscle cells are abnormally proliferating . these methods include the administration of o - acylated heparin compounds , preferably o - hexanoylated or o - butanoylated heparin derivatives . administration of the compounds of the invention to treat and / or prevent aberrant smooth muscle cell proliferation are known to those skilled in the art and are presented above . preferably , o - acylated heparin is coated on an implantable stent , wherein the delivery of the heparin is controlled and sufficient to reduce or ablate aberrant smooth muscle cell proliferation . in yet another embodiment , the present invention is directed to the treatment and / or prevention of pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary fibrosis . preferably , o - acylated heparins of the invention are presented for administration to the respiratory tract as a snuff or an aerosol or solution for a nebulizer , or as a microfine powder for insufflation , alone or in combination with an inert carrier such as lactose . in such a case the particles of the active compound suitably have diameters of less than 50 microns , preferably less than 10 microns , more preferably between 2 and 5 microns . the methods of the present invention are directed to the treatment of both primary and secondary pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary fibrosis . in this example , we describe the synthesis of low molecular weight ( lmw ) heparin by periodate oxidation , its characterization , and its o - acylation . heparin was fragmented by periodate oxidation based on a modification of an earlier procedure ( described in u . s . pat . no . 4 , 990 , 502 ), wherein heparin sodium salt ( 20 g , 1 . 43 mmol ) was dissolved in 175 ml distilled water . the ph was adjusted to 5 . 0 using 1 n hcl . naio 4 ( 15 g , 0 . 070 mol ), dissolved in 500 ml water , was added in a single portion with stirring . the ph was readjusted to 5 . 0 using 1 n hcl and left for 24 hours at 4 ° c . in the dark . the solution was dialyzed against 4 volumes of water ( with one change of water ) for 15 h at 4 ° c . to the approximately 1 . 5 l solution obtained after dialysis , 32 ml of 10 n naoh was added . the solution was stirred at room temperature for 3 h . to prevent the development of colored products , this step was done in the dark . nabh 4 ( 1 g , 0 . 026 mol ) was added in one portion and the approximately 1 . 5 l of solution was stirred for 4 hours . the ph was then adjusted to 4 . 0 using 37 % hcl and the solution was stirred for an additional 15 min . the solution was neutralized to ph 7 . 0 using 1 n naoh , nacl ( 32 . 8 g , 0 . 56 mol ) followed by 2 . 54 l of ethanol . the solution was left for 3 h without stirring and the precipitate was recovered by centrifugation at 15000 rpm ( 22 , 000 × g ) for 20 min . the precipitate was recovered by decantation and suspended in 400 ml absolute ethanol . the solution was filtered using a buchner funnel and left to dry for 5 hours under vacuum affording 14 . 2 g of product . the product was dissolved in 190 ml of water . nacl ( 2 . 8 g , 0 . 05 mol ) was added and the ph was adjusted to 3 . 5 using 1 n hcl . the volume was adjusted to 280 ml using water . absolute ethanol ( 240 ml ) was added with stirring . the solution was stirred 15 min and then left without stirring for 10 hours at room temperature . after decanting , the precipitate was recovered and dissolved in water . the ethanol was removed by rotary evaporation under reduced pressure and freeze - dried affording ˜ 10 g of lmw heparin fragments ( fig1 ). for 1 h nmr spectroscopy , approximately 10 mg of each sample was exchanged by lyophilization three times from 0 . 5 ml portions of 99 . 9 % 2 h 2 o before being redissolved in 2 h 2 o for nmr analysis . chemical shifts are reported relative to tms at 0 . 00 ppm . the degree of substitution ( o - acylation ) was determined from the ratio of the integrated area of the peaks assigned to the aliphatic methyl protons of the hexanoyl group ( 0 . 753 ppm ) to the anomeric proton of idoa2s ( 5 . 092 ppm ) ( table 1 , fig2 ). gradient polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis ( page ) was performed on a 32 cm vertical slab gel unit protean ii equipped with model 1000 power source from bio - rad irichmond , calif .). polyacrylamide linear gradient resolving gels ( 14 × 28 cm ), 12 - 22 %) total acrylamide ) were prepared and run as previously described ( edens et al ., 1992 , j . pharm . sci . 81 , 823 - 827 ). the molecular sizes of the oligosaccharide samples were determined by comparing with a banding ladder of heparin oligosaccharide standards prepared from bovine lung heparin . oligosaccharides were visualized by alcian blue staining . the average mw of the product was determined to be 6 , 000 . lmw heparin and heparin standard were in diluted normal human plasma . chromogenic xa substract s - 2732 ( suc - i1c - glu ( gamma - piperidyl )- gly - arg - pna ) 2 . 9 mm in 50 mm tris , 7 . 5 μm edta , ph 8 . 4 buffer ( 200 μl ), was added to 25 μl of plasma containing sample and 200 μl of bovine factor xa ( 1 . 25 / ml ). after mixing , the reaction was incubated for 8 min . at 37 degrees celsius and 200 μl of 20 % aqueous acetic was added . residual factor xa was then determined by measuring absorbance at 405 nm . anti - factor iia activity was determined by incubating 50 ml of lmw heparin in nhp diluted 4 - fold with water with 50 ml of human thrombin ( 12 nih units / ml ) at 37 ° c . for 30 s . then 50 ml of ( 2 . 5 mmol / ml of chromogenic th ( ethylmalonyl - pro - aeg - p - nitroanilide hydrochloride ) was added , and the amidolytic thrombin activity was measured at 405 nm . measurements were performed on an acl 300 plus from instrumentation ( lexington , mass .) and calculated in comparison with usp heparin reference standard ( k - 3 ) supplied by u . s . pharmacopeial convention ( rockville , md .). the product exhibited no measurable anti - factor xa or anti - factor iia activity . ( 1 ) o - hexanoyl derivative of periodate - oxidized heparin fragments . these were obtained by treating the tributylaminmonium salt of periodate oxidized heparin fragments with hexanoic anhydride as described previously ( gohda et al ., 2001 , biomacromolecules , 2 ( 4 ): 1178 - 83 )( lormeau u . s . pat . no . 4 , 990 , 502 ). briefly , the tributylammonium salt ( 11 . 9 g ) was dissolved in dry dmf ( 114 ml ), kept under ar and cooled to 0 degrees celsius . 4 - dimethylaminopyridine ( 0 . 695 g , 5 . 69 mmol ), hexanoic anhydride ( 26 . 2 ml , 0 . 113 mol ), and tributylamine ( 227 ml , 0 . 113 mol ) were successively added in single portions , and the reaction was allowed to proceed under argon at room temperature for 24 hours . after cooling to 0 ° c ., 5 % nahco3 in water ( 227 ml ) was gradually added and the solution was stirred at room temperature for 48 h . excess nahco3 was eliminated by slow , dropwise addition of 1 n hcl (˜ 200 ml ) until ph4 was reached and then readjusted to ph 7 with 1 n naoh (˜ 150 ml ). cold denatured ( 95 %) ethanol ( 5l , 5 vol ) was added with stirring . the sample was allowed to sit overnight at 4 degrees celsius to afford precipitate . the precipitate was recovered by by decanting and dissolved in 0 . 2 m nacl ( 114 ml ), and the precipitation procedure was repeated by adding absolute ethanol ( 570 ml ). the precipitate was recovered by centrifugation at 15000 rpm for 20 minutes , dissolved in water ( 114 ml ), and passed through a column ( 300 ml ) of dowez 50wx8 ( h + ) cation - exchange resine and 600 ml was recovered . the acid was neutralized to ph 7 with 10 n naoh and the solution was filtered through a 0 . 22 μm millipore filter . after lyophilization , o - hexanoyl heparin oligosaccharides ( 7 . 12 g ) was obtained as an off - white powder ( fig3 ). this derivative was prepared from the tributylaminmonium salt of lmw heparin by treatment with butyric anhydride under the same condition as described for hexanoyl derivative ( see above ). o - acylated heparin derivatives can be coated on stents using the methods set forth in u . s . pat . no . 6 , 620 , 194 . the method is generally as follows . the application of the coating material to the stent is quite similar for all of the materials and the same for the heparin and one or more additional suspensions prepared as in the above examples . the suspension to be applied is transferred to an application device , typically a paint jar attached to an air brush , such as a badger model 150 , supplied with a source of pressurized air through a regulator ( norgren , 0 - 160 psi ). once the brush hose is attached to the source of compressed air downstream of the regulator , the air is applied . the pressure is adjusted to approximately 15 - 25 psi and the nozzle condition checked by depressing the trigger . any appropriate method can be used to secure the stent for spraying and rotating fixtures . both ends of the relaxed stent can be fastened to the fixture by two resilient retainers , commonly alligator clips , with the distance between the clips adjusted so that the stent remains in a relaxed , unstretched condition . the rotor is then energized and the spin speed adjusted to the desired coating speed , nominally about 40 rpm . with the stent rotating in a substantially horizontal plane , the spray nozzle is adjusted so that the distance from the nozzle to the stent is about 2 - 4 inches and the composition is sprayed substantially horizontally with the brush being directed along the stent from the distal end of the stent to the proximal end and then from the proximal end to the distal end in a sweeping motion at a speed such that one spray cycle occurs in about three stent rotations . typically a pause of less than one minute , normally about one - half minute , elapses between layers . of course , the number of coating layers will vary with the particular application . for example , for a coating level of 3 - 4 mg of heparin per cm . sup . 2 of projected area , 20 cycles of coating application should be required and about 30 ml of solution will be consumed for a 3 . 5 mm diameter by 14 . 5 cm long stent . the rotation speed of the motor , of course , can be adjusted as can the viscosity of the composition and the flow rate of the spray nozzle as desired to modify the layered structure . generally , with the above mixes , the best results will be obtained at rotational speeds in the range of 30 - 50 rpm and with a spray nozzle flow rate in the range of 4 - 10 ml of coating composition per minute , depending on the stent size . it is contemplated that a more sophisticated , computer - controlled coating apparatus will successfully automate the process demonstrated as feasible in the laboratory . the coated stent can be thereafter subjected to a curing step in which the pre - polymer and crosslinking agents cooperate to produce a cured polymer matrix containing the biologically active species . the curing process involves evaporation of the solvent xylene , thf , etc . and the curing and crosslinking of the polymer . certain silicone materials can be cured at relatively low temperatures , ( i . e . rt - 50 ° c .) in what is known as a room temperature vulcanization ( rtv ) process . more typically , however , the curing process involves higher temperature curing materials and the coated stents are put into an oven at approximately 90 ° c . or higher for approximately 16 hours . the temperature may be raised to as high as 150 ° c . for dexamethasone containing coated stents . of course , the time and temperature may vary with particular silicones , crosslinkers , and biologically active species . stents coated and cured in the manner described need to be sterilized prior to packaging for future implantation . for sterilization , gamma radiation is a preferred method particularly for heparin containing coatings ; however , it is possible that stents coated and cured according to the process of the invention subjected to gamma sterilization may be too slow to recover their original posture when delivered to a vascular or other lumen site using a catheter unless a pretreatment step as at 24 is first applied to the coated , cured stent . the pretreatment step can involve an argon plasma treatment of the coated , cured stent in the unconstrained configuration . in accordance with this procedure , the stents are placed in a chamber of a plasma surface treatment system such as a plasma science 350 ( himont / plasma science , foster city , calif .). the system is equipped with a reactor chamber and rf solid - state generator operating at 13 . 56 mhz and from 0 - 500 watts power output and being equipped with a microprocessor controlled system and a complete vacuum pump package . the reaction chamber contains an unimpeded work volume of 16 . 75 inches ( 42 . 55 cm ) by 13 . 5 inches ( 34 . 3 cm ) by 17 . 5 inches ( 44 . 45 cm ) in depth . in the plasma process , unconstrained coated stents are placed in a reactor chamber and the system is purged with nitrogen and a vacuum applied to 20 - 50 mtorr . thereafter , inert gas ( argon , helium or mixture of them ) is admitted to the reaction chamber for the plasma treatment . a highly preferred method of operation consists of using argon gas , operating at a power range from 200 to 400 watts , a flow rate of 150 - 650 standard ml per minute , which is equivalent to 100 - 450 mtorr , and an exposure time from 30 seconds to about 5 minutes . the stents can be removed immediately after the plasma treatment or remain in the argon atmosphere for an additional period of time , typically five minutes . after this , the stents can be exposed to gamma sterilization at 2 . 5 - 3 . 5 mrad . the radiation may be carried out with the stent in either the radially non - constrained status — or in the radially constrained status . with respect to the anticoagulant material heparin , the percentage in the tie layer is nominally from about 20 - 50 % and that of the top layer from about 0 - 30 % active material . the coating thickness ratio of the top layer to the tie layer varies from about 1 : 10 to 1 : 2 and is preferably in the range of from about 1 : 6 to 1 : 3 . suppressing the burst effect also enables a reduction in the drug loading or in other words , allows a reduction in the coating thickness , since the physician will give a bolus injection of antiplatelet / anticoagulation drugs to the patient during the stenting process . as a result , the drug imbedded in the stent can be fully used without waste . tailoring the first day release , but maximizing second day and third day release at the thinnest possible coating configuration will reduce the acute or subacute thrombosis . effect on smooth muscle cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo . hexanoylated lmw heparin significantly inhibited pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell proliferation in vivo ( fig4 ) and the development of pulmonary hypertension induced by hypoxia in pig lung ( fig5 ) in comparison to non - acylated heparin fragments , hexanoylated lmw heparin significantly enhanced the antiproliferative effect of bovine pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells in vitro . effect of o - acylation of heparin on tumor growth in vivo . as seen in fig6 - 10 , butanoylated heparin significantly inhibited the growth of both a549 non - small cell lung carcinoma and dms79 small cell lung carcinoma in scid mice ( fig6 - 10 ). in addition , fig1 and 12 demonstrate that butanoylated heparin significantly inhibited the growth of hct116 colonic carcinoma in scid mice . fig1 and 14 demonstrate that the above butanoylated heparin compounds exhibit very low anticoagulant effects ( compared to non - acylated controls ). butanoylated heparin had no toxic effect on heart , liver , kidney , and lung of the animals tested ( fig1 - 18 ). furthermore , the anti - tumor effect of butanoylated heparin is associated with the induction of apoptosis ( fig1 ). the mechanism by which butanoylated heparin inhibits tumor growth of lung cancer and coloncancer may involve p27 - and p21 - rb - e2f pahthway ( fig2 - 22 ). similar antiproliferative effects were seen with o - hexanoylated lmw heparin on anti - tumor cell growth in vitro . | 0 |
referring now in detail to the drawings and in particular to fig1 thereof , a windshield wiper assembly 10 , in accordance with one preferred embodiment of the present invention , is shown in operative association with the outer end of a windshield wiper arm 12 having an end fitting 14 mounted on the outer end thereof and adapted to be detachably secured to the assembly 10 . generally speaking , the assembly 10 comprises a bridge structure or section 16 that is connected at the opposite ends thereof to a flexor section 18 which functions to operatively carry an elongated wiper element 20 . as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art , upon pivotal or swinging movement of the wiper arm 12 , the assembly 10 is adapted to be biased concomitantly across a windshield surface or the like , whereby to remove excessive moisture therefrom . in accordance with one feature of the present invention , the flexor and bridge sections 18 and 16 , respectively , are of a one - piece monolythic molded construction , with the bridge section 16 comprising a central portion 22 and opposed end portions 24 and 26 . the end portions 24 , 26 are provided with connecting means c 1 and c 2 , respectively , which function to operatively connect the bridge section 16 to the flexor section 18 and provide for selected movement therebetween in a manner to be hereinafter described . the portions of the bridge section 16 intermediate the central portion 22 and end portions 24 , 26 , herein designated by the numerals 28 and 30 , are preferably of a generally circular shape , as best seen in fig2 whereby to enhance the anti - windlift characteristics of the wiper assembly 10 of the present invention . the central portion 22 is formed with an opening 32 which is of an elongated configuration and extends entirely through the portion 22 . the opening 32 is adapted to removably receive a reduced thickness portion 34 of the end fitting 14 on the wiper arm 12 in a manner best seen in fig1 and 14 . means for operatively securing the assembly 10 to the end fitting 14 is provided by a pivot pin or the like 36 which extends through aligned bores 38 and 40 formed in reduced thickness side portions 42 and 44 of the portion 22 , the pin 36 also extending through a bore or opening 46 formed in the end fitting 14 and aligned with the bore 38 , 40 , whereby to provide for relative pivotal movement of the assembly 10 on the outer end of the wiper arm 12 so that the wiper element 20 may conform with the surface of the windshield upon relative pivotal movement of the arm 12 . a slightly modified embodiment of the present invention is shown in fig1 and 16 wherein the side portions 42 , 44 of the bridge section 16 are formed with a pair of laterally inwardly projecting aligned bosses or shoulders 48 and 50 which are of a generally circular cylindrical configuration and are adapted to be removably received within the opposite ends of the bore 46 formed in the end fitting 14 . by virtue of the relatively flexible characteristics of the material from which the assembly consisting of the bridge and flexor sections is fabricated , the side portions 42 , 44 may be temporarily biased outwardly whereby to provide for insertion of the reduced thickness portion 34 of the end fitting 14 and hence operative insertion of the bosses 48 , 50 within the ends of the bore 46 . if desired , suitable integral reinforcing ribs 51 may be provided on the outer sides of the side portions 42 , 44 in order to provide for the requisite structural integrity and rigidity of the bridge section 16 and assure against inadvertent disassembly of the bosses 48 , 50 from within the associated bore 46 of the wiper arm end fitting 14 . referring now in detail to the construction of the flexor section 18 of the assembly 10 , in accordance with another inventive feature of the present invention , said section 18 comprises an elongated hollow tubular body 52 which includes a circular side wall 54 defining a longitudinally extending central cavity 56 . the side of the tubular body 52 opposite the bridge section 16 is formed with an elongated slot which is coextensive of the side wall 54 and communicates at the inner side thereof with the cavity 56 . the cavity 56 is adapted to removably receive a generally cylindrically - shaped mounting section 60 which extends along the entire length and is formed integrally of the wiper element 20 . as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art , the element 20 is fabricated of a resilient deformable material , such as rubber or the like , and includes a neck portion 62 which , as seen in fig5 extends downwardly from the mounting section 60 and functions to operatively connect the mounting section 60 to a windshield engaging wiping lip section 64 . the neck portion 62 is slightly smaller in cross - sectional size than the slot 58 , whereby to permit the wiper element 20 to be inserted longitudinally into the flexor section 18 from one end thereof , resulting in the wiping lip section 64 depending outwardly from the bridge section 16 , as best seen in fig5 . if desired , suitable means may be provided at the ends of the flexor section 18 for releasably retaining the wiping element 20 within the cavity 56 , such as a radially inwardly extending shoulder or the like 66 formed at one end of the flexor section 18 , as best seen in fig8 . in addition , or alternatively , the circular side wall 54 may be provided with an opening 68 , as shown in fig9 adapted to removably receive a suitable outwardly projecting boss portion or the like 70 formed integrally of the wiper element 20 and adapted to be snapped into the opening 70 upon operative installation of the wiper element 20 into the flexor section 18 . as previously mentioned , the assembly consisting of the bridge section 16 and flexor section 18 may be of a one - piece monolythic construction preferably fabricated , as by injection molding or the like , of a suitable polymeric plastic material having the requisite flexible characteristics to assure for positive contiguous engagement of the wiper element 20 with the associated windshield . in accordance with the present invention , it is contemplated that the flexor section 18 be fabricated in a manner so as to assume a relatively arcuate configuration which is known in the art as a positive bow , whereupon operative mounting of the blade assembly 10 , the force of the wiper arm 12 toward the associated windshield will be transmitted via the bridge section 16 to the outer ends of the flexor section 18 and cause the wiper element 20 to exert a relatively uniform force against the surface of the associated windshield . by fabricating the flexor section 18 by means of an injection or other type of molding operation , the desired degree of positive bow may be easily achieved by properly designing the associated mold , as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art . in accordance with another construction of the present invention , it is contemplated that the wall thickness of the circular side wall 54 of the flexor section 18 may be of varying thickness whereby to selectively control the degree of flexibility of the flexor section 18 . as best seen in fig1 - 12 , it is contemplated that the portion of the circular wall 54 of the flexor section 18 adjacent the opposite ends thereof will be somewhat thinner , as seen at 72 , than the portion of the side wall 54 adjacent the center of the flexor section 18 , as indicated at 74 . accordingly , the flexor section 18 will be of a relatively greater flexibility at the outer ends thereof with a gradually decreasing degree of flexibility towards the center thereof , thus optimizing the conformity of the flexor section 18 to the associated windshield surface . means for varying the degree of flexibility of various longitudinal portions of the flexor section 18 may also be achieved through the provision of reinforcing ribs , as indicated at 76 in fig1 , that are formed integrally of the flexor section 18 . such ribs 76 may be spaced longitudinally along the flexor section 18 in order to achieve a greater or lesser degree of flexibility , with the ribs 76 also functioning to assure against separation or opening of the slot 58 which might result in inadvertent disassembly of the wiper element 20 therefrom when the assembly 10 is moved across a highly frictional surface , such as a relatively dry windshield . it will be noted that the circular cross - sectional shape of the flexor section 18 provides for improved anti - windlift characteristics as compared to prior art flexor designs . as previously mentioned , in order to achieve optimum conformity to relatively curved windshields , it is desirable to provide for relative longitudinal shifting movement of the flexor section 18 relative to the associated bridge section 16 . such longitudinal shifting movement may be provided in a variety of different ways , one of which is shown in fig1 and 4 wherein the connecting means c 1 and c 2 is in the form of a pair of hinge constructions formed integrally of the bridge section 16 and flexor section 18 . in particular , the connecting means c 1 is formed with a pair of reduced thickness sections 78 and 80 which are intended to permit relative flexing movement between the bridge section 16 and flexor section 18 . in a similar manner , the connecting means c 2 comprises a reduced thickness section 82 which provides for relative flexing movement between the adjacent end of the flexor section 18 and the end section 26 of the bridge section 16 . as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art , the provision of the double reduced thickness sections 78 and 80 of the connecting means c 1 permits the bridge section 16 and flexor section 18 to move longitudinally relative to one another so that the wiping element 20 carried by the flexor section 18 may conform to the optimum degree with the associated windshield . fig7 illustrates a modified construction of the windshield wiper assembly 10 of the present invention wherein the connecting means operatively connecting the opposite ends of the bridge section 16 with the flexor section 18 consists of separate members in the form of connecting means c 1 &# 39 ; and c 2 &# 39 ; , which members are herein designated by the numerals 84 and 86 . members 84 and 86 are adapted to function generally in the same manner as the connecting means c 1 and c 2 previously described ; however , by virtue of being fabricated of a separate material from the remainder of the bridge and flexor sections , such material may be specifically selected so as to have desired flexibility or &# 34 ; hinge &# 34 ; characteristics that may or may not be different from the material from which the flexor and bridge sections are fabricated . the connecting means c 1 &# 39 ; includes a pair of reduced thickness sections 88 and 90 , while the connecting means c 2 &# 39 ; consists of a reduced thickness section 92 . the members 84 , 86 may be connected by any suitable means to the adjacent ends of the flexor section 18 and bridge section 16 , such as by suitable fastening means and / or by being molded thereto during the fabricating operation . the means for providing for lateral shifting movement of the flexor section 18 relative to the bridge section 16 may be provided by hinged arrangements other than the reduced thickness sections hereinabove described in connection with fig3 and 7 . for example , fig6 illustrates another embodiment of the present invention wherein connecting means c 1 &# 34 ; and c 2 &# 34 ; function to operatively connect the opposite ends of the bridge section 16 to the flexor section 18 . the connecting means c 1 &# 34 ; comprises a separate hinge member or element , herein designated by the numeral 94 , which is hingedly or pivotably connected via a first pivot pin or the like 96 at one end thereof and by a second suitable pivot pin or the like 98 at the opposite end thereof to adjacent portions 100 and 102 , respectively , of the bridge section 16 and flexor section 18 . similarly , the connecting means c 2 &# 34 ; operatively connecting the opposite end of the bridge section 16 to the opposite end of the flexor section 18 consists of a pivotable or hinged connection between adjacent portions 104 and 106 of the sections 18 and 16 , respectively , which pivotal connection is provided by means of a suitable pivot pin or the like 108 extending through aligned bores in the portions 104 , 106 . fig1 - 19 illustrate yet another embodiment of the present invention wherein connecting means c 1 &# 39 ;&# 34 ; and c 2 &# 39 ;&# 34 ; are provided between the opposite ends of the bridge section 16 and the flexor section 18 and function to permit relative longitudinal shifting movement of the flexor section and wiper element 20 carried thereby . in particular , the connecting means c 1 &# 39 ;&# 34 ; comprises an aperture 110 formed in the terminal end of the end portion 26 of the bridge section 16 , which aperture 110 is adapted to slidingly receive the outer end portion 112 of a generally hookshaped element 114 integrally formed on the adjacent end of the flexor section 18 . the hook section 114 defines an elongated slot 116 within which a generally circular - shaped portion 118 on the end section 26 is adapted to be slidingly disposed . the connecting means c 2 &# 39 ;&# 34 ; at the opposite end section 24 includes an aperture 120 which is similar to the aperture 110 and is adapted to cooperate with a generally circular cylindrical portion 122 , analogous to the portion 118 , receiving a generally hook - shaped section 124 formed on the flexor section 18 . the section 124 and aperture 120 are preferably dimensioned so as to provide for a &# 34 ; snap - in &# 34 ; or interference fit , whereby to assure against inadvertent disassembly of the bridge section 16 and flexor section 18 . by virtue of the sliding relationship provided by the connecting means c 1 &# 39 ;&# 34 ; and the relative pivotal connection provided by the connecting means c 2 &# 39 ;&# 34 ;, lateral shifting movement of the flexor section 18 may occur . fig2 illustrates a slightly modified construction of the connecting means c 1 &# 39 ;&# 34 ; wherein a connecting means c 1 &# 34 ;&# 34 ; is shown as comprising a generally cylindrically - shaped boss portion 150 formed on the terminal end of the end portion 26 of the bridge section 16 . the boss portion 150 is adapted to extend through a slot 152 and be disposed within a longitudinally extending guideway 154 defined by an upwardly extending portion 156 formed on the outer end of the flexor section 18 in the same general location as the connecting means c 1 &# 39 ;&# 34 ;. by virtue of the sliding relationship of the boss portion 150 within the guideway 154 , the adjacent end portion 26 of the bridge section 16 may move longitudinally within the guideway 154 and hence provide for longitudinal shifting movement of the flexor section 18 relative to the bridge section 16 . fig2 - 23 illustrate still another embodiment of the present invention wherein connecting means c 1 &# 34 ;&# 34 ;&# 39 ; and c 2 &# 34 ;&# 34 ;&# 39 ; function to operatively connect the opposite ends of the bridge section 16 to the associated ends of the flexor section 18 . in the construction shown in fig2 - 23 , the bridge section 16 is formed with a pair of opposite end portions 126 and 128 , each of which end portions 126 , 128 is formed with a pair of opposed claws 130 and 132 , as best seen in fig2 and 23 . the claws 130 , 132 define a recess 134 within which the uppermost portion of the associated wiper element , herein designated by the numeral 140 , is adapted to be retained . the claws 130 and 132 are formed with inwardly projecting end portions 136 and 138 , respectively , which are adapted to embrace the upper mounting portion of the wiper element 140 which , in the embodiment shown in fig2 - 23 is provided with an internal metallic , plastic or other relatively rigid , yet flexible , flexor element , herein designated by the numeral 142 . in accordance with the present invention , one of the connecting means c 1 &# 34 ;&# 34 ;&# 39 ; or c 2 &# 34 ;&# 34 ;&# 39 ; is adapted to be immovably secured to the assemblage consisting of the wiper element 140 and flexor element 142 , while the other of said connecting means is adapted to be longitudinally slidably secured to said assemblage . for example , the connecting means c 1 &# 34 ;&# 34 ;&# 39 ; may have the end portions 136 , 138 of the claws 130 , 132 clampingly engaged with the mounting section of the wiper element , as shown in fig2 , whereby to immovably secure the wiper element 140 to the end portion 126 of the bridge section 16 . the connecting means c 2 &# 34 ;&# 34 ;&# 39 ; consists of the end portions 136 , 138 of the opposite end claws 130 , 132 spaced slightly away from the underside of the mounting portion of the element 140 , ( see fig2 ), so as to provide for longitudinal sliding movement of the wiper element 140 within the recess 134 and thus accommodate for variation in windshield curvature or the like so as to assure the optimum wiping contact of the wiping element 140 with the associated windshield . it will be seen from the foregoing that the present invention provides a novel windshield wiper construction wherein maximum wiping contact is provided between the wiper element and the associated windshield , regardless of the degree of curvature thereof . the wiper blade construction of the present invention will be seen to be a substantial advance over the prior art from a standpoint of minimizing component parts and thus simplifying construction and assembly , with the result that the windshield wiper construction of the present invention will exhibit substantial economies over comparable devices heretofore known and used . while it will be apparent that the preferred embodiments of the invention disclosed are well calculated to fulfill the objects above stated , it will be appreciated that the invention is susceptible to modification , variation and change without departing from the proper scope or fair meaning of the subjoined claims . | 1 |
referring more specifically to the drawings there is seen in fig1 a hay baler 10 of conventional design towed behind a tractor 12 . an attachment 14 of this device is connected to and towed by baler 10 . bale stacking device 14 is towed over the field on wheels 16 which are connected in conventional fashion at opposite ends of axle 18 . machine 14 takes its form by virtue of numerous frame members 22 which can be configured as desired in order to support the working components of the machine . as seen in fig1 hay bales 21 emerging from baler 10 successively push each other up the incline of chute 20 and onto a drop table 24 . drop table 24 is pivotally connected to frame 20 and is provided with a counterweight 26 which causes the table 24 to be maintained in the horizontal position seen in fig1 - 4 . the weight of a bale 21 overcomes the force of counterweight 26 allowing table 24 to drop each successive bale 21 when table 24 is unlatched . table 24 is attached to one or more of the cross frame members 22 by means of a pivot shaft 28 . referring specifically to fig2 the latch and trip mechanism for pivoting drop table 24 is illustrated . a reciprocating arm 30 is attached to a driven wheel 32 to cause reciprocation of arm 30 in an axial direction as indicated by arrows 33 . arm 30 is pivotally attached to wheel 32 so that its free end can be raised by bale 21 when the bale is entirely positioned on and supported by table 24 . the free end of 34 of arm 30 is fitted through a loop 36 . the upper surface of arm 30 is provided with a projection 38 which forms a cam surface adapted to strike the loop 36 when arm 30 is raised . loop 36 is attached to the side of a vertical arm 40 which is positioned on the edge of table 24 . when the platform is in the raised position the bottom of arm 40 acts as a latch to retain the table 24 in the horizontal position thereby enabling it to support a bale 21 . when arm 30 is raised by bale 21 and loop 36 is struck by cam 38 and the lower end of vertical rod 40 is caused to move off of the edge of table 24 . table 24 is then free to pivot downwardly thus discharging bale 21 and causing it to rotate 90 °. bale stack collecting bed 42 is provided with a side plate 44 and bale divider panels 46 and 48 . panels 46 and 48 are pivotally connected to bed 42 by hinges 45 and 47 , respectively . it is preferred to support each of these hinges on an angle iron 49 in order to assure stability of the bed assembly . as best seen in fig3 the first bale 21 is collected on bed 42 with separator panels 46 and 48 pivoted to the left . this enables placement on bed 42 of the first bale . the mechanism for pivoting of separator plates 44 , 46 and 48 as well as raising and lowering of bed 40 to which is pivotal about axel 18 is not shown herein in detail as the mechanisms are identical to those utilized in my aforementioned previously manufactured machines of the same type . after the first bale has been collected on bed 42 the mechanism ( not shown ) allows separator panel 46 to pivot to the right as seen in fig4 . two more bales are then collected and panel 48 is subsequently pivoted to the right in order to receive the remaining three bales of the stack on bale supporting arm 43 . it will be noted that after each of the bales has been rotated 90 ° from the initial position that is assumed on drop table 24 that each bale is now oriented with a cut side down . this orientation is believed to optimize the curing conditions of the hay . it will be noted that divider panel 48 is provided with a lower end 49 that is angled away from the panels 44 and 46 . this assures a separation between the lowermost bale supported against panel 48 and the adjoining lowermost bale between panels 46 and 48 . as a result the hay bale stack assumes a configuration shown in fig7 wherein air circulation spaces are provided between the rows of bales . such circulation has been found to be instrumental in providing well cured and nutritious hay even though the hay is baled in a very moist or even freshly cut condition . after six bales have been collected as seen in fig4 and 5 the timing mechanism provided on machine 14 causes , through appropriate linkage , the supporting bed 42 to pivot downwardly as seen in fig6 . since the baler and stacking machine 14 are moving forward the stack of bales 15 becomes deposited in a weather - resistant stack in the field as seen in fig7 . since bed 42 is substantially shorter than the length of bales 21 the bales contact the ground while bed 42 , arm 43 and panel 44 . 46 and 48 are pulled away from the stack of bales 50 . in accordance with the present invention the difficulty which previously occurred of withdrawing bed 42 , arm 43 and separator panels 44 , 46 and 48 away from the stack of bales 50 is overcome by orienting bed 42 so that arm 43 and the divider panels 44 , 46 and 48 are positioned at an oblique angle relative to the line of travel of machine 10 . as best seen in fig8 this causes the stack of bales to be dropped at an oblique angle ( preferably in the range of 2 ° to 10 °) relative to the line of travel of machine 14 . the positioning of stack 50 at this oblique angle has the advantage that the separator panels 44 , 46 and 48 appear to be pulled away from the surfaces of bales 21 and do not cause the bales to be wedged or dragged along behind the machine . thus , unlike earlier machines which tended to tip the bales over , the bales remain standing in a water and weather resistant stack 50 as shown herein . as in the case of my earlier machines bed 42 is raised back to the horizontal position by appropriate counterweights and springs and , preferably , a lever arm 90 , all of which assist in raising bed 42 to a horizontal position where it is latched by means of appropriate latching devices ( not shown ). since these features have been previously employed and can be formed in various versions and modifications by those skilled in the art , they are not shown in detail herein . pivoting of bed 42 an its divider panels at an oblique angle relative to the line of travel of machine 10 can be accomplished in various ways . in the preferred embodiment illustrated , hinges 52 and 53 engage axle 18 at different distances from the front of bed 42 . preferably right hand hinge 53 is of a length greater than left hand hinge 52 . the bed 42 and divider panels 44 , 46 , 48 will then all be positioned at an oblique angle relative to the line of travel of machine 10 as well as to axle 18 . a similar effect is produced by angling wheels 16 relative to axle 18 so that machine 10 is always tending to steer to the left . this method is , however , less preferred for machines intended to be towed on roadways than the alternative shown in the drawings . as best seen in fig8 a , hinge 52 is either connected to the forward end of bed 42 or to an extension 55 thereof . hinges 52 and 53 are preferably formed from an angle iron 57 which engages the top and front of axle 18 . straps or bolts 59 secure the hinge around axle 18 . in order to assure that the machine 14 has moved forward enough to clear the stack of bales 50 a sensing device 54 is provided overhanging the rear of the machine as seen in fig1 . after the sensor 54 rides over the top of stack 50 the latch mechanism is triggered so that bed 42 is raised once again . referring now to fig9 - 12 it has been found efficient to provide a timing wheel to control the motions of the machine in a manner that is coordinated with the discharge of each bale from the drop table . since the bales are desired to be dropped into six bale stacks , it is desirable to have a timing wheel 56 with six separate positions . each of these six positions corresponds to the position of the timing wheel for each of the six bales of the stack . in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the machine the timing wheel 56 is rotatably mounted on the right side of the machine 14 when viewed from the rear . however other locations for mounting such a device will be apparent to those skilled in the art . referring to fig9 it is seen that the motion imparted to loop 36 by cam 38 also causes movement of a linkage system , as illustrated , as well . the linkage system includes a cross member 58 which is attached , at the opposite end from vertical member 40 , to a vertical member 60 having a clevice 61 which is pivotally mounted to a rod 62 that in turn has at its opposite end a plate 64 which is provided with a latching notch 66 . notch 66 is adapted to engage a shaft 68 on a bar 70 that is rockably mounted on the machine and provided with an arm 72 which engages a series of circumferentially arranged pins 74 provided in timing wheel 56 . arm 72 is pivotally attached to frame 22 at a pivot point 73 on its end which , in the preferred embodiment , is l - shaped as shown . when arm 30 is raised by each successive bale 21 so that cam 38 pushes loop 36 , rod 58 is also moved so that movement of arm 62 occurs allowing shaft 68 to become unlatched from slot 66 . this allows the arm 70 and connected arm 72 to raise and engage the next successive pin 74 on timing wheel 56 as seen in fig9 and 11 . a shaft 78 is integral with wheel 32 . an arm 80 is integral with the end of shaft 78 opposite from wheel 32 . arm 80 is preferably provided at its free end with a wheel 82 which is adapted to engage the end of arm 70 with each revolution . as arm 80 revolves , and if arm 70 is in the unlatched position seen in fig9 then the rotation of wheel 32 and arm 80 causes arm 80 to push downwardly on arm 70 thereby causing connected arm 72 to push one of the shafts 74 to advance wheel 56 one position . the downward movement of arm 70 caused by downward pushing of arm 80 also causes pin 68 to be recaptured in slot 66 as best seen in fig1 . the pin 68 remains captured within slot 66 until another bale 21 once again raises arm 30 . preferably a loop 84 is provided on arm 70 to prevent rotation of timing wheel 56 when the mechanism is in the latched position . loop 84 thus prevents the mechanism from becoming out of time . in operation , as each successive hay bale 21 exits the baler 10 directly onto chute 20 , each succeeding bale pushes the bale in front of it . because the baler and stacker machine 14 hinge to facilitate turning , a funnel begins the chute 20 in known fashion . thus the bale plunger of baler 10 provides the power to move the bales up chute 20 to the drop table 24 . in accordance with the foregoing description each successive bale trips both the drop table and the movement of timing wheel 56 as previously described . as the bales drop they need space to execute a 90 ° rotation . thus in a preferred embodiment the width of drop table 24 is 20 &# 34 ; in order to accommodate a standard 14 &# 34 ;× 18 &# 34 ; bale , but there needs to be a 23 &# 34 ; wide space in the drop area in order to enable the bales to rotate as they fall . as the timing wheel 56 is thus rotated as the first bale out of a six bale stack is caused to fall , the movement of the timing wheel 56 also causes , through appropriate linkage , panel 46 to drop to the right . this provides space for the second and third bales which follow . after the first three slots are full , the movement of the timing wheel 56 causes divider panel 48 also to fall to the right together with the first three bales . the correct stacking angle and space for the final three bales is then provided . dropping and collecting of the final three bales completes the pyramidal or &# 34 ; tepee &# 34 ; shaped stack which is then ready to exit the stacking machine as the timing wheel is in its sixth and final position . the movement of the timing wheel to the sixth position also triggers the release of a latch that allows the rear of supporting bed 42 to fall under the weight of the pyramidal stack of bales so that the bales contact the ground . as this occurs the stack of bales stops and the continuing forward movement of the machine pulls the divider panels and bed 42 loose allowing the stack to remain deposited in an intact condition onto the field . sensor 54 then rides up and over the stack , thereby activating a linkage restoring the bed 42 to its original starting position , thus competing the cycle . in practice , appropriate linkages are provided , in accordance with previously known practice , to pull the bed 42 upwardly . a helper spring can also be provided to assist in upward pivoting of the bed 42 . an angle iron may be attached to the forward end of the bed for this purpose . a chain or cable can also be utilized to assist in lifting the rear of the bed . various additional modifications of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art thus the claims should be deemed to be limited not only to their literal scope but to reasonable equivalents thereof . | 0 |
as required , a detailed illustrative embodiment of the present invention is disclosed herein . however , telephone techniques , physical communication systems , data formats and operating structures in accordance with the present invention may be embodied in a wide variety of forms and modes , some of which may be quite different from those in the disclosed embodiment . consequently , the specific structural and functional details disclosed herein are merely representative , yet in that regard , they are deemed to afford the best embodiment for purposes of disclosure and to provide a basis for the claims herein which define the scope of the present invention . referring initially to fig1 a series of remote telephone terminals t1 - tn are represented . in addition , a series of remote computer terminals ct1 - ctn are represented . the indicated terminals t1 - tn represent the multitude of telephone terminals existing in association with the public telephone network ( ptn ). the indicated computer terminals ct1 - ctn represent the multitude of computer terminals connected to the internet . the ptn , which accommodates the individual terminals t1 - tn , is coupled to an interactive voice response system ( ivr ). the internet , which accommodates individual computer terminals ct1 - ctn , is coupled to an internet web server ( iws ). individual callers use the individual telephone stations t1 through tn to interface the ivr through the ptn . individual users at computer terminals ct1 through ctn use the internet to interface the iws . telephone callers and internet users may record digital audio messages that can be listened to from any of the remote telephone terminals t1 - tn or from any of the remote computer terminals ct1 - ctn . internet users may also leave digital text messages that may be accessed from any of the remote telephone terminals t1 - tn using text to speech or from the remote computer terminals ct 1 - ctn via computer monitor . considering the system of fig1 in somewhat greater detail , it is to be understood that the ptn has multiplexing capability for individually coupling the terminals t1 - tn to the ivr on request . in the illustrative embodiment of the system , the individual terminals t1 - tn take the form of existing traditional or conventional telephone instruments . it is also to be understood that the internet has the capability for individually connecting the computer terminals ct1 - ctn to the iws . in the illustrative embodiment of the system , the individual computer terminals ct1 - ctn take the form of personal computers that comprise a central processing unit cpu , modem , monitor , keyboard , hard drive , sound card , speakers , and microphone . considering the ivr in somewhat greater detail , the ptn is coupled to an ivr as shown in fig1 . in the disclosed embodiment , from the ptn , forty - eight lines are connected to the ivr and , accordingly , the ivr may accommodate up to forty - eight simultaneous calls from the public is telephone network ptn . the ivr contains a processor , an exemplary form of which is an intel 166 mhz pentium processor . the forty - eight lines from the ptn are connected to the processor though an interface 15 , an exemplary form of which is a series of commercially available dialogic ( d240sc - ti ) cards . the interface incorporates modems , tone decoders , switching mechanisms , dialed number identification service ( dnis ) and automatic number identification ( ani ) capability . the dialogic card stores audio information in the dialogic . vox format . generally , dnis capability is a function of the ptn to provide digital data indicating the called number . ani capability is a similar function whereby the digital data indicates the calling number . considering the iws in somewhat greater detail , the iws is coupled to the internet via a ds i line to a local internet provider service . the iws may accommodate a multitude of simultaneous internet users . as represented , the iws is a micro computer programmed for internet information server operations . the iws contains a processor and internet server software , exemplary forms of which are an intel 166 mhz pentium processor and microsoft internet information server software . the iws is also loaded with realaudio server software from progressive network . realaudio allows a microsoft windows . wav file to be converted into a realaudio . ra file , a compressed format that allows play back over the internet in real time , as opposed to first downloading a file and then listening to it . realaudio accomplishes this by playing an audio file while it is still downloading , using a process called data streaming . the iws is also loaded with vdolive server software . vdolive allows a video clip in the microsoft windows avi , apple quicktime , or mpeg video file formats to be converted into a vdolive . vdo format , a compressed format that allows play back over the internet in real time , as opposed to first downloading a file and then listening to it . vdolive also utilizes data streaning . the ivr and the iws are coupled to a database server ( dbs ) via an ethernet hub as shown in fig1 . the system includes one or more operator workstations ow1 - own , through which an operator can interact with and control the dbs , ivr and iws . the dbs is a computer programmed for database operations . in the illustrated embodiment , the dbs manages a personal ad database which is comprised of multiple tables that manage ad creation , the audio greeting files , ad response files , photograph and video files . the ad database comprises an electronic equivalent of the personal classified ads placed via telephone and the internet , and responses placed to ads . the ivr converts audio files received via telephone into the realaudio . ra format for real time retrieval via the internet . conversely , the iws converts audio files received via the internet into dialogic . vox files for retrieval via telephone . audio file conversions are done through audio file conversion software , an exemplary form of which is sound forge by sonic foundry . the dbs contains a processor and an sql ( structured query language ) relational database software , exemplary forms of which are the intel 166 mhz pentium processor and microsoft sql server . the operator workstation ( ow ) is a conventional personal computer equipped with a sound card capable of playing the audio data and a video display capable of displaying digitally stored photographs and videos . an exemplary form of the ow is a microcomputer equipped with an intel 166 mhz pentium processor and a creative labs sound blaster sound card . operators review all incoming advertiser files — text , audio , photograph , and video — to insure that their content is appropriate . also , operators use advertisers &# 39 ; text messages and audio recordings to create summary text ads for publication in a newspaper . the following sections describe in greater detail the interaction between the ivr , the dbs , the iws , and the ow . an exemplary operation of the system of the present invention , with regard to a specific telephone caller placing a personal advertisement will now be treated to accomplish the process as indicated in fig6 . first , suppose a telephone caller at terminal ti makes a call to place a personal advertisement in response to an advertisement in xyz newspaper . the assumed call involves the telephone caller actuating the buttons to input the number 1 800 555 3333 , for example . as a result , signals are provided to the public telephone network resulting in a connection from the remote terminal t1 to the ivr . using standard dnis techniques , the ivr associates the called number 1 800 555 3333 with a specific format , for example , a voice personals ad taking format . the caller is first prompted to create a profile of himself by answering a series of questions using the buttons on his touch tone phone . the profile contains data on the advertiser and the type of person the advertiser wishes to meet . referring initially to fig6 and fig2 upon receiving a call , the ivr cues the caller to enter his telephone number 801 . the ivr stores the telephone number 802 in the field ad_phone 203 . next , the ivr cues the caller to enter his gender 803 . for example : “ if you are a woman , press 1 . if you are a man , press 2 .” the ivr stores the caller &# 39 ; s gender 804 in the field ad_gender 207 . next , the ivr cues the caller for his marital status 805 . for example : “ if you are single , press 1 . if you are divorced , press 2 . if you are widowed , press 3 .” the caller responds and the ivr stores the caller &# 39 ; s marital status 806 in the field ad_marital_status 208 . next , the ivr cues the caller for his age 807 . for example : “ please enter your age .” the caller &# 39 ; s age is then stored 808 in the field ad_age 209 . next , the caller is prompted to indicate the type of person he wishes to meet . the ivr first cues the caller for the martial status of the person he is seeking 825 . for example : “ if you wish to meet someone who is single , press 1 . if you wish to meet someone who is divorced , press 2 . if you wish to meet someone who is widowed , press 3 .” the martial status sought is then stored 826 in the field ad_marital_sought 212 . next , the ivr cues the caller to enter the lowest age of the person he wishes to meet 827 . for example : “ please enter the lowest age of the person you wish to meet .” the low age sought is them stored 828 in the field low_age_sought 213 . finally , the ivr cues the caller to enter the highest age of the person he wishes to meet 829 . for example : “ please enter the highest age of the person you wish to meet .” the high age sought is then stored 830 in the field high_age_sought 213 . it is to be understood that the actual questions asked about the caller and the person he is seeking are merely illustiative . the actual questions could vary greatly in both number and kind . next , the ivr cues the caller to record an audio greeting 812 the advertiser &# 39 ; s audio greeting is then stored to a disk file on the ivr 813 and the ad database is updated 809 . specifically , the ad_review flag 210 in the ad_personal_table of fig2 is set to false indicating that the ad must be reviewed by an operator . in addition , a new record is created in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 and the field gr_review_flag 303 set to false to indicate that the audio greeting has not been reviewed . in the new record , the fields gr_mailbox_number 301 , gr_type 302 , gr_filename 304 , gr_date_time 305 in the ad_greetings table of fig3 are also populated to indicate the advertiser &# 39 ; s mailbox number , the format of the audio file , the location of the audio file on the ivr , and the date and time the greeting was recorded . the field gr_type is set to vox to indicate that the audio recording is in the dialogic . vox file format . finally , the field gr_conversion_flag 506 is set to false to indicate that the audio file must be converted from the dialogic . vox format to create a new audio file in the realaudio . ra format for playback on the internet . the ivr then cues the caller to indicate if he wishes to record an e - mail address 816 . for example : “ press 1 to input an e - mail address . press 2 to decline .” if the caller elects to leave an e - mail address , the ivr cues the caller to record his e - mail address 817 . the audio recording is stored to a disk file on the ivr 818 and the field ad_email_filename 205 in ad_personal_table of fig2 is set , indicating that an e - mail audio file exists and its location on the ivr . next , the ivr assigns the advertiser a five digit mailbox number 819 . for example : “ your 5 - digit mailbox number is 12345 .” the mailbox number is then stored 820 in the field ad_mailbox_number 201 . the ivr then cues the caller to enter a five digit password 821 , and the password is stored 822 in the field ad_password 202 . in addition , the ivr stores the date the ad is taken in the field ad date time 206 , and updates the field ad_origin 211 to indicate that the personal ad originated on the telephone 823 . finally , the ivr creates an electronic mailbox for the advertiser on the iws 824 , using the mailbox number stored in the field ad_mailbox_number 201 as the electronic mailbox address , to allow respondents to submit audio , video and photographic files in response to the advertiser &# 39 ; s ad . finally , the ivr queries the ad database to determine if there are other existing advertiser &# 39 ; s whose profile matches that of the new advertiser 831 . more specifically , there is a match if the values in the field ad_marital_status 208 and the values in the field ad_marital sought 212 match for each ad , and if the value in the field ad_age 209 for each ad is within the range of values in the fields ad_low_age_sought 213 and ad_high_age_sought 214 for the other ad . if the query finds one or more ads that match , the ivr speaks the number of matching ads to the caller 832 . for example : “ the number of ads that match your preferences is 5 .” the caller is then given both a 900 number 833 and an internet address 834 that can be used to retrieve the matches , and the call is terminated 835 . if no matches are found , the call is terminated 835 . in addition , the mailbox numbers of matching ads are placed in a notification queue 835 , together with delivery information corresponding to the matching ad so that the existing advertisers can be notified that a new personal ad has come onto the system that matches the existing advertisers &# 39 ; profile the delivery information includes the telephone number and e - mail address , if available , of the existing advertiser to be notified , together with mailbox number of the new ad coming onto the system . an exemplary operation of the system , with regard to a specific internet user placing a personal advertisement will now be treated to accomplish the process as indicated in fig7 . first , suppose a internet user at terminal ct1 connects to the internet to place a personal advertisement in response to an advertisement in xyz newspaper . the assumed internet user connects to the internet and inputs a uniform reference locator ( url ), for example : http :// www . personal_ads . com , resulting in a connection from the remote terminal ct1 to a home page 1001 on the iws . referring to fig7 from the home page 1001 on the iws , the internet user selects an ad placement form 1002 . the ad placement form 1002 contains the following input fields corresponding to fields in the ad database as indicated : gender 1003 ad_gender 207 marital status 1004 ad_marital_status 208 age 1005 ad_age 209 martial sought 1034 ad_martial_sought 212 low age sought 1035 ad_low_age_souht 213 high age sought 1036 ad_high_age_sought 214 e - mail address 1006 ad_email_address 204 phone number 1007 ad_phone 203 password 1008 ad_password 202 greeting text 1014 gr_filename 304 this process largely parallels the process of placing a personal ad via a telephone . the password 1008 is used by the advertiser to retrieve messages and the e - mail address 1006 and telephone number 1007 are used to contact the advertiser . the gender 1003 , age 1005 , and marital status 1004 fields create a profile of the advertiser . the marital sought 1034 , low age sought 1035 and high age sought 1036 fields complete the advertiser &# 39 ; s profile by indicating the type of person the advertiser wishes to meet . finally , the field greeting text 1014 comprises the advertiser &# 39 ; s text personal ad . the internet user completes the ad placement form 1002 and presses the “ submit ” button to submit her ad . the form is checked by the iws for completeness 1016 . if the form is incomplete , the user is returned to the ad placement form 1002 . if the form is complete , the iws updates the ad database 1017 . this includes assigning the user a five digit mailbox number and storing it in the field ad_mailbox_number 201 . in addition , the advertiser &# 39 ; s profile , contact information , password and greeting are added to the ad database . also , the advertiser &# 39 ; s text greeting is stored to a disk file on the iws . next , the ad_review_flag 210 in the ad_personal_table of fig2 is set to false indicating that the ad must be reviewed by an operator 10 , a new record is created in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 and the field gr_review_flag 303 is set to false to indicate that the text greeting has not been reviewed . in the new record , the fields gr_mailbox_number 301 , gr_type 302 , gr_filename 304 , gr_date_time 305 in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 are also populated to indicate the advertiser &# 39 ; s mailbox number , the file format , the location of the text file on the iws , and the date and time the greeting was placed . specifically , the field gr type is set to text . finally , the field gr_conversion_flag is set to true to indicate that the text does not need to be converted to a different format . next , the iws queries the ad database to determine if there are other existing advertiser &# 39 ; s whose profile matches that of the new advertiser 1018 . the iws then creates an ad confirmation page 1020 . if the query finds one or more ads that match , the ad confirmation page displays a text message of the number of matching ads 1027 . the text message is displayed as a hyper - link which can be followed by a browser to the actual matching ads . in addition , the ad confirmation page 1020 confirms the advertiser &# 39 ; s mailbox number 1021 , and gives the advertiser an e - mail address to submit an audio greeting 1022 , photograph 1023 , or video clip 1024 for inclusion with her personal ad . also , the internet web server stores the date and time the ad is taken in the field ad_date_time 206 , and updates the field ad_origin 211 to indicate that the personal ad originated on the internet 1025 . finally , in addition , the iws creates an electronic mailbox for the advertiser 1026 , using the mailbox number stored in the field ad_mailbox_number as the electronic mail address , to allow respondents to submit audio , video and photographic files in response to the advertiser &# 39 ; s ad . in addition , the mailbox numbers of matching ads are placed in a notification queue 1038 , together with delivery information corresponding to the matching ad so that the existing advertisers can be notified that a new personal ad has come onto the system that matches the existing advertisers &# 39 ; profile . the delivery information includes the telephone number and e - mail address , if available , of the existing advertiser to be notified , together with mailbox number of the new ad coming onto the system . a more detailed explanation of how an advertiser submits an audio greeting , photograph , or video clip via ct1 will now be given . to submit an audio greeting , the advertiser first makes an audio recording using a wav file editor and then saves the file using her five digit mailbox number as the file name 1030 fig7 for example : 44567 . wav . the advertiser then submits the audio file using e - mail to an audio greeting electronic mailbox 1031 , for example : audio_greeting @ personals . com . the advertiser &# 39 ; s audio recording is stored to a disk file on the internet web server . in addition , a new record is created in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 and the ad database is updated 1032 . specifically , the field gr_review_flag 303 is set to false to indicate that the audio greeting has not been reviewed . also , the fields gr_mailbox_number 301 , gr_type 302 , gr_filename 304 , gr_date_time 305 in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 are also populated to indicate the advertiser &# 39 ; s mailbox number , the format of the audio file , and the location of the audio file on the iws , and the date and time the greeting placed . the field gr_type is set to wav to indicate that the audio recording is in the microsoft . wav file format . finally , the field gr_conversion_flag 306 is set to false to indicate that the audio file must be converted from the microsoft . wav format to create two new audio files : one in the realaudio . ra format for playback on the internet , and another in the dialogic . vox format for playback via the telephone . to enhance a personal ad with a photograph , the advertiser first digitizes a photograph using a scanner or takes a photograph with a digital camera and then saves the image to a gif file using her five digit mailbox number as the file name 1037 , for example : 44567 . gif . the advertiser then submits the graphic file using e - mail to an photograph electronic mailbox , for example : photo @ personals . com 1031 . the advertiser &# 39 ; s photo is stored to a disk file on the iws and the ad database is updated 1032 . specifically , a new record is created in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 and the field gr_review_flag 303 set to false to indicate that the graphic file has not been reviewed . in each new record , the fields gr_mailbox_number 301 , gr_type 302 , gr_filename 304 , gr_date_time 305 in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 are also populated to indicate the advertiser &# 39 ; s mailbox number , the format of the graphic file , and the location of the graphic file on the iws , and the date and time the photograph was received . the field gr_type 302 is set to gif to indicate that the graphic file is in the . gif file format . finally , the field gr_conversion_flag 306 is set to true to indicate that no file conversion is necessary as gif is the graphic file format used by the iws . if other graphic formats were accepted , they might have to be converted to a . gif format , depending on the file formats supported by the iws . if file conversion were necessary , the field gr_conversion_flag 306 would be set to false . to enhance a personal ad with video , the advertiser first digitizes a video clip and then saves the image to a microsoft . avi file using her five digit mailbox number as the file name 1036 , for example : 44567 . avi . other video formats such as apple quicktime , or mpeg video could also be used . the advertiser then submits the graphic file using e - mail to an electronic mailbox , for example : video @ personals . com 1031 . the advertiser &# 39 ; s video clip is stored to a disk file on the iws and the ad database is updated 1032 . specifically , a new record is created in the ad_greetings table of fig3 and the field gr_review_flag 303 set to false to indicate that the video file has not been reviewed . in each new record , the fields gr_mailbox_number 301 , gr_type 302 , gr_filename 304 , gr_date_time 305 in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 are populated to indicate the advertiser &# 39 ; s mailbox number , the format of the video file , and the location of the video file on the iws , and the date and time the video was received . specifically , the field gr_type 302 is set to avi to indicate that the video clip is in the microsoft avi file format . finally , the field gr_conversion_flag 306 is set to false to indicate that the video file must be converted to the vdolive format for real time playback on the internet . [ 0068 ] fig8 illustrates the notification routine that processes the records placed in the notification queue in step 836 of fig6 and step 1038 of fig7 . in step 7001 , the dbs scans the notification queue to determine if any notifications are scheduled to be made at the present time . as previously described , each notification record includes the telephone number and e - mail address , if available , of the advertiser to be notified , together with the mailbox number of the new matching personal ad that has come onto the system . in step 7003 , the dbs scans the notification record for an e - mail address . if an e - mail address is present , the dbs sends the record to the iws 7004 . in step 7005 , the iws sends an e - mail message to the advertiser informing him that a new ad has come onto the system that matches his profile . the e - mail message includes the mailbox number of the new ad . the mailbox number is also a hot link that can be followed to the actual ad for those retrieving their e - mail via a browser . step 7006 sends the record to the ivr . in step 7007 , the ivr dials an advertiser &# 39 ; s telephone number contained in the callback record and waits for a response . if a voice response is not received , then the ivr sends a corresponding message to the dbs . the dbs then marks the time of the attempted callback in the notification queue record , so that a set period of time can be established between callback attempts . a note could also be made if an e - mail message had been sent to avoid sending duplicate notifications . if a voice response is received 7008 , then , in step 7009 , the ivr sends a voice message informing the person that a new ad has come onto the system that matches the person &# 39 ; s profile . the voice message also gives a 900 number and internet address that can be used to receive the match . it may be desirable in certain applications to prompt the person who answers the telephone for a password and mailbox number to verify their identity . also , it may be desirable to actually allow the person to listen and respond to his match during the call . an exemplary operation of the system of the present invention , with regard to an advertiser retrieving personal ads that match his preferences will now be treated to accomplish the process as indicated in fig9 . first , suppose a telephone caller at terminal t1 places a call to retrieve matches after having placed a personal ad or after having been notified of the existence of a new personal ad that match his preferences . the assumed call involves the advertiser actuating the buttons to input the number 1 900 777 4444 , for example . as a result , signals are provided to the ptn resulting in a connection from the remote terminal t1 to the ivr . using standard dnis techniques , the ivr associates the called number 1 900 777 4444 with a specific format , for example , a match retrieval format . referring to fig9 upon receiving a call , the ivr sets the “ logon attempts ” equal to zero 8001 . the ivr then increments the “ logon attempts ” by one 8002 and cues the caller for a mailbox number and password 8003 . the ivr then queries the ad database to determine if the mailbox number and password are valid 8004 . if the entries are not valid , the ivr determines if the caller has exceeded the maximum number of logon attempts allowed 8005 . if the caller has exceeded the maximum number of logon attempts allowed , the call is terminated 8006 . if the maximum number of logon attempts allowed has not been exceeded , the ivr increments the “ logon attempts ” by one 8002 and again cues the caller for a mailbox number and password 8003 . if the entries are valid , the ivr then queries the ad database for existing ads whose profile matches that of the caller 8008 . if there are no matches , the call is terminated 8006 . if the ivr finds a match , the ivr plays the greeting of the matching ad 8009 . if the greeting is in text form , the ivr uses text to speech to play the message . the ivr then prompts the caller to indicate if he wishes to respond to the ad 8010 . if the caller elects not to respond to the ad and there are no additional matches , the call is terminated 8015 . if the caller elects not to respond to the ad and there are additional matches , the caller is returned to block 8009 . if the caller elects to respond to the ad , the ivr next cues him to record his response 8011 . the ivr then stores the response to a disk file 8012 and updates the ad database 8013 . specifically , the ivr creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 and populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the response , and the location of the response file on the ivr . the field rsp_type 504 is set to vox to indicate that the audio recording is in the dialogic . vox file format . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to false to indicate that the audio must be converted from the dialogic . vox format to create a new audio file in the realaudio . ra format for playback on the internet . the ivr creates a new realaudio . ra file from the dialogic . vox file and stores the realaudio file to a disk file on the iws and updates the ad database . specifically , the ivr creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 and populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the response , and the location of the response file on the ivr . the field rsp_type 504 is set to ra to indicate that the audio recording is in the realaudio . ra file format . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to true for both the audiotext vox file and the realaudio . ra file to indicate that the audio files do not need to be converted . if there are additional matches , the caller is returned to block 8009 . otherwise , the call is terminated 8015 . an exemplary operation of the system of the present invention , with regard to a specific advertiser retrieving her matches via the internet will now be treated to accomplish the process as indicated in fig1 . first , suppose an advertiser at terminal ct1 connects to the internet to find existing ads that match her profile . the assumed advertiser connects to the internet and inputs a uniform reference locator url , for example : http :// www . personal_ads . com , resulting in a connection from the remote terminal ct1 to a home page 1301 on the internet web server . referring to fig1 , from the home page 9001 on the internet web server , the internet user selects a match form 9002 . the match form 9002 instructs the advertiser to enter a mailbox number 9003 and password 9004 . the iws then queries the ad database to determine if the mailbox number and password are valid 9005 . if the entries are not valid , the internet user is presented with an invalid mailbox and password form 9006 . if the entries are valid , the tws queries the ad database 9007 to find existing ads whose profile matches that of the advertiser . if the query does not find any matching ads , the advertiser is presented with a no matches page 9009 . if the query finds one or more matching ads , the iws presents the advertiser with a results form 9010 . the results form 9010 shows the matching ads . specifically , the results form shows the twenty word text ad that appears in the newspaper 9011 . in addition , each ad contains one or more icons that represent any additional text or multimedia files ( audio , video , photograph ) for the ads that are available on the iws . these icons include an audio icon 9012 to denote the ad &# 39 ; s audio greeting , a still camera icon 9013 to denote a photograph of the advertiser , a video camera icon 9014 to denote a video clip of the advertiser , or a paper icon 9015 to denote the ad &# 39 ; s full text greeting , if the ad was placed on the internet . it is to be understood that these icons are merely representative and that many other possibilities exist to denote the existence of text and multimedia files . by clicking on an icon , the internet user can view or listen to the associated file . in addition , by selecting a maximize bar 9016 , the internet user can expand an ad to a fill page size , see fig1 . the internet user responds to an ad by selecting the “ respond ” button 9017 . when the internet user selects the respond button , she is presented with an ad response form 9018 . the internet user creates a response by typing in a response text field 9019 . after completing the ad response form , the internet user submits the form by pressing the “ submit ” button 9020 . the advertiser is then presented with a response confirmation form 9021 . the response confirmation form gives the advertiser information on enhancing her response with an audio message , photograph , or video clip . the iws then stores the response to a disk file and updates the ad database 9022 . specifically , the iws creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 and then populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the formnat of the response , and the location of the response file on the iws . the field rsp_type 504 is set to text . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to true to indicate that the text does not need to be converted to a different format . the internet user can return to the results form by using the “ back ” key on her browser . all new personal ads are reviewed by an operator at an ow to insure that their content is appropriate . also , each greeting submitted by an advertiser , whether it be an audio greeting recorded by an advertiser via a telephone or a text greeting placed by an advertiser via the internet , is summarized by an operator to create a twenty word classified text ad for publication in a newspaper . the twenty word limit is a function of newspaper imposed space limitations . it should be noted that space limitations , if they exist at all , may vary widely from newspaper to newspaper . in another format , text ads that are published in the newspaper are first placed with a live operator via a telephone , precluding the need to summarize an audio recording . an exemplary operation of the process of reviewing and summarizing ads with regard to a specific operator at ow1 will now be treated to accomplish the process as indicated in fig1 . the operator first queries the ad database to determine if there are new ads to review 1800 . specifically , the query looks for all ads in the ad_personal_table of fig2 where the field ad_review_flag 210 is set to false . if the query finds a new ad , the operator first reviews the ad &# 39 ; s greeting 1801 as found in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 . if the ad was placed via telephone , this consists of listening to the ad &# 39 ; s audio greeting . if the ad was placed via the internet , this consists of reading the text greeting . the operator then determines if the greeting &# 39 ; s contents are appropriate 1802 . if the greeting &# 39 ; s contents are inappropriate , the ad is deleted and the record purged from the ad database 1803 and the operator is returned to block 1800 . if the greeting &# 39 ; s contents are appropriate , the operator writes a twenty word summary of the greeting 1804 . the operator then queries the ad database to determine if the advertiser recorded an e - mail address 1805 . if an e - mail address audio recording is found , the operator transcribes the e - mail address 1806 . the operator then updates the ad database 1807 . specifically , the advertiser &# 39 ; s twenty word text summary is stored to a disk file on the iws . the ad_review_flag 210 in the ad_personal_table of fig2 is set to true indicating that the ad has been reviewed . in addition , a new record for the text summary is created in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 and the field gr_review_flag 303 set to true indicating that the record has been reviewed . in the new record , the fields gr_mailbox_number 301 , gr_type 302 , gr_filename 304 , gr_date_time 305 in the ad_greetings_table of fig3 are also populated to indicate the advertiser &# 39 ; s mailbox number , the file format , and the location of the text file on the iws , and the date and time . the field gr_type is set to text . finally , the field gr_conversion_flag 306 is set to true to indicate that the text does not need to be converted to a different format . the operator then returns to block 1800 to continue processing ads . if no new ads are found , the operator queries the ad database to determine if any multimedia files ( audio , video , or photo ) have been submitted via the internet to enhance a personal ad 1808 . specifically , the query looks for all ads in the ad_personal_table of fig2 where the field ad_review_flag 210 is set to true that has files in the ad_greeting_table of fig3 where the gr_review_flag 303 is set to false . if the query finds a multimedia file , the operator first reviews the file 1809 . if it is an audio file , this consists of listening to the ad &# 39 ; s audio greeting . if it is a video or graphic file , this consists of viewing the file . the operator then determines if the greeting &# 39 ; s contents are appropriate 1810 . if the greeting &# 39 ; s contents are inappropriate , the filed is deleted and the record purged from the ad database 1811 . the operator is then returned to block 1808 to continue processing multimedia files . if the file &# 39 ; s contents are appropriate , the operator approves the file 1812 and updates the ad database 1813 . specifically , this consists of setting the field gr_review flag 303 to true to indicate that the file has been reviewed . if the file is an audio file , the ow converts the file to create a new realaudio . ra file and stores the file on the iws . the ow also converts the file to create a dialogic . vox file and stores the file on the ivr . for each new audio file , a new record is created in the ad_greetings_table of fig2 and the fields gr_mailbox_number 301 , gr_type 302 , gr_date_time 305 , and gr_filename 304 are populated to indicate the mailbox number of the advertiser , the format of the file , the date and time , and the location of the audio file on the ivr . also , the field gr_review_flag 303 is set to true to indicate that the file has been reviewed . finally , the field gr_conversion_flag is set to true to indicate that the audio file does not need to be converted . if the file is a video file , the ow converts the microsoft avi file to create a new vdolive file and stores the file on the iws . also , a new record is created in the ad_greetings_table of fig2 and the fields gr_mailbox_number 301 , gr_type 302 , gr_date_time 305 , and gr_filename 304 are populated to indicate the mailbox number of the advertiser , the format of the file , the date and time , and the location of the video file on the ivr . also , the field gr_review_flag 303 is set to true to indicate that the file has been reviewed . finally , the field gr conversion flag 306 is set to true to indicate that the video file does not need to be converted . the operator then returns to block 1808 to continue processing multimedia files . if no new multimedia files are found , the session is terminated 1814 . each week , all the twenty - word summary text ads from personal ads submitted via telephone and via the internet are published in a newspaper along with their five digit mailbox numbers . fig1 depicts personal ads as they would appear in the local newspaper . icons are included in each ad that represent the origin of an ad ( via telephone or via the internet ) and what additional information or multimedia , if any , is available on the internet . for example , an ad placed via the telephone contains a telephone icon 2001 ; an ad placed via the internet contains a computer icon 2002 . if there is additional text on the internet , an ad contains an icon denoting additional text 2004 . the presence of a photo or video clip is indicated respectively by a still camera 2004 and video camera 2005 icons . an exemplary operation of the system of the present invention , with regard to a telephone caller responding to a personal advertisement will now be treated to accomplish the process as indicated in fig1 . first , suppose a telephone caller at terminal ti places a call to respond to a personal ad advertised in xyz newspaper . the assumed call involves the telephone caller actuating the buttons to input the number 1 900 777 3333 , for example . as a result , signals are provided to the ptn resulting in a connection from the remote terminal t1 to the ivr . using standard dnis techniques , the ivr associates the called number 1 900 777 3333 with a specific format , for example , a voice personals response format . referring to fig1 , upon receiving a call , the ivr sets the “ invalid mailbox number count ” equal to zero 2301 . the ivr then increments the “ invalid mailbox number count ” by one 2302 and cues the caller for a mailbox number 2303 . upon the caller entering a mailbox number , the ivr queries the field ad_mailbox_number 201 to determine if the mailbox number is valid 2304 . if the mailbox number is invalid , the ivr determines if the caller has exceeded the maximum number of attempts allowed 2305 . if the caller has exceeded the maximum number of attempts allowed , the call is terminated 2306 . if the maximum number of attempts allowed has not been exceeded , the ivr increments the “ invalid mailbox number count ” by one 2302 and again cues the caller for a mailbox number 2303 . if the mailbox number is valid , the ivr queries the field ad_origin 211 to determine if the ad originated on the internet 2307 . if the ad originated on the telephone , the ivr plays the ad &# 39 ; s audio greeting 2311 . if the ad originated on the internet , the ivr uses text to speech to play the ad &# 39 ; s text greeting as placed on the internet 2308 . the ivr then queries the ad_greetings_table of fig2 to determine if the internet advertiser also submitted an audio greeting 2309 . if the query does not find an audio greeting 2310 , the ivr prompts the caller to indicate if he wishes to respond to the ad 2312 . if the query finds an audio greeting 2310 , the ivr plays the audio greeting 2311 . the ivr then prompts the caller to indicate if he wishes to respond to the ad 2312 . if the caller elects not to respond to the ad , he is given the option of having the ivr find other ad that are similar to the one he just listened to 2324 . if the caller elects to respond to the ad , the ivr cues the caller to enter his five digit mailbox number or to enter “#” if he does not have a mailbox number 2332 . if the caller indicates that he does not have a mailbox number by entering the “#” key , the ivr assigns the respondent a five digit mailbox number 2327 . for example . “ your five digit mailbox number is 54321 .” the mailbox number is then stored 2328 in the field pr_mailbox_number 401 . the ivr then cues the respondent to enter a five digit password 2329 . the password is then stored 2330 in the field pr_password 402 . the ad database is then updated 2331 to include the date and time the mailbox is created . the ivr first cues the caller to record his response 2319 . the ivr then stores the response to a disk file and updates the ad database 2321 . specifically , the ivr creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the response , and the location of the response file on the ivr . the field rsp_type 504 is set to vox to indicate that the audio recording is in the dialogic . vox file format . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to false to indicate that the audio must be converted from the dialogic . vox format to create a new audio file in the realaudio . ra format for playback on the internet . the ivr also creates a new realaudio . ra file from dialogic . vox file and stores the realaudio file to a disk file on the iws . specifically , the ivr creates a new record in the ad_response table of fig5 and populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the response , and the location of the response file on the ivr . the field rsp_type 504 is set to ra to indicate that the audio recording is in the realaudio . ra file format . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to true for both the audiotext . vox file and the realaudio . ra file to indicate that the audio files do not need to be converted . in addition , the mailbox number of the personal ad responded to is placed in a notification queue 2322 , together with delivery information corresponding to the ad , so that the advertiser can be notified that a response has been left for her ad . the delivery information includes the telephone number and e - mail address , if available , of the advertiser to be notified . the caller is then asked if he wants the ivr to automatically find other ads that are similar to the one he just responded to 2325 . if the caller declines this option , the call is terminated 2326 . if the caller chooses to have the ivr find other matching ads , the ivr queries the ad database to find other ads that are similar to the ad selected by the caller . specifically , an ad is deemed to be similar if the age in the ad &# 39 ; s profile is within five years of the profile of the ad selected by the caller and if the ads have the same gender and marital status . its is to be understood that the criteria used to determine a similar ad could vary greatly in kind and quantity . if the query does not find any matches , the call is terminated 2326 . if the query returns a match , the caller is returned to block 2307 for processing . an exemplary operation of the system of the present invention , with regard to a specific internet user responding to a personal ad via the internet will now be treated to accomplish the process as indicated in fig1 . first , suppose an advertiser at terminal ct1 connects to the internet to respond to a personal advertisement advertised in xyz newspaper . the assumed internet user connects to the internet and inputs a url , for example : http :// www . personal_ads . com , resulting in a connection from the remote terminal ct1 to a home page on the iws . referring to fig1 , from the home page 2401 on the iws , the internet user selects an ad response form 2402 . the ad response form instructs the internet user to enter the five digit mailbox number of the ad she wishes to respond to 2403 . upon the internet user entering her mailbox number , the iws queries the field ad_mailbox_number in the ad database to determine if the mailbox number is valid 2404 . if the mailbox number is invalid , the internet user is presented with an invalid mailbox number form 2405 . if the mailbox number is valid , the iws presents the internet user with a results form 2406 . the results form 2406 shows the ad the internet user selected specifically , the results form shows the twenty word text ad that appears in the newspaper 2407 . in addition , the ad contains one or more icons that represent any additional text or multimedia files ( audio , video , photograph ) for the ad that are available on the iws and a path to other ads that match the ad to which the internet user is responding . these icons include an audio icon 2408 to denote the ad &# 39 ; s audio greeting , a still camera icon 2409 to denote a photograph of the advertiser , a video camera icon 2410 to denote a video clip of the advertiser , a paper icon 2411 to denote the ad &# 39 ; s full text greeting , if the ad was placed on the internet , and a matching icon to denote that the iws has identified other ads that are similar to the one being responded to 2415 . it is to be understood that these icons are merely representative and that many other possibilities exist to denote the existence of text and multimedia files . by clicking on an icon , the internet user can view or listen to the associated file . in addition , by selecting a maximize bar 2412 , the internet user can expand an ad to full page size , as shown in fig1 . the internet user responds to an ad by selecting the “ respond ” button 2413 . when the internet user selects the respond button , she is transferred to an ad response form 2414 . the ad response form instructs the internet user to enter her five digit mailbox number 2417 and to complete the response text field 2416 . if the internet user does not have a mailbox number , she is instructed to create one by selecting the “ create new mailbox ” button 2426 . after selecting the “ create new mailbox ” button , the internet users is presented with a mailbox confirmation page 2418 that assigns the internet user a five digit mailbox number and a five digit password 2419 . by selecting the “ complete response ” button 2420 , the internet user can return to the ad response form 2414 . the iws then updates the ad database . specifically , the iws stores the internet user &# 39 ; s new mailbox number and password to the fields pr_mailbox_number 401 and pr_password 402 in the ad_personal_response table of fig4 along with the date and time the new mailbox is created . after completing the ad response form , the internet user submits the form by pressing the “ submit ” button 2422 . the advertiser is then presented with a response confirmation form 2423 which is illustrated in fig1 . the response confirmation form gives the advertiser information on enhancing her response with an audio message , photograph , or video clip . the iws then stores the response to a disk file and updates the ad database 2424 . specifically , the iws creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 and populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 501 , rsp_date time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the response , and the location of the response file on the iws . the field rsp_type 504 is set to text . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to true to indicate that the text does not need to be converted to a different format . in addition , the mailbox number of the personal ad responded to is placed in a notification queue 2425 , together with delivery information corresponding to the ad , so that the advertiser can be notified that a response has been left for her ad . the delivery information includes the telephone number and e - mail address , if available , of the advertiser to be notified . as already indicated , after a text response has been submitted via the internet , the internet user is shown a response confirmation form 1501 as shown in fig1 . the response confirmation form gives the internet user instructions on how to enhance a response to an ad with audio , video , or a photograph . a more detailed explanation of how a respondent submits an audio response , photograph , or video clip via ct1 will now be given . to submit an audio response , the internet user first makes an audio recording using a wav file editor and then saves the file 1503 , for example : response . wav . the internet user then submits the audio file using e - mail to the recipient &# 39 ; s electronic mailbox on the iws 1504 , for example : 22345 @ personals . com 1512 . the internet user &# 39 ; s audio response is stored to a disk file on the iws and the ad database is updated 1505 . specifically , the ivr creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 and populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 501 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 506 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the audio file , and the location of the audio file on the ivr . the field rsp_type 504 is set to wav to indicate that the audio recording is in the microsoft . wav file format . also , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to false to indicate that the audio file must be converted from the microsoft . wav format to create two new audio response files : one in the realaudio . ra format for playback on the internet , and another in the dialogic . vox format for playback via the telephone . the iws determines if conversion of audio files is needed 1506 , and then creates a new realaudio . ra file and dialogic . vox file from the microsoft . wav file 1507 . the realaudio file is stored on the iws and the dialogic file is stored on the ivr . the iws also updates the ad database 1508 . specifically , for each new audio file , the iws creates a new record in the ad_response table of fig5 and populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the response , and the location of the response file on the iws . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to trle for both the source audio file (. wav ) and the target audio files (. vox and . ra ) to indicate that the audio files do not need to be converted 1509 . to send a photograph in response to an ad , the internet user first digitizes a photograph using a scanner or takes a photograph with a digital camera and then saves the image to a gif file , for example : response . gif 1510 . the respondent then submits the graphic file using e - mail to the recipient &# 39 ; s electronic mailbox , for example : 22345 @ personals . com 1504 . the respondent &# 39 ; s photo is stored to a disk file on the iws and the ad database is updated 1505 . specifically , the iws creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 and populates the rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the file format of the photograph , and the location of the file on the iws . the field rsp_type 504 is set to gif to indicate that the graphic file is in the gif file format . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to true to indicate that no file conversion is necessary as . gif is the graphic file format used by the iws 1506 . it should be noted that file conversion may or may not be necessary depending on what file formats are supported by the iws and ivr and in which formats the system allows users to submit files . to send an advertiser a video clip , the internet user first digitizes a video clip and then saves the image to a microsoft . avi file 1510 , for example : 44567 . avi . other video formats such as apple quicktime , or mpeg video could also be used . the respondent then submits the graphic file using e - mail to the recipient &# 39 ; s electronic mailbox , for example : 22345 @ personals . com 1504 . the respondent &# 39 ; s video is stored to a disk file on the iws and the ad database is updated 1505 . specifically , the ivr creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 and populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the file format of the video clip , and the location of the video file on the iws . specifically , the field rsp_type 504 is set to avi to indicate that the audio recording is in the microsoft avi file format . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to false to indicate that the vdolive file must be converted to the vdolive format for real time playback on the internet . the iws determines that the video file must be converted to vdolive format 1506 . the iws creates a new vdolive file from the microsoft avi file and stores the new file to a disk file 1507 on the iws and updates the add database 1508 . a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 is created and the iws populates the rsp_mailbox_nummer 501 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 fields to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the date and time of the response , the format of the video file , and the location of the video file on the iws . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to true for both record formats ( avi and vdolive ) in the ad database to indicate that the video file ( s ) does not need to be converted 1509 . as previously indicated , if the user selects the matching option 2415 in fig1 , the iws queries the ad database to find other ads that are similar to the ad selected by the caller . specifically , an ad is deemed to be similar if the age in the ad &# 39 ; s profile is within five years of the profile of the ad selected by the caller and if the ads have the same gender and marital status . its is to be understood that the criteria used to determine a similar ad could vary greatly in kind and quantity . [ 0129 ] fig1 illustrates the notification routine that processes the records placed in the notification queue in step 2322 of fig1 and step 2425 of fig1 . in step 3001 , the dbs scans the notification queue to determine if any callbacks are scheduled to be made at the present time . as previously described , each notification record includes the telephone number and e - mail address , if available , of the advertiser to be notified . in step 3003 , the dbs scans the notification record for an e - mail address . if an e - mail address is present , the dbs sends the record to the iws 3004 in step 3005 , the iws sends an e - mail message to the advertiser informing him that a response has been made to his ad . the e - mail message includes a hot link that can be followed to the actual response for those retrieving their e - mail via a browser step 3006 sends the record to the ivr in step 3007 , the ivr dials an advertiser &# 39 ; s telephone number contained in the callback record and waits for a response . if a voice response is not received , then the ivr sends a corresponding message to the dbs the dbs then marks the time of the attempted callback in the notification queue record , so that a set period of time can be established between callback attempts . note could also be made if an e - mail message had been sent to avoid sending duplicate notifications . if a voice response is received 3008 , then in step 3009 , then the ivr sends a voice message informing the advertiser that a response has been made to his ad . the voice message also gives a telephone number and internet address that can be used to retrieve the response . it may be desirable in certain applications to prompt the person who answers the telephone for a password and mailbox number to verify their identity . also , it may be desirable to actually allow the person to listen to the response during the call . an exemplary operation of the system , with regard to an advertiser retrieving response messages to his personal ad will now be treated to accomplish the process as indicated in fig1 . first , suppose an advertiser at terminal t1 places a call to retrieve messages left in response to his ad . the assumed call involves the advertiser actuating the buttons to input the number 1 900 777 4444 , for example . as a result , signals are provided to the public telephone network resulting in a connection from the remote terminal t1 to the ivr . using standard dnis techniques , the ivr associates the called number 1 900 777 4444 with a specific format , for example , a message retrieval format . referring to fig1 , upon receiving a call , the ivr sets the “ logon attempts ” equal to zero 2501 . the ivr then increments the “ logon attempts ” by one 2502 and cues the caller for a mailbox number 2508 and password 2503 . the ivr then queries the ad database to determine if the mailbox number and password are valid 2504 . if the entries are not valid , the ivr determines if the caller has exceeded the maximum number of logon attempts allowed 2505 . if the caller has exceeded the maximum number of logon attempts allowed , the call is terminated 2506 . if the maximum number of logon attempts allowed has not been exceeded , the ivr increments the “ logon attempts ” by one 2502 and again cues the caller for a mailbox number and password . if the entries are valid , the ivr then queries the ad_response_table of fig5 to determine if the advertiser has any response messages 2507 . if the advertiser has no response messages , the call is terminated 2506 . if the ivr finds a response message , the ivr queries the field ad_origin 211 to determine if the response message originated on the internet 2509 . if the response message originated on the telephone , the ivr plays the audio response message 2513 . if the response message originated on the internet , the ivr uses text to speech to play the text response message as placed on the internet 2510 . the ivr then queries the ad_greetings_table of fig2 to determine if the internet respondent also submitted an audio response message 2511 . if the query does not find an audio greeting 2512 , the ivr prompts the caller to indicate if he wishes to respond to the ad 2514 . if the query finds an audio greetings 2512 , the ivr plays the audio greetings 2513 . the ivr then prompts the caller to indicate if he wishes to respond to the ad 2514 . if the caller elects not to respond to the ad , the ivr queries the ad_response_table of fig5 to determine if the advertiser has any additional response messages 2519 . if an additional response message is found , the caller is returned to block 2509 for processing . if an additional response message is not found , the call is terminated 2520 . if the caller elects to respond to the ad , the ivr cues the caller to record his response 2515 . the ivr then stores the response to a disk file 2516 and updates the ad database 2517 . specifically , the ivr creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox - number of the system user to whom the response is directed , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the response , and the location of the response file on the ivr . the field rsp_type 504 is set to vox to indicate that the audio recording is in the dialogic . vox file format . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to false to indicate that the audio must be converted from the dialogic . vox format to create a new audio file in the realaudio . ra format for playback on the internet . the ivr also creates a new realaudio . ra file from dialogic . vox file and stores the realaudio file to a disk file on the iws . specifically , the ivr creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 and populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the ad responded to , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the response , and the location of the response file on the ivr . the field rsp_type 504 is set to ra to indicate that the audio recording is in the realaudio . ra file format . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to true for both the audiotext . vox file and the realaudio . ra file to indicate that the audio files do not need to be converted . next , the ivr queries the ad_response_table of fig5 to determine if the advertiser has any additional response messages 2519 . if an additional response message is found , the caller is returned to block 2509 for processing . if no additional response messages are found , the call is terminated 2520 . an exemplary operation of the system of the present invention , with regard to an advertiser retrieving her messages via the internet will now be treated to accomplish the process as indicated in fig1 . first , suppose an advertiser at terminal ct1 connects to the internet to retrieve messages . the assumed internet user connects to the internet and inputs a uniform reference locator url , for example : http :// www . personal_ads . com , resulting in a connection from the remote terminal ct1 to a home page 1701 on the internet web server . referring to fig1 , from the home page 1701 on the internet web server , the advertiser selects a message retrieval form 1702 . the message retrieval form 1702 instructs the advertiser to enter a mailbox number 1703 and password 1704 . the iws then queries the ad database to determine if the mailbox number and password are valid 1705 . if the entries are not valid , the internet user is presented with an invalid mailbox and password form 1706 . if the entries are valid 1705 , the iws queries the ad database 1707 to find responses to the advertiser &# 39 ; s ad . if there are no responses , the iws presents the advertiser with a no responses form 1709 . if the iws finds one or more responses , the iws presents the advertiser with a personal ad messages form 1710 . the personal ad messages form 1709 shows any messages for the advertiser . each message shows the date 1712 and time 1713 the message was received and contains one or more icons that represent the contents of the message . a text icon 1714 denotes a text message ; an audio icon 1715 denotes an audio message ; a still camera icon 1716 denotes a photograph ; a video camera icon 1717 denotes a video clip . by clicking on an icon , the advertiser can view or listen to the associated file . the internet user responds to a message ad by selecting its associated “ respond ” button 1718 . when the internet user selects the respond button , she is transferred to an ad response form 1719 . the internet user creates a response by completing a response text field 1720 . after completing the ad response form , the internet user submits the form by pressing the “ submit ” button 1721 . the advertiser is then presented with a response confirmation form 1722 which is illustrated in fig1 . the response confirmation form gives the advertiser information on enhancing her response with an audio message , photograph , or video clip . the iws then stores the response to a disk file and updates the ad database 1723 . specifically , the iws creates a new record in the ad_response_table of fig5 and populates the fields rsp_mailbox_number 501 , rsp_rmailbox_number 502 , rsp_date_time 503 , rsp_type 504 , and rsp_filename 505 to indicate the mailbox number of the system user to whom the response is directed , the mailbox number of the respondent , the date and time of the response , the format of the response , and the location of the response file on the iws the field rsp_type 504 is set to text . finally , the field rsp_conversion_flag 506 is set to true to indicate that the text does not need to be converted to a different format | 7 |
in all the figures of the drawing , sub - features and integral parts that correspond to one another bear the same reference symbol in each case . referring now to the figures of the drawing in detail and first , particularly , to fig1 thereof , there is shown a laser module according to the invention that has a laser chip 1 which is disposed on a to base 2 of a to housing 5 . the to housing 5 has a cylindrical coaxial geometry and forms a holder 51 into which it is possible to plug a glass fiber 8 surrounded by a ferrule 6 for the purpose of optical coupling . the to base 2 or the laser chip 1 disposed thereon is driven and supplied electrically via electric connections 3 which lead away from the to base 2 . to housings are standard housings , known in the prior art , for optical transmit or receive modules , the form of which resembles the housing of a standard transistor , but which have an opening on the topside for the entry or exit of light . a to laser module , in the case of which a glass fiber is coupled to the to laser module , is also designated as a coaxial module . the coupled glass fiber is also designated as a pigtail . a facet or end face 81 of the glass fiber 8 is located in accordance with fig1 in the interior of the housing 5 , and is coupled optically to the laser chip 1 via a coupling optical system . the coupling optical system has a deflecting mirror 9 and a lens 4 located in a holder , which deflect light emitted by the laser chip 1 onto the end face of the glass fiber 8 , or vice versa , and thereby couple the laser light from the laser diode 1 into the glass fiber 8 . the laser chip 1 is a fabry - perot semiconductor laser chip and is illustrated schematically in fig4 . accordingly , the chip 1 has in a way known per se a cuboid crystal volume with an active laser region 15 which is bounded by two plane - parallel crystal faces or facets 12 , 13 . the rear facet 12 of the laser chip 1 is provided with a highly reflecting layer , and constitutes a reflecting surface . the rear facet 12 can be assigned a monitor diode in this case ( not illustrated ). by contrast , in a departure from conventional fabry - perot interferometers , the front facet 13 is antireflection - coated , and so laser light 14 passes the front facet 13 without reflections and is launched into the glass fiber 8 via the coupling optical system 9 , 4 ( compare fig1 ). the residual reflections reach values below 0 . 1 % in this case . in an alternative refinement , the front and the rear facets of the laser chip 1 are slightly tilted with respect to the laser axis , in order to avoid undesired reflections and resonances . according to fig1 a fiber bragg grating 7 is constructed in the region of the core of the glass fiber 8 ( which is preferably a single - mode fiber ) adjoining the end face 81 . the fiber bragg grating 7 is permanently inscribed into the fiber core of the single - made fiber 8 , for example by lateral uv irradiation . a conventional single - mode glass fiber or a specifically doped uv - photosensitive fiber can be used in this case . the grating period of the grating 7 is selected in such a way that only a desired wavelength λ is retroreflected . the relationship holds in this case that the grating period is equal to λ / 2 n , n being the refractive index of the glass fiber . a typical spatial grating period is approximately 0 . 5 μm . the optical resonator of the laser is formed by the rear , silvered facet 12 of the laser chip 1 and the fiber grating 7 of the optical conductor 8 . in this configuration , the fiber grating 7 provides frequency - selective feedback of the light emitted by the active region 15 of the laser chip 1 , such that only the reflected frequency is amplified and emitted as laser light . a portion of the laser light is transmitted in this case into the optical fiber 8 through the fiber bragg grating 7 . a second exemplary embodiment of the invention is illustrated in fig2 . identical elements are denoted in this case with identical reference numerals . in the exemplary embodiment of fig2 the ferrule 6 , which surrounds the optical conductor 8 , is permanently connected to the housing 5 of the optoelectronic module . a plastic sleeve 10 bearing against the holder 51 of the housing 5 ensures in this case that the optical conductor 8 cannot be bent too strongly . the lens 4 is a silicon lens with a short focal length of preferably less than two , in particular less than one millimeter . the numerical aperture of the lens 4 is sufficiently large and is typically above the value of 0 . 4 . the silicon lens was produced , for example , from a planar substrate via etched structures . alternatively , it is also possible to use other spherical or aspherical lenses made from a suitable optical material for the respective wavelength region , for example made from glass , plastic , gap or sic . the refractive index of the lens is preferably greater than 2 in this case . only a specific , desired wavelength is reflected given appropriate selection of the grating period of the fiber bragg grating 7 , and so the laser starts up only for this wavelength . the remaining wavelengths are destroyed by interference . an end face 81 ′ of the glass fiber 8 is slightly chamfered in order to avoid undesired back reflections . the chamfering is typically 8 °, it also being possible for larger or smaller angles , in particular between 5 ° and 25 °, to be implemented , depending on the application . fig3 shows the module according to the invention , in the case of which the optical conductor 8 can be pluggably coupled to the housing 5 of the laser module . the holder of the housing 5 is constructed in this case cylindrically and in such a way that the ferrule 6 need only be pushed into the opening with the optical conductor 8 . a screwable fixing element 11 serves a purpose of connecting the ferrule 6 and the glass fiber 8 permanently to the housing 5 . it is possible in this case for another fiber bragg grating 7 to be provided in a simple way by exchanging the ferrule 6 with the glass fiber 8 and plugging in another glass fiber with a fiber grating of another grating period . since a different grating period leads to a change in the frequency fed back , the emission wavelength of the laser module can be changed by changing the optical conductor 8 or the fiber grating 7 . experiments have shown that it is possible in this way to use only one laser to generate more than ten different channel wavelengths that , for example , respectively have a spacing of 100 mhz . this is particularly advantageous for providing replacement laser modules in systems with many wdm channels . in the exemplary embodiments of fig2 and 3 , the resonator length of the laser module is selected to be short in such a way that the circulation frequency of the light in the resonator is higher than the desired modulation frequency of the module . in this case , the resonant frequency is at bit rates of the modulated signal of up to 10 gbit / s in conjunction with approximately 15 ghz . fig5 shows an exemplary embodiment of the module according to the invention in the case of which a multiplicity of laser diodes are disposed in to housings 5 , and coupled optical fibers 8 , 8 ′, 8 ″ with fiber bragg gratings in accordance with fig1 to 3 are disposed in an array on a carrier plate 16 . in this configuration , the spatial grating period of the fiber bragg grating differs for each optical fiber 8 , 8 ′, 8 ″, and so the respective laser in each case has a somewhat different emission wavelength , and consequently light of a different wavelength is respectively launched into the individual optical fibers 8 , 8 ′, 8 ″. the result is that through the use of similar laser diodes a module with a multiplicity of optical channels is provided such as is used , in particular , in dwdm systems . the individual optical channels in this case preferably have a fixed channel spacing of , for example , 100 ghz . | 7 |
having summarized the invention , reference will now be made in detail to the description of the invention as illustrated in the drawings . while the invention will be described in connection with these drawings , there is no intent to limit it to the embodiment or embodiments disclosed therein . on the contrary , the intent is to cover all alternatives , modifications and equivalents included within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims . turning now to the drawings , fig1 illustrates a block diagram of a current driven dce device 16 shown in context with communication lines and data terminal equipment ( dte ) devices . more specifically , fig1 illustrates dte device 12 connected via serial line 14 to dce device 16 . dte device 12 may comprise a number of devices , including , but not limited to a computer , printer , point - of - sale device , or a telephone . for example , where dte device is a computer , dce device 16 may comprise a modem and line 14 may comprise a serial connection between the dte device 12 and the dte device 16 . dce device 16 communicates with other dce devices across input / output line 19 . the input / output line 19 may typically be comprised of a two wire service , which wires are often denoted as tip 18 and ring 20 . located at another end of input / output line 19 is dce device 21 which communicates with dte device 24 via line 22 . as discussed above , dte device 24 may comprise a number of devices , including , but not limited to a computer , printer , point - of - sale device , or a telephone , and dce device 21 may comprise , but is not limited to , a modem . fig2 represents a schematic diagram of dce devices 16 and 21 . as discussed above , tip 18 and ring 20 lines are coupled to an analog front - end circuit 11 which includes the simulated termination 10 via inductive coupling 22 and lines 48 and 50 . a monitor circuit 46 includes a tip and ring monitor circuit for off - hook and ring detection via lines 24 and 26 . the monitor circuit 46 then provides a signal representative of the status of tip and ring lines 18 and 20 via connection 49 to the main control module 80 of the dce device . analog to digital circuitry 42 receives an analog communication signal from the front - end analog circuitry 11 for further processing by a digital signal processor ( dsp ) 40 via line 58 . additionally , dsp 40 provides a digital communication signal via line 60 to a front - end analog circuitry 11 for signaling over input / output line 19 . data received from the input / output line 19 passes through the analog front - end 11 , line 58 and is converted from analog to digital form by the analog to digital converter of block 42 , before being passed to the digital signal processor 40 . conversely , outgoing data output from the dsp 40 is converted by the digital to analog circuitry 44 , before being communicated to input / output line 19 , by way of the analog front - end 11 . finally , a dte interface 38 is in communication with the dsp 40 and in further communication across line 14 , with the dte 12 , such as a computer . a control module 80 is in communication with the various other components of the dce 16 . while there are various ways to implement the control module 80 , one way , as illustrated , is to further partition the control module 80 into functional units denoted as a processing unit 25 , a memory 30 ( which may further include an executable code segment 32 ) and a controller 36 . for purposes of the broad concepts of the present invention , the controller 80 receives a signal from the monitor circuit 46 on line 49 , that signal will then provide controller 80 with information necessary to control the dsp 40 for the receipt and transmission of data . in this regard , the monitor circuitry 46 may be configured to detect an off - hook condition or alternatively a ring condition via lines 24 and 26 . as is known in the art , the off - hook condition may be detected by a drop in voltage across the tip and ring lines 18 and 20 within input / output line 19 , or alternatively a sudden chance in impedance on the input / output line 19 . on the other hand , a ring detect condition is identified by a low frequency oscillatory voltage on input / output line 19 . in short , the controller 80 evaluates the signal received on input / output line 19 for the purpose of controlling the dsp 40 and related componentry . appropriate signals may , accordingly , be transmitted to the dsp for formulating data transmissions ( or interpreting received data transmissions ). in accordance with an alternative embodiment of the invention , it will be appreciated that the analog to digital converter 42 and digital to analog converter 44 may be implemented as part of the dsp 40 , to generate a signal in digital format which may be more readily evaluated and processed by the dsp 40 . additionally , the controller 80 may be a microprocessor , a microcontroller , an application specific integrated circuit ( asic ) or other digital circuitry configured to specially processed information . in the illustrated embodiment , the controller 80 includes fundamental components ( processor unit 25 , controller 36 , memory 30 ) that together operate to perform distinct computing operations . such operations may be controlled , for example , by executable code 32 contained within the memory 30 . turning now to fig3 a synthetic termination circuitry module 10 within the front end analog circuitry 11 is illustrated . in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention , a current driven current source 52 drives the transmission lines 48 and 50 . the current driver current source 52 typically has a current gain , for example , current through line 64 divided by current through line 63 is greater than unity . a feedback mechanism 54 senses the voltage difference between point a and point b , converts that voltage difference into an appropriate current , and feeds that current into control summation node 62 . line 60 transmits current from a current source ( not shown ) to control summation node 62 . control summation node 62 then provides current to the current driven current source 52 to force the impedance across the termination . thus , feedback mechanism 54 and driver control summation node 62 force an apparent impedance . thus , any transmission line coupled to the dce device 16 or 21 senses a termination impedance simulated by the synthetic termination 10 . for example , in one embodiment synthetic termination 10 forces an apparent input impedance to the dce device 16 of approximately 135 ohms . in that embodiment , the driver load is the only high - valued resistor of 13500 ohms , plus the transmission line of approximately 135 ohms . in the absence of the present invention embodied in the synthetic termination circuitry 10 , a current driver would have to drive the 135 termination ohm plus the 135 ohm transmission line ( assuming the termination impedances are arranged in a parallel configuration in the current driven environment ), resulting in a total of a 67 . 5 ohm load and about twice the drive current . although an apparent input impedance of 135 ohms is cited as an example of a simulated termination impedance in the present invention , the ordinarily skilled artisan will understand that discreet componentry may be arranged such that any desired input impedance may be achieved . fig4 illustrates an arrangement of discreet analog componentry which may be arranged to implement the above - referenced simulated termination impedance . operational amplifier u18 and resistors r46 , r16 , r17 and capacitor c3 form the current driven current source 52 . additionally , operational amplifier u44 and resistors r118 , r115 , r116 and r117 form a portion of the feedback mechanism 54 . specifically , that group of components comprising feedback mechanism 54 senses a voltage drop across nodes a and b and sends a voltage signal to coupling capacitor c68 and through resistor r114 . resistor r114 converts the amplified voltage signal from operational amplifier u44 into a current signal on line 61 . line 60 receives current from a current driver ( not shown ) and node c functions as the driver control summation node 62 as shown in fig3 . table 1 below lists the values of resistors and / or serial numbers of operational amplifiers set out in fig4 . those values are chosen to simulate an input termination impedance of approximately 135 ohms for the data communication equipment devices 16 and 21 . ______________________________________component identification no . component valve / serial no . ______________________________________resistor r46 13500 ohmsresistor r118 100 kohmsresistor r115 100 kohmsresistor r116 100 kohmsresistor r117 100 kohmsresistor r17 10 ohmsresistor r16 60 . 4 ohmsresistor r114 845 ohmscapacitor c3 47μcapacitor c68 10μop - amp u18 lm6171op - amp u44 lm6124b / ns______________________________________ the discreet component analog circuitry of fig4 illustrates an embodiment where a 135 ohm termination is simulated in a load resistance of 13 , 500 in resistor r46 is utilized . however , the ordinarily skilled artisan will understand that load resistances as well as gain values achieved by the feedback mechanism 54 may be changed to simulate other impedance values . the synthetic , active termination circuitry reduces transmission output power by synthesizing termination by the active components described above . additionally , this synthetic termination may synthesize any level of impedance depending upon the value and nature of the discreet componentry which is chosen for the circuit . furthermore , the current driver circuitry requires approximately one - half the current normally needed without such a synthetic termination . for example , prior art configurations terminate each end of the communication transmission line in series for echo and noise control . in the front - end analog circuitry of the present invention the local termination is not necessarily driven in the dce devices 16 and 21 , which reduces power consumption associated therewith . furthermore , the inventive synthetic termination dramatically reduces driver requirements in current transmission by reducing driver internal bias current . in turn , the invention affords improved linearity to behavior of the data communication equipment device . the synthetic termination in accordance with the present invention has particular utility in a current driven dce environment . as mentioned above , prior art dce devices generally utilize voltage signaling techniques and termination resistances in series to achieve line connection . that prior art signaling method generally limits communication to two dce devices coupled across a single local subscriber loop at one time . the current driven environment allows for several dce devices within a customer premises to communicate simultaneously over a single local subscriber loop . referring to fig5 initially , a connection is established between current driven dce devices 16 , and 21 , 21 ( a ) and 21 ( b ), wherein dce devices 16 , 21 , 21 ( a ) and 21 ( b ) each have synthetic termination circuitry as described above , which may be utilized on demand as described below . dce device 16 terminates one end of input / output line 19 and either dce device 21 , 21 ( a ) or 21 ( b ) terminates the other end of input / output line 19 using the synthetic termination as described above . for illustrative purposes only , assume dce device 21 terminates the customer premises end 90 of input / output line 19 . in this case , dce devices 21 ( a ) and 21 ( b ) are bridged ( connected in parallel ) to input / output line 19 such that any signal transmitted by dce device 16 is simultaneously received by dce devices 21 , 21 ( a ) and 21 ( b ). furthermore , it is assumed that dce devices 21 , 21 ( a ) and 21 ( b ) are capable of determining which signals transmitted by dce device 16 are destined for dce devices 21 , 21 ( a ) and 21 ( b ), respectively . therefore , each of dce devices 21 , 21 ( a ) and 21 ( b ) only processes the signals that are destined for it . thus , any one of dce devices 21 , 21 ( a ) and 21 ( b ) may first terminate input / output line 19 using the synthetic termination as discussed above for making the proper connection . subsequently , the remaining dce devices may then simply communicate over input / output line 19 using a current driven signaling configuration while bridged to input / output line 19 without a termination . current driven signaling without effecting synthetic termination may be achieved with the present invention by simply disconnecting current signal line 61 in fig3 or equivalently , setting the value of r114 sufficiently large . therefore , the ordinarily skilled artisan will understand and recognize that only one of the group of dce devices in customer premises 90 terminates input / output line 19 while the other dce devices are bridged to the input / output line 19 . the ordinarily skilled artisan will also understand that the present invention may be implemented in any environment and are not limited to operation at a central office 13 and a customer premises 90 . in addition to enabling data communication across input / output line 19 , data communication directly between dce devices in customer premises 90 is possible . when intra - customer premises input / output 88 and 89 are sufficiently less than one - forth ( 1 / 4 ) wavelength of the highest data signal , dce devices 21 , 21 ( a ), and 21 ( b ) may communicate with terminations and bridge connections as described above . when input / output line 88 approaches or exceeds one - fourth ( 1 / 4 ) wavelength of the data signal , dce device 21 ( a ) should be configured to synthetic termination mode , as described herein . that same methodology applies to input / output line 89 , or any plurality of long input / output lines . as described above , the current driven dce in combination with a synthetic termination allows multiple dce devices to be connected to a single input / output line 19 as described above , which greatly expands utilization of the input / output line 19 . another unique feature of the current driven dce devices as described above is that they allow for the termination of an input / output line while accepting a transmit signal from a dsp 40 through a digital to analog converter 44 in the current driven signaling configuration . another important feature of the present invention is that the input impedance ( z ) for the subject invention is of a low parameter sensitivity . more specifically , the above - described discrete analog components which control the impedance are of low parameter sensitivity which increases manufacturability of the synthetic termination device . for example , since the synthetic termination componentry has a low overall component sensitivity , larger tolerances in the values of specific components may be accommodated in the synthetic termination without departing from predetermined quality standards . sensitivity s is represented as follows : ## equ1 ## in the present invention , a sensitivity range of - 1 . 0 to + 1 . 0 is acceptable . for example , if the sensitivity of z with respect to component ( comp ) were + 1 . 0 , and if the value of a comp goes up by one percent ( 1 %), with design termination impedance ( z ) of 100 ohms , the resulting termination impedance would increase by one percent ( 1 %) to 101 ohms . in the present invention , the sensitivity of z to current driven current source 52 gain is - 0 . 992 . similarly , the sensitivity of z to feedback mechanism 54 is - 0 . 992 . furthermore , the sensitivity of z to resistor r114 is 0 . 992 . finally , the sensitivity z to resistor r46 is 0 . 007 . thus , each component of the inventive synthetic termination has a very low parameter sensitivity which allows the synthetic termination impedance to remain quite consistent regardless of specific component values with acceptable tolerances . it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that many modifications and variations may be made to the preferred embodiments of the present invention , as set forth above , without departing substantially from the principles of the present invention . all such modifications and variations are intended to be included herein within the scope of the present invention , as defined in the claims that follow . | 7 |
the following description is provided alongside all chapters of the present invention , so as to enable any person skilled in the art to make use of said invention and sets forth the best modes contemplated by the inventor of carrying out this invention . various modifications however , will remain apparent to those skilled in the art , since the generic principles of the present invention have been defined specifically to provide a wireless communication system for tracking assets and methods thereof . the system accommodates asset management and control functions via over the air asset related data exchange . the system consists of a plurality of smart agent tags ( smart tags ) affixed to the assets and base stations incorporated as front end units of a bidirectional wireless communication link between the smart tags and the central unit of the system . system timing and data structures are synchronized by a single clock source transmitted over the communication link . the system may further consist of at least one rf beacon used for locating smart tags within a predefined area and for initiating data exchange with smart tags that are most of the time in a sleep mode for minimizing power consumption of the smart tag battery . depending on the size of the area serviced by the system and the locating accuracy requirement , the system may be configured but not limited to rf , optical or ops measurement location devices or any combination thereof . the system architecture , data transfer timing and communication protocol are described in the subsequent sections . the term ‘ central processing and communicating unit ’ ( cpcu ) relates to processing devices radio frequency transmitters and receivers configured for communicating with the tags and user interface . the term ‘ tag ’ or ‘ smart tag ’ relates to an electronic device communicating transmitting location and identification to a cpcu . the term ‘ asset ’ relates to an object that can be tracked by affixing a tag to it . the term ‘ wireless communication link ’; examples internet , intranet , cellular , or any other communicating means adapted to exchange data , the term ‘ clock signal ’ means a digital waveform of constant frequency . the term ‘ time slice ’ relates a period of time assigned for operation of a single tag . the term ‘ re beacon ’ relates to a radio transmitter that sends a characteristic signal used for locating . the term ‘ information registration module ’ is a data base used by the central unit to record tag information . the term ‘ uplink ’ relates to data transmitted from the tags to the central unit . the term ‘ downlink ’ relates to data transmitted from the central unit to the tags . the term ‘ communication cycle ’ is the repeatable cycle time during which the central unit communicates with all the system tags and updates the tags database . the term ‘ tag originated mode ’ relates to a communicating mode initiated by a tag . the term ‘ system originated mode ’ relates to a communicating mode initiated by an enquiry of the central unit . the term ‘ cyclic redundancy correction ( crc ) relates to a number derived from data , and transmitted with the data in order to detect errors . the term ‘ protocol stack ’ is software implementation of a computer networking protocol . the term ‘ application interface server ( api )’ is related to the user interface terminal . the term ‘ location server ’ relates to processing function of the cpcu , the term ‘ radio frequency triangulation transceivers ’ relates to a radio frequency location measurement by intersecting direction of two radio frequency beams reflected from an object . the term ‘ base station ’ relates to the units providing the radio frequency front end to the wireless communication link . the term ‘ application data frame ’ is the section of data in the application layer of the communication protocol . the term ‘ acknowledge ’ relates to a confirmation response transmitted by the cpcu to the tags indicating correct reception of data , reference is now made to fig1 schematically illustrating a block diagram of a system according to one embodiment of the present invention . an asset location and control system 10 consists of a central control and processing unit 11 connected via a wireless communication link 12 to a plurality of similar smart agent tags 13 a , 13 b and 13 n affixed respectively to assets 14 a , 14 b , and 14 n . data communication between the smart tags and the central unit 11 , consisting of inquiries initiated by the central unit and local data sent by each of the smart tags , is sustained continuously . the central unit 11 may include but is not limited to base stations , re beacons , servers and an application processor configured to be adaptable to smart tag operation and for data exchange between the smart tags and the and an application module . smart tag data including asset location , identification and motion , or further required information , is used by the system for monitoring the assets within a user defines area . a single clock generator 15 generates a clock signal that synchronizes all the smart tags with the central unit by broadcasting the clock over the communication link . system synchronization enables defining time slots assigned to a tag operation on demand and thus minimizing or even avoiding conflicting transmission circumstances ( collisions ) between the smart tags . furthermore , the robustness of synchronous data transfer and staying away from repeated data transmissions leads to short data transfer messages and hence to saving the power of a smart tag battery , reference is now made to fig2 schematically illustrating a detailed block diagram of the system architecture . system 20 is depicted with a single tag 21 representative of all the smart tags of the system , connected to the central unit incorporated by several parts . at least one re beacon 22 , operating within a defined range of the system area , is used to transmit wakeup calls via rf link 23 to tag 21 which may be in a sleep mode . re beacon 22 may also transmit to the central processor the associated coverage area which is included within the tracking area of the system . rf transceivers of base station units 24 a and 24 b provide the communication link between smart tags and the central processor . each base station unit is connected to a data communication module 25 a and 25 b comprising client and server units . each base station unit is further connected to a gps receiver 26 a and 26 b providing base station location data to the central unit . data communication modules 25 a and 25 b connected the associated base station units 24 a and 24 b are communicating with a mediation control server 36 via data communication unit 29 . mediation control server 36 which is the processor of the central unit carries out the system operation algorithm and the user application interface . the mediation control server receives location data from a location server 34 and stores all the pertinent data of the tags in a database defined as tag information registration module 35 . when optical smart tags are used , a light beams generated by a tag , is detected by optical reader 31 a and 31 b which are essentially video cameras . the outputs of the optical readers are connected to a video processing module 32 , deriving each tag location by synchronous processing of video images of the optical smart tags . alternatively , when non optical smart tags are being used , tag location may be determined by an rf triangulation module 33 using an rf triangulation method utilizing the intersection of two lines of radio frequency signals reflected from the tag , to measure tag location . data associated with tag location , obtained either optically or by rf triangulation , is calculated by a location server 34 to provide the location of every smart server . as indicated in the preceding section , the synchronous operational mode of the system facilitates sharing effectively limited resources like the central unit processing power by a plurality of clients like smart tags . a single clock generator 27 , broadcasted over the communication and available to all the system modules , facilitates a synchronous operation of the system . the clock signal may be obtained from one of the system units or be entirely independent clock generator . using synchronous communication reduces the probability of error rate and reduces the length of exchanged messages by staying away from frequently having to resend a message in the not as much of reliable asynchronous communication systems . a user can operate the system via a user application program 38 a , 38 b and 38 c connected to the mediation control server 36 via an application program interface ( api ) 37 . furthermore , communication protocol is also synchronized to the system clock and operable by the user through a terminal . reference is now made to fig3 schematically illustrating the system timing diagram . a system communication cycle 40 is divided into a plurality of equal time slots 43 associated with the plurality of system smart tags . when optical smart tags are used , each tag turns on a signaling light during a single time slot designated by the system controller for the associated tag . when system smart tags are configured with gps receivers , each tag gps transmits and receives data during the corresponding time slot . system communication cycle time 40 begins with transmission of clock signal which is transmitted continuously every cycle or intermittently every few cycles . system communication cycle consists of two sections of bidirectional data transfer : a downlink data section 41 followed by an uplink data section 42 . a commonly used communication cycle time may be 1 sec long , however actual value of communication cycle time , up - link time and down - link time may be set to other values depending on the configuration and requirements of the tracking system . a communication cycle time begins with radio frequency ( rf ) downlink time section 41 when system central unit transmits to the smart tags an acknowledgement of receiving data , or commands to the tags , or a combination of acknowledgement and commands thereof . the second section of the system communication cycle is rf uplink time 42 when a time slot is randomly assigned to a reporting smart tag which transmits during the associated time slot data to the central unit . a tag initiating a service request transmits the service request during the next randomly selected time slot . smart tags can search for a beacon during any available time not interfering with synchronization and receiving an acknowledging message for the service request transmission . tag receiver is utilizing the available free time for receiving beacon transmission . communication between the smart tags and the central system may be initiated by the smart tags or by the central system . in the tag originated mode , the smart tags send first messages to the central system regarding tag events selected from a group of battery low power , detecting a beacon , exceeding tag sleep time limit , external interrupt occurrence or any additional event that needs to be reported . in the system originated mode , the system sends first a message to the tag responding to an application request requiring any status information of a tag . reference is now made to fig4 a schematically illustrating the data flow through the communication link layers in the tag originated mode . beacon 52 transmits id information that is received by all the smart tags located at the area covered by the beacon . upon receiving id information from the beacon , smart tag 51 transmits a tag service request ( tsr ) to the central system 50 . the system transmits back an acknowledgement of tsr receipt to tag 51 , updates the data base of the tag information registry ( tir ) 53 with the information received from the tag and if applicable updates the application 54 with the new tag event information . based on the received information and user instructions , the application 54 monitors the tracked assets with the affixed smart tags and controls the operation of the tracking system . this sequence of data flow is repeated by all the smart tags affixed to tracked assets and repeats for any of the tracked smart tags of the system . every subsequent communication cycle , the procedure of data transfer between the smart tags and the central unit repeats , as long as the tracking system is operating . reference is made now to fig4 b presenting a schematically illustrating the data flow through the communication link layers in the system originated mode . unlike the previous mode , data transfer begins with user application 54 sending an application request to the system central unit 50 . the system central unit responds by initiating data exchange with an associated tag by transmitting a query to tag 51 . the following data flow steps are identical to the corresponding steps listed in the preceding section . tag 51 transmits a tag service request to the system 50 and the system transmits back to the tag an acknowledgement of received message , updates tir data base 53 and user application 54 . reference is now made to fig5 presenting a schematic illustration of the protocol stack which is the structure associated with the protocol layer . application layer 60 is at the top level of the protocol . for every exchange of data with a tag , the data link layer 61 transfers an application frame of data to the application layer 60 . application data consists of messages , timing diagram and logic of communication between the smart tags and the central unit . in the data link layer 61 , data is a commonly used data packet organized in three main sections : a service preamble section , a data section and a cyclic redundancy correction section . the service preamble section consists of parameters of transmitted data selected from a group consisting of type of data , data length , source address and destination address . the data section can be configured in any format that is proper for the system operation . the crc section is used for error correction of the data by including at least one bit of value determined by a checksum error correction calculation of the data section . physical layer 62 is the lowest level of the communication link . the physical layer 62 comprises the actual data transmitted in the rf communication link . the physical layer includes a preamble section , a header section and a data frame section . the preamble section commonly uses a start bit indicating a beginning of data transmission . the header section is used for synchronization purposes and the data frame includes all the sections defined in data link layer 61 . | 8 |
fig1 shows an assembled connector according to this invention . the connector consists of non - conductive body 10 , preferably made of molded plastic , cap 12 , also preferably made of molded plastic and a plurality of conductive elements 15 enclosed in body 10 and cap 12 . cap 12 has a plurality of slots through which the looped ends 14 of conductive elements 15 extend . likewise , body part 10 has , on the underside thereof , a corresponding plurality of slots 12 through which the opposite ends 14 of conductive elements 15 extend . this can be seen in fig3 . fig2 shows an exploded view of the connector of fig1 . the main body part 10 is constructed of molded plastic and contains a plurality of bores 20 defined therein for accepting the plurality of conductive elements 15 . main body 10 also includes a plurality of recesses 24 for accepting clip members 22 defined on cap 12 . the plurality of conductive elements 15 are inserted into bores 20 such that the bottom loop 14 extends from slots 18 defined in the bottom of main body 10 . cap 12 is then placed on top of main body 10 such that the upper loops 14 of conductive elements 15 extend through slots 18 defined in cap 12 . note that while the connector of fig1 - 3 are shown as having 18 contacts , this invention is not limited thereby but can be used for connectors having any number of contacts . cap 12 is then compressed onto main body 10 such that clip members 22 engage recesses 24 . clip members 22 may be located either on cap 12 or on main body 10 , with the mating recesses being located on the opposite part . fig3 shows an inverted exploded view of the device of fig1 showing the rectangular slots 18 defined in the bottom of main body part 10 . one of conductive elements 15 is shown in fig6 . each conductive element 15 essentially consists of a spring portion 16 having defined on each end thereof a loop 14 . although conductive elements 15 may be composed of any conductive material , in the preferred embodiment they are composed of stainless steel plated with nickel and hard gold . as the cap 12 is connected to main body part 10 , springs 16 are compressed thereby to provide a preload . springs 16 are designed and constructed to provide an exact compression force when installed in the intended application . the compression must be sufficient to provide a contact resistance low enough to allow a current sufficient to support the necessary data signals being transmitted by the connector . the design of the springs ( i . e ., number of turns , material , gauge of wire , etc .) may be varied to provide varying amounts of compression , and therefore varying contact interface resistances when the connector is installed in the intended application . fig7 shows spring 15 in place in a cut away section of the molded plastic body of the connector . it can be seen that looped ends 14 extend through openings 18 in cap 12 and main body part 10 . the main portion of the cavity in which the spring portion 16 is received is preferably cylindrical in shape . this cylindrical cavity defined in body part 10 and cap 12 can be as small as 1 millimeter or less in diameter . this ability to use a hole of this size is an improvement over the prior art cantilevered design , which limited the size of hole that could be used . this feature of the invention provides a distinct advantage over the prior art , which would require a larger cylindrical cavity in which to receive the spring to provide the same compression as can be achieved in this design . to assemble the connector , the plurality of springs are inserted in the cavities 20 with bottom loops 14 extending through rectangular slots 18 defined in the main body part 10 . cap 12 is then placed on top of main body 10 , allowing upper loops 14 of conductive elements 15 to extend through the rectangular openings 18 and cap 12 . clips 22 in cap 12 are received in recesses 24 defined in main body part 10 and engaged therein , thereby holding cap 12 securely in place and providing a preloaded compression on spring 16 . fig4 and 5 show the connector in place in a typical application , for example , a cellular telephone consisting of frame 38 and main printed circuit board 34 having a plurality of contacts 36 defined thereon . connector 8 is held in place by frame 38 and the lower looped ends 14 of connector 8 make contact with contacts 36 on printed circuit board 34 . fig5 shows another view showing accessory 30 having a plurality of contacts 32 which contact the upper looped ends 14 of connector 8 , providing a positive connection between contacts 36 and contacts 32 . as springs 16 are compressed by pushing together accessory 30 and main unit 38 , the proper amount of electrical conductivity is achieved and contact resistance is minimized . although we have shown one embodiment of the connector , it can be seen by one of ordinary skill in the art that the frame consisting of main body part 10 and cap 12 can be made of any non - conductive material and conductors 15 can be comprised of any conductive material capable of providing sufficient construction of spring 16 to provide enough compression force to over come the necessary contact resistance . additionally , the design parameters of spring 16 may be varied . further , the connector need not be limited to application in mobile communications or data processing devices , but may be used for any application . | 7 |
an illustrative embodiment of the present invention , shown diagramatically in fig1 comprises a conveyor indicated generally at 10 adapted to receive hot rolled steel rod issuing from a rolling mill ( not shown ) at high speed (+ 20 , 000 fpm ) through a delivery pipe 12 which is equipped ( optionally ) to apply cooling water to the rod to cool it from rolling temperature ( c 1000 ° c . to 1100 ° c .) down to a surface temperature as low as 550 ° c . the hot rolled rod is then passed through a laying head 14 which coils the rod into rings and lays then onto an endless wire mesh belt , run - in portion 16 of conveyor 10 , which , due to its forward motion , spreads the falling rod out into rings 18 . although the laying head 14 herein shown coils the rings on a vertical axis , it will be understood that coiling on a tilted or horizontal axis is also intended and the horizontal axis is preferred for high delivery speeds . the depiction of the rings 18 in fig1 a is diagrammatic . in actual practice , however , the diameter of the rod will vary between 3 / 16 &# 34 ; and 3 / 4 &# 34 ;, the diameter of the rings will be about 31 / 2 &# 39 ;, and the spacing of the rings will be between about 3 &# 34 ; and 1 / 10 &# 34 ; on centers depending upon the conveyor and delivery speeds , as may be required for various types of rod processing . the conveyor 10 may be equipped with insulated and heated covers 20 , 22 , 24 , 26 , 28 and 30 as shown in fig1 . in one embodiment , blowers 32 are mounted below each conveyor section and are equipped to supply cooling air to the rod through plenum chambers 42 . these chambers can be baffled across the conveyor , to provide a multiplicity of plenum 42a , 42b and 42c ( see fig8 ), each of which can be supplied by different blowers so that greater pressure can be supplied to the rod along the edges of the conveyor where the lay is more dense . heat is applied to the covers 20 , 22 , etc ., at 34a , 34b , etc . conveyor i0 terminates with a wire mesh belt , run - out portion 36 which conveys the rings 18 to a collecting device 37 . in the area of covers 20 , 22 etc . the conveyor 10 comprises spaced , driven rollers 38 , each of which , as shown in fig2 is supplied with cooling air from fans 32 through small plenums 40 which communicate with fans 32 through larger plenums 42 . heaters 44 , which may be electrical resistance elements as shown , or larger gas fired radiant heating elements , mounted over refractory material 46 , are located between each pair of rollers 38 . air , under pressure in plenums 40 , passes upwardly through slots 48 , around rollers 38 and then impinges against the undersurface of rings 18 . plenums 40 can be sectioned across the conveyor and slots 48 can be provided with vanes for adjusting the widths of different slots in different sections so as to vary the air application across the rings if desired . additional heat for either retarded cooling or for heat treating may be supplied through gas - fired radiant heating tubes 50 carried by covers 20 , 22 , etc . as shown in fig7 . covers 20 , 22 , etc . are also provided with remotely controllable pneumatic mechanism 52 for automatically pivoting them into or out of operative position . remotely recording heat and pressure indicating instruments are provided in each plenum 40 , along the conveyor at closely spaced intervals along the conveyor 10 within the insulated ( and heated ) pivotally mounted covers 20 , 22 , etc ., the air plenums 40 and adjacent to heating elements 44 and 50 . each element is individually remotely operable such that a wide variety of treatments can be performed under push - button control from a remote station . among the treatments feasible are ( a ) extremely slow cooling ( e . g ., 0 . 2 ° c ./ sec ) of a closely packed lay ( i . e ., 10 rings per inch ) either with or without irc , ( b ) laying the rings with a spacing of about 1 &# 34 ; at a low temperature so as partially to form martensite ( or bainite ) followed by brief tempering ( as in u . s . pat . no . 3 , 711 , 338 ), ( c ) processing either low or medium - to - high carbon content rod as in conventional stelmor equipment , ( d ) laying high carbon rod at elevated temperature , and applying cooling air uniformly to all parts of the rod , gradually at first and building up to maximum air application during transformation of the dense part of the lay , with the air being forced into the lay from jets positioned in contact with the undersurface of the lay , or ( e ) any variation of the foregoing . alternate means for applying the cooling air to the rod are shown in fig3 to 6 . in fig3 means are shown for admitting air under pressure to the interior of rollers 38 through ducts 54 and slots 56 at one end of each roller 38 . ducts 54 are stationary and the escape of air is prevented by gland seals 58 . in this embodiment , rollers 38 are perforated at 60 in the areas where the rings 18 come in contact with rollers 38 . air passing through perforations impinges against the rod rings 18 . the air may be concentrated against the rod by a cylindical shield 62 which prevents the escape of air except upwardly ( see shield 62 of fig4 with enclosed bottom along dotted lines ). axial flow , or turbine type , air compressors may be used to increase the air pressure and also individually to control each air application station . a further alternative is shown in fig4 in which air from plenums 40 is channelled through rollers 38 passing into perforations 60 at the bottom of each roller and outwardly at the top . this embodiment has the advantage of using the cooling air to cool the rollers 38 . it also can be sectioned so as to confine the air application longitudinally of the rollers 38 so as to make sure that air destined for the dense part of the lay is not deflected laterally . still another embodiment , shown in fig5 and 6 , employs a solid shaft 63 onto which are mounted disks 64 separated by spacers 66 at intervals along the shaft 63 with threaded headers at the shaft ends to hold them together . in this case , a shield 68 is employed which has fingers 70 extending upwardly between disks 64 at the top of the rollers positioned to channel the air and concentrate it against the rod . this embodiment has the advantages of providing a larger arc of roll contact in case a portion of rod rings 18 happens to sag down . it also has a very small area of contact ( or exposure ) between the hot rod and the roller surface which area of contact can be serrated for better traction . this , coupled with applying the cooling air both to the disks 64 and to the insides of shield elements 68 and 70 , helps keep the rollers cool and makes the air cooling more efficient . this embodiment also permits the application of cooling air at different pressures and independently such that back - pressure at any given point does not cause a stoppage of air flow . another advantage of this embodiment has to do with the materials out of which the rollers are made . in the embodiments of fig2 to 4 , expensive , heat resistant , steels must be used for the rollers to accommodate the high heat of the retarded cooling and heat treatment modes of operation . in the embodiments of fig5 and 6 , however , a rim of expensive metal on disks 64 is all that is needed , and shafts 63 , spacers 66 , and the remainder of disks 64 can be made of less expensive metal . in addition a sleeve of insulating material surrounding shaft 63 can be employed . also spacers 66 can be made of insulating material . also the shaft 63 can be hollow and adapted for the circulation of cooling water through it . while rollers as shown in fig3 to 6 and described , bear a special cooperative relationship to the related and surrounding structures , they also present unique advantages in themselves , and therefore , we intend to claim them both alone and in combination . the apparatus of the invention provides a wide range of treatment options within one and the same piece of equipment all on a single treating line and all at push - button control . for example , for an annealing type operation , the operator can operate the conveyor in an intermittent manner so as to form spaced , relatively large , stacked bundles with only a few connecting rings in between . in this way treatments such as subcritical , full , isothermal , and cycle annealing can be simulated , but with the advantage of avoiding the time and energy required in those processes to heat the rod . the time available for treatment depends upon rolling speed , the conveyor speed , the concentration of metal on the conveyor and the length of the conveyor . thus , a 300 &# 39 ; conveyor moving a 5 fpm can subject the rod to treatment for one hour , which is adequate for many types of annealing when a reheating cycle is not involved . of course , merely by removing the covers , speeding up the conveyor , turning off the heaters , and turning on the air cooling , an immediate ( labor free ) change to the rapid cooling modes of operation can be made . having thus described preferred embodiments of our invention , various modifications will now be apparent to those skilled in the art and therefore , it is not our intention to confine the invention to the precise form herein shown but rather to limit in terms only of the appended claims . | 2 |
fig1 shows how a recognition system device 1 in accordance with the invention is mounted on a weapon 2 in such a way , that the center of gravity line 21 of the weapon equipped with the laser device 1 intersects the laser device 1 itself . as can be seen from fig2 the laser device 1 ( fig1 ) comprises a laser target illumination element 3 , a housing element 4 , in which the batteries required for operation are housed among other things , and a mounting rail 5 connecting elements 3 and 4 with each other . the elements 3 and 4 have cylindrical portions which extend parallel with each other in such a way that a soldier can aim between them along an aiming line 22 ( fig1 ). one front end of the element 3 has a display window 31 in the form of a miniature screen , used for representing pictograms of some useful pieces of information . the housing element 4 is provided with a luminous spot 41 , a luminous zone 42 , a fastening aid 43 for an antenna , two coaxial connectors 44 , two operating knobs 45 , 46 each , and a switch 47 . fig2 and 3 show that the front portion of the element 3 has an optical laser device 32 , which can transmit a laser beam 11 . as represented in fig3 the mounting rail 5 can be provided with widenings 51 , 52 which make the mounting of the device i on the weapon 2 easier . a lateral lever 33 can be provided in the illumination element 3 for causing a change of the laser beam characteristic by the insertion of a small hologram plate in such a way that at the target the beam diameter is expanded in a ring shape or by points distributed in a ring shape . fig4 shows a housing element 4 with a pivotable rod antenna 53 and a snap - in or fixation device 54 for this antenna 53 . an optical receiving device 48 can be provided at the front end of the housing element 4 . fig5 shows a harness device 6 provided as equipment for a soldier for battle purposes , having a plurality of electrical or electronic components . a harness device of this type is known , for example , from german published , non - examined patent application de - os 40 03 960 a1 . however , the harness device in accordance with fig5 has sensors 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , which are preferably equipped with a special electronic circuit . in addition , this harness device supports one or several led transmitters 68 , 69 , as well as a control unit 7 , if required with a battery . in the example in fig5 there is an obstacle , for example a bush 12 , between the laser target illumination element 3 on the weapon of a first soldier a and the harness device of a second soldier b . the low - voltage laser 80 in fig6 is connected to a modulator 81 and comprises , for example , a laser diode 82 , a feedback diode 83 coupled with it , an operational amplifier 84 and a transistor 85 , as well as some resistors 86 , 87 and 88 . the anode of the diode 82 and the cathode of the diode 83 are together connected to a voltage source 89 , for example a 3 to 5 volt battery . the cathode of the diode 82 is connected to ground by means of the series connection of the resistor 86 and the emitter - collector path of the transistor 85 . the amplifier 84 with the resistor 87 , which is connected downstream of it , has been inserted between the anode of the diode 83 and the base of the transistor 85 . the base of the transistor 85 formed by the modulating input of the circuit is connected to ground via the resistor 88 . a reference potential can of course also be used as ground . the modulator comprises a circuit 81 which not only provides a coding function , but also a scrambling or chopper function in order to chop , already prior to coding , a light signal of the ( carrier ) frequency ft with a chopper frequency fz which takes place at a bit rate fd of the frequency . the sensors 61 to 67 in fig6 contain a sensor circuit 9 in accordance with fig7 . for example , the sensor circuit 9 comprises a detector diode 91 , whose cathode is connected on the one side with the input of the amplifier 92 and on the other side via a coil 93 with a connector of a capacitor 94 . the output of the amplifier 92 is connected via an integrator filter 95 to a microprocessor 96 , whose output signals are conducted via cables to the control unit 7 . the iff - system in accordance with the instant invention operates under two different environmental conditions , depending on whether the soldier intended as the target is on the open ground or under cover . if , in a scenario with an open field , soldier a wants to identify soldier b , who is not under cover ( this would be without the bush 12 in fig5 ), he puts his laser illumination device 1 mounted on his weapon into operation and “ fires ” a laser beam 11 from the target illumination device 1 against soldier b . a coded message 13 , transmitted by the laser beam 11 , requests soldier b to identify himself . a harness device 6 of soldier b receives the coded message 13 from soldier a , which is composed , for example , of a signal comprising 116 bits . a sensor , for example 63 , on the harness device 6 of soldier b recognizes the 116 bit signal . now soldier b will receive the coordinates of soldier a obtained by means of gps , and an led transmitter 68 on the harness device 6 of soldier b transmits an acknowledgement code . the acknowledgement code can be arbitrarily selected by the unit employing the system . it can consist , for example , of the name of soldier b , the battalion or any arbitrary other terms . in accordance with an embodiment of the invention , soldier a is not only equipped with a laser transmitter 3 , but also has a laser receiver available , possibly housed in the element 4 , with an optical receiving device 48 mounted parallel with the laser transmitter , i . e . on the element 3 . the laser receiver now receives diffused light emitted by the led transmitter 68 of soldier b . soldier a sends an identification code until he receives an acknowledgement from soldier b . if soldier b is of his own party , soldier a sees a red alarm signal in the luminous spot 41 and / or in the luminous zone 42 , which prohibits him from attacking soldier b . this alarm signal appears in the system in such a way that it can only be perceived by soldier a , but not by the enemy . although soldier a receives the acknowledgement signal for example by means of the optical receiving device 48 in the led receiver 49 of his device 1 , a corresponding target illumination device 3 of the laser device 1 of soldier b is not used as an infrared transmitter for returning the acknowledgement to soldier a , because the laser target illumination device 3 transmits a too tightly bundled light beam . this tightly , preferably at an angle of approximately 0 . 5 mrad , aligned light beam could not return the acknowledgement signal to soldier a , since soldier b does not necessarily know the position of soldier a . therefore a high - output led transmitter ( led = light - emitting diode ) is used for returning the acknowledgement code , which is also attached to the harness device 6 of soldier b . this led transmitter 50 , 68 radiates its light output over a much larger spatial angle , so that the acknowledgement from soldier b can be received by soldier a under all circumstances . as long as soldier a can see soldier b , he is capable of receiving the acknowledgement signal . since fighting increasingly takes place under bad light conditions , it is becoming increasingly common to equip soldiers involved in the fighting with night - vision goggles . if this is the case , the weapon 2 is usually fired from the hip . the observation and aiming process takes place along the laser beam 11 , which is visible by means of night - vision goggles ( not represented ). because of the hip position of the weapon 2 , the red alarm signal ( 41 and / or 42 ) is not visible to the soldier carrying the weapon 2 . however , since the laser target illumination device 3 is controlled by a microprocessor , it is easily possible to alternatingly switch the laser beam 11 on and off in place of or in addition to the red alarm signal . the soldier equipped with the night - vision goggles can detect the alarm signal swiftly and easily by means of the laser beam and can in this way identify the illuminated soldier as belonging to his own party . if the illuminated soldier is under cover , for example hidden behind a bush 12 , soldier a can only partially see the body of soldier b . again , soldier a fires the laser beam as described above . the harness device 6 of soldier b will still detect the laser beam from soldier a , because the total system has sufficient sensitivity for this mode of employment , for example because the sensors 61 , 62 , 64 , . . . are each equipped with a special electronic device , which can be supplied with current by a common battery or , if desired , each by a single small battery . the main problem lies in that the led transmitter 68 of soldier b can be completely screened by the bush 12 and that soldier a does not receive the response from soldier b . only light coming directly from the led transmitter 68 can be received by soldier a , since the light is radiated diffused and not directionally . if soldier a does not receive an acknowledgement within a time period ta of , for example , 100 ms after the transmission of the laser beam , but soldier b would obviously be in a position to receive messages from soldier a , soldier b is given a second chance for transmitting an acknowledgement by transmitting a pulse sequence by means of a radio unit 71 attached to the harness device 6 , which can comprise a radio transmitter or radio transmitter / receiver . this radio signal can be received by soldier a under any conceivable circumstances , but because of its vulnerability to enemy countermeasures it should be used only in case other means fail . furthermore , because of transmitting such radio signals , enemy forces can cause friendly soldiers to be attacked . if soldier b is an enemy , no response to the interrogation transmitted by the laser beam of soldier a will take place in either of the above scenarios . after a period of time tb , the laser transmitter 3 of soldier a will stop operations , and a radio unit 72 installed in the system and provided with an antenna 53 will , as a precaution , transmit a pulse sequence tc , lasting for example 1 ms , for identification interrogation . the time period tb can for example lie between 1 ms and 1 s , but preferably should be 100 ms , and for this pulse sequence tc can be selected to be approximately equal to or greater than 0 . 1 ms , preferably approximately 1 ms or more . the radio unit 72 can also comprise a radio transmitter or a radio transmitter / receiver . under all conceivable circumstances this pulse sequence can be received over a distance of several kilometers . if after this second transmission over a radio channel there is no response , the system will identify the illuminated target as an enemy object . a total of 200 ms is required for this process . if soldier a wears night - vision goggles he will see the continuously transmitted laser beam , which identifies an illuminated soldier as an enemy , through the night - vision goggles . the sensors 61 , 62 , 63 , . . . are preferably designed in the form of round disks of a relatively great thickness , so that they are sensitive to laser beams not only on the surface , but also laterally , i . e . at the periphery of the disk . this means that the detector 91 ( fig7 ) is also distributed in a corresponding form over the cylindrical surface of the disks . as mentioned above , the laser beam is chopped , so that the detector 91 detects an intermittent radiation , which it converts with the aid of the resonance circuit formed by the coil 93 and the capacitor 94 into an alternating current of the same frequency fz . the alternating voltage resulting therefrom at the input of the amplifier 92 is very strongly amplified by the latter . the output signal of the amplifier 92 is conducted to the integrator filter 95 , which transmits the coded signal to the microprocessor 96 for evaluation . signals evaluated from this are then supplied to the control unit 7 by the microprocessor 96 . for example , the pulse width of the transmitted chopped laser pulses lies between 10 ns and 100 ms , and preferably between 0 . 1 and 10 ms . the width of an information bit pulse preferably matches the width of a number of 3 to 50 chopped laser pulses . in accordance with another embodiment of the invention , a lever , not represented , can be used for triggering the laser device in place of one of the operating knobs 45 or 46 . the upper part of the laser device preferably forms two semi - cylindrical parallel chambers , wherein the gap provided between these chamber permits an unimpeded view of the target . since this gap is sufficiently wide , in a further embodiment of the invention a luminous spot can be housed just laterally next to this gap , namely preferably in the end area of the gap where the light beam is radiated in such a way that the soldier can simultaneously see the target and this luminous spot . the laser device preferably emits light in a wavelength in the range between 780 and 905 nm , for example 820 nm , and this namely at an output strength of an order of magnitude of 50 mw . if this laser light source is operated with the holographic grid , because of which the exiting light beam can have a divergence of 10 mrad , for example , the range is approximately 2 km . without the holographic grid , because of the reduced divergence of 0 . 2 mrad , however , it is more than 10 km . at distances of less than 2 km the aiming process is made easier by the inserted holographic grid . fig8 shows the interior area of a capsule - shaped housing 610 of a sensor 61 , 62 , 63 , ( fig5 ), and fig9 a section along the line ix — ix in fig8 . the housing 610 has a bottom 611 , preferably embodied flat , and a ring - shaped wall 612 . the housing 610 has four enlargements 613 , 614 , 615 and 616 in its interior ( fig8 ), with threaded bores for fastening a plate 617 , which can be designed as a printed circuit board . toward the outside , the housing 610 is provided with a peripheral bulge 618 , which acts in the manner of a toroidal magnifying glass or collecting lens for the incident laser beams 619 , 620 , because the housing material is transparent to or respectively light - conductive for the laser radiation used . preferably three fastening elements 621 , 622 , 623 are arranged on the plate 617 , which extend far into the interior area of the housing and there maintain a printed circuit board 624 in place , which supports several photo - sensors 625 , 626 , 627 , 628 and a microprocessor 629 or , if desired , only a discriminator . the fastening elements 621 , 622 , 623 can be simultaneously used as electrical connectors for conducting the already discriminated signals via lines to the control unit 7 ( fig5 ). the photo - sensors 625 , 626 , . . . are arranged inside the housing in such a way that their sensitive sides respectively rest flat against the inner , preferably cylindrical , ring - shaped wall portions located between the enlargements 613 , 614 , 615 and 616 , in order to be able to detect the received laser beams conducted through the bulge . at least one further photo - sensor 630 is located in the center of the printed circuit board 624 , whose sensitive side is oriented toward the bottom 611 of the housing and is therefore suitable for detecting laser beams 631 , 632 , whose incidence is at a greater inclination in respect to the surface of the bottom 611 than the laser beams 620 and 619 , which are propagated almost parallel in respect to this bottom surface . in addition to the individual microprocessor 629 or 96 ( fig7 ) or discriminator , preferably an individual pre - amplifier 92 and an integrator filter 95 are also housed in the housing 610 in order to obtain as individual means an alternating electrical signal from the received chopped laser beams and to send the already discriminated signals via lines to the control unit 7 . it is possible , for example , to house the coil 93 and / or the capacitor 94 in the printed circuit board 624 or to integrate them there , which , as sensor means , form the resonance circuit . the discriminator and / or the microprocessor can be embodied for only filtering signals with an expected coding out of a received laser radiation . accordingly , the sensors in fig8 and 9 are embodied as round disks with the diameter / thickness ratio shown in the drawings figures . the incident laser beams can be reflected by the body of soldier b and can laterally reach the radiation sensitive side of the photo - sensor 625 through the peripheral bulge 618 , for example as laser beams 619 or 620 ( fig9 ). when employing infrared laser radiation , which is invisible to the human eye , the housing 610 can be impervious to normal light , for example colored or black . the above explained exemplary embodiments are to be merely understood to be representations for the employment of such a system , which can also be used for simulation purposes . however , other embodiments immediately resulting from them for one skilled in the art also contain the basic concept of the invention . | 5 |
the following examples set forth preferred materials and procedures in accordance with the present invention . it is to be understood , however , that these examples are provided by way of illustration only , and nothing therein should be deemed a limitation upon the overall scope of the invention . this example describes the isolation and sequencing of the protein of the present invention . in order to separate proteins from lawsonia intracellularis (“ lawsonia ”), lawsonia was first grown under standard conditions in a container having 1 l volume using mccoy cells . the extracellular lawsonia cells were harvested by first filtering the culture through a 5 micron filter in order to remove the mccoy cells and other cell debris . this was then followed by centrifugation sufficient to pellet the bacteria . the supernatant was discarded and the pellet was then washed with in pbs to remove residual media components . after washing , the pellet primarily contained lawsonia cells . this final preparation of cells was then dissolved in 2 ml solution of 50 mm tris buffer ( ph 8 . 0 ), 5 mm 2 - mercaptoethanol (“ 2 - me ”), and 8m urea buffer . after extraction for approximately 30 minutes , the mixture was centrifuged for 10 minutes at 20 , 000 × g in order to remove urea - insoluble material . the resulting urea - soluble material was then loaded onto a 1 ml q sepharose anion exchange column , where the proteins were separated over a gradient of 0 - 0 . 6 m nacl over 20 column volumes . one milliliter fractions were then collected , and peak fractions were separated in a second dimension following standard sds - page procedure ( 4 - 12 % bis / tris in mops buffer ). the resulting gel may be viewed as fig1 . following the sds - page , the proteins were then transferred to a pvdf membrane and blotted using swine anti - lawsonia convalescent serum . the serum was diluted to 1 : 100 in a ttbs buffer containing a 2 % blocking reagent ( dry milk ). the membrane was maintained at a constant 30v for over an hour using a novex blot module ( invitrogen , carlsbad , calif .). next , a second blot was done with vpm53 mab , which was diluted to 1 : 50 . next , the membrane was washed three times with ttbs . each wash lasted two minutes . the membrane was then incubated for at least one hour with a secondary antibody . this secondary antibody was goat anti - swine - hrp ( kpl , gaithersburg , md . ), which was diluted to 1 : 1000 in ttbs + 2 % dry milk . the membrane was then washed twice for two minutes with ttbs , then washed once for two minutes with pbs . detection of the protein was accomplished with a opti - 4cn substrate ( bio - rad , hercules , calif . ), which was developed for about 30 minutes , then rinsed with water to stop . the results of the blots may be seen in fig2 and fig3 . the resulting protein shown is a ˜ 52 kda protein that was detected by the convalescent serum . the fractions containing the above - mentioned protein were then concentrated by tca / acetone precipitation and then suspended in a 1 × sds - page buffer containing 10 mm 2 - me . the proteins were then separated using standard sds - page procedure ( 4 - 12 % bis / tris in mops buffer ). the proteins were then transferred from the gel to a pvdf membrane . the membrane was maintained at a constant 30 v for at least one hour using the novex blot module before being dried completely and stained with an aqueous coomassie blue stain ( invitrogen , carlsbad , calif .). the approximately 52 kda protein corresponding to that which was detected by western blot was then excised from the blot using a sterile razor blade . the excised protein was then sent to the protein facility at iowa state university for n - terminal sequencing . the resulting sequence , idfkakgvwdfnfe , is designated seq id no . 1 . the n - terminal sequence was utilized to search various databases for homologous sequences . the top hit protein was from desulfovibrio spp ., a closely related organism to lawsonia . it is likely that this protein has a signal sequence and characteristics of an outer membrane protein , thereby rendering this protein an excellent candidate for incorporation into an immunogenic composition or vaccine operable for eliciting an immune response in swine . such an immune response will provide a degree of protective immunity against lawsonia infection . this example describes the isolation and sequencing of a three other proteins of the present invention . extracellular lawsonia cells were prepared by filtering the culture through a five μm filter and centrifuging under conditions sufficient to pellet the bacteria . the resulting pellet was suspended in buffer a , which comprised 2 . 5 ml of 50 mm sodium phosphate , 0 . 5 m nacl , and 5 mm 2 - me , at a ph of 7 . 4 ). the cells were disrupted through sonication before being subjected to three freeze / thaw three cycles , each comprising one minute pulses with 0 . 5 second duty cycles for a total often minutes . the sonication step was repeated once more for about five minutes and the resultant mixture ( the whole cell lysate ) was frozen and stored at − 85 ° c . until it was removed for use . to fractionate the proteins from the whole cell lysate , the lysate was thawed and then transferred to two eppe tubes that were centrifuged for five minutes at 20 , 000 × g at 4 ° c . this produced a first supernate and a first pellet . the first supernate was centrifuged at 100 , 000 × g at 4 ° c . for 1 . 5 hours to produce a second supernate and a second pellet . this second supernate is labeled as supe ( cytosol ) 1 in fig4 and the pellet is labeled as pellet 2 in fig4 . the first pellet from the initial centrifugation of the thawed whole cell lysate was extracted with buffer a plus 1 % octylglucoside . this was centrifuged for five minutes at 20 , 000 × g at 4 ° c . to produce a third pellet and supernate . the third supernate was then centrifuged the same as the first supernate in order to produce a fourth supernate product , which is labeled as supe ( octyl soluble ) 3 and a fourth pellet , labeled pellet 4 in fig4 . the third pellet was again extracted with butter a , this time with 1 % sarkosyl before centrifuging at 20 , 000 × g for five minutes at 4 ° c . this produced a fifth pellet and fifth supernate . the fifth pellet is labeled as pellet 5 in fig4 . the filth supernate was centrifuged in the same manner as the previous supernates in order to produce a sixth supernate , which is labeled in fig4 as supe ( sarkosyl soluble ) 6 , and a sixth pellet , which is labeled in fig4 as pellet 7 . each of the samples obtained in this example were then subjected to coomassie blue staining , the results of which are shown in fig5 . in that figure , lanes 3 - 9 correspond to fractionated proteins 1 - 7 , as shown in fig4 . fractionated proteins 3 , 5 , and 6 ( supe 3 , pellet 5 , and supe 6 ) were then subjected to western blot analysis using convalescent pig serum . the proteins labeled 3 , 5 , and 6 were transferred from gel to pvdf membrane , which was then subjected to a constant 30 v for at least one hour using a novex blot module . this was blocked for at least one hour in about 50 ml ttbs plus 2 % dry milk ( w / v ). the ttbs is made by adding 0 . 05 % of freshly prepared tween 20 to one liter of a 10 × tbs solution comprising a filter sterilized mixture of 200 ml of 1 m tris at a ph of 8 , and 292 . 2 grams nacl , that has been ph adjusted to 7 . 4 with hcl and qs to one liter . the membrane was then incubated with a primary antibody ( swine anti - lawsonia intracellularis ) 1 : 100 in ttbs plus 2 % dry milk for at least one hour . this was then washed three times for two minutes each time with ttbs . the membrane was then incubated with a secondary antibody ( goat anti - swine - hrp , kpl , lot # xd047 ) 1 : 1000 in ttbs plus 2 % dry milk for at least one hour . this was then washed twice for two minutes each time with ttbs before washing one time for two minutes with 10 × pbs . one liter of the 10 × pbs solution was made by adding 0 . 96 grams nah 2 po 4 ( monobasic ) anhydrous , 13 . 1 grams na 2 hpo 4 ( dibasic ) anhydrous 87 . 7 grams nacl , all of which are dissolved in water and adjusted to a ph of 7 . 4 and qs to one liter before filter sterilizing . finally , ten ml of opti - 4 cn lot # 99051 was added as the substrate and developed for up to 30 minutes before rinsing with water to stop . fig6 presents the results of the western blot of the respective lawsonia protein fractions , 3 , 5 , and 6 . each western blot is in 4 - 12 % bis - tris / mops gel . for the sample prep , 20 microliters of each fraction was mixed with five microliters of 4 × lds - page buffer . lanes 1 - 6 contained the strict negative control serum ( 1 : 100 ) followed by the conjugate ( 1 : 1000 ). lanes 7 - 11 contained the anti - lawsonia intracellularis serum ( 1 : 100 ) followed by the conjugate ( 1 : 1000 ). lane 1 contained the 10 kda marker ( 5 microliters ), lane 2 contained the prestained marker ( 5 microliters ), lane 3 contained protein fraction 6 ( supe 6 ), lane 4 contained protein fraction 5 ( pellet 5 ), lane 5 contained protein fraction 3 ( supe 3 ), lane 6 was empty , lane 7 contained the 10 kda marker ( 5 microliters ), lane 8 contained the prestained marker ( 5 microliters ), lane 9 contained protein fraction 6 ( supe 6 ), lane 10 contained protein fraction 5 ( pellet 5 ), and lane 11 contained protein fraction 3 ( supe 3 ). replicates of fractions 3 and 6 ( 20 μl each ) were run 10 times on 4 - 12 % nupage gels with mops buffer for transfer to pvdf membranes . these results are given in fig7 and 8 . in fig7 , anti - lawsonia intracellularis serum ( 1 : 50 ) was followed by the conjugate ( 1 : 1000 ) and lanes 3 - 9 correspond to fractions 1 - 7 of fig4 . coomassic stained protein fractions are provided in fig8 where lanes 3 - 9 correspond to fractions 1 - 7 from fig4 . the fractionation procedure resulted in fairly distinctive profiles for each protein fraction . in fig6 , li 1 and li 2 were from supe 6 . these protein fractions are octylglucoside insoluble and sarkosyl soluble and are likely from the cell wall fraction . li 3 and li 4 were from pellet 5 . these protein fractions are octyl and sarkosyl insoluble and appear to be membrane proteins . l15 was from supe 3 and is octyl soluble . this protein fraction is likely from the cell wall . of the fractionated proteins , li 1 and li 6 were excised from the membrane of fig6 and 7 , and their n - terminals were sequenced . the n - terminal sequence from li 6 , from supe 3 , is designated as seq id no . 3 and the n - terminal sequence from li , from supe 6 , is designated as seq id no . 7 . this example provides sub - sequences or seq id nos . 1 and 3 that are immunologically relevant and can be used to illicit an immune response against lawsonia intracellularis , thereby providing an animal susceptible to lawsonia intracellularis infection protective immunity , as well as a lessening of the clinical symptoms associated with infection from lawsonia intracellularis . seq id nos . 1 and 3 were analyzed for potential epitopes using a svm and ann - based ctl epitope prediction tool , as described in vaccine , 2004 aug . 13 ; 22 ( 23 - 24 ): 3195 - 204 , prediction of ctl epitopes using qm , svm , and ann techniques , bhasin m , and raghava g p , institute of microbial technology , sector 39a , chandigarh , india , the teachings and contents of which are incorporated by reference . seq id no . 1 contained 1 epitope , which had a score ( ann / svm ) of 0 . 82 /− 0 . 063950275 . this sequence is provided herein as seq id no . 2 . seq id no . 3 contained four epitopes , seq id no . 4 , which had a score of 0 . 91 / 0 . 68874217 , seq id no . 5 , which had a score or 0 . 73 / 0 . 55686949 , seq id no . 6 , which had a score of 0 . 83 / 0 . 17021055 , and seq id no . 2 . this example describes the formation of a vaccine . generally , any one of or a combination of seq id nos . 1 - 7 are provided for use as the antigenic portion of a vaccine . veterinary - acceptable carriers , such as adjuvants , dilulents , and the like will be added to the vaccine and the vaccine will be administered in any conventional manner . | 0 |
fig1 shows a connector for engaging an anchor post of a member according to a preferred embodiment . the connector comprises a body 1 having a first opening 2 , and an engagement member 3 having a second opening 4 with a first portion 4 a and a second portion 4 b . as shown in fig4 , the first portion 4 a has a dimension 12 a greater than a dimension 12 b of the second portion 4 b , and the engagement member 3 is slidable within the body 1 between ( i ) a first position at which the first portion 4 a of the second opening 4 is aligned with the first opening 2 to receive the anchor post when inserted into the body 1 through the first opening 2 , and ( ii ) a second position at which the second portion 4 b of the second opening 4 is aligned with the first opening 2 to prevent the anchor post from being removed from the body 1 through the first opening 2 . the body may be any suitable material or combination of materials such as fabric , metal , leather , natural materials or plastic . the body is more preferably made of natural or artificial fabric . the body is most preferably made of leather or a durable synthetic fabric such as nylon . the body may comprise one or more pieces of material . the body may comprise a single piece with a space within the body for the slidable engagement member . more preferably , the body is comprised of two flaps sewn , riveted , glued or otherwise joined together . the preferred embodiment shown in fig1 and fig2 shows the body 1 consisting of flaps 7 a and 7 b joined together by stitches 10 . a space between non - joined portions of the flaps 7 a and 7 b defines an internal space within which the engagement member 3 is slidable between the first and second positions . as shown in fig1 , an opening 5 ( hereinafter fourth opening ) is created between the two flaps along an outer perimeter where the two flaps are not joined . it is preferable that at two points where the two flaps are not joined to form the fourth opening , reinforcements such as rivets 6 a and 6 b or extra sewing are present to reinforce this opening and prevent failure of the fourth opening . furthermore , as shown in fig1 , fourth opening 5 has a width 5 a , defined by rivets 6 a and 6 b , which is less than the width of the engagement member around portion 4 a . this feature prevents the engagement member from accidentally falling out of body 1 and becoming lost during a musical performance or in other situations where the connector is repeatedly removed from and then replaced on a member having an anchor post . in an alternative arrangement of the body , two flaps are completely joined and the fourth opening is located in one of the flaps . alternatively , there can be no fourth opening and the user slides the engagement member by manipulating the engagement member through the body or by a suitable mechanical device . in the preferred embodiment shown in fig1 , fig2 and fig5 , the body is composed of two flaps 7 a and 7 b having different lengths , such that when the connector is engaged with an anchor post , the flap 7 b is positioned between engagement member 3 and the member having the anchor post and protects the member having the anchor post from damage by engagement member 3 when the engagement member is in the second position . alternatively , the flaps can be of the same length . in the arrangement where the fourth opening is located in one of the flaps , both flaps protect the member having the anchor post from damage by the engagement member . a body made of one , or more than two pieces , may also be configured in a similar manner with respect to the position of the engagement member to the member having an anchor post . in the preferred embodiment , as shown in fig1 , strap 8 is attached to body 1 with stitches 9 . as shown in fig5 , strap 8 is attached by stitches 9 to body 1 between flaps 7 a and 7 b . this feature ensures a secure and durable attachment . alternatively , the strap can be stitched to an outer surface of the body . the strap may be permanently attached to the body by any suitable manner such as stitching , gluing or riveting . the strap can be composed of the same piece or pieces of material as the body , such as leather , fabric or nylon . the strap and one of the flaps can be composed of a single piece of material , such as leather , or the strap and the body can be composed of a single piece of material such as leather . alternatively , the strap can be attached to a fastener which is connected to the body . the fastener may be any suitable structure such as a loop , buckle , clip , grommet or snap . the strap may be permanently attached to the fastener or be removably attached thereto . the fastener can be a buckle and the strap can be removed from the buckle and replaced . the strap may be of any suitable material or combination of materials such as fabric , metal , leather , natural materials or plastic . more preferably , the strap is made of leather or fabric . most preferably , the strap is made of nylon or leather . as shown in fig1 and fig2 , first opening 2 passes completely through flap 7 a and 7 b of body 1 . alternatively , the first opening can only partially pass through the body and connect with the internal space for the engagement member . the first opening can be any shape but must be sufficiently sized to allow insertion of the desired anchor post . as illustrated in fig1 and fig2 , the anchor post is a standard guitar button known in the art and first opening 2 is a substantially circular hole with a diameter equal to , or slightly larger than , the diameter of the top portion of a standard guitar button . as shown in cross section in fig3 and fig5 , anchor post 11 tightly fits inside opening 1 and does not substantially move when the user slides the engagement member between the first position , which is shown in fig1 , and the second position which is shown in fig2 . alternatively , the first opening has a diameter smaller than the diameter of the top portion of the anchor post but the portion of the body around the first opening is made of stretchable material such that the anchor post can be inserted into the first opening by an appropriate application of pressure . as shown in fig1 and fig2 , a third opening 16 is provided that allows a user to remove engagement member 3 from body 1 . further , a user can slide engagement member 3 between the first and second positions by inserting a finger , thumb or a suitable object into third opening 16 . additionally , a user can remove the engagement member from the third opening and then replace the engagement member in a more suitable orientation . this maneuver is often necessary if a user is utilizing the connector with different guitars having different anchor post orientations . further , as shown in fig2 , a user can remove the engagement member from third opening 16 and replace it with a different engagement member that is more suitable for use with a different anchor post . this feature is very advantageous for a user of guitars with different types of anchor posts . a user can then utilize the same connector body and simply change the engagement member , dependent upon the style of the anchor post . fig4 shows engagement member 3 according to the preferred embodiment . the engagement member may be any suitable material , or combination of materials , such as metal , natural materials or plastic . the engagement member is more preferably made of metal and most preferably made of high tensile strength wire . the engagement member may be any shape suitable to slide within the body , so long as the engagement member has an opening with a first portion and a second portion , with the first portion having a width greater than a width of the second portion . the engagement member may be square , rectangular or generally triangular . fig4 shows the engagement member 3 as a wire having the tapered or keyhole shaped second opening with the first portion 4 a and the second portion 4 b . as shown in fig5 , the engagement member has a longitudinal axis 13 and an end portion 14 bent away from longitudinal axis 13 such that when the engagement member 3 is within body 1 , end portion 14 is bent away from a member having anchor post 15 . this bend in the engagement member impedes damage , such as scratching , to the member having the anchor post . alternatively , the engagement member does not have a bend in the end portion . fig4 shows the engagement member 3 having the second opening 4 . it is preferable that the second opening is completely surrounded by the material forming the engagement member to improve durability . fig4 shows engagement member 3 made of a wire loop that is attached at section 17 by brazing . any suitable manner of attaching together a wire or other object or material to form the second opening may be used , such as welding , gluing , soldering or crimping . the engagement member may define an opening that is not completely closed . alternatively , the first portion of the second opening farthest from the second portion is open . alternatively , the second portion of the second opening farthest from the first portion is open . any suitable second opening shape may be used . preferably , the shape of the second opening can be generally oval , elliptical , quadrilateral , triangular , irregular or v - shaped as long as the opening has a first portion and a second portion , with the first portion having a width greater than a width of the second portion . more preferably the second opening has a tapered width from the first portion to the second portion . most preferably , the second opening has a keyhole shape with a width at the first portion that quickly narrows to a lesser width at the second portion . fig1 and fig2 show part of a flexible support of the invention comprising the connector and strap 8 according to the preferred embodiment . the flexible support may be any suitable combination such as one connector and strap ; two connectors and one strap ; a connector , a strap , and a fastener for connecting the strap to the connector ; or two connectors , a strap , and two fasteners for connecting the connectors to the strap . furthermore , the flexible support can comprise two or more engagement members , in addition to straps , connectors and / or fasteners , so that a user may utilize the same strap or connector with a plurality of members having anchor posts , wherein the anchor posts have different dimensions . the strap , fastener and connector may be any of the embodiments described above . a system including the connector of the preferred embodiment comprises a member having an anchor post , and a strap having attached thereto the connector . the system may be any suitable combination such as : a member having an anchor post , a strap and the connector ; a member having an anchor post , a strap , the connector , and a fastener for connecting the strap to the connector ; a member with more than one anchor post , a strap , and two or more connectors ; a member with more than one anchor post , a strap , two or more connectors and two or more fasteners for connecting the connectors to the strap ; or a plurality of members having one or more anchor posts , straps and / or connectors . furthermore , the system can comprise two or more engagement members , in addition to straps , connectors , and members having anchor posts and / or fasteners , so that a user may utilize the same strap or connector with a plurality of members having anchors posts , wherein the anchor posts have different dimensions . the strap , fastener and connector may be any of the embodiments described above . anchor posts include any suitable structure attached to a member such as a nail , screw , protrusion , peg or button . the anchor post may be made of any suitable material such as wood , metal or plastic . more preferably the anchor post is a peg or guitar button . the peg or guitar button may be any suitable shape including cylindrical , square , triangular or irregular . more preferably , the peg or guitar button is cylindrical . most preferably the peg or guitar button has a top portion and a bottom portion , wherein the bottom portion is located between the top portion and a remainder of the member , with the bottom portion having a dimension smaller than a dimension of the top portion . fig3 and fig5 illustrate a typical guitar anchor post 11 . the system can also include any member having an anchor post , such as luggage , portable electronics , portable equipment , or musical instruments . more preferably , the member is a musical instrument . still more preferably the member is a stringed instrument . most preferably , the member is a guitar . though the connector is shown connected to a strap , it can be used absent any strap . thus , while a preferred embodiment of the inventors has been illustrated and described , it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that various changes and modifications may be made therein without departing from the scope of this inventor as defined in the appended claims . | 8 |
in accordance with a preferred aspect there is provided a method of compression of image data of an image wherein each element is compared with a previous element . if they are both equal , a first value is recorded . if they are not both equal , a second value is recorded . each element may be a pixel . the first value may be a 1 , and the second value may be a 0 . the first and second values may be stored in a bit plane . for a one - dimensional compression , a single bit plane may be used to store the values . however , for a two - dimensional compression , comparison may be in both horizontal and vertical directions , a separate bit plane being used for each direction . the bit - planes for the horizontal and vertical directions may be combined by binary addition to for a repetition coded compression bit - plane . combining may be by binary addition , only the second values being stored for lossless reconstruction of the image . the result of the combining may be repetition coded compression data values . all other image data values may be able to be reconstructed using the repetition coded compression data values , and the bit planes for the horizontal and vertical directions . storage in bit planes may be in a matrix . a single mathematical operation may be performed for each element . in accordance with a further aspect , there is provided a system for repetition coded compression comprising a camera for capturing at least one image and for supplying digital data ; a reshaping block for rearranging the digital data into a matrix of image data values ; a processor for receiving the matrix of image data values and compressing the image data values to form compressed data ; and a memory for storage of the compressed data . the camera may be analog . an analog - to - digital converter may be used to convert the analog image to provide the digital data . in accordance with another aspect , there is provided a method for compression of an image comprising capturing the image and converting the image into digital form to provide digital data . the digital data is reshaped into a digital data matrix . repetitions in the digital data matrix are encoded into a bit - plane index , and the data values of the digital data matrix are encoded for storage . the compressed data is stored in a storage memory . the bit - planes may contain information regarding the repetitions along horizontal and vertical directions . there may be further included the combining of the horizontal and vertical bit - planes by a binary addition operation to give a repetition coded compression bit - plane . there may also be included comparing the repetition coded compression bit - plane with the digital data matrix to obtain final repetition coded compression data values . the method may further include storing and archiving the repetition coded compression data values along with the horizontal and vertical bit - planes . the compression is preferably lossless . alternatively , the method a method may further include compression by comparison with a threshold value to achieve lossy compression and a significantly higher compression ratio . the method may be used for an application selected from : medical image archiving , medical image transmission , database system , information technology , entertainment , communications applications , and wireless application , satellite imaging , remote sensing , and military applications . image data is a highly correlated . this means that the adjacent data values in an image are repetitive in nature . therefore , it is possible to achieve some compression out of this repetitive property of the image and then apply huffman coding or other source coding schemes . such a method would be very efficient . in repetition coded compression (“ rcc ”), each element is compared with the previous element . if both of them are equal then a value of “ 1 ” is stored in a bit - plane . otherwise a value of ‘ 0 ’ is stored in the bit - plane . only the difference value is stored in a matrix , instead of storing all the repeating values . in a one - dimensional performance of the method , only one bit - plane is used to code the repetition in the horizontal direction . but in a two - dimensional performance of the method , two bit - planes are used to code the repetitions in both the horizontal and the vertical directions . this is more efficient and gives a better compression ratio . the compression system is based on a mathematical comparison of adjacent image data values . the comparison is performed between adjacent image data values in both the horizontal as well as vertical directions . the bit - planes formed as a result of the comparison in the horizontal and vertical directions are respectively combined by a binary addition method . after this the resultant bit - plane positions are called as rcc bit - planes . the zero values in the rcc bit - plane are stored for lossless reconstruction of the original image . for lossless reconstruction , they are the only values stored . the stored values correspond to the same locations in the original image matrix as zeros in the rcc bit - plane and are hereinafter called rcc data values . all the other image data values can be reconstructed by using the rcc data values , and the horizontal and vertical bit - planes . in case of a lossy system of implementation , the adjacent pixels are not only compared for repetition , but also for the difference value . if the difference value between adjacent pixels is less than a given arbitrary threshold value , then the two adjacent pixels are made as the same . this further increases the number of repetitions in the image data and therefore also increases the compression ratio after repetition coded compression is applied . the value of the threshold can be varied according to the requirements of the particular application , and system . the higher the threshold , the better the compression ratio and also the higher the loss in the quality of the reconstructed image . fig1 illustrates the entire image compression system based on repetition coded compression on a hardware implementation . the analog image signals 12 are captured by the camera 10 and are converted into respective digital data 16 by a analog to digital converter 14 . this digital data 16 is rearranged into a matrix of image data values by a reshaping block 18 . the reshaped image matrix is stored in the embedded chip 20 , which performs the entire repetition coded compression system . this therefore gives the compressed repetition coded compression data values 22 and also the bit - planes of data 24 for storage , archival and future retireval 26 . fig2 is a sample image of the human brain which is captured by magnetic resonance imaging ( mri ). this sample image may be used to demonstrate the compression achieved by repetition coded compression . it is a grayscale image . fig3 zooms a small region from the sample mri image of the human brain . this zoomed region may also be used for demonstrating the repetition coded compression system . fig4 shows that the image is made up of lot of pixels in grayscale . fig5 shows a 36 - pixel region within the sample mri image of the human brain . fig6 shows the ascii value equivalents of the image data values which are originally used for data storage . each value requires eight bits ( 1 byte ) of data memory . currently , the 36 - pixel region requires about 288 bits or 36 bytes of data memory . that data could be compressed and stored with only 112 bits after repetition coded compression . fig7 shows the application of repetition coded compression along the horizontal direction in the image matrix . this results in the horizontal bit - plane and also the horizontal values stored . fig8 shows the application of repetition coded compression along the vertical direction in the image matrix . this result in the vertical bit - plane , and also the vertical values stored . fig9 shows the combination of horizontal and vertical bit - planes by a binary addition operation . this results in only five zero values which correspond to the final values stored from the original image matrix . fig1 shows the total memory required for the 36 - pixel region before and after applying repetition coded compression . the original memory requirement was 288 bits . after applying repetition coded compression the memory required was 112 bits . this is a great amount of compression . fig1 shows the application of repetition coded compression to the entire image . the size is compressed to 44 , 000 bits from the original 188 , 000 bits . fig1 shows an implementation of repetition coded compression . the image matrix 1201 is transposed 1202 , encoded along the horizontal 1203 and vertical 1204 directions and the respective bit - planes 1205 , 1206 are derived . further compression is achieved by combining the horizontal and vertical bit - planes 1203 , 1204 by a binary addition operation . this results in the repetition coded compression bit - plane 1207 , which is logically inverted 1208 and compared 1209 with the original image matrix 1201 to obtain the final repetition coded compression data values 1210 . the repetition coded compression data values 1210 , together with the horizontal and vertical 1206 bit - planes are stored in a data memory 1211 for archival and future retrieval . the coded data can be further compressed by huffman coding . this compression of the image data is achieved using the repetition coded compression system . this system is fast as it does not make use of complex transform techniques . the method may be used for any type of image file . in the example given above , the system is applied only for grayscale images . it may be applied to color images . the system of repetition coded compression of images may be applied to fields such as , for example , medical image archiving and transmission , database systems , information technology , entertainment , communications and wireless applications , satellite imaging , remote sensing , military applications . the preferred embodiment of the present invention is based on a single mathematical operation and requires no multiplication for its implementation . this results in memory efficiency , power efficiency , and speed , in performing the compression . because of the single mathematical operation involved , the system is reversible and lossless . this may be important for applications which demand zero loss . the compression ratios may be significantly higher than existing lossless compression schemes . if the application permits a lossy compression system , a modification is made to the mathematical operation so that a certain amount of loss is observed in the compression , thereby resulting in higher compression ratios . this lossy compression system would find great applications in entertainment and telecommunication systems . whilst there has been described in the foregoing description a preferred embodiment of the present invention , it will be understood by those skilled in the technology that many variations or modifications in details of design , constructions or operation may be made without departing from the present invention . | 7 |
in the figure , reference numeral 1 designates a unit in which a pump - circulated fluid may be throttled . a hydraulic brake booster is identified by reference numeral 2 and is connected to an outlet port 14 of unit 1 through a conduit . brake booster 2 communicates with a reservoir 4 through a return line . a pump 3 draws fluid from reservoir 4 feeding it to an inlet port 12 of unit 1 through a filter 5 . an outlet port 13 of unit 1 communicates with reservoir 4 through a power steering arrangement 6 . unit 1 includes a housing 11 having a stepped bore 15 accommodating a throttle slide 16 and a piston 17 slidable therein . throttle slide 16 and bore 15 are stepped such that an annular chamber 18 communicating with inlet port 12 and outlet port 14 and an annular chamber 19 communicating with outlet port 13 are formed . intermediate annular chambers 18 and 19 , an annular throttle cross section 20 of throttle slide 16 is provided . on the left of annular chamber 18 and on the right of annular chamber 19 , throttle slide 16 is sealed and displaceably guided in bore 15 . throttle slide 16 extends to the left into a chamber 21 and has on this end a stop ring 22 which limits its movement to the right . towards the right , throttle slide 16 extends into a chamber 24 which is bounded by the adjacent end of piston 17 . chamber 24 is in unpressurized fluid communication with reservoir 4 below the latter &# 39 ; s fluid level so that chamber 24 is always filled with unpressurized fluid . throttle slide 16 has a passage bore 25 &# 39 ; providing a communication between chamber 24 and chamber 21 . in chamber 24 , a control spring 25 is engaged between piston 17 and throttle slide 16 . piston 17 has a mushroom - shaped projection 26 which extends into a sleeve 27 fitted to throttle slide 16 and is anchored therein by a radially inwardly directed stop 28 so as to permit only a predetermined relative movement between piston 17 and throttle slide 16 . further , chamber 24 accommodates a stop 29 formed in housing 11 to limit the movement of piston 17 in the direction of throttle slide 16 and , thus , in the actuating direction . the end of piston 17 remote from chamber 24 forms a boundary for a control chamber 30 which communicates with a booster chamber of brake booster 2 through a conduit coupled to inlet 32 of chamber 30 . control chamber 30 houses a weak spring 31 bearing on piston 17 towards the left . the mode of operation of unit 1 is described below . with the brakes not actuated , all parts are in their illustrated positions . pump 3 delivers fluid from reservoir 4 through filter 5 and inlet port 12 into annular chamber 18 . from chamber 18 , the fluid flows through throttle cross section 20 to annular chamber 19 and onwards through outlet port 13 and power steering arrangement 6 back to reservoir 4 . this pump - circulated fluid is slightly throttled at throttle cross section 20 so that a slight overpressure prevails in annular chamber 18 . if this should not be achieved with throttle slide 16 in the illustrated position because the circulation of fluid is too low , weak spring 31 will displace piston 17 and , thus , via control spring 25 , will displace throttle slide 16 to the left by such an amount as to ensure throttling of the low overpressure in annular chamber 18 . with the brake not applied , control chamber 30 is unpressurized because in that instance the booster chamber of the brake booster 2 is in communication with the reservoir as is known . only when the brakes are applied , i . e ., the brake booster 2 is activated , will pressurized fluid arriving from annular chamber 18 be fed into the booster chamber and , thus , into control chamber 30 . the piston 17 is thereby displaced to the left into abutment with stop 29 formed in housing 11 . through control spring 25 , throttle slide 16 is likewise acted upon to the left so as to cause throttling , at throttle cross section 20 , of a pressure in the pump - circulated fluid which is determined by control spring 25 . however , if , as a result of an actuation of power steering arrangement 6 , such a control pressure is already present in the pump - circulated fluid , this control pressure will act upon throttle slide 16 against control spring 25 , so that in that case there occurs no additional throttling of the pump - circulated fluid which would unnecessarily increase the load on pump 3 . following termination of the braking action , control chamber 30 again becomes unpressurized since the fluid is discharged through the booster chamber of brake booster 2 . all parts of unit 1 thereby reassume their illustrated position or a position which is merely determined by weak spring 31 , and only a stand - by pressure is throttled again in the pump - circulated fluid . while we have described above the principles of our invention in connection with specific apparatus it is to be clearly understood that this description is made only by way of example and not as a limitation to the scope of our invention as set forth in the objects thereof and in the accompanying claims . | 1 |
the preferred embodiment ( s ) of the present invention is illustrated in fig1 - 4 . the present invention teaches a prefilled , unifying dispensing container containing at least two different dosage units for the treatment of rhinitis , and containing indicia for distinguishing the dosage units and signifying their use together , and coordinated instructions for their use together . it is to be understood that either single or multiple doses of each dosage units are contained . the dosage units may be in the form of tablet , pill , capsule , caplet , powders , liquids , gels , some of which may require reconstituting , or any generally recognized oral form of medication . referring to the drawings , it will be understood that while preferred embodiments of the invention have been illustrated and described , the invention is not limited to such embodiments . changes and additions may be made therein and thereto without departing from the spirit of the invention . embodiments of the unifying container of the preferred invention are depicted in fig1 - 4 . fig1 depicts a support package 10 containing multiple dosages of two different dosage units 12 , 14 in tablet form 50 in blister packaging 52 . fig2 depicts a support package 20 which houses two modules in the form of bottles 22 , 24 containing different dosage units , which can be either in liquid form or in solid form . fig3 depicts a support package 30 with a single dosage unit 32 for morning and a single different dosage unit 34 for night . fig4 depicts a support package 40 which is manufactured to house a multiplicity of daytime modules in the form of pouches 42 and a multiplicity of nighttime modules in the form of pouches 44 . in each of the four depicted configurations , the support package has specific provision for supporting said dosage units in physical accord with indicia 16 , 26 , 36 , 46 of fig1 - 4 , respectively . the indicia manufactured with the support package distinguishes between the dosage units by means of wording , color , shape symbol , or other means known in the art . the indicia , by their presence , also indicate the suitability of said dosage units for use with each other . the support package also incorporates coordinated administration instructions 18 , 28 , 38 , 48 of fig1 - 4 , respectively , which also indicate the suitability of the dosage units for use with each other , and instruct coordination of the dosage units as a regimen . although the embodiments specifically described herein have two medicament housings , packaging containing other numbers of housings is also within the scope of this invention . the packaging may be adapted by widening the packaging and increasing the number of housings and indicia . additionally , the packaging may be in any geometric configuration . the packaging contains combinations of medications , which include nasal decongestants and antihistamines that comprise a regimen for treating rhinitis . specifically , the packaged medication is comprised of at least two dosage units , a non - sedating dosage unit for administration during the day , and a dosage unit , which is non - stimulatory in accord with the susceptibility of the user , for use at night . the package also contains instructions for taking the dosage units as a regimen . it is to be understood that the nighttime dosage unit , at least , contains a lesser amount of decongestant as compared to the aforementioned conventional decongestant - antihistamine dosage units . it is considered that in the case of a package intended for over - the - counter sales , a comparison between the amount of decongestant to conventional dosing is provided by the instructions , indicia , or both in a manner which would allow a user to estimate the degree of stimulation which might be expected . in the case of a package intended for prescription , however , the prescribing provider would be expected to be able to assess the stimulatory qualities of such regimens on behalf of the user , and the inclusion of such a comparison within the package is optional . the daytime dosage unit may be formulated to contain non - sedating antihistamine , and / or decongestant , but not sedating antihistamine . the decongestant may be in conventional or attenuated quantity . the nighttime dosage unit may be formulated to contain sedating or nonsedating antihistamine , and , if containing decongestant , contains an attenuated quantity in comparison to conventional dosing . the terms “ daytime ” is intended to be synonymous with a time when sedation is considered undesirable , such as time of awakening , and the term “ nighttime ” to be synonymous with times when stimulation would be undesired , such as times of sleeping , as well as daytime and nighttime literally , in that such times vary in accordance with the schedule of individuals . the regimen is devised using dosage units , which are favorable for use with each other , especially with regard to their pharmacokinetic and therapeutic characteristics . the following are examples of regimens according to the present invention : the following regimen is suggested for an individual who is considered to be moderately susceptible to the stimulating side - effects of decongestants : daytime dosage : 90 mg pseudoephedrine hydrochloride in 12 hour time - release formulation , and 5 mg loratidine ( to be taken in the morning ), and bedtime dosage : 60 mg pseudoephedrine hydrochloride in 12 hour time - release formulation , and 5 mg loratidine ( to be taken at bedtime ). this regimen employs the stimulating decongestant pseudoephedrine hydrochloride and the non - sedating antihistamine loratidine . the conventional 12 - hour dosing of 120 mg of pseudoephedrine has been illustrated by the aforementioned examples of single dosage unit antihistamine - decongestant combinations . as noted , stimulatory side effects are known to occur with conventional dosing , and some individuals are more susceptible to side effects than others . this regimen utilizes a morning dosing to 90 mg of pseudoephedrine , instead of the conventional 120 mg , and a bedtime dosing to 60 mg , one - half of the conventional 120 mg , to achieve therapeutic effects to address side effects in an individual considered to have a moderate degree of susceptibility . consideration of susceptibility and therefore appropriateness of this regimen may be based upon self - assessment of prior experience , or assessment by a caregiver . methods for time - release formulation of pseudoephedrine are well known in the art . avoidance of daytime sedation is considered important in regimens of the present invention , and is avoided by the employment of the non - sedating antihistamine , loratidine . half of the daily loratidine dose is given at bedtime to assure significant receptor binding in the morning . the following regimen is considered appropriate for an individual who is moderately susceptible to the stimulating side - effects of decongestants , and particularly susceptible to insomnia from decongestants at night : daytime dosage : 90 mg pseudoephedrine hydrochloride in 12 hour time - release formulation ( to be taken in the morning ), and nighttime dosage : 30 mg pseudoephedrine hydrochloride in 12 hour time - release formulation , and 4 mg of chlorpheniramine ( to be taken at bedtime ). in this example , the total 24 hour dose of 120 mg of pseudoephedrine is one - half that of conventional dosing . by reducing the morning dose of pseudoephedrine to 90 mg , instead of the conventional 120 mg , and the bedtime dose to 30 mg , instead of the conventional 120 mg , a balance between therapeutic and side effects might be achieved in an individual susceptible to stimulatory side - effects , particularly insomnia . the potential for nighttime stimulation from pseudoephedrine is further diminished by the inclusion of the sedating antihistamine , chlorpheniramine in the nighttime formulation . dosing of antihistamine at bedtime favors binding by histamine receptors in the morning , when such binding is typically most desired . 60 mg pseudoephedrine sulfate in a 12 - hour time release formulation , and 60 mg of fexofenadine ( to be taken in the morning ), and 60 mg of fexofenadine ( to be taken in the evening ). for an individual known to be prone to insomnia with decongestants , limitation of pseudophedrine dosing to the day , in this example , avoids stimulation and insomnia at night . dosing of one half of the conventional daytime dosage of 120 mg of pseudoephedrine might suit an individual who is susceptible to its side effects but able to tolerate a decreased dosage in order to gain therapeutic benefit . use of the non - sedating antihistamine fexofenadine avoids daytime sedation compared to sedating antihistamine . the 12 - hour duration of antihistaminic activity of fexofenadine requires daytime dosing to achieve an effective daytime combination of antihistamine and decongestant . binding of fexofenadine to the histamine receptors in the morning is expected with its bedtime dosing . in addition to antihistamines and decongestants , additional therapeutic ingredients for the treatment of rhinitis may be formulated if desired . for example , analgesics , anticholinergic agents , and inhibitors of allergic mediators other than histamine , such as those generated by the arachadonic acid pathways , may be considered for inclusion in such formulations and are within the scope of this invention . these examples do not constitute an exhaustive list of potential combinations , and variations and modifications may be made by those of ordinary skill in the art . those of skill in the art may also recognize modifications to these presently disclosed embodiments . these variations and modifications are meant to be covered by the spirit and scope of the present claims . | 0 |
referring to the fig1 to 3 , the following is a explanation of an inventive method and an inventive shell . fig1 shows a partial perspective view of a shell with a stiffening element that has been attached in accordance with a first embodiment of the present invention . a shell 1 comprises a shell skin 2 , a stiffening element 3 as well as connecting elements 4 and 5 . as shown in fig1 , the stiffening element 3 has a substantially rectangular cross - section . however , the stiffening element 3 may also have other cross - sectional shapes . the connecting elements 4 and 5 are connecting angle pieces with a substantially l - shaped cross - section . the shell skin 2 , the stiffening element 3 and the connecting elements 4 and 5 are made of a plurality of semi - finished parts in the form of curable prepregs . the prepregs are carbon fiber reinforced sheet - shaped members , that are soaked or impregnated with a curable epoxy resin . in their non - cured state , virtually any geometric shape can be imparted on the prepregs . thus , using prepregs as semi - finished parts , shell skins or stiffening elements with l - shaped cross - sections that are curved in two spatial directions can be formed , for example . to manufacture the shell 1 in accordance with the inventive method , in a first step , the shell skin 2 and the stiffening element 3 are preferably completely cured . alternatively , it is also possible to cure the shell skin and the stiffening element 3 only partially , so that a tolerance compensation of a larger extent is possible . furthermore , it is possible to use a pre - fabricated , that is , already cured shell skin 2 and pre - fabricated and pre - cut stiffening elements 3 . in this case , the first step can be eliminated without substitution . in a second step , the stiffening element 3 is placed on the shell skin 2 , whereupon in a third step , the connecting elements 4 and 5 , which in accordance with the invention are only partially cured , are abutted preferably against both sides of the stiffening element 3 . due to the connecting elements 4 and 5 that in accordance with the present invention are at least not completely cured , a tolerance compensation between the shell skin 2 and the stiffening element 3 can be carried out . if necessary , the stiffening element 3 may be fixed prior to the placement in the vacuum sack by auxiliary means , that are not shown in the figures . after this , the entire arrangement is placed in a vacuum sack , which is disposed in an autoclave for curing . in accordance with one variation of this process , it is not necessary to place the entire arrangement in a vacuum sack . rather , an individual vacuum sack of smaller volume may be provided for each stiffening element 3 , so that the risk of leakages is reduced and the overall risk of defective products is minimized . furthermore , the curing of the arrangement may also be carried out without an autoclave , which makes it possible to reduce the manufacturing costs . for example , the curing may take place in a vacuum sack , which is placed in a simple furnace . furthermore , the curing may also be accomplished by external heating to a temperature between 60 ° c . and 180 ° c . in a fourth step of an inventive method , the connecting elements 4 and 5 are completely cured in the autoclave . after the complete curing of the connecting elements 4 and 5 in the autoclave , the shell 1 has been finished in accordance with the inventive method . herein , the vacuum sack completely encloses the shell skin 2 , the stiffening element 3 and the connecting elements 4 and 5 . due to the negative pressure in the vacuum sack , the connecting elements 4 and 5 are pressed firmly against the stiffening element 3 and the shell skin 2 by the ambient air pressure or the high positive pressure in the autoclave . the curing in the autoclave is performed at a temperature of between 120 ° c . and 180 ° c . and at a pressure of up to 10 bar . simultaneously to the curing of the connecting elements 4 and 5 , the unresolvable connection , that is , the cross - linking between the stiffening element 3 , the connecting elements 4 and 5 and the shell skin 2 is performed . during the curing process , the shell skin 2 and the stiffening element 3 should be held at predetermined positions with respect to each other by retaining devices or clamping devices that are not shown in the drawings . typically , a retaining device or clamping device that is not shown in the figures , is necessary in order to position and fasten the stiffening elements 3 on the shell skin 2 . compared to manufacturing methods known in the art , the retaining device may be structurally less elaborate and lighter in weight since the shell skin 2 and the stiffening elements 3 have already been cured , so that they only need to be retained in their relative positions , but it is not necessary to retain a predetermined geometric shape of these components during the curing process . furthermore , the connecting elements , which are not completely cured at the beginning of the curing process , are supported by the already cured stiffening element 3 , so that no retaining devices are necessary within the vacuum sack that encloses the shell skin 2 and the stiffening element 3 . due to the light weight of the retaining device that is typically necessary in accordance with the inventive method , the mass that is to be heated up in the autoclave is reduced , which leads to additional savings in time and energy . nevertheless , due to the not yet completely cured connecting elements 4 and 5 , the inventive method allows a sufficient tolerance compensation between the stiffening element 3 and the shell skin 2 , to form a shell 1 with high dimensional stability , which cannot be attained by mere gluing of the cured stiffening elements 3 to the shell skin 2 (“ secondary bonding ”). due to the arrangement of the retaining device outside of the vacuum sack , the process becomes simpler and shorter , which is very advantageous with regard to the limited shelf time of the prepregs or semi - finished parts , in particular in the case of large shells , such as wing shells or the like . the retaining device may be for example a bar - shaped element , which is provided with a recess for accommodating the stiffening element 3 that is enclosed by the vacuum sack . by placing the retaining device onto the shell 2 in the vacuum sack with the stiffening element 3 , a tilting of the stiffening element 3 with respect to the shell skin 2 during the curing process of the connecting elements 4 and 5 in the autoclave is avoided . herein , the connecting elements 4 and 5 are pressed onto the stiffening element 3 and the shell skin 2 by the vacuum sack , so that a firm cross - linking and connection is possible . since the shell skin 2 is already cured , only a light supporting device needs to be provided for supporting the shell skin 2 . this supporting device is preferably adapted to the geometric shape of the shell skin 2 and may therefore be curved in up to two spatial directions . alternative embodiments of the retaining device and / or the supporting device are also possible and are comprised by the basic principle of the invention . due to the fact that the stiffening element 3 is preferably already completely cured , it is typically sufficient to provide a retaining device only in a beginning area and an end area of the stiffening element 3 . for the curing , the retaining device for the stiffening element 3 is then clamped to the supporting device for the shell skin 2 with clamping elements , such as screw clamps or the like . due to the fact that the retaining device or the supporting device may be placed outside of the vacuum sack , the vacuum sack may be devised in a simpler manner , which reduces the probability of leaks . if the shell skin 2 includes a larger number of stiffening elements 3 , then a corresponding number of recesses for accepting the stiffening elements that are placed at suitable spacings of each other , should be provided in the bar - shaped element of the retaining devices . furthermore , it is necessary to adapt a contour of the bar - shaped elements , with which the bar - shaped elements lie on the shell skin 2 , to a surface geometry of the shell skin 2 that may be curved in two spatial directions , for example . furthermore , abutting angle pieces for increasing the abutting area with respect to the stiffening elements may be provided on both sides of the recesses . moreover , the retaining devices may be connected to each other , for example by stays or webs or the like . different to the planar configuration shown in fig1 , the shell skin 2 may also be curved , at least partially , in one or two spatial directions . furthermore , a plurality of stiffening elements 3 may be arranged in virtually any geometric arrangement and / or with different lengths on the shell skin 2 . in order to achieve firmer cross - linking and therefore a mechanically even stronger joint between the stiffening element 3 and the connecting elements 4 and 5 or between the connecting elements 4 and 5 and the shell skin 2 , it may be necessary to additionally apply and adhesive at least on two parts of the abutting areas 6 and 7 or the connecting elements 4 and 5 . as an adhesive for this case , it is preferable to use a curably epoxy resin of the same type as that used for soaking or impregnating the semi - finished parts or prepregs . in general , however , the excess epoxy resin that is always present on the upper side due to the soaking of the semi - finished parts or prepregs is sufficient to manufacture a mechanically sufficiently strong joint between the stiffening element 3 and the shell skin 2 . fig2 shows a partial cross - section of a shell with a stiffening element according to a first embodiment . a shell 8 is made of a shell skin 9 , a stiffening element 10 and the connecting elements 11 and 12 . the stiffening element 10 has a substantially rectangular cross - section . the stiffening element 10 may also have a different cross - sectional shape . the connecting elements 11 and 12 have a substantially l - shaped cross - section , the legs of the connecting elements 11 and 12 having substantially the same length . the connecting elements 11 and 12 are reinforced with carbon fibers 13 and 14 . the carbon fibers 13 and 14 run substantially parallel to a surface of the stiffening element 10 or a surface of the shell skin 9 . in order to prevent peel - off of the connecting elements 4 and 5 in the end regions 15 to 18 , the carbon fibers 13 , 14 do not run parallel to the surface of the stiffening element 10 or the surface of the shell skin 9 in the end areas 15 to 18 , but end at an angle of 5 ° to 90 ° with respect to those surfaces . the carbon fibers 13 , 14 shown in the drawings are merely representative for a plurality of carbon fibers that run approximately parallel to the paper plane and that in conjunction with other carbon fibers that do not run parallel to the paper plane constitute the carbon fiber reinforcement of the semi - finished parts or the prepregs for forming the connecting elements 11 , 12 . gussets 21 and 22 are provided in a kink area 19 , 20 of the connecting elements 11 and 12 . in the area of the gussets 21 , 22 there is no connection between the connecting elements 11 , 12 and the shell skin 9 or the stiffening element 10 . in order to avoid corrosion processes and / or condensation processes in the gussets 21 and 22 , the gussets are filled with a suitable synthetic material , which may be additionally provided with fibers , after the inventive method has been completed . this synthetic material does not need to have any particular mechanical properties , since the gussets 21 and 22 typically do not fulfill a function of transmitting forces . alternatively , the gussets may be formed with a curable synthetic material , and particular an epoxy resin , a polyester resin or the like , into which additional reinforcement fibers (“ rovings ”) for armature are embedded , so that also the gussets 21 and 22 may accept mechanical forces — at least to some extent . in some regions , the shell skin 9 may also be provided with thickened portions for reinforcement . in this case , the stiffening element 10 should be provided with recesses at corresponding locations , so that the stiffening element 10 lies continuously and with its entire surface on the upper side of the shell skin 9 . regarding the connecting elements 11 and 12 , special measures need to be taken during the application of stiffening elements in the area of thickened portions , since the connecting elements 11 and 12 still have sufficient flexibility prior to the during process , which ensures a continuous and substantially full - surface contact with the upper side of the shell skin 9 in the area of the thickened portions . fig3 shows a partial cross - sectional view of a shell , onto which a stiffening element is placed , in accordance with a second embodiment . the shell 23 is provided with a shell skin 24 , onto which at least one stiffening element 25 is attached with connecting elements 26 and 27 arranged on either side in accordance with an inventive method . in contrast to the stiffening element 10 , the stiffening element 25 does not have a rectangular cross - section . in a lower region 28 , the stiffening element 25 has a rectangular shape , whereas in an upper region 29 , it is provided with a widening section 30 . the widening section 30 enables a higher flexural rigidity of the stiffening element 25 . due to the widening section 30 arranged in the upper region 29 , it may be necessary to make the legs 31 , 32 shorter than the legs 33 , 34 of the connecting elements 26 , 29 . other details of fig3 correspond to those shown in fig2 , so that their further description has been omitted . in accordance with one aspect of an inventive method , a shell for forming component parts for aircraft is formed by placing , positioning and fastening already cured stiffening elements onto the shell that is also cured , by connecting the stiffening elements with at least not yet completely cured connecting elements to the shell skin by means of final curing of the connecting elements . an inventive method allows the manufacture of shells of very large dimensions at significantly reduced costs in comparison to manufacturing processes known in the art . | 1 |
in the following detailed description of various embodiments , reference is made to the accompanying drawings that form a part thereof , and in which are shown by way of illustration specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced . it is understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention . in this section , we formally present our framework and the problem of finding an efficient and effective k - route over uncertain datasets , we also present the concept of route search . uncertain geo - spatial datasets a geo - spatial dataset is a collection of geo - spatial objects . each object has a location and may have additional spatial and non - spatial attributes . height and shape are examples of spatial attributes . address and name are examples of non - spatial attributes . we assume that locations are points and objects are disjoint , i . e ., different objects have different locations . for objects that are represented by a polygonal shape and do not have a specified point location , we consider the center of mass of the polygonal shape to be the point location . the distance between two objects is the euclidean distance between their point locations . we denote the distance between two objects o 1 and o 2 by distance ( o 1 , o 1 ). similarly , if o is an object and l is a location , then distance ( o , l ) is the distance from o to l . an uncertain geographical dataset is a pair ( d , φ c ), where d is a geo - spatial dataset and φ c : d →[ 0 , 1 ] is a function that maps each object of d to a value between 0 and 1 , called confidence . an instance of ( d , φ c ) is a pair ( d , τ ) where τ : d →{ true , false } is a function that maps objects of d to a correctness value , either true or false . for each uncertain dataset ( d , φ c ), there are 2 | d | possible instances , where | d | is the number of objects in d . we consider the confidence of an objects as an indication of how likely it is for the object to be correct , i . e ., to be mapped to true by τ . to each instance i =( d , τ ), we assign a probability p ( i ) according to the confidence values of the objects : p (( d , τ ))=[ ii { o i | τ ( o i )= true } ρφ c ( o i )]·[ ii { o i | τ ( o i )= false } ( 1 − φ c ( o i ))]. when computing a route over an uncertain data , it is not known what the actual instance is . hence , the probabilities of possible instances should be taken into account . usually , users know only d and φ c when querying or using uncertain data . however , when developing algorithms for uncertain data , it is important to test them on data for which τ is known in order to determine the quality of the results of each algorithm . thus , the datasets in our experiments included full information about τ . efficient and effective k - route consider a dataset d with n objects o 1 , . . . , o n . a complete route over d is a sequence ρ = o i 1 , . . . , o i n where i 1 , . . . , i n is some permutation of 1 , . . . , n . the complete route ρ provides an order for traversing the objects of d . now , suppose that we are given an instance i =( d , τ ), which includes τ in addition to d . consider a traversal that starts at some given point s and visits the objects according to ρ . for each object o , we can count the number of correct objects and the distance until we get to o . formally , we denote by correct ρ ( o i j ) the number of correct objects among o i 1 , . . . , o i j . that is , correct ρ ( o i j )=|{ o i i | 1 ≦ l ≦ j and τ ( o i i )= true }|. also , we denote by distance ρ ( s , o i j ) the distance of the path that starts at s and leads to o i j according to ρ . that is , distance ρ ( s , o i j )= distance ( s , o i i )+ σ l = 1 j − 1 distance ( o i i , o i i + 1 ). given an instance i =( d , τ ) and a complete route ρ = o i 1 , . . . , o i n over d , a k - route is the shortest subsequence o i 1 , . . . , o i j such that correct ρ ( o i j )= k ; however , if such a subsequence does not exist ( i . e ., correct ρ ( o i n )& lt ; k ), then the k - route is ρ itself . intuitively , a k - route is a traversal that stops at the k - th correct object . we denote by k - distance ( s , ρ , i ) the distance of the k - route o i 1 , . . . , o i j when starting at s , that is , k - distance ( s , ρ , i )= distance ρ ( s , o i j ). for an uncertain dataset , there can be many possible instances having k - routes with different lengths . thus , we consider an expected length rather than an exact length . given an uncertain dataset ( d , φ c ), a start point s and a complete route ρ over d , the expected length of a k - route is σ i is an instance of ( d , φ i ) [ p ( i )· k - distance ( s , ρ , i )]. the efficient and effective k - route over an uncertain dataset ( d , φ c ) is a complete route ρ that has an expected length smaller or equal to the expected length of any other k - route over ( d , φ c ). our goal in this work is to provide algorithms that compute a good approximation to the efficient and effective k - route . assessing the quality of the result in this work , we present three approximation algorithms to the problem of finding an efficient and effective k - route . in order to assess the quality of the results of these algorithms , we compare the expected length of the k - routes that the different algorithms compute . an algorithm a 1 is considered better than algorithm a 2 with respect to an uncertain dataset ( d , φ c ) and a starting point s , if the expected length of the k - route produced by a 1 is shorter than the expected length of the k - route produced by a 2 . given a digital map that contains d , algorithm a 1 is better than a 2 for ( d , φ c ) if the number of points s ( of the map ) for which a 1 is better than a 2 is greater than the number of points s for which a 2 is better than a 1 . in many scenarios , traveling from one object to another must be on a road and cannot be done in a straight line . in such cases , traversal is according to a road network . a road network is represented as a set of intersecting polygonal lines . the network location of an object o is the point on the network that is nearest to the actual location of o . over networks , we assume that the distance between two objects is the length of the shortest path between their network locations . ( for methods of computing distances over a road network , see the work of samet et al . [ h . samet , j . sankaranarayanan , and h . alborzi . scalable network distance browsing in spatial databases . in acm sigmod , pages 43 - 54 , 2008 ] and the work of shahabi et al . [ c . shahabi , m . r . kolandouzan , and m . sharifzadeh . a road network embedding technique for k - nearest neighbor search in moving object databases . geoinformatica , 7 ( 3 ): 255 - 273 , 2003 ].) users specify what entities they would like to visit using search queries . a search query consists of a set of keywords and constraints on attributes . we represent a query as a pair q =( w , c ), where ( 1 ) w is a set of keywords , and ( 2 ) c is a set of constraints having the form a ⋄ v , such that a is an attribute name , v is a value and ⋄ is a comparison symbol among =, & lt ;, & gt ;, ≠, ≦ and ≧. for instance , hotel , wireless internet access , rank ≧ 3 , price ≦ 100 specify that the user would like to go via a hotel that provides an internet wireless connection , has a ranking of at least three starts and a rate that does not exceed $ 100 . for a search , we consider the textual component of an object to be the concatenation of the values in the non - spatial attributes of the objects . an object o satisfies a search query q when at least one keyword of q appears in its textual component and the constraints of q are satisfied in the usual way . each object that satisfies a query is given a ranking score ( or score , for short ). the score is a value between 0 and 1 , and it indicates how relevant is o to the search . we denote the score of an object o by score ( o ). there are different approaches for computing relevance scores for textual elements and a set of keywords , e . g ., tf - idf , okapi bm25 [ s . jones , s . walker , and s . robertson . a probabilistic model of information retrieval : development and comparative experiments ( parts 1 and 2 ). information processing and management , 36 ( 6 ): 779 - 840 , 2000 ; s . robertson , s . walker , s . jones , m . hancock - beaulieu , and m . gatford . okapi at trec - 3 . in proc . of the text retrieval conference ( trec - 3 ), pages 109 - 126 , gaithersburg , usa , 1994 ] and others [ g . salton and m . mcgill . introduction to modern information retrieval . mcgraw - hill , 1983 ]. route search can be defined with respect to search queries with a different syntax or a different semantics . in a route - search query , the user specifies a source location , a target location and the entities that the route should visit . we represent a route - search query as a triplet r =( s , t , q ), where s is a source location , t is a target location and q is a set of search queries . consider again the route - search task presented in example 1 . a suitable route - search query for this task should include ( 1 ) the location s of the parking lot of the car - rental agency , ( 2 ) the location t of the hotel , and ( 3 ) the following three search queries : q 1 ={ pharmacy }; q 2 ={ coffee shop }; and q 3 ={ department store }. a pre - answer to a route - search query is a route that starts at s , ends at t and for each query q in q , goes via one object of the result of q . that is , if a 1 , . . . , a k are the answers to the search queries of r , a route is a sequence s , o 1 , . . . , o k , t , where o i ∈ a i for 1 ≦ i ≦ k . the length of such a route is the sum of the distances between adjacent objects , i . e ., distance ( s , o 1 )+ σ i = 1 k − 1 distance ( o i , o i + 1 )+ distance ( o k , t ). the total score of the route is σ i = 1 k score ( o i ). the minimal score of the route is min { score ( o i )| 1 ≦ i ≦ k }. the answer to a route - search query is a pre - answer chosen according to a specific semantics . when computing an answer to a route - search query , it is desirable that the total length of the route will be as small as possible . it is also desirable that the visited objects will have a ranking score as high as possible . there can be a conflict between these two goals . the route that travels via the objects with the highest ranking scores may be long while the shortest route , among those satisfying the route - search constraints , will go via objects with low ranking scores . furthermore , having a total high score for a route does not guarantee that all the objects on the route have a high score , yet , having a high minimal score may be desirable in some scenarios . thus , we present three semantics for route - search queries . when presenting the semantics , we assume that d is a dataset , r =( s , t , { q 1 , . . . , qk }) is a given route - search query , and a 1 = q 1 ( d ), . . . , ak = qk ( d ) are the answers to the search queries of r , over d . shortest route ( sr ). under the shortest - route semantics , the answer is the shortest pre - answer . most - profitable route ( mpr ). under the most - profitable semantics , a distance limit l is given . the answer is the pre - answer that has the highest total score among the pre - answers whose length does not exceed the distance limit l . most - reliable route ( mrr ). under the most - reliable semantics , a distance limit l is given . the answer is the pre - answer with the highest minimal score among the pre - answers whose length does not exceed the distance limit l . next , we compare the proposed semantics to optimization problems that exists in the literature . the problem of finding the shortest route is a version of the generalized traveling - salesman problem ( gtsp ). in gtsp , given a partition of the nodes of a weighted graph to k clusters , the goal is to find the least - cost cycle passing through each cluster exactly once . thus , gtsp is similar to computing the shortest route when the source and the target have the same location . yet , note that our problem is limited in the following two aspects . we assume that there is an edge between every two nodes and that the weights on the edges define a metric space ( i . e ., the weights satisfy the triangle inequality ). gtsp has been studied extensively over the years . it was introduced by henry - labordere [ a . henry - labordere . the record balancing problem — a dynamic programming solution of a generalized traveling salesman problem . revue francaise d informatique derecherche operationnelle , 2 : 43 - 49 , 1969 ], saksena [ j . p . saskena . mathematical model for scheduling clients through welfare agencies . j . of the canadian operational research society , 8 : 185 - 200 , 1970 ] and srivastava et al . [ s . s . sarivastava , s . kumar , r . c . garg , and p . sen . generalized traveling salesman problem through n sets of nodes . journal of the canadian operational research society , 7 : 97 - 101 , 1969 ] for problems that arise in computer design and in routing . many approaches were proposed for solving gtsp , including dynamic programming [ a . g . chentsov and l . n . korotayeva . the dynamic programming method in the generalized traveling salesman problem . mathematical and computer modeling , 25 ( 1 ): 93 - 105 , 1997 ], integer programming [ g . laporte and y . nobert . generalized traveling salesman problem through n - sets of nodes — an integer programming approach . infor , 21 ( 1 ): 61 - 75 , 1983 ], lagrangian relexation [ g . laporte , h . mercure , and y . nobert . finding the shortest hamiltonian circuit through n clusters : a lagrangian approach . congressus numerantium , 48 : 277 - 290 , 1985 ; c . e . noon and j . c . bean . a lagrangian based approach for the asymmetric generalized traveling salesman problem . operations research , 39 ( 4 ): 623 - 632 , 1991 ], branch - and - cut [ m . fischetti , j . j . salazar - gonz &# 39 ; alez , and p . toth . a branch - and - cut algorithm for the symmetric generalized traveling salesman problem . operations research , 45 ( 3 ): 378 - 394 , 1997 ], genetic algorithms [ l . v . snyder and m . s . daskin . a random - key genetic algorithm for the generalized traveling salesman problem . european journal of operational research , 174 : 38 - 53 , 2006 ] and transforming the problem into a standard traveling salesman problem [ y . lien , e . ma , and b . w . s . wah . transformation of the generalized traveling - salesman problem into the standard traveling - salesman problem . information sciences , 74 ( 1 - 2 ): 177 - 189 , 1993 ]. the algorithms of the invention are different from the above by giving precedence to efficiency over the quality of the results . the problem of finding the most - profitable route has some similarity to the orienteering problem . in the orienteering problem , the input consists of a distance limit , a start location and a set of objects where each object has a score . the problem is to compute a route that ( 1 ) starts at the given starting location , ( 2 ) have a length that does not exceed the given distance limit and ( 3 ) goes via objects whose total score is maximal . the orienteering problem has been studied extensively [ i . chao , b . golden , and e . wasil . the team orienteering problem . european journal of operational research , 88 : 464 - 474 , 1996 ; b . golden , l . levy , and r . vohra . the orienteering problem . naval research logistics , 34 : 307 - 318 , 1987 ] and several heuristic algorithms [ i . chao , b . golden , and e . wasil . a fast and effective heuristic for the orienteering problem . european journal of operational research , 88 ( 3 ): 475 - 489 , 1996 ; b . golden , q . wang , and l . liu . a multifaceted heuristic for the orienteering problem . naval research logistics , 35 : 359 - 366 , 1988 ; p . keller . algorithms to solve the orienteering problem : a comparison . european journal of operational research , 41 : 224 - 231 , 1989 ; a . leifer and m . rosenwein . strong linear programming relaxations for the orienteering problem . european journal of operational research , 73 : 517 - 523 , 1994 ; t . tsiligirides . heuristic methods applied to orienteering . journal of the operational research society , 35 ( 9 ): 797 - 809 , 1984 ] and approximation algorithms [ r . ramesh , y . yoon , and m . karwan . an optimal algorithm for the orienteering tour problem . orsa journal on computing , 4 ( 2 ): 155 - 165 , 1992 ] were proposed for it . there are three main differences between orienteering and the problem of computing the most - profitable route . 1 . in mpr , the objects are divided into sets ( the sets are the answers to the queries ) and an object from each set must be visited . in the orienteering problem , objects differ only in their location and score . 2 . in mpr , exactly k objects must be visited , where k is the number of search queries in the route - search query . the number of objects in the answer to the orienteering problem is not known in advance . 3 . there is always an answer to the orienteering problem ( a route that does not include any object is a possible answer ), whereas mpr is not always satisfiable . because of these differences , there is no simple way of using heuristic algorithms for the orienteering problem to solve mpr . the problem of the most - profitable route also has some similarity to the multiple - choice knapsack problem . in the multiple - choice knapsack problem , there are k sets of objects n 1 , . . . , n k . each object o ∈ n i has an associated profit and a weight . the objective is to choose exactly one item from each set n i , such that the total profit of the chosen items is maximized while their total weight does not exceed a given capacity c . the problem has been studies from many different perspectives and several heuristics were suggested for it [ r . armstrong , d . kung , p . sinha , and a . zoltners . a computational study of a multiple - choice knapsack algorithm . acm transactions on mathematical software , 9 : 184 - 198 , 1983 ; m . dyer . an o ( n ) algorithm for the multiple - choice knapsack linear program . mathematical programming , 29 : 57 - 63 , 1984 ; m . dyer , n . kayal , and j . walker . a branch and bound algorithm for solving the multiple choice knapsack problem . journal of computational and applied mathematics , 11 : 231 - 249 , 1984 ; d . pisinger . a minimal algorithm for the multiple - choice knapsack problem . european journal of operational research , 83 ( 2 ): 394 - 410 , 1995 ; p . sinha and a . zoltners . the multiple - choice knapsack problem . operations research , 27 ( 3 ): 503 - 515 , 1979 ; e . zemel . an o ( n ) algorithm for the linear multiple choice knapsack problem and related problems . information processing letters , 18 : 123 - 128 , 1984 ]. the difference between the multiple - choice knapsack problem and mpr is that in the first , the weights of items are part of the input and do not change . thus , when choosing an item , the total weight is increased by an amount that is independent of the other chosen items . in the most - profitable route problem , when we construct a route by adding new objects one by one , the increase in the length of the route caused by a newly added object depends on ( its distances from ) the preceding and the succeeding objects . so , for instance , the same objects in different orders may produce routes with different lengths . the three semantics that we consider in this paper are a generalization of the traveling - salesman problem ( tsp ). in tsp , the goal is to find the shortest path that starts at a given location , ends at a given location and goes via all the objects . it is easy to show that computing route - search queries under either one of the three semantics is ( at least ) as hard as tsp . in this section , we present three novel approximation algorithms for the problem of finding an efficient and effective k - route . we use the following notation when presenting the algorithms . we denote by ( d , φ c ) the given uncertain dataset and by o 1 , . . . , o n the objects of d . we denote by s the location where the traversal should start . the result of the algorithms is a sequence o i 1 , . . . , o i n that defines a complete route . since tsp is a np - hard problem , computing a route , under any of the proposed semantics , is np - hard . hence , assuming p ≠ np , there is no polynomial - time algorithm for answering route - search queries and , thus , in this section we present heuristic algorithms for query answering . when considering heuristic algorithms , in many cases there is a tradeoff between the efficiency of the computation and the quality of the results . intuitively , a heuristic algorithm that examines many possible solutions will , in most cases , provide more accurate results than a heuristic algorithm that examines only a few possible solutions ; however , the first algorithm will probably be less efficient than the second . algorithms for online services should be highly efficient . many users will not be willing to wait for an answer more than several seconds . thus , our goal is to provide algorithms that have time complexity that is linear or close to linear , in the size of the input . throughout this section , we use the following notations . we denote by r =( s , i , q ) the route - search query . we denote by d the dataset on which r is computed . by l we denote the distance limit , when relevant . in the greedy algorithm , a route is constructed iteratively . intuitively , in each iteration , the algorithm adds ( to the sequence ) the object that has the best ratio of confidence to distance among the objects that have not yet been added in previous iterations . the algorithm is presented in fig1 . note that when choosing which object to add , while constructing the route , objects with high confidence are preferred over objects with low confidence and near objects are preferred over far objects . the greedy algorithm is simple and efficient . no preprocessing is required and it has o (| d | 2 ) time complexity . it usually provides a good approximation of an efficient and effective k - route in the following two cases . first , when k is very small . in particular , this is true for k = 1 . secondly , when the objects of d are uniformly distributed and there is no correlation between confidence values and locations . intuitively , in such cases , there is no preferred direction for the first leg of the traversal ( which starts at s ). hence , the initial direction chosen by the greedy algorithm is as good as any other direction , and the produced route will have an expected distance close to the optimal . when k is large and the distribution of either the objects or their confidences is not homogeneous , the greedy algorithm is not likely to provide good results . the following example illustrates a problematic behavior of the greedy algorithm . fig2 shows a dataset that has a cluster of objects on the right side , and three objects with growing distances between them on the left side . suppose that all the objects have the same confidence value . given the starting location marked by a diamond , the route computed by the greedy algorithm will first go to the three objects on the left instead of going to the cluster on the right . for k = 4 , for instance , it is better to start the route by going to objects in the cluster on the right side . dealing with clusters of objects is important in many real - world scenarios . for example , in many cities , hotels are grouped near airports or tourist sites . restaurants are usually located in the city center , near tourist sites and in the business district . similarly , other utilities , such as shops or municipal buildings , are usually grouped together rather than being uniformly dispersed all over the city . when a given dataset contains clusters of objects , a good heuristic is to give precedence to points that are in a cluster over points that are not in a cluster . this , however , is not done by the greedy algorithm , as shown in example 5 . the adjacency - aware greedy algorithm ( aag ) improves the greedy algorithm by preferring objects that are surrounded by many near objects , especially if the near objects have high confidence values . this is done by means of assigning values to objects as follows . the adjacency - aware value given to an object should be based not only on the distance of the other objects and their confidence values , but also on their configuration . for example , we should prefer an object that has a neighboring cluster of four objects , within a distance of 100 meters , over an object that has four neighbors , all of them at a distance of 100 meters but in four different directions . in order to compute a value that is adjacency aware , we represent the dataset as a weighted graph and compute , for each object , a value that is the probability of reaching this object in a random walk on the graph . the weights on the graph edges are according to the distance between objects and the confidence values . an object that has many near neighbors has a higher probability to be visited in a random walk than an object that does not have near neighbors . furthermore , an increase in the value of a node increases the values of its neighboring nodes for the following reason . if a node has a high probability to be visited in a random walk , this increases the likelihood of visiting the near neighbors of that node . hence , the values of objects are affected by the configuration of the dataset . now , we formally define the weighted graph and show how to compute the probability of reaching a node by a random walk on this graph . given the uncertain dataset ( d , φ c ), we generate a weighted graph g =( v , e , w ), where the set of nodes v consists of all the objects in d , the set of edges e is d × d , i . e ., there is an edge in g between every two nodes , and w is a function that maps each edge e =( o 1 , o 2 ) of e , where o 1 ≠ o 2 , to a weight for each object o , we define w (( o , o ))= 0 . a random walk over g is a stochastic process that chooses the next node to visit as follows . if we are at some node v , we randomly choose an outgoing edge of v . the probability of choosing an edge is proportional to its weight . the random walk creates a sequence v 1 , v 2 , . . . , v t , . . . of nodes . since the walk is random , the node v t that is visited after t steps can be any node of g — each node with a different probability . we denote by x t the probability distribution over v of being at each node after t steps . we represent x t as a vector of probabilities of length | d |. that is , x t [ i ] is the probability to be at node o i after t steps . the random walk is a memory - less process , that is , each step depends only on the last state . in other words , the probability of choosing an outgoing edge for making the next step is independent of the path that led to the current node . hence , it is a markov chain , which means that the random walk can be described using an n × n transition matrix p , such that x t + 1 = px t holds for every t ( note that n is the number of objects in d ). we denote by p ij the element in the ith column and the jth row of p . the element p ij is the probability to move from node o i to node o j . since the choice of edges is according to their weights , we define p as follows . note that σ 1 = 1 1 p ij = 1 holds for every row j . the transition matrix p defines an irreducible and aperiodic markov chain . ( intuitively , irreducible means that from each node there is a non - zero probability to reach any other node , since the graph is connected ; aperiodic means that for each node , 1 is the greatest common divisor of the lengths of all paths from this node to itself , since the graph is not bipartite .) so , given an initial uniform distribution we have that p t x 1 → x s as t →∞, where x s is a stationary distribution , that is , px s = x s . for each i , the distribution x s gives the probability to be at o i in a random walk on g . the aag algorithm computes the stationary distribution x s and then applies the greedy algorithm where x s replaces φ c . the algorithm is presented in fig3 . computing x s can be done as a preprocessing step . thus , given a user request with a specific location , the time complexity of computing a route is the same as the time complexity of the greedy algorithm . our experiments show that the aag algorithm improves the greedy algorithm . however , aag has the disadvantage that the probability distribution xs must be computed before computing a route , and hence aag is less efficient than the greedy algorithm for datasets that change frequently . aag also suffers from the following two problems . 1 . aag ignores k when computing the route . for instance , consider the case that is depicted in fig5 , assuming that all the objects have the same confidence . there is a small cluster on the left side of the starting point and a larger cluster on the right side of the starting point . the smaller cluster is closer to the starting point than the larger cluster . for large values of k , it is better to go to the bigger cluster first . however , for small values of k , going to the near ( and smaller ) cluster may be a better approach . in aag , the same path is returned for all values of k . 2 . a second problem is that by going directly to points in a cluster , there may be points on the way to the cluster , such that visiting them would not increase the distance of the route and yet , in the aag method , such points are not always visited . we now present the third method , namely , the k - expectancy grouping ( k - eg ) algorithm . differently from the previous methods , the route generated by this algorithm depends not only on the dataset and the starting point , but also on the value of k . the k - eg algorithm consists of two steps . the first creates sets of objects such that the expected number of correct objects in each one is k . the second step applies the greedy algorithm to each one of these sets , and chooses the set for which the greedy algorithm generates the shortest route . the k - eg algorithm is shown in fig4 . in the first part of the algorithm , sets of objects are generated and inserted into k . the sets in k are constructed so that the sum of confidence values , of the objects in each set , is greater than k . this means that for the sets in k , the average number of correct objects is at least k . initially , k is empty . the algorithm uses s to store sets that are eventually moved to k . initially , for each object o in d , the set { o } is in s . then , we iteratively extend the sets in s by adding one object at a time , as described below . when a set has ( for the first time ) a confidence sum that is at least k , it is moved to k . in order to extend a set s of s by one object , we examine all the objects o of d that are not yet in s . for each object o , we compute a route that starts at s and traverses the objects of s ∪ { o }. this route is computed by a greedy algorithm that uses ordinary distances ( rather then the ratio of the confidence to the distance ) in order to decide which node should be visited next . the object o for which the constructed route is the shortest is the one that is added to s . after constructing the sets ( lines 1 - 15 ), we choose the one that has the shortest route ( lines 16 - 22 ). then , a route is created from the chosen set by applying the greedy algorithm with ordinary distances . after traversing all the objects of the chosen set , we continue the route by visiting all the remaining objects of d , but now we apply the greedy algorithm that uses the ratio of the confidence to the distance . in general , k - eg has o ( n 5 ) time complexity , where n is the number of objects in d . to see why this is true , note that initially there are n sets in s . since the number of sets in s does not grow , there are at most n sets in s during the entire run of the algorithm . also , each set contains at most n objects . every set can be extended at most n times , each time by choosing an object from a set of at most n possible objects . so , there are at most n 2 times of considering whether to add a certain object to a certain set , which means no more than n 3 times of computing a route using a greedy algorithm , for all the n sets . since for each set s the greedy algorithm has o (| s | 2 ) runtime , the total time is o ( n 5 ). in practice , the sets in s are expected to have a size that is much smaller than n . it is reasonable to assume that in practical cases the sets of s ( and hence , also the sets in d will have o ( k ) size . if we consider , for instance , the case where all the objects in d have confidence values greater than 0 . 5 , then every set in s must contain at most 2k objects . under the assumption that sets in s have o ( k ) size , the time complexity of the algorithm is o ( n 2 k 3 ). when k is constant , we actually get o ( n 2 ) time complexity . three optimizations are available to improve on the k - eg algorithm , namely optgreedy , optremove and optbb . 1 . optgreedy — in the beginning of the algorithm run first the greedy algorithm and generate its route cgreedy . we will denote cgrredy ( l ) as the length of the route of the greedy algorithm until the sum of the confidences reach 1 . now , for each k , object o where distance ( start , o )& gt ; cgreedy ( k ) is not considered for addition to the route . note that since the search is incremental , meaning we first generate the groups of k = 1 , then the groups of k = 2 , etc &# 39 ;, this optimization is significant even for large k values . 2 . optremove — remove identical groups , i . e . groups that contain identical set of objects . optremove uses two supporting data structures : a . sorted array of the sums of the indexes of the objects in each group . using these data structures we check if two groups are identical in the following way : in a pass over the first array the sum of the indexes in the group is identical we check in the bit array if these groups are actually identical . if yes , one of the groups is removed . 3 . optbb — for each group the bounding box ( bb for short ) is saved . in each step we increase the bb by the maximal of two values : a . the maximal interval between two objects in the route between the group that was generated so far . b . the distance from the last object in the route so far to the nearest neighbor ( that is not yet in the group ) now , only objects within the updated bb are considered for adding to the group . in this section , we present three variants of a greedy algorithm for the shortest - route problem . these algorithms are simple and our focus is on their efficient implementation . before presenting the algorithms , we introduce some notations . consider a sequence of objects π . with a slight abuse of notation , we also consider π as the set of the objects it contains . by indexes ( π )={ i | π ∪ ai ≠ ø } we denote the indexes of the sets that have a representative in π . by π [ j ] we denote the object in the j - th position of π , e . g ., for π = s , o 1 , t , it holds that π [ 2 ]= o 1 . we denote by insert ( π , o , j ) the sequence that is created by inserting the object o into 7e , after the object in position j and before the object in position j + 1 . the greedy extension algorithm ( gext ), presented in fig2 , is a greedy algorithm for the shortest - route problem . given a route - search query r and a dataset d , gext evaluates the search queries of r over d and then constructs a route by greedily inserting objects at the end of the sequence . each insertion is of the object that has the smallest effect on the length of the route . in gext we construct a route iteratively , starting with the sequence s , t . in each iteration , we insert an object into the last segment of the sequence . that is , given the initial sequence s , t , we add an object between s and t . in later iterations , the sequence is of the form s , o 1 , . . . , o m , t ( m ≧ 1 ) and we insert an object between o m and t . in each iteration , we add to the sequence π an object from a set a i , such that i ∉ indexes ( π ). the added object is the one that yields the smallest increase in length ( π ). in gext , there are k iterations . in each iteration , we examine at most n possible extensions to the constructed sequence , where n in the size of the dataset d . thus , gext has linear - time complexity . proposition 1 . greedy extension has o ( k | d |) time complexity , where k is the number of search queries and | d | is the size of the dataset over which r is computed . we can decrease the number of objects being examined in each iteration by using a grid index ( mesh ). in a grid index , the given area is partitioned into squares and for each square , the index contains an entry that stores references to the objects located in that square . we use the index by applying a two - step retrieval process . in the first step , we find an object near the interval where an object should be inserted . then , we verify that the inserted object is the one that yields the smallest increase in the length of the route . consider the sequence s , o i , . . . , o m , t . we need to insert an object between o m and t . first , we build a buffer around the line that connects o m and t . the size of the buffer is chosen so that the expected number of objects in its area , from each set a i , will be constant . thus , suppose that s is the whole area of the map and the objects of d ( and of each set a i ) are distributed uniformly in s . let be the density of objects in s , and suppose that the minimum is obtained for a h ( i . e ., when i = h ). let 1 be the distance between o m and t . in an area of size 1 / d , the expected number of objects from a h will be 1 , and the expected number of objects from every other set among a 1 , . . . , a n will be some constant greater than 1 . the buffer we construct is the area s x containing all the points whose distance from the line that connects o m and t is not greater than x , where x is determined as follows . the size of the area s x is in order to construct s x so that its area will be equal to 1 / d we choose x to be using the grid index , we retrieve the objects in the area s x and find the object o ′ whose addition causes the smallest increase in the length of the sequence . ( if we cannot find a suitable object in s x , we increase the size of the search area by adding 1 / d to it , i . e ., replacing 1 / d with 2 / d when computing x . we continue increasing the search area , till we find a suitable object .) in the second step of the retrieval , we check whether the object o ′ that was found above is indeed the one that causes the smallest increase in the length of the sequence . we do it by examining the elliptic area that contains all the points p , such that distance ( o m , p )+ distance ( p , t )≦ distance ( o m , o ′)+ distance ( o ′, t ). we retrieve the objects in this area using the index , and examine whether one of them should be added to the sequence instead of o ′. it is easy to see that for objects outside of this area , adding them to the sequence will yield an increase in the length that is greater than the increase caused by inserting o ′. furthermore , the examined area is smaller than 2x ( l + 2x ), so the expected number of objects in it is bounded by a constant . consequently , in each iteration of gext , we examine a constant number of objects , so the time complexity of each step is a function of the number of index entries we examine , which is usually much smaller than | d |. in gext , each extension is by adding an object to the last segment of the sequence . this approach helps keeping the algorithm efficient ; however , in many cases after constructing part of the route , we may discover that for some set a i , the best position to insert any object of a i into the sequence is not in the last segment . thus , in the greedy - insertion algorithm , we allow insertion of objects into any segment of the sequence . the greedy insertion ( gins ), presented in fig2 , is similar to gext , except for the following difference . instead of inserting objects only into the last segment of the constructed sequence , gins allows insertion of objects into any segment . that is , given a sequence s , o 1 , . . . , o m , t , gins inserts the object that yields the smallest increase in the length of the route , where the insertion can be between any two elements of the sequence , i . e ., between s and o 1 , between o i and o i + 1 , or between o m and t . in each iteration of gins , we examine at most | d | objects and for each object , at most k possible segments are considered as candidates where the object can be inserted . this provides the following complexity . proposition 2 . greedy insertion has o ( k 2 | d |) time complexity , where k is the number of search queries and | d | is the size of the dataset over which r is computed . for boosting the efficiency of the computation , we use a grid index in the same way we used it in gext . in each iteration , we first construct a buffer having a width x around the route constructed in the previous iteration . ( the width x is calculated as for gext , where l is the sum of lengths of all the segments of the sequence .) we retrieve the objects of the grid cells that intersect the buffer , and we find the best candidate o ′ and position i for the insertion of o ′ in position i . then , for every pair of objects o j and o i + 1 that are adjacent in the sequence prior to the insertion of o ′, we consider the elliptic area containing all the points whose distance from the two objects o j and o j = 1 does not exceed distance ( o i , o ′)+ distance ( o ′, o i + 1 ) ( where o ′ was inserted between the objects o i and o i + 1 that are in positions i and i + 1 of the sequence prior to the insertion ). as earlier , we check whether any object in this elliptic area should be inserted between o j and o j + 1 instead of inserting o ′ between o i and o i + 1 . the sets a 1 , . . . , a k can be of different size . so , if a set a i is much larger than a set a j and the objects of the sets are distributed approximately uniformly , then at a random point there is a greater chance of finding a near object of a i than a near object of a j . similarly , there is a higher chance of finding an object of a i near a partially created route than of finding there an object of a i . in an ordinary run , gext and gins are expected to add objects of large sets before adding objects of smaller sets . the intuition behind the infrequent - first heuristic ( ifh ) is to reverse that order of insertion and start by inserting objects from small sets , since such objects tend to be infrequent and may not exist in adjacency to a partially created route in ifh , we sort the sets a 1 , . . . , a k in a descending order according to their size . let a j 1 , . . . , a j k be such an order , i . e ., for every 1 ≦ i ≦ i ′≦ k , we have | a j i |≦| s j i |. then , we apply the algorithm gins with the following change . in each iteration i , the inserted object is chosen from the set a ji rather than from the union of several sets . ifh is expected to be slightly more efficient than gins , since in each iteration we examine a smaller set of objects . the sorting of the sets has a complexity of o ( m log in ), so when m is much smaller than | d |, it has an insignificant influence on the running time . in this section , we present two algorithms for the most - reliable route problem . one algorithm works in a bottom - up fashion by starting with the shortest route and improving it iteratively . the second algorithm works in a top - down fashion . it starts with a small set of objects and extends this set as long as it is possible to build a route whose length is smaller than the given distance limit . next , we describe these algorithms more precisely . the ascending - from - shortest algorithm ( asa ), presented in fig2 , is a heuristic algorithm for mrr . it starts by computing the shortest route , e . g ., using one of the algorithms previously presented . it then applies an iterative sequence of improvement steps . in each step , it finds the object o of the route with the smallest score . then , it examines all the possible candidates to replace o . we denote by replace ( ρ , o , o ′) the path that is created by removing an object o from a sequence ρ and inserting o ′ into the position where the increase in the length is the smallest . suppose that o ∈ a i and the current route is ρ . then , a candidate to replace o is an object o ′ from a i such that ( 1 ) score ( o )& lt ; score ( o ′), and ( 2 ) length ( replace ( ρ , o , o ′))≦ l ( recall that l is the given limit distance ). the algorithm replaces o by the candidate object that causes the smallest increase in the length of the route . the algorithm stops when for the object with the lowest score , there are no candidates to replace it . note that each replacement increases the minimal score of the route . for analyzing the complexity of the algorithm , we note that it comprises two steps . the first step is of generating a shortest route . the time complexity of this step depends on the algorithm that is used . as previously shown , we can use a heuristic algorithm with o ( k 2 | d |) time complexity for this computation . the second step is an iterative process of improving the minimal score . it has at most | d | iterations . this is because in each iteration an object is replaced , and the algorithm never adds to the route an object that has been previously removed . in each iteration , there are at most | d | objects to examine , and for each object we consider k possible segments in which this object can be inserted . consequently , the complexity of asa is as follows . in order to increase the efficiency of the algorithm , we reduce the number of objects being examined in each step by removing objects that cannot affect the result . when the algorithm starts , we remove from the sets a 1 , . . . , a k all the objects o such that distance ( s , o )+ distance ( o , t )& gt ; l . a second reduction is done during the run of the algorithm . in each iteration , we compute l ′= l − length ( π ′). we then , consider only objects o , such that there are two adjacent objects in π ′, say o 1 and o 2 , for which distance ( o 1 , o )+ distance ( o , o 2 )≦ l ′. we do not extend π ′ by objects that do not satisfy this condition . the algorithm route over the most - highly ranked objects ( rmhr ) tacklesmrr in a top - down fashion . the algorithm is presented in fig2 . in the algorithm , we examine sets of highly - ranked objects . we define t ⊂ d as a set of highly - ranked objects if for every object o t ∈ t and every object o d ∈| d \ t , it holds that score ( o t )≧ score ( o d ). we search for a set t of highly - ranked objects that is minimal in the following sense : there is a route π over objects of t that satisfies length ( π )≦ l and the other conditions ( i . e ., starting at s , ending in t and going via one object of each set among a 1 , . . . , a n ), but such a route does not exist over any subset t ′ ⊂ t of highly - ranked objects . we search for the minimal set of highly - ranked objects by sorting the objects of each set a i in a descending order according to their score . initially , we add to t the object with the highest score for each a i . if we find a route over t whose length is smaller than or equal to l , we return this route . otherwise , we add to t the object that has the highest score among the objects that are not in t . we stop when we find a route whose length is smaller than l or when there are no more objects that we can add to t . rmhr employs a heuristic algorithm for computing the shortest route . however , when using an exact algorithm for computing the shortest route , rmhr computes an optimal solution to the most - reliable route problem . proposition 4 . let r be a route - search query under the most - reliable semantics . when rmhr uses an exact algorithm for computing the shortest route , it correctly computes an optimal answer to r if there is one . for improving the efficiency of rmhr , we use the following three optimizations . 1 . initially , we discard all the objects o of d such that distance ( s , o )+ distance ( o , t )& gt ; l , since such objects do not affect the result . 2 . in the first insertion of objects to t ( after line 9 in fig2 ), if o is the object with the smallest score in t , then we can move from u to t any object that has a score greater than or equal to score ( o ). 3 . finding the set t can be carried out in the form of a binary search . after having all the relevant objects sorted in the queue u , we partition u into two sets . let the set that contains the objects in u with the highest score . if we can compute over t a route whose length does not exceed l , we let t be the set that contains the objects in u with the highest score . otherwise , we take t to be the objects in u with the highest score . we continue this way ( adding or removing objects in each step i ), till we find the minimal set of highly - ranked objects . if we use the binary - search approach , we get log 2 | d | iterations in rmhr and , thus , the complexity is as follows . proposition 5 . if rmhr employs an o ( k 2 | d |)- time algorithm for finding the shortest route , then rmhr runs in o ( k 2 | d | log | d |) time . in this section , we describe the results of extensive experiments on both real - world data and synthetically - generated data . the goal of our experiments was to compare the three methods presented in sections 3 . 1 , 3 . 2 and 3 . 3 , over data with varying levels of object spread and different distributions of confidence values . we used synthetic datasets to test the differences between our algorithms . one of the synthetic datasets on which we conducted experiments is depicted in fig6 . in this figure , objects are marked by crosses . potential starting points are marked by circles and have a letter ( a , b or c ) beside the circle to designate the point . the confidence values were chosen randomly according to a gaussian distribution ( normal distribution ) with mean 0 . 7 and standard deviation 0 . 1 . we do not show the confidence values in fig6 because in some parts of the figure , objects are too dense for writing visible numbers beside them . for estimating the expected distance of a route p over some given dataset ( d , φ c ), when testing the quality of some algorithm , we generated 100 instances of ( d , φ c ) and computed the average distance of a k - route over these instances . that is , for every given dataset ( d , φ c ) we generated 100 instances ( d , τ 1 ), . . . , ( d , τ 100 ) where each τ i was the result of randomly choosing truth values τ i ( o 1 , . . . , τ i ( o n ) such that in each choice , τ i ( o j ) was chosen as true with probability φ c ( o j ) and as false with probability 1 − φ c ( o j ). we then computed the distances d 1 , . . . , d 100 , where di is the length of the route from the starting point to the kth correct object when traversing ( d , τ i ) according to p . we consider the average ( σ i − 1 100 d i )/ 100 as the expected distance of p over ( d , φ c ). fig8 shows the results of our algorithms when computing a route over the dataset of fig6 , given starting - point a . the graph in this figure shows the expected k - distance , of the routes computed by the algorithms , as a function of k . the results of the greedy algorithm are presented by diamonds . for aag , the results are depicted by squares , and for k - eg , the results are depicted by triangles . the graph shows that for small k values ( k = 1 or k = 2 ) all three algorithms provide a route with a similar expected distance . for larger k values , the greedy algorithm is much worse than aag and k - eg . for instance , when k = 7 , the greedy algorithm provides a route with expected length greater than 10 kilometers while aag and k - eg provide routes with expected length of less than 5 kilometers . the differences are because aag and k - eg generate a route that goes directly to a near cluster while the route generated by the greedy algorithm does not go directly to a cluster . for start - point b , the differences in the quality of the result , between the greedy and the other two algorithms , are even larger . this is because it takes longer for the route of the greedy algorithm to get to a cluster . fig1 shows the results of our algorithms when computing a route over the dataset of fig6 with respect to start - point c . in this case there is a difference between the results provided by aag and those of k - eg . in order to understand the behavior of the different algorithms in this case , we present the routes that are computed . the greedy algorithm returns the route that is depicted in fig1 . the route computed by aag is shown in fig1 . the route that k - eg returns for k = 7 is presented in fig1 . in these figures it can be seen that the route computed by the greedy algorithm reaches a cluster after a long travel . aag reaches a cluster directly and thus is better than the greedy algorithm for large k values . the main problems with the route that aag computes is that it goes directly to a cluster and skips objects that are on the way to the cluster . going through these objects increases the likelihood to reach k correct object sooner without lengthening the route . thus , for this case , k - eg provides a better route than aag . we conducted several additional tests on synthetic datasets . in these tests we had datasets with a few large clusters , datasets with several small clusters and datasets with no clusters at all . our experiments confirmed that in the presence of clusters the greedy algorithm is much worse than the other two algorithms , and they showed that k - eg provides the best results in almost all cases . we tested our algorithms on several real - world datasets to which we added confidence values . a dataset of hotels in soho , manhattan is depicted in fig7 . the objects were taken from a map of new - york city and the confidence values were added randomly according to a gaussian distribution with mean 0 . 7 and standard deviation 0 . 1 . the results of our algorithms on this dataset are depicted in fig1 and fig1 for two starting points a and b , respectively . in this test , again the greedy algorithm provides the worst route and k - eg provides the best route , for almost all cases . the routes computed by the greedy , aag and k - eg algorithms are depicted in fig1 , 18 and 14 , respectively . in k - eg , a route is chosen from a set of possible routes . this reduces the number of cases where the algorithm produces an extremely bad route . to show this we conducted experiments over three real - world datasets that are very different one from the other , using two different confidence distributions . one dataset we used is of embassies in tel - aviv . in this dataset , almost all the objects are in two clusters that are quite far one from the other . a second dataset is of gas stations in the area of tel - aviv . this dataset contains three large clusters ( dense urban areas ) but also many objects that do not belong to a cluster . a third dataset we used is of points of interest where objects are dispersed without any visible cluster . for each one of these datasets we chose confidence values randomly . first , according to a uniform distribution in the range 0 to 1 , and secondly , according to a gaussian distribution with mean 0 . 7 and standard deviation 0 . 1 . for each case , we chose a starting location . over each dataset , we summarized for aag and k - eg the quality of the result with respect to the result of the greedy algorithm . to do so , we computed for k = 2 , . . . , 10 the ratio of the distance of the route produced by the tested algorithm ( aag or k - eg ) to the distance of the route produced by the greedy algorithm . we show the minimal and the maximal ratios for these cases in fig1 . the graph in fig1 shows that aag sometimes generates a route that is much worse than the route the greedy algorithm would produce . this is because in the presence of clusters the route generated by aag goes directly to a cluster even when all the clusters are far from the starting point . this approach can be expensive , especially for small k values . in the presence of clusters , both aag and k - eg sometimes produce a route that is much better than the route produced by the greedy algorithm . not surprisingly , when there are no clusters , the differences between the algorithms are smaller . note that for different distributions of confidence values we get similar results , however , an increase in the variance of confidence values leads to an increase in the difference between the smallest ratio and the largest ratio . we consider now the time it takes for computing a route using our algorithms . to give runtime estimations , we measured the computation of a route on datasets of different sizes . when measuring the times , we used a pc with core 2 duo 2 . 13 ghz processor ( e 6400 ) and 2 gb of main memory . in table 1 we show the time it takes for computing , using the greedy algorithm or aag , a route over four datasets with 50 , 100 , 150 and 200 objects . for aag we show both the time it takes for computing adjacency - aware values in the preprocessing part of the method , and the time it takes for computing a route after the preprocessing has been completed . for k - eg , we present in fig2 the times for computing a route , as a function of k . table 1 and fig2 show that the greedy algorithm is the most efficient among the three algorithms while k - eg is less efficient than the other two methods . aag is less efficient than the greedy algorithm when considering the preprocessing time in the measure , however , without the preprocessing , aag is as efficient as the greedy algorithm . we tested our algorithms on both synthetically - generated datasets and real - world datasets . our goal was to compare the efficiency and the effectiveness of our algorithms , for different queries and over various datasets . the experiments were conducted on a pc equipped with a core 2 duo processor 2 . 13 ghz ( e 6400 ), 2 gb of main memory and windows xp professional operating system . the real - world data that we used in our experiments is part of a digital map of the city tel - aviv that has been generated by mapa ® ( a registered trademark of mapa internet from tel - aviv , israel ) available at www . mapa . co . il . a fragment of that map is presented in fig2 . in our tests , we used the “ point of interest ” ( poi ) layer of the map . the objects in this layer represent many different types of geographical entities . we extracted from the map 628 objects of seven different types ( 20 cinemas , 29 hotels , 31 pedestrian bridges , 54 post offices , 136 pharmacies , 169 parking lots and 189 synagogues ). that is , in the tests we had k = 7 . these objects received scores that are normally distributed , with mean of 69 . 7 percent and a standard deviation of 9 . 98 percent . in our experiments we examined three cases of locations of the source s and the destination t . case a : the source and the destination are the same location . case b : there is a medium distance between s and t . case c : there is a large distance between s and t , i . e ., each location is in a different corner of the map . table 2 shows the results of the three sr algorithms over the tel - aviv dataset . the results are presented for case b ( the distance between s and t is neither small nor large ). for case a and case c the algorithms provide similar results . the test results support our analysis . they show that the route provided by ifh is shorter than the routes of the other two methods . the route of gext is the longest among the three routes . as for the running times , gext is the most efficient and gins is the least efficient . in fig2 , 27 and 28 , we present the results of experimenting with rmhr and asa over the tel - aviv dataset , when computing the most - reliable route . fig2 presents the minimal scores of routes computed by rmhr and asa , for different values of the distance limit l . the results show that in all circumstances rmhr computes better routes than asa . when the distance bound l is increased , the results of asa are improved , and eventually become as good as the results of rmhr . fig2 presents the running times of rmhr and asa as a function of the distance limit l . in most cases , rmhr is more efficient than asa . however , when l is small , asa is faster . this is because for a small t , the number of iterations that asa performs is small , whereas rmhr needs many iteration to complete its task . when l is not small , asa performs many iterations , so rmhr finds a route faster . fig2 shows that when l is small , the route computed by rmhr is shorter than the route computed by asa . when l is large , asa computes the shorter route . testing our algorithms over synthetic data allows us to examine the algorithms over datasets with specific , sometimes extreme , properties . in a synthetic dataset we have control over the distribution of the locations of objects in the area of the map , the way that the objects are partitioned into sets , etc . for generating the synthetic datasets , we implemented a random - dataset generator . our generator is a two - step process . first , the objects are generated . the locations of the objects are randomly chosen according to a given distribution , in a square area . in the second step , we partition the objects into sets and a confidence value is attached to each object . the partitioning of objects into sets can be uniform or according to a distribution specified by the user . the user provides the following parameters to the dataset generator : the number of objects , the size of the square area in which the objects are located and the minimal distance between objects . for simulating search results , the user provides the distribution of scores , the distribution of the size of the sets in the partition . these parameters allow a user to generate tests with different sizes of datasets and different partitions of the datasets into sets . in table 3 we present the results of experiments with the sr algorithms over synthetic datasets , one containing 10 , 000 objects and the other containing 100 , 000 objects . these tests illustrate the efficiency of our algorithms and they provide another evidence that ifh provides better results than the other two algorithms . in order to compare the efficiency of rmhr and asa , we present in table 4 their running times over datasets with various sizes . the table presents the mean of many runs using different distance limits . the standard deviation is also presented . the results show that rmhr is much more efficient than asa . moreover , having a small standard deviation shows that rmhr is efficient in almost all the cases . asa , for comparison , has a large standard deviation because it is efficient in some cases and not efficient in others . fig2 illustrates the effect of the partitioning into sets on the running times of rmhr and asa ( the size of the dataset is 1 , 000 objects ). when the partitioning is into sets of approximately equal size , i . e ., every two sets among a 1 , . . . , a n have a similar size , then rmhr is very efficient and asa is not efficient ( fig2 a ). when the partitioning is uneven , then the efficiency of rmhr decreases while the efficiency of asa increases ( fig2 b ). to see why this happens consider the case where some set a i is small . when asa tries to improve a route by replacing an element of a i , it quickly fails and stops . so having a small set increases the efficiency of asa . for rmhr , it adds objects to the set over which it works according to their score . so , when a i is small , rmhr will add objects of a i to the working set at a low rate ( for each objects of a i added to the set , many objects of other sets will be added ). consequently , the computation will be slower . with the ongoing advances in the areas of wireless communication and positioning technologies , it has become possible to provide mobile , location - based services . these services may track the movements and requests of their customers in multidimensional data warehouses , and later use this information for answering complex queries [ c . s . jensen , a . kligys , t . b . pedersen , and i . timko . multidimensional data modeling for location - based services . the vldb journal , 13 ( 1 ): 1 - 21 , 2004 ]. data models for location - based services have been developed and implemented in recent years . an r - tree - based technique for indexing data about the current positions of objects in highly dynamic databases has been proposed by saltenis and jensen [ s . saltenis and c . s . jensen . indexing of moving objects for location - based services . in proceedings of the 18 th international conference on data engineering , washington d . c . ( usa ), 2002 ]. an efficient search for specific information over multiple collections has been described by goodchild and zhou [ m . f . goodchild and j . zhou . finding geographic information : collection - level metadata . geoinformatica , 7 ( 2 ): 95 - 112 , 2003 ], who have also reported on several conceptual designs for a searching process that is based on collection - level metadata ( clm ). miller and shaw [ h . j miller and s . shih - lung . geographic information systems for transportation : principles and applications ( spatial information systems ). oxford university press , 2001 ] have described the use of gis - t data models and different aspects of path finding in geospatial systems for transportation purposes . manipulating uncertain and probabilistic data has received a lot of attention recently . several papers deal with managing probabilistic and uncertain data , and propose models for representing the data [ d . barbara , h . garcia - molina , and d . poter . the management of probabilistic data . ieee transaction on knowledge and data engineering , 4 ( 5 ): 487 - 502 , 1992 ; r . cavallo and m . pittarelli . the theory of probabilistic databases . in proceedings of 13 th international conference on very large data bases , 1987 , n . fuhr . a probabilistic framework for vague queries and imprecise information in databases . in proc . of the 16 th international conference on very large data bases , 1990 ; l . v . s . lakshmanan , n . leone , r . ross , and v . s . subrahmanian . probview : a flexible probabilistic database system . acm trans . on database systems , 22 ( 3 ): 419 - 469 , 1997 ]. in some papers , the problem of querying probabilistic data is considered and various techniques for efficient evaluation of queries over probabilistic data are proposed [ r . cheng , d . kalashnikov , and s . parbhakar . evaluating probabilistic queries over imprecise data . in proc . of acm sigmod international conference on management of data , 2003 ; n . n . dalvi and d . suciu . efficient query evaluation on probabilistic databases . in proceedings of the 30 th international conference on very large data bases , 2004 ; m . pittarelli . an algebra for probabilistic databases . ieee transactions on knowledge and data engineering , 6 ( 2 ): 293 - 303 , 1994 ; r . ross , v . s . subrahmanian , and j . grant . aggregate operators in probabilistic databases . journal of the acm , 52 ( 1 ): 54 - 101 , 2005 ; e . zimnyi . query evaluation in probabilistic relational databases . theoretical computer science , 171 ( 1 - 2 ): 179 - 219 , 1997 ]. the above papers are concerned with probabilistic data in general , and not with spatial data . for probabilistic spatial data , the problem of computing a join of spatial polygonal - shaped objects with imprecise locations is investigated in [ j . ni , c . v . ravishankar , and b . bhanu . probabilistic spatial database operations . in proc . of the 8 th international symposium on advances in spatial and temporal databases , 2003 ]. computing nearest - neighbor on probabilistic spatial databases is discussed in [ s . zhang . a nearest neighborhood algebra for probabilistic databases . intelligent data analysis , 4 ( 1 ): 29 - 49 , 2000 ]. probabilistic spatial data has also been considered in the context of dealing with moving objects [ s . saltenis and c . s . jensen . indexing of moving objects for location - based services . in proceedings of the 18th international conference on data engineering , washington d . c . ( usa ), 2002 ; g . trajcevski , o . wolfson , k . hinrichs , and s . chamberlain . managing uncertainty in moving objects databases . acm transactions on database systems , 29 ( 3 ): 463 - 507 , 2004 ; g . trajcevski , o . wolfson , f . zhang , and s . chamberlain . the geometry of uncertainty in moving objects databases . in proceedings of the 8 th international conference on extending database technology , 2002 ]. all these problems are different from the present invention , namely , finding an efficient and effective k - route . although the invention has been described in detail , nevertheless changes and modifications , which do not depart from the teachings of the present invention , will be evident to those skilled in the art . such changes and modifications are deemed to come within the purview of the present invention and the appended claims . | 6 |
an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to fig2 through 4 . as shown in fig2 a thrust receiver 22 comprises a spherical member , or other member having a convex spherical end surface 50 at the center and extending in a radial direction , which surface opposes an end surface 12 of a shaft member 10 . the end surface 12 opposing the convex spherical surface 50 of thrust receiver 22 has a concave spherical surface 13 at the center which extends in a radial direction . a radius of curvature rs of the concave spherical surface 13 is , as shown in fig2 larger than a radius of curvature rk of the convex spherical surface 50 , and a thrust bearing is constituted by the convex spherical surface 50 and the concave spherical surface 13 . in a preferred embodiment , the hardness of the shaft member 10 is preferably equal to hrc40 or higher , and the hardness of the thrust receiver 22 is preferably in a range of hrc60 to 67 . thus , the hardness of the shaft member 10 is lower than that of the thrust receiver 22 . it is possible to make the hardness of the thrust receiver 22 equal to hv 1300 or larger , and in this case , the thrust receiver 22 is made of , for example , wc - co alloy , or other cemented carbide of the tungsten carbide group . the structure of parts other than those mentioned above are the same as in the prior art bearing device of fig1 and identical parts are assigned with identical reference numerals , and repeated descriptions are omitted . an alternative embodiment , shown in fig4 discloses a thrust receiver 22 which is not a sphere . a surface 40 , located at an opposite side with respect to the end surface 12 of the shaft member 10 , is a plane surface having a radius smaller than the radius of curvature of the convex spherical surface 50 of the thrust receiver 22 . by employing such a structure , the size in the axial direction , of a member including the sleeve 20 and the thrust receiver 22 , can be reduced . next , a method for manufacturing a bearing device structured as described above will be described . a cylindrical member ( not shown ) having an inner diameter slightly larger than shaft member 10 is formed to allow sliding engagement of said member around the outer periphery of shaft member 10 . a pressing member having a hardness higher than the shaft member 10 is fixed to the inside of the cylindrical member , at one end in the axial direction , by press fitting , or the like . the resulting apparatus is referred to as a forming jig for use in forming shaft member 10 of the present invention . the shaft member 10 is inserted into the forming jig . the surface of the pressing member opposing the end surface 12 of shaft member 10 has a convex spherical surface at the center which extends in a radial direction . the hardness of shaft member 10 is lower than that of the pressing member , which is generally equal to hrc40 or higher . a spherical member may be used as the pressing member . the shaft member 10 is fixed in place in the forming jig and the pressing member of the jig is pressed against the end surface 12 of shaft member 10 to apply a predetermined pressing load . alternatively , shaft member 10 may be pressed against the pressing member of the jig which is fixed , or both the jig and the shaft member 10 may be pressed in the axial direction against each other to apply the pressing load to the end surface 12 of the shaft member 10 . an air escape groove is formed in the inner surface at one end of the cylindrical member to enable air trapped in the space between the shaft member 10 and the pressing member to pass therethrough to the atmosphere . due to the pressing load , plastic deformation and elastic deformation are caused in the end surface 12 of the shaft member 10 by the pressing member , which is harder than the shaft member 10 . following deformation , the pressing load is removed , allowing the deformed end surface 12 of shaft 10 to spring back to the extent of the elastic deformation . as a result , a concave spherical surface 13 having a radius of curvature rs larger than a radius of curvature rk of the convex spherical surface of the pressing member is formed in the end surface 12 of the shaft member 10 . the gap between the cylindrical membre of the jig and the shaft member 10 in the radial direction can be made smaller than the gap between the sleeve 20 of the end product and the shaft member 10 . as a result , a concave spherical surface 13 , having small eccentricity from the axis of the shaft member 10 , can be formed on the end surface 12 of the shaft member 10 . furthermore , by using a pressing member of the forming jig , whose convex spherical surface has a different radius of curvature than the radius of curvature rk of the convex spherical surface 50 of the thrust receiver 22 used in the end product , it is possible to form on the end surface 12 of shaft member 10 a concave spherical surface 13 having a different radius of curvature rs in accordance with the radius of curvature of the convex spherical surface of the pressing member . in place of the aforementioned forming jig , the thrust receiver 22 and the sleeve 20 , used in the end product , may be used such that the thrust receiver 22 is fixed to the sleeve 20 by press fitting or the like . other accessories may or may not be attached to the assembly . in this case , the shaft member 10 may be fixed to the lower cylinder 30 by press fitting or the like beforehand , or the shaft member 10 may not be fixed . in either case , by performing a similar operation to that described in the foregoing , the concave spherical surface 13 can be formed on the end surface 12 of the shaft member 10 . where the forming jig is not used , the sleeve 20 having the thrust receiver 22 secured therein is slidingly engaged around the shaft member 10 , and a predetermined pressing load is applied to form the concave surface 13 . in so doing , simultaneously with the formation of the concave surface 13 , an assembled bearing device is obtained . test samples manufactured in accordance with the aforementioned method , and the results of wear tests on these test samples are as follows . as the thrust receiver 22 , a steel ball ( suj2 ) for a bearing having a diameter of about 1 . 5 mm and which has been subjected to hardening and tempering ( hardness hrc62 ˜ 64 ) was used . the steel ball was press fitted into the inside of the sleeve 20 , which is a component part of the bearing device . as the shaft member 10 , a stainless round steel rod ( sus 420j2 ) having a diameter of about 1 . 5 mm , slightly smaller than the diameter of the thrust receiver 22 , and which has been subjected to hardening and tempering ( hardness hrc 57 ˜ 58 ) was used . the shaft member 10 was fitted in the sleeve 20 , and pressed in the axial direction by applying a pressing load of about 10 kgf thereto . as a result , a concave spherical surface 13 having a diameter of about 3 mm ( a radius of curvature of about 1 . 5 mm ) was formed on the end surface 12 of the shaft member 10 . in this manner , even when the end surface 12 of shaft member 10 is pressed against the spherical member which is the thrust receiver 22 , it is possible to form , by plastic and elastic deformation , the concave spherical surface 13 having a larger radius of curvature rs than a radius of curvature rk of the convex spherical surface 50 , on the end surface 12 of the shaft member 10 . this test sample was used without any change for the wear test . it was ascertained that substantially no wear was caused on the concave spherical surface 13 , formed according to the present invention , even after several hundred hours elapsed as compared with the prior art bearing device in which , as described in the foregoing , an amount of wear equal to 5 μm or larger was caused on the end surface of the shaft member after the same time period elapsed . in this case , the hardness of the shaft member 10 is preferably equal to hrc 40 or higher , and the hardness of the pressing member is preferably within a range of hrc 60 ˜ 67 . when the hardness of the shaft member 10 is lower than hrc 40 , wear of the concave spherical surface 13 of the shaft member 10 is easily caused , and on the other hand , when the hardness of the shaft member 10 is made harder than the pressing member , plastic deformation of the shaft member 10 is not caused . the pressing member is only required to have a hardness higher than that of the shaft member 10 . however , when the hardness of the pressing member is made lower than hrc 60 , plastic deformation of the shaft member 10 becomes difficult to be caused whereas when the hardness of the pressing member is made higher than hrc 67 , heat treatment becomes difficult . in this connection , the hardness of the thrust receiver 22 may be high or low . however , it is preferable that the hardness of the thrust receiver 22 is in a range of hrc 60 ˜ 67 . when the hardness of the thrust receiver 22 is made lower than hrc 60 , it becomes difficult to use the thrust receiver 22 as the pressing member , and when the hardness of the thrust receiver 22 is made higher than hrc 67 , the heat treatment of the thrust receiver 22 becomes difficult . when the concave spherical surface 13 is formed by plastic deformation on the end surface 12 of the shaft member 10 before hardening and tempering , depending on the manner of handling of the shaft member 10 , scratches are easily caused on the concave spherical surface 13 and on the peripheral surface of the shaft member 10 during intermediate processes until the hardness of the shaft member 10 is actually increased . moreover , a deformation due to the heat treatment is caused on the concave construct such that the thrust receiver 22 is attracted towards the shaft member 10 by an attraction force in the axial direction produced between the rotor magnet and the stator coil . while certain embodiments of the invention have been described in detail above in relation to bearing devices and methods for manufacturing the same , it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the disclosed embodiment may be modified . therefore , the foregoing description is to be considered exemplary rather than limiting , and the true scope of the invention is that defined in the following claims . | 5 |
in accordance with scheme i below , the present invention provides an efficient synthesis of racemic isobutyl - gaba and a method for obtaining ( s )- isobutyl - gaba from racemic isobutyl - gaba . ## str29 ## wherein r 1 and r 2 are the same or different and are hydrogen , c 1 - c 6 alkyl , aryl , benzyl or c 3 - c 6 cycloalkyl ; and m is hydrogen , an alkali metal , or an alkaline earth metal . scheme i illustrates a method of making (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid ( vii or racemic 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid ), the method comprising condensing isovaleraldehyde ( i ) with ( ii ) to form ( iii ); reacting ( iii ) with a cyanide source to form ( iv ); decarboxylating ( iv ) to form ( v ); hydrolyzing ( v ) with an alkali metal or alkaline earth metal hydroxide to form ( vi ); and hydrogenating ( vi ) to form (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid ( vii ). in a preferred embodiment of the present method , (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid can be made by condensing isovaleraldehyde ( i ) with ( ii ) to form ( iii ); reacting ( iii ) with a cyanide source to form ( iv ); hydrolyzing and decarboxylating ( iv ) to form ( vi ); and hydrogenating ( vi ) to form (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid ( vii ). also provided by the present invention is a method for obtaining ( s )- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid ( ix ) from (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid ( vii ), the method comprising combining (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid and ( s )- mandelic acid in water , an alcohol or a mixture of water and an alcohol ; allowing a precipitate to form ; introducing the precipitate into a polar aprotic solvent , or a polar aprotic solvent and water , to form a slurry ; and collecting the solid from the slurry . in one step of the present method for making (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid , isovaleraldehyde is condensed with ## str30 ## wherein r 1 and r 2 are the same or different and are hydrogen c 1 - c 6 alkyl , aryl , benzyl , or c 3 - c 6 cycloalkyl . this type of reaction is known to those skilled in the art as a knoevenagel condensation , and the conditions under which a knoevenagel condensation can be carried out are well known to those skilled in the art . for example , the condensation can be achieved using a catalytic amount of a base such as di - n - propylamine . other suitable catalysts are known in the literature . see for example , tietze l . f ., and beifuss u . in comprehensive organic synthesis , 1991 ; 2 : 341 - 394 ( trost b . m ., ed . ), pergamon press . representative examples of suitable catalysts include pyrrolidine , β - alanine , ammonium acetate , di - isoproplylamine , and di - n - propylamine . these basic catalysts can also be used in combination with an acid such as p - toluene sulfonic acid or acetic acid . a preferred catalyst system in the present method is di - n - propylamine and acetic acid . in general , the reaction is run in a refluxing hydrocarbon solvent including , but not limited to , toluene , hexane , heptane , methyl tert - butyl ether or cyclohexane , with the azeotropic removal of water . a preferred solvent is hexane . it is noted that olefin regioisomers can also be formed in the reaction , but are converted to the desired product in a subsequent step in the reaction sequence . representative examples of c 1 - c 6 alkyl groups include methyl ethyl , propyl , isopropyl , n - butyl , isobutyl , tert - butyl , pentyl and hexyl . representative examples of c 3 - c 6 cycloalkyl include cyclopropyl , cyclobutyl , cyclopentyl and cyclohexyl . representative examples of aryl groups include phenyl and substituted phenyl , naphthyl , pridinyl , and the like . the aryl moiety may be substituted with one or more substituents , which can be the same or different . examples of such groups include c 1 - c 6 alkyl , c 1 - c 6 alkoxy and halogen . preferably , r 1 and r 2 are ethyl . in general , the isovaleraldehyde and ## str31 ## are added to the solvent along with the catalyst , and refluxed with azeotropic removal of water . it is also contemplated that additional catalyst may be added when the rate of azeotropic water collection slows . the progress of the condensation reaction may be monitored by methods well known in the art . a preferred monitoring method is gas chromatography ( gc ). in another step of the present method , ## str32 ## is reacted with a cyanide source to form ## str33 ## in general , ## str34 ## is reacted with a cyanide source in a polar protic solvent such as ethanol , methanol , n - propanol , isopropanol , a mixture of water and alcohols , or polar aprotic solvents such as dimethylsulfoxide ( dmso ) or dmso / water , and then treated with an acid . examples of suitable cyanide sources include , but are not limited to , hydrogen cyanide , acetone cyanohydrin or an alkali metal or alkaline earth metal cyanide , such as sodium cyanide , potassium cyanide , or magnesium cyanide . the ## str35 ## in this step may be used in the next step without purification , i . e . in crude form , or it may be purified . examples of suitable acids are acetic acid , hydrochloric acid , hydrobromic acid , sulfuric acid , benzoic acid , mandelic acid , p - toluenesulfonic acid , and the like . the ## str36 ## can be decarboxylated to form ## str37 ## by heating ## str38 ## in a solvent with a salt . examples of suitable solvents include mixtures of water and a polar solvent such as ethanol or dimethylsulfoxide ( dmso ). examples of suitable salts include alkali metal and alkaline earth metal halides such as sodium chloride and alkali metal and alkaline earth metal cyanides such as sodium cyanide , magnesium cyanide , and the like . the ## str39 ## can be hydrolyzed with an alkali metal hydroxide or an alkaline earth metal hydroxide to form an alkali or alkaline earth metal carboxylate salt . the alkali or alkaline earth metal hydroxide can be any alkali or alkaline earth metal hydroxide known to those skilled in the art . examples of suitable alkali metal hydroxides include sodium hydroxide , lithium hydroxide , and potassium hydroxide . examples of suitable alkaline earth metal hydroxides include calcium hydroxide and magnesium hydroxide . the reaction is usually run in a suitable protic solvent such as water or a mixture of water and a polar protic solvent such as methanol , ethanol , or isopropanol . the carboxylate salt can be reduced to give the alkali or alkaline earth metal salt of (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid . the carboxylate salt can be protonated with mineral acids or carboxylic acids to give the carboxylic acid and then the nitrile group of the carboxylic acid can be reduced . conversely , the nitrile group of the carboxylate salt can be reduced , and subsequently protonated to form the carboxylic acid . the salt can be treated with mineral acids or carboxylic acids to give (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid . those skilled in the art are familiar with the reduction of nitrile functional groups . one common method of reducing a nitrile uses a hydrogenation catalyst , such as sponge nickel , in the presence of hydrogen . other catalysts include palladium , platium , rhodium , cobalt , and nickel . in general , the reaction is run in a solvent system such as a mixture of water and a polar protic solvent . the amino carboxylate formed after nitrile reduction can be obtained in the acid form by treating the amino carboxylate with an acid . the mineral acids such as hydrochloric acid can be used . carboxylic acids , such as acetic acid , can also be used . preferably , the acid is acetic acid , as a byproduct formed by the reaction is moac where m is an alkali metal ion ( na , k , and the like ), and oac is an acetate ion . the salt moac is more soluble in aqueous alcoholic solvents than inorganic salts such as sodium chloride , potassium chloride , and the like . thus , isolation of the product is simplified , and the need for ion exchange treatment to remove excess salts is avoided . the cyano acid may also be reduced using a suitable hydrogenation catalyst , such as sponge nickel and hydrogen , in a polar solvent such as methanol , ethanol , or isopropanol in combination with ammonia or a mixture of ammonia and water . examples of other suitable hydrogenation catalysts include palladium , platium , rhodium , cobalt , and nickel . in a preferred method ## str40 ## is taken to (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid without isolation of intermediates . for example , ## str41 ## can be hydrolyzed using an alkali or alkaline earth metal hydroxide such as potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide in an alcohol solvent , which promotes decarboxylation . further hydrolysis using an alkali or alkaline earth metal hydroxide in water , an alcohol , or a mixture of water and an alcohol , gives carboxylate ( vi ), which can be reduced with a hydrogenation catalyst followed by treatment with a mineral acid to give racemic 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid . racemic 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid can be resolved , i . e ., the enantiomers separated , by selective crystallization with ( s )- mandelic acid . racemic 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhekanoic acid and ( s )- mandelic acid can be combined in a solvent such as water or an alcohol or a mixture of water and an alcohol to form a salt . examples of suitable alcohols include methanol , ethanol , n - propanol , isopropanol , n - butanol , tert - butanol , and the like . in general , the s , s salt precipitates from the solution , and the diastereomer , the r , s salt , stays in solution . diasteriomeric purity of the s , s salt can be enhanced by further crystallizations . additional ( s )- mandelic acid can be included in the recrystallizations to enhance diastereomeric enrichment . in general , an excess of mandelic acid is used . it is also noted that mandelic acid can be used in combination with another acid in accordance with the &# 34 ; pope - peachy &# 34 ; method known in the art . removal of ( s )- mandelic acid from the salt to give enriched ( s )- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid can be done using a polar aprotic solvent such as dimethylsulfoxide or mixtures of dimethylsulfoxide and water or tetrahydrofuran and water , at temperatures typically in the range of about 0 ° c . to about 100 ° c . trituration to obtain the s - enantiomer has the advantage that it is operationally simple and more economical than traditional acid / base or ion exchange methods . alternatively , ( s )- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methyl - hexanoic acid can be obtained by combining (±)- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid with ( r )- mandelic acid to give the r , r salt which crystallizes out of the solution leaving the solution enriched in ( s )- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid which can then be isolated from the solution by methods well known to those skilled in the art . the ( r )- mandelic salt of ( s )- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid can be isolated as an intermediate , treated with a polar aprotic solvent or mixture of water and a polar aprotic solvent to give the ( s )- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid . it is also possible to obtain ( s )- 3 -( aminomethyl )- 5 - methylhexanoic acid from racemic isobutyl - gaba by standard methods of resolution known to those skilled in the art . it is noted that the isolated solids may be dried at each stage in the resolution or carried on to the next step as solvent - wet solids with comparable results . also provided by the present invention are the novel compounds ## str42 ## where r 1 and r 2 are the same or different and are hydrogen , c 1 - c 6 alkyl , aryl , benzyl or c 3 - c 6 cycloalkyl ; ## str43 ## where m is hydrogen , an alkali metal , or an alkaline earth metal ; ## str44 ## where r 1 is a defined above ; and ## str45 ## it is also contemplated that the compounds of the present method can be found or isolated in the form of hydrates or solvates , which are considered to fall within the scope of the present invention . the examples below are intended to illustrate specific embodiments of the invention and are not intended to limit the scope of the specification , including the claims , in any manner . isovaleraldehyde ( 361 . 6 kg , 4198 . 3 mol ) was combined with diethyl malonate ( 640 . 8 kg , 4000 . 7 mol ), hexane ( 1000 l ), di - n - propylamine ( 20 . 0 kg , 197 . 6 mol ), and glacial acetic acid ( 24 . 0 kg , 399 . 7 mol ) in a 4000 l vessel . the mixture was heated to reflux ( jacket temperature set at 90 ° c .) with continuous removal of water until the rate of water collection slowed significantly ( 69 . 4 kg water was collected versus 72 . 0 kg expected by theory ). at this point , the mixture was cooled to below 60 ° c . and a second catalyst addition was carried out by charging di - n - propylamine ( 20 . 0 kg , 197 . 6 mol ), and glacial acetic acid ( 24 . 0 kg , 399 . 7 mol ) to the mixture . ( the second catalyst addition is optional , but helps to bring the reaction to completion faster . this modification shows improved purity profiles and yields in some cases versus a single catalyst charge .) the mixture was heated to reflux ( jacket temperature set at 90 ° c .) with continuous removal of water for an additional 22 . 5 hours or until the reaction is judged complete by gc assay (& gt ; 90 % combined product and isomer ). the mixture was brought to & lt ; 40 ° c . and was washed with water ( 2 × 800 l ). the organic layer was concentrated by atmospheric pressure distillation until most of the hexane was removed . the remaining oil was further concentrated by vacuum distillation at 40 ° c . for 2 - 18 hours . the product was obtained as a colorless liquid ( 810 . 0 kg , 88 . 7 % yield ) and contained a mixture of olefin isomers ( both of which are converted to the same product in the next synthetic step ). the major isomer is 2 - carboxyethyl - 5 - methylhex - 2 - enoic acid , ethyl ester ; the minor isomer ( typically 10 - 13 % by gc ) is believed to be 2 - carboxyethyl - 5 - methylhex - 3 - enoic acid , ethyl ester . gc assay : 74 - 76 % 2 - carboxyethyl - 5 - methylhex - 2 - enoic acid ethyl ester ; 10 - 13 % 2 - carboxyethyl - 5 - methylhex - 3 - enoic acid ethyl ester ; 87 - 88 % total of both isomers . 1 h nmr , note : chemical shifts and multiplicities are reported as observed for a sample of the mixture prepared by the process described above . the observed integration results are slightly different than would be expected for pure 2 - carboxyethyl - 5 - methylhex - 2 - enoic acid ethyl ester due to the presence of two olefin isomers . thus , the integration has been reported as would be expected for a pure sample of 2 - carboxyethyl - 5 - methylhex - 2 - enoic acid ethyl ester . 1 h nmr ( cdcl 3 , 200 mhz ): δ 0 . 91 - 1 . 02 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 23 - 1 . 37 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 78 - 1 . 85 ( m , 1h ), 2 . 16 - 2 . 23 ( m , 2h ) 4 . 19 - 4 . 36 ( m , 4h ), 7 . 02 ( t , 1h , j = 7 . 9 hz ). boiling point : purified samples can be obtained by vacuum distillation : 101 °- 104 ° c . at 1 . 1 - 1 . 2 mm hg ; or 132 ° c . at 5 mm hg . 2 - carboxyethyl - 5 - methylhex - 2 - enoic acid ethyl ester ( 692 . 7 kg , 3034 mol ) was charged to a 4000 l vessel containing potassium cyanide ( 172 . 6 kg , 2650 mol ) and 2b ethanol ( 700 kg ). the resulting slurry was stirred at 25 °- 40 ° c . for at least 18 hours or until in - process hplc assay indicated less than 5 % 2 - carboxyethyl - 5 - methylhex - 2 - enoic acid , ethyl ester ( typically 22 - 24 hours ). hexane ( 890 l ) was charged to the slurry . glacial acetic acid ( 175 kg , 2914 mol ) was slowly added keeping the temperature & lt ; 35 ° c . to the resulting thick slurry was added water ( 820 l ) with stirring . the layers were separated . the aqueous layer was extracted with hexane ( 1 × 890 l ). the organic layers were combined and washed with water ( 1 × 420 l ). the water layer was separated and the remaining organic solution was distilled at atmospheric pressure until most of the hexane was removed . the oil was then further concentrated by vacuum distillation at 40 ° c . for 2 - 19 hours . the product was obtained as a liquid ( 752 . 6 kg , 93 . 8 %). 1 h nmr ( dmso - d 6 , 200 mhz ): δ 0 . 92 ( t , 6h , j = 6 . 1 hz ), 1 . 15 - 1 . 21 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 23 - 1 . 36 ( m , 1h ), 1 . 54 - 1 . 68 ( m , 2h ), 3 . 25 - 3 . 33 ( m , 1h ), 3 . 97 ( d , 1h , j = 6 . 5 hz ), 4 . 10 - 4 . 25 ( m , 4h ). an 800 l still was charged with sodium chloride ( 21 kg , 359 mol ), 2 - carboxyethyl - 3 - cyano - 5 - methylhexanoic acid , ethyl ester ( 80 . 0 kg , 313 mol ), dimethylsulfoxide ( 238 kg ), and water ( 10 . 8 kg , 600 mol ). the mixture was heated to 137 °- 148 ° c . for 8 . 5 hours . the mixture was cooled to below 50 ° c ., and treated with methyl tert - butyl ether ( 125 kg ). the mixture was cooled to 0 °- 10 ° c ., and treated with water ( 160 l ) in portions to maintain the temperature below 40 ° c . after stirring for 15 - 30 minutes , the phases were separated . the aqueous phase was extracted with methyl tert - butyl ether ( 125 kg ). the organic extracts were combined with a vessel rinse ( 25 kg methyl tert - butyl ether ) and was extracted with water ( 110 l ). the water phase was discarded . the methyl tert - butyl ether phase was concentrated by atmospheric pressure distillation to a batch temperature of about 65 ° c . the batch was cooled to 30 °- 40 ° c . and further concentrated by vacuum distillation until the solvent content was acceptable (& lt ; 5 % methyl tert - butyl ether by area ogc analysis ). the product was obtained as a brown oil ( 51 . 3 kg , 85 . 7 %). boiling point : purified samples can be obtained by vacuum distillation : 99 °- 103 ° c . at 1 . 3 - 1 . 5 mm hg 1 h nmr ( cdcl 3 , 200 mhz ): δ 0 . 88 - 0 . 99 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 19 - 1 . 40 ( m , 4h ), 1 . 57 - 1 . 69 ( m , 1h ), 1 . 72 - 1 . 84 ( m , 1h ), 2 . 53 ( dd , 1h , j = 6 . 8 hz , j = 16 . 6 hz ), 2 . 70 ( dd , 1h , j = 7 . 4 hz , j = 16 . 5 hz ), 2 . 99 - 3 . 10 ( m , 1h ), 4 . 21 ( q , 2h , j = 7 . 1 hz ). an 800 l still was charged with 3 - cyano - 5 - methyl hexanoic acid , ethyl ester ( 50 . 1 kg , 273 mol ) and ethyl alcohol 2b ( 53 kg ). a solution of potassium hydroxide ( 17 . 8 kg , 317 mol ) in water ( 56 l ) was added controlling the addition rate to maintain the batch temperature below 25 ° c . the mixture was stirred at 20 °- 25 ° c . for about 1 . 5 hours . the batch was transferred to a hydrogenator containing sponge nickel ( 15 . 0 kg , 50 % water wet ), followed by a rinse of ethyl alcohol 2b ( 27 kg ). the mixture was treated with hydrogen at about 50 psi for about 19 hours ( hydrogen uptake stopped ). the nickel was removed by filtration and the filter cake was rinsed with a mixture of 39 kg ethyl alcohol 2b and 111 l water . to the filtrate was added glacial acetic acid ( 22 . 8 kg , 380 mol ) maintaining the batch temperature less than 40 ° c . the batch was heated to 70 °- 75 ° c . to dissolve the solids . the batch was slowly cooled to 0 °- 5 ° c . to crystallize the product . the solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with 160 l isopropyl alcohol that was previously cooled to 0 °- 5 ° c . the damp solid was dried in a vacuum tray drier under vacuum at 35 °- 45 ° c . ( 28 hours ) to give 31 . 4 kg ( 75 . 1 %) of racemic 3 - aminomethyl - 5 - methylhexanoic acid . the product was characterized by hplc and nmr . the water content for this product was 9 . 51 % by weight ( karl fischer ). the product may contain a variable amount of water ranging from nearly anhydrous up to about 10 . 2 % ( monohydrate ). 1 h nmr ( d 2 o , 200 mhz ) δ 0 . 86 - 0 . 90 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 21 ( t , 2h , j = 7 . 0 hz ), 1 . 62 - 1 . 69 ( m , 1h ), 2 . 12 - 2 . 35 ( m , 3h ), 2 . 94 - 3 . 00 ( m , 2h ). a 2000 l still was charged with 2 - carboxyethyl - 3 - cyano - 5 - methyl hexanoic acid , ethyl ester ( 286 kg , 1120 mol ) and methyl alcohol ( 100 l ). a solution of potassium hydroxide ( 60 . 8 kg , 1046 mol ) in methyl alcohol ( 260 l ) was added controlling the addition rate so as to keep the batch temperature about 20 °- 35 ° c . a rinse of 40 l methyl alcohol was added to the batch and the mixture was heated to reflux for 4 - 5 hours . the batch was cooled to 25 °- 30 ° c . and a solution of potassium hydroxide ( 121 . 6 kg , 2167 mol ) in water ( 200 l ) was added maintaining the batch temperature below 50 ° c . the batch was concentrated by vacuum distillation to about 580 l volume . water ( 100 l ) was added and the distillation continued to a volume of about 510 l . the batch was transferred to an 800 l hydrogenator containing 44 . 8 kg sponge nickel ( 50 % water wet ), along with a mixture of 20 l water and 30 kg ethyl alcohol 2b as a rinse . the mixture was treated with hydrogen at about 50 psi for about 18 - 19 hours ( hydrogen uptake stopped ). to the batch was added 58 kg ethyl alcohol 2b and the nickel was removed by filtration . the filter cake was rinsed with a mixture of 100 kg ethyl alcohol 2b and 270 l water . the filtrate was transferred to a 2000 l still containing 222 kg ( 3697 mol ) glacial acetic acid at 50 °- 60 ° c . controlling the addition rate to control gas evolution and to maintain the temperature at 50 °- 60 ° c . a rinse of 40 l water was added to the batch and the temperature increased to 70 °- 75 ° c . to dissolve the solids . the batch was slowly cooled to 0 °- 5 ° c . to crystallize the product . the solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with 570 l isopropyl alcohol . the damp solid was dried in a vacuum tray drier under vacuum at 35 °- 45 ° c . ( 22 hours ) to give 108 . 1 kg ( 72 . 7 %) of racemic 3 - aminomethyl - 5 - methylhexanoic acid . the product was characterized by hplc and nmr . the product may contain variable amounts of water ranging from nearly anhydrous ( 1 . 68 % by weight in this example ) up to about 10 . 2 % ( monohydrate ). 1 h nmr ( d 2 o , 200 mhz ): 6 0 . 88 - 0 . 92 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 23 ( t , 2h , j = 6 . 9 hz ), 1 . 64 - 1 . 70 ( m , 1h ), 2 . 13 - 2 . 37 ( m , 3h ), 2 . 96 - 3 . 01 ( m , 2h ). a solution of 3 % v / v water in isopropyl alcohol was prepared by mixing water ( 9 kg ) and isopropyl alcohol ( 291 l ) in a 400 l reactor . this was repeated . the solvent was stored in plastic drums and used as necessary ( described below ). a 400 l still was charged with racemic 3 - aminomethyl - 5 - methylhexanoic acid ( 29 . 7 kg , 168 mol ), s -(+)- mandelic acid ( 39 . 3 kg , 258 mol ), and 3 % v / v water / isopropyl alcohol solution ( 244 kg ) prepared earlier . the mixture was heated to dissolve the solids ( about 65 °- 80 ° c . ), cooled , and seeded with s , s - salt to crystallize the mixture of diastereomeric mandelate salts enriched in the s , s - isomer . the solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with 3 % water / isopropanol ( 21 . 5 kg ). ( s / r isomer ratio : 93 . 7 % s : 6 . 3 % r . the solid may optionally be dried at this stage or carried on as a solvent - wet solid ). the damp salt was charged to a 400 l still along with ( s )-(+)- mandelic acid ( 5 . 8 kg , 38 mol ) and 3 % water / isopropyl alcohol ( 121 kg ). the mixture was heated to dissolve the solids ( about 65 °- 80 ° c . ), cooled , and seeded if necessary , with s , s - salt to crystallize the mixture of diastereomeric mandelate salts further enriched in the s , s - isomer . the solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with 3 % water / isopropyl alcohol ( 33 . 3 kg ). the solid may optionally be dried at this stage or carried on as a solvent - wet solid ( s / r isomer ratio : 99 . 5 % s : 0 . 5 % r ). the dried s , s - salt typically has the following characteristics : description : white to off - white solid ; mp 133 °- 134 ° c . ; 1 h nmr ( d 2 o , 200 mhz ): δ 0 . 87 - 0 . 92 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 24 ( t , j = 7 . 2 hz , 2h ), 1 . 55 - 1 . 76 ( m , 1h ), 2 . 11 - 2 . 52 ( m , 3h ), 3 . 00 ( d , j = 6 . 2 hz , 2h ), 5 . 07 ( s , 1h ), 7 . 43 ( s , 5h ). the damp salt was transferred to a 400 l reactor with tetrahydrofuran ( 195 l ) and water ( 10 kg ). the mixture was warmed to 60 °- 65 ° c ., and cooled to 0 °- 5 ° c . the crude ( s )- isobutyl gaba solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with a mixture of tetrahydrofuran ( 28 l )/ water ( 1 kg ). the solid may optionally be dried at this stage or carried on as a solvent - wet solid ( s / r isomer ratio : 100 % s :& lt ; 0 . 05 % r isomer ( not detected )). the damp solid was transferred to a 200 l still with isopropyl alcohol ( 113 l ) and water ( 38 kg ). the mixture was heated to dissolve the solids ( about 75 °- 80 ° c . ), filtered while hot , and cooled to 0 °- 5 ° c . to crystallize the ( s )- isobutyl gaba . the solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with 25 l isopropyl alcohol . the damp solid was dried in a vacuum tray drier under vacuum at 35 °- 45 ° c . to give 7 . 4 kg ( s )- isobutyl gaba . chiral purity ( hplc ): 100 % s ; r - isomer not detected ( limit of detection 0 . 05 %) 1 h nmr ( d 2 o , 200 mhz ): δ 0 . 88 - 0 . 92 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 23 ( t , 2h , j = 6 . 9 hz ), 1 . 64 - 1 . 70 ( m , 1h ), 2 . 13 - 2 . 32 ( m , 3h ), 2 . 96 - 3 . 01 ( m , 2h ). a solution of 3 % v / v water in isopropyl alcohol was prepared by mixing water ( 5 . 7 kg ) and isopropyl alcohol ( 184 l ) in a 400 l reactor . the solvent was stored in plastic drums and used as necessary ( described below ). a 2000 l reactor was charged with racemic 3 - aminomethyl - 5 - methylhexanoic acid ( 117 . 6 kg , 673 mol ). a 2000 l still was charged with water ( 36 l ), s -(+)- mandelic acid ( 153 . 0 kg , 1006 mol ), and isopropyl alcohol ( 1170 l ). the mandelic acid mixture was heated to 55 °- 65 ° c . and the resulting solution was transferred to the reactor containing racemic 3 - aminomethyl - 5 - methylhexanoic acid . the batch was heated to 50 °- 65 ° c . just long enough to dissolve the solids . note : batch heating and temperature are kept to the minimum necessary to dissolve solids in order to minimize acid catalyzed decomposition of racemic 3 - aminomethyl - 5 - methylhexanoic acid to the corresponding lactam . this decomposition is undesired because it lowers product yield .! the mixture was cooled to 40 °- 45 ° c ., seeded with s , s - salt ( 20 g ), and further cooled to 20 °- 25 ° c . to crystallize the mixture of diastereomeric mandelate salts enriched in the s , s - isomer . after maintaining the temperature at 20 °- 25 ° c . for at least 12 hours , the solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with 3 % water / isopropanol solution ( 100 kg ) prepared earlier . note : s / r isomer ratio : 92 . 5 % s : 7 . 5 % r . the solid may optionally be dried at this stage or carried on as a solvent - wet solid .! the solvent - wet s , s - salt was charged to an 800 l reactor . an 800 l still was charged with water ( 14 . 4 kg ), ( s )-(+)- mandelic acid ( 23 . 0 kg , 151 mol ), and isopropyl alcohol ( 468 l ). the mandelic acid mixture was heated to 65 °- 70 ° c ., and the resulting solution was transferred to the reactor containing the solvent - wet salt . the batch was heated to 60 °- 70 ° c . just long enough to dissolve the solids or , if solids do not dissolve , until batch temperature reached 70 ° c . note : batch heating and temperature are kept to the minimum necessary either to dissolve solids or to reach 70 ° c ., in order to minimize acid catalyzed decomposition to the corresponding lactam . this decomposition is undesired because it lowers product yield .! the mixture was cooled to 50 °- 55 ° c . seeding with s , s - salt at this temperature range is optional but is typically not needed to induce crystallization or further diastereomeric enrichment . the batch was further cooled to 0 °- 5 ° c . to crystallize the mixture of diastereomeric mandelate salts enriched in the s , s - isomer . after maintaining the temperature at 0 °- 5 ° c . for at least 12 hours , the solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with 3 % water / isopropanol solution ( 100 kg ) prepared earlier . note : s / r isomer ratio : 98 . 6 % s : 1 . 4 % r . the solid may optionally be dried at this stage or carried on as a solvent - wet solid . the dried s , s - salt typically has the following characteristics : description : white to off - white solid ; mp 133 °- 134 ° c . 36832 × 88 ! ; 1 h nmr ( d 2 o , 200 mhz ): δ 0 . 87 - 0 . 92 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 24 ( t , j = 7 . 2 hz , 2h ), 1 . 55 - 1 . 76 ( m , 1h ), 2 . 11 - 2 . 52 ( m , 3h ), 3 . 00 ( d , j = 6 . 2 hz , 2h ), 5 . 07 ( s , 1h ), 7 . 43 ( s , 5h ).! an 800 l reactor was charged with water ( 31 l ), the solvent - wet s , s - salt , and tetrahydrofuran ( 595 l ). the mixture was warmed to 50 °- 55 ° c ., and cooled to 0 °- 5 ° c . after maintaining the temperature at 0 °- 5 ° c . for at least 12 hours , the solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with tetrahydrofuran ( 50 l ) and then with isopropyl alcohol ( 50 l ). note : s / r isomer ratio : 99 . 94 % s : 0 . 06 % r . the solid may optionally be dried at this stage or carried on as a solvent - wet solid .! an 800 l reactor was charged with water ( 155 l ), the solvent - wet ci - 1008 , and isopropyl alcohol ( 465 l ). the mixture was heated to dissolve the solids ( about 75 °- 80 ° c . ), filtered while hot , cooled to 40 °- 45 ° c ., seeded with ci - 1008 ( 10 g ), and further cooled to 0 ° c . to - 5 ° c . to crystallize the ci - 1008 . the solid was collected on a centrifuge and rinsed with isopropyl alcohol ( 50 l ). the damp solid was dried in a vacuum tray drier under vacuum at 35 °- 45 ° c . to give 32 . 4 kg ci - 1008 ( 60 . 4 % yield ). chiral purity ( hplc ): 100 % s ; r - isomer not detected ( limit of detection 0 . 05 %) 1 h nmr ( d 2 o , 200 mhz ): δ 0 . 86 - 0 . 90 ( m , 6h ), 1 . 21 ( t , 2h , j = 7 . 1 hz ), 1 . 62 - 1 . 65 ( m , 1h ), 2 . 15 - 2 . 35 ( m , 3h ), 2 . 94 - 2 . 99 ( m , 2h ). cd 2586 ! | 2 |
wherein a dashed line indicates the presence or absence of a covalent bond ; y is an organic acid functional group , or an amide or ester thereof comprising up to 14 carbon atoms ; or y is hydroxymethyl or an ether thereof comprising up to 14 carbon atoms ; or y is a tetrazolyl functional group ; these compounds are useful for reducing intraocular pressure or treating glaucoma . one embodiment is a method of treating glaucoma comprising administering a compound disclosed herein . another embodiment is a method of reducing intraocular pressure comprising administering a compound disclosed herein . another embodiment is use of a compound disclosed herein in the manufacture of a medicament for the reduction of intraocular pressure . another embodiment is use of a compound disclosed herein in the manufacture of a medicament for the treatment of glaucoma . for the purposes of this disclosure , “ treat ,” “ treating ,” or “ treatment ” refer to the use of a compound , composition , therapeutically active agent , or drug in the diagnosis , cure , mitigation , treatment , prevention of disease or other undesirable condition . unless otherwise indicated , reference to a compound should be construed broadly to include pharmaceutically acceptable salts , prodrugs , tautomers , alternate solid forms , and non - covalent complexes of a chemical entity of the depicted structure or chemical name . a pharmaceutically acceptable salt is any salt of the parent compound that is suitable for administration to an animal or human . a pharmaceutically acceptable salt also refers to any salt which may form in vivo as a result of administration of an acid , another salt , or a prodrug which is converted into an acid or salt . a salt is a chemical species having an ionic form of the compound , such as a conjugate acid or base , associated with a corresponding amount of counter - ions . salts can form from or incorporate one or more deprotonated acidic groups ( e . g . carboxylic acids ), one or more protonated basic groups ( e . g . amines ), or both ( e . g . zwitterions ). a prodrug is a compound which is converted to a therapeutically active compound after administration . while not intending to limit the scope of the invention , conversion may occur by hydrolysis of an ester group or some other biologically labile group . generally , but not necessarily , a prodrug is inactive or less active than the therapeutically active compound to which it is converted . prodrug preparation is well known in the art . for example , “ prodrugs and drug delivery systems ,” which is a chapter in richard b . silverman , organic chemistry of drug design and drug action , 2d ed ., elsevier academic press : amsterdam , 2004 , pp . 496 - 557 , provides further detail on the subject . tautomers are isomers that are in rapid equilibrium with one another . they often , but do not necessarily , include a transfer of a proton , hydrogen atom , or hydride ion . for example , the structures herein are intended to include , but are not limited to , the tautomeric forms shown below . unless stereochemistry is explicitly depicted , a structure is intended to include every possible stereoisomer , both pure or in any possible mixture . alternate solid forms are different solid forms than those that may result from practicing the procedures described herein . for example , alternate solid forms may be polymorphs , different kinds of amorphous solid forms , glasses , and the like . non - covalent complexes are complexes that may form between the compound and one or more additional chemical species that do not involve a covalent bonding interaction between the compound and the additional chemical species . they may or may not have a specific ratio between the compound and the additional chemical species . examples might include solvates , hydrates , charge transfer complexes , and the like . hydrocarbyl is a moiety consisting of carbon and hydrogen only , including , but not limited to : a . alkyl , meaning hydrocarbyl having no double or triple bonds , including , but not limited to : linear alkyl , e . g . methyl , ethyl , n - propyl , n - butyl , n - pentyl , n - hexyl , etc ., branched alkyl , e . g . iso - propyl , t - butyl and other branched butyl isomers , branched pentyl isomers , etc ., cycloalkyl , e . g . cyclopropyl , cyclobutyl , cyclopentyl , cyclohexyl , etc ., combinations of linear , branched , and / or cycloalkyl ; b . alkenyl , e . g . hydrocarbyl having 1 or more double bonds , including linear , branched , or cycloalkenyl c . alkynyl , e . g . hydrocarbyl having 1 or more triple bonds , including linear , branched , or cycloalkenyl ; d . combinations of alkyl , alkenyl , and / or akynyl use of the notation “ c x - y ” means the moiety has from x to y carbon atoms . for example , c 1 - 6 alkyl means alkyl having from 1 to 6 carbon atoms , or c 1 - 6 hydrocarbyl means hydrocarbyl having from 1 to 6 carbon atoms . as used herein , “ aryl ” is phenyl , naphthyl , or biphenyl which may be substituted or unsubstituted . “ heteroaryl ” is monocyclic or bicyclic heteroaryl , i . e . a monocyclic aryl ring wherein at least one nitrogen , oxygen , or sulfur atom is in the ring , or a bicyclic aromatic ring system wherein at least one nitrogen , oxygen , or sulfur atom is in at least one of the rings . examples of heteroaryl include pyridinyl , furyl , thienyl , benzothienyl , benzofuryl , quinolinyl , imidazolyl , thiazolyl , oxazolyl , and the like . aryl or heteroaryl may be substituted or unsubstituted . if aryl is substituted , it may have from 1 to 5 substituents . each substituent independently consists of from 0 to 8 carbon atoms , from 0 to 3 oxygen atoms , from 0 to 2 sulfur atoms , from 0 to 2 nitrogen atoms , from 0 to 3 fluorine atoms , from 0 to 2 chlorine atoms , from 0 to 1 bromine atoms , from 0 to 1 iodine atoms , and from 0 to 17 hydrogen atoms . subject to the constraints described herein ( e . g . limits on the number of atoms for a substituent ), examples of substituents include , but are not limited to : amine substituents , including — nh 2 , — nh - alkyl , — n - alkyl 1 alkyl 2 ( i . e ., alkyl 1 and alkyl 2 are the same or different , and both are attached to n ), alkyl - nh 2 , alkyl - nh - alkyl , alkyl - n - alkyl 1 alkyl 2 , and the like ; aminoalkyl , meaning alkyl - amine , such as aminomethyl (— ch 2 - amine ), aminoethyl , and the like ; and the like ; in particular , acetyl , propionyl , and benzoyl substituents are contemplated ; fluorocarbons or hydrofluorocarbons such as — cf 3 , — ch 2 cf 3 , etc . ; and combinations of the above are also possible , subject to the constraints defined ; in particular , alkyl having from 1 to 8 carbon atoms is contemplated as a substituent . alternatively , alkyl having from 1 to 4 carbon atoms is contemplated ; substituents must be sufficiently stable to be stored in a bottle at room temperature under a normal atmosphere for at least 12 hours , or stable enough to be useful for any purpose disclosed herein . if a substituent is a salt , for example of a carboxylic acid or an amine , the counter - ion of said salt , i . e . the ion that is not covalently bonded to the remainder of the molecule is not counted for the purposes of the number of heavy atoms in a substituent . thus , for example , the salt — co 2 − na + is a stable substituent consisting of 3 heavy atoms , i . e . sodium is not counted . in another example , the salt — nh ( me ) 2 + cl − is a stable substituent consisting of 3 heavy atoms , i . e . chlorine is not counted . a dashed line indicates the presence or absence of a double bond . thus , the structures below are contemplated . an organic acid functional group is an acidic functional group on an organic molecule . while not intending to be limiting , organic acid functional groups may comprise an oxide of carbon , sulfur , or phosphorous . thus , while not intending to limit the scope of the invention in any way , in certain compounds y is a carboxylic acid , sulfonic acid , or phosphonic acid functional group . additionally , an amide or ester of one of the organic acids mentioned above comprising up to 14 carbon atoms is also contemplated for y . in an ester , a hydrocarbyl moiety replaces a hydrogen atom of an acid such as in a carboxylic acid ester , e . g . co 2 me , co 2 et , etc . in an amide , an amine group replaces an oh of the acid . examples of amides include con ( r 2 ) 2 , con ( or 2 ) r 2 , con ( ch 2 ch 2 oh ) 2 , and conh ( ch 2 ch 2 oh ) where r 2 is independently h , c 1 - c 6 alkyl , phenyl , or biphenyl . moieties such as conhso 2 r 2 are also amides of the carboxylic acid notwithstanding the fact that they may also be considered to be amides of the sulfonic acid r 2 — so 3 h . the following amides are also specifically contemplated , conso 2 - biphenyl , conso 2 - phenyl , conso 2 - heteroaryl , and conso 2 - naphthyl . the biphenyl , phenyl , heteroaryl , or naphthyl may be substituted or unsubstituted . while not intending to limit the scope of the invention in any way , y may also be hydroxymethyl or an ether thereof comprising up to 14 carbon atoms . an ether is a functional group wherein a hydrogen of an hydroxyl is replaced by carbon , e . g ., y is ch 2 och 3 , ch 2 och 2 ch 3 , etc . these groups are also bioisosteres of a carboxylic acid . “ up to 14 carbon atoms ” means that the entire y moiety , including the carbonyl carbon of a carboxylic acid ester or amide , and both carbon atoms in the — ch 2 o — c of an ether has 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , or 14 carbon atoms . finally , while not intending to limit the scope of the invention in any way , y may be a tetrazolyl functional group . thus , while not intending to be limiting , the structures below exemplify what is meant by tetrazolyl ; carboxylic acid , phosphonic acid , sulfonic acid , and their esters and amides ; hydroxymethyl and ether of hydroxymethyl . in these structures , r is h or hydrocarbyl , subject to the constraints defined herein . each structure below represents a specific embodiment which is individually contemplated , as well as pharmaceutically acceptable salts and prodrugs of compounds which are represented by the structures . a tetrazolyl functional group is another bioisostere of a carboxylic acid . an unsubstituted tetrazolyl functional group has two tautomeric forms , which can rapidly interconvert in aqueous or biological media , and are thus equivalent to one another . additionally , if r 2 is c 1 - c 6 alkyl , phenyl , or biphenyl , other isomeric forms of the tetrazolyl functional group such as the one shown below are also possible , unsubstituted and hydrocarbyl substituted tetrazolyl up to c 12 are considered to be within the scope of the term “ tetrazolyl .” while not intending to limit the scope of the invention in any way , in one embodiment , y is co 2 r 2 , con ( r 2 ) 2 , con ( or 2 ) r 2 , con ( ch 2 ch 2 oh ) 2 , conh ( ch 2 ch 2 oh ), ch 2 oh , p ( o )( oh ) 2 , conhso 2 r 2 , so 2 n ( r 2 ) 2 , so 2 nhr 2 , wherein r 2 is independently h , c 1 - c 6 alkyl , unsubstituted phenyl , or unsubstituted biphenyl . b is — ch ( oh )—, — c (═ o )—, — ch 2 ch ( oh )—, or — ch 2 c (═ o )—. thus , the structures below are contemplated . in one embodiment , d is linear alkyl having 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , or 6 carbon atoms . u . s . patent application ser . no . 11 / 553 , 143 , filed on oct . 26 , 2006 , incorporated by reference herein , describes the methods used to obtain the in vitro data in the table below . u . s . pat . no . 7 , 091 , 231 describes the methods used to carry out the tests reported below . 5 -[( r )- 1 -(( s )- 3 - hydroxyoctyl )- 5 - oxopyrrolidin - 2 - ylmethoxymethyl ]- thiophene - 2 - carboxylic isopropyl ester was tested in normotensive dogs at 2 concentrations , dosing once daily for 5 days . at 0 . 1 %, the maximum intraocular pressure ( top ) decrease from baseline was 8 mmhg ( 47 %) at 78 h ; the maximum ocular surface hyperemia ( osh ) score was 2 . 25 at 50 h . at 0 . 01 %, the maximum top decrease from baseline was 6 . 1 mmhg ( 35 %) at 78 h ; the maximum osh score was 1 . 7 at 30 h . this compound was also tested in laser - induced hypertensive monkeys , using one single day dose . at 0 . 1 %, the maximum top decrease from baseline was 17 mmhg ( 48 %) at 6 h . potassium carbonate ( 730 mg , 5 . 28 mmol ), copper ( i ) iodide ( 54 mg , 0 . 28 mmol ) and n , n ′- dimethylethylenediamine ( 29 μl , 0 . 27 mmol ) were added sequentially to a solution of ( r )- 5 -( hydroxymethyl )- pyrrolidin - 2 - one ( 1 , aldrich chemical , 365 mg , 3 . 17 mmol ) and vinyl iodide a ( nissan chemical , 972 mg , 2 . 64 mmol ) in mecn ( 6 ml ). the reaction flask was fitted with a reflux condenser , purged with nitrogen and heated at reflux for 18 h . the reaction mixture cooled to room temperature , diluted with etoac and filtered through celite , washing with excess etoac . the filtrate was concentrated in vacuo . the residue was suspended in etoac , filtered and concentrated a second time . purification of the crude residue by flash column chromatography on 12 g of silica gel ( 60 % etoac / hexane ) afforded 627 mg ( 67 %) of desired product 2 . palladium on carbon ( 10 wt . %, 55 mg ) was added to solution of alkene 2 ( 374 mg , 1 . 05 mmol ) in etoac ( 11 ml ). a hydrogen atmosphere was established by evacuating and refilling with hydrogen ( 5 ×) and the reaction mixture was stirred under a balloon of hydrogen for 30 min . the reaction mixture was filtered through celite , washing with etoac , and the filtrate was concentrated in vacuo . purification of the resulting crude residue by flash column chromatography on 4 g of silica gel ( 50 % etoac / hexane → etoac , gradient ) afforded 298 mg ( 79 %) desired product 3 . sodium hydride ( 60 % oil dispersion , 16 mg , 0 . 40 mmol ) was added to a solution of alcohol 3 ( 99 mg , 0 . 28 mmol ) dmf ( 0 . 7 ml ) at 0 ° c . after 5 min , the reaction was allowed to warm to room temperature . after 30 min at room temperature , the mixture was cooled to − 40 ° c . and a solution of bromide b ( see u . s . provisional patent application no . 60 / 804 , 680 , filed on jun . 14 , 2006 , 54 mg , 0 . 23 mmol ) in dmf ( 0 . 7 ml ) was added via cannula . after 2 h at − 40 ° c ., the reaction was quenched with 1 . 0 n hcl ( 10 ml ) and extracted with etoac ( 3 × 30 ml ). the combined extracts were washed with h 2 o ( 2 × 20 ml ) and brine ( 20 ml ), then dried ( na 2 so 4 ), filtered and concentrated in vacuo . purification of the crude residue by flash column chromatography on 4 g of silica gel ( hexane → etoac , gradient ) afforded 83 mg ( 59 %) of desired product 4 . hf - pyridine ( 0 . 25 ml ) was added to a solution of silyl ether 4 ( 83 mg , 0 . 16 mmol ) in mecn ( 3 . 2 ml ) at 0 ° c . in a plastic scintillation vial . after 1 . 5 h at 0 ° c ., the reaction mixture was quenched with saturated aqueous nahco 3 ( 10 ml ) and extracted with etoac ( 3 × 15 ml ). the combined extracts were washed with brine ( 10 ml ), then dried ( na 2 so 4 ), filtered and concentrated in vacuo . purification of the crude residue by flash column chromatography on 4 g of silica gel ( 50 % etoac / hexane → etoac , gradient ) afforded 50 mg ( 78 %) of alcohol 5 . aqueous lithium hydroxide ( 1 n , 0 . 63 ml , 0 . 63 mmol ) was added to a solution of ester 5 ( 50 mg , 0 . 13 mmol ) in thf ( 1 . 25 ml ). after 18 h at room temperature , the solvent was removed under a stream of nitrogen , the residue was diluted with h 2 o ( 2 ml ), acidified with 1 . 0 m hcl ( 2 ml ) then extracted with etoac ( 3 × 15 ml ). combined extracts were washed with brine ( 10 ml ), dried ( na 2 so 4 ), filtered and concentrated in vacuo to afford 44 mg ( quant .) of the title compound ( 6 ). acid 6 ( 12 mg , 0 . 031 mmol ), 1 -( 3 - dimethylaminopropyl )- 3 - ethylcarbodiimide hydrochloride ( edci , 8 . 4 mg , 0 . 044 mmol ), 4 - dimethylaminopyridine ( dmap , 4 . 6 mg , 0 . 038 mmol ) and methanesulfonamide ( 9 mg , 0 . 095 mmol ) were dissolved in dmf ( 0 . 2 ml ) and the resulting solution was stirred at room temperature under an atmosphere of nitrogen . after 15 h the solution was diluted with etoac ( 20 ml ) and washed with 1n aqueous hcl ( 3 × 5 ml ) and brine ( 5 ml ), then dried ( na 2 so 4 ), filtered and concentrated in vacuo . purification of the crude residue by flash column chromatography on 4 g of silica gel ( ch 2 cl 2 → 10 % meoh / ch 2 cl 2 , gradient ) afforded 3 . 5 mg ( 25 %) of the title compound ( 7 ). triethylamine ( 9 ml , 0 . 065 mmol ) and ethyl chloroformate ( 4 . 5 ml , 0 . 47 mmol ) were added sequentially to a solution of acid 6 ( 12 mg , 0 . 031 mmol ) in ch 2 cl 2 ( 0 . 2 ml ) at 0 ° c ., after 1 h at 0 ° c ., ethylamine ( 2 . 0 m in thf , 0 . 15 ml , 0 . 30 mmol ) was added and the mixture was allowed to warm to room temperature . after 18 h at room temperature , the reaction was quenched with 1 . 0 n hcl ( 5 ml ) and extracted with etoac ( 3 × 10 ml ). the combined extracts were washed with brine ( 5 ml ), then dried ( na 2 so 4 ), filtered and concentrated in vacuo . purification of the crude residue by flash column chromatography on 4 g of silica gel ( ch 2 cl 2 → 10 % meoh / ch 2 cl 2 , gradient ) afforded 7 . 7 mg ( 60 %) of the title compound ( 8 ). potassium carbonate ( 474 mg , 3 . 43 mmol ), copper ( i ) iodide ( 33 mg , 0 . 17 mmol ) and n , n ′- dimethylethylenediamine ( 18 μl , 0 . 17 mmol ) were added sequentially to a solution of ( r )- 5 -( hydroxymethyl )- pyrrolidin - 2 - one ( 1 , aldrich chemical , 237 mg , 2 . 06 mmol ) and vinyl iodide c ( see tani , et al . bioorg . med . chem . lett . 2002 , 10 , 1093 - 1106 , 700 mg , 1 . 71 mmol ) in mecn ( 3 . 9 ml ). the reaction flask was fitted with a reflux condenser , purged with nitrogen and heated at reflux for 18 h . the reaction mixture cooled to room temperature , diluted with etoac and filtered through celite , washing with excess etoac . the filtrate was concentrated in vacuo . the residue was suspended in ch 2 cl 2 , filtered and concentrated a second time . purification of the crude residue by flash column chromatography on 40 g of silica gel ( hexane → etoac , gradient ) afforded 630 mg ( 93 %) of desired product 9 . palladium on carbon ( 10 wt . %, 85 mg ) was added to solution of alkene 9 ( 630 mg , 1 . 59 mmol ) in etoac ( 16 ml ). a hydrogen atmosphere was established by evacuating and refilling with hydrogen ( 5 ×) and the reaction mixture was stirred under a balloon of hydrogen for 30 min . the reaction mixture was filtered through celite , washing with etoac , and the filtrate was concentrated in vacuo . purification of the resulting crude residue by flash column chromatography on 40 g of silica gel ( 40 % etoac / hexane → etoac , gradient ) afforded 608 mg ( 96 %) desired product 10 . sodium hydride ( 60 % oil dispersion , 40 mg , 1 . 0 mmol ) was added to a solution of alcohol 10 ( 200 mg , 0 . 51 mmol ) in dmso ( 1 . 25 ml ) at room temperature . after 30 min at room temperature , a solution of bromide b ( see allergan docket # 17833 , 130 mg , 0 . 55 mmol ) in dmso ( 1 . 25 ml ) was added via cannula . after 15 min at room temperature , the mixture was heated at 40 ° c . after 16 h at 40 ° c ., the mixture was allowed to cooled to room temperature , quenched with saturated aqueous nh 4 cl ( 5 ml ) and 0 . 5 n hcl ( 15 ml ) and extracted with etoac ( 3 × 40 ml ). the combined extracts were washed with h 2 o ( 2 × 20 ml ) and brine ( 20 ml ), then dried ( na 2 so 4 ), filtered and concentrated in vacuo . purification of the crude residue by flash column chromatography on 4 g of silica gel ( hexane → etoac , gradient ) afforded 36 mg ( 13 %) of desired product 11 . hf - pyridine ( 0 . 10 ml ) was added to a solution of silyl ether 11 ( 35 mg , 0 . 06 mmol ) in mecn ( 1 . 25 ml ) at 0 ° c . in a plastic scintillation vial . after 2 h at 0 ° c ., the reaction mixture allowed to warm to room temperature . after 18 h at room temperature , the reaction was quenched with saturated aqueous nahco 3 ( 10 ml ), extracted with etoac ( 3 × 15 ml ). the combined extracts were washed with saturated aqueous nahso 3 ( 10 ml ) and brine ( 10 ml ) then dried ( na 2 so 4 ), filtered and concentrated in vacuo . purification of the crude residue by flash column chromatography on 4 g of silica gel ( 40 % etoac / hexane → etoac , gradient ) afforded 23 mg ( 83 %) of alcohol 12 . aqueous lithium hydroxide ( 1 n , 0 . 25 ml , 0 . 25 mmol ) was added to a solution of ester 12 ( 22 mg , 0 . 05 mmol ) in thf ( 0 . 5 ml ). after 20 h at room temperature , the solvent was removed under a stream of nitrogen , the residue was diluted with h 2 o ( 1 ml ), acidified with 1 . 0 m hcl ( 2 ml ) then extracted with etoac ( 3 × 10 ml ). combined extracts were washed with brine ( 5 ml ), dried ( na 2 so 4 ), filtered and concentrated in vacuo to afford 21 mg ( 99 %) of the title compound ( 13 ). dbu ( 9 μl , 0 . 06 mmol ) and 2 - iodopropane ( 62 μl , 0 . 62 mmol ) were added to a solution of acid 6 ( 12 mg , 0 . 031 mmol ) in acetone ( 0 . 3 ml ) at room temperature under nitrogen . after 5 days at room temperature , the solvent was removed under a stream of nitrogen . the residue was acidified with 1 n hcl ( 2 ml ) and extracted with etoac ( 3 × 10 ml ). the combined extracts were washed with brine ( 5 ml ) then dried ( na 2 so 4 ), filtered and concentrated in vacuo . purification of the residue by flash column chromatography on silica ( ch 2 cl 2 → 10 % meoh / ch 2 cl 2 ) afforded 11 . 3 mg ( 85 %) of the title compound . | 2 |
the system of fig1 includes a file reel 11 and a machine reel 12 . two vacuum columns 13 and 14 de - couple the inertia of the magnetic tape 15 and reels 11 and 12 from the single capstan 16 which drives the tape past the magnetic heads 17 . the magnetic tape includes a beginning of tape ( bot ) marker 18 and a similar end of tape ( eot ) marker on the other edge of the tape at the end thereof . the bot and eot markers are light reflective . a source of light 19 and a photo - detector 20 are positioned in the area of the magnetic heads 17 to detect the end of the tape marker . a source 21 and a photo - detector 22 are similarly positioned to detect the bot marker . as more fully described in the herger patent , a light source 23 and a photodetector 24 are positioned adjacent the vacuum column 14 to detect the passage of the bot marker 18 upon rewind . the photo - detector 24 produces the low speed area ( lsa ) signal when the marker is detected . this switches the control system 25 to a low - speed rewind . the control system 25 controls the reel drive motor 26 and the capstan drive motor 27 . fig2 depicts the conventional way of maintaining the output of the light sensor substantially constant . the emitter of the photo - transistor 28 is connected to a potentiometer 29 . the slider of the potentiometer is connected to the level detector 30 . the service engineer periodically adjusts the potentiometer 29 to compensate for changes in the intensity of the light source or changes in reflectivity . although fig2 shows the lsa circuit , the conventional bot and eot circuits are similar to the lsa circuit , except that the light sources are connected in series . the present invention is shown in fig3 . a feedback circuit is connected between the output of the photo - transistor light sensor 28 and the light source 31 which may be either an incandescent bulb or a light emitting diode . the feedback circuit controls the intensity of the source 31 to maintain the output of the photo - transistor 28 substantially constant notwithstanding changes of reflectivity of the tape or gradual changes of light source efficiency . an operational amplifier 32 compares the output of the photo - transistor with a reference voltage applied at 33 . transistor 34 , connected as an emitter follower , responds to the difference voltage from the operational amplifier 32 to control the current supplied to the light source 31 . in accordance with an important aspect of this invention , the light source 31 is disabled through the feedback circuit , except when there is a rewind operation . in order to do this , a rewind signal from the control system 25 ( fig1 ) is applied through the resistor 35 and the diode 36 to the feedback circuit . during rewind , the rewind signal is low thereby enabling the operational amplifier 32 . when the system is not in a rewind mode , the rewind signal goes high . this acts through diode 36 to cut off the operational amplifier 32 . as a result , reduced current flows through the transistor 34 . this reduced current greatly extends the life of the source 31 . fig4 shows the present invention applied to the bot and eot detectors . the light sources 37 and 38 supply light to the bot sensor 39 and the eot sensor 40 , respectively . the light sources 37 and 38 are connected in series with a common source of voltage . the outputs of the photo - transistor sensors 39 and 40 are respectively applied to the bot level detector 41 and the eot level detector 42 . the outputs of the photo - transistors 39 and 40 are connected through resistors 43 and 44 so that the feedback circuit receives a signal representing the average of the output of the two sensors . this average is compared to the reference voltage by the operational amplifier 45 . the operational amplifier 45 controls the emitter follower transistor 46 which controls the current supplied to the light sources 37 and 38 . in the event that component tolerances cause a large unbalance between the outputs of the photo - transistors 39 and 40 , the equalizer circuit 49 reduces the higher of the two voltage levels , and tends to re - balance the signals . this equalizer circuit monitors the bot and eot levels by means of a difference amplifier , and develops a dual - output current sink , proportional in amplitude to the difference between the two levels . this current sink is applied only to the higher of the two photo - transistor outputs , to reduce the voltage level on that side . it is important that the feedback circuit not react too quickly in a manner which would obliterate the distinction between the tape and the reflective marker . that is , when the reflective marker is detected , a finite difference in the levels of the outputs of transistors 39 and 40 must exist for a period of time sufficient for the level detectors 41 and 42 to operate . if the feedback circuit immediately changes the intensity of the sources in response to a change in output signal , proper operation will not be achieved . it has been found that incandescent bulbs inherently have enough delay in their change in intensity to obviate this problem . however , when light emitting diode detectors are used , it is necessary to provide a delay in the feedback circuit . this is provided for in fig4 by the filter which includes the capacitor 47 and the resistor 48 . this can be adjusted to provide the proper delay . while particular embodiments have been shown and described , various modifications are within the true spirit and scope of the invention . the appended claims are , therefore , intended to cover all such modifications . | 6 |
fpgas with embedded serdes are commonplace these days . however , these embedded serdes are significantly slower than the serdes in a testchip ( i . e . they are mature technology ). therefore , it would be necessary to use many such serdes on the fpga in concert with instances of the serdes under test on the test chip . fig1 is an exemplary high level diagram of an embodiment of the present invention . the serdes of interest ( under test ) is on the right , the pcs is in the fpga on the left . data to / from the serdes on the right is striped across 2 or 4 lanes on the left . the tricky part here is how to convert between one lane and 2 or 4 lanes at half or quarter of the rate , in a manner which is not dependent on the data format of any particular standard and does not require lots of complex hardware in the testchip . the basic muxing function of the present embodiment is illustrated in fig2 . the boxes marked 1 : 1 2 : 1 4 : 1 are the added muxing functionality and associated control required . everything else required would have been in the testchip in any event . even when not using the novel fpga interface arrangement of the present invention , it is common to use two serdes macros on the test chip and provide fifo architecture to cross clock domains . for example , in test data is sent from a bert ( e . g . a known bit error rate tester ) to a serdes receiver , through fifos to an associated serdes transmitter and back to the bert . for this configuration , one uses the 1 : 1 muxing option of the present embodiment . when the bert is replaced by an fpga in accordance with the principles of the present invention , one would send data from the fpga to 2 or 4 serdes receivers , and then use the 2 : 1 or 4 : 1 muxing option to output that data on a single serdes transmitter on the test side . externally it might then go through some backplane or other media , and get looped back to a single receiver , thence through a 1 : 2 or 1 : 4 demux , and back to the fpga . the muxing and demuxing functions implemented in the testchip are also implemented in the fpga . so for example , the data flow would be : from the fpga : single data stream in the fpga -& gt ; demux to 2 or 4 data streams -& gt ; send to testchip -& gt ; mux back to one data stream -& gt ; output to channel ; to the fpga : single data stream input to the testchip -& gt ; demux to 2 or 4 data streams -& gt ; send to fpga -& gt ; mux back to one data stream . the 1 : 2 or 1 : 4 demux function is trivial as a single datastream at a particular data rate is being distributed to 2 or 4 lanes at half or a quarter of the rate . for example , assuming a 16 - bit datapath , simply send the odd numbered 16 - bit words to one lane and the even numbered 16 bit words to the other ( for a 1 : 2 demux ). the 2 : 1 or 4 : 1 mux function is more tricky , because the data has arrived on multiple lanes which have independent clock recovery , and needs to be reassembled in the right order , and with the right word alignment . there are two things to consider : word alignment of the data received on each lane and inter - lane alignment so data from the different receiving lanes is recombined into a single stream in the right order . how to use the existing serdes pattern generation and verification features to achieve this in accord with the present invention is now described . the basic idea is to use these patterns as an initial training phase to set up the correct alignment before switching to the appropriate data stream for whichever standard is being tested . using the 2 : 1 case as an example . the 4 : 1 case is a simple extension of the same principles . as previously discussed , data is being sent even words via one serdes , odd words via the other . when recovered at the receiving end , these two data streams cannot simply be muxed back together ( odd , even , odd , even , etc ) without first ensuring it is aligned correctly . the basic technique is for example follows : demux the pattern as described above , and send it to the testchip ; recover the data in the testchip , and mux the two streams back together ( odd , even , odd , even , etc . ); configure the line - side serdes on the testchip in internal loopback , and use its internal pattern verifier to check that the recombined pattern is correct ; use an iterative process to adjust the word and lane alignment until the pattern verifier shows the pattern is correct ; switch out of internal loopback , and start sending application data from the fpga . the first step is to achieve word alignment . start by sending a series of clock patterns . the key here is that the even and odd words are the same , so it does not matter if the inter - lane alignment is wrong . consider this example : send 1010 1010 1010 1010 . after recovering the data and recombining into a single stream , there are two possible outcomes : data is correctly aligned , or alternate words are mis - aligned by 1 bit : 1010 1010 1010 1010 followed by 0101 0101 0101 0101 , etc . if the former , the pattern verifier will pass , and if the latter it will fail . in the case of failure , use the existing serdes realignment scheme ‘ jog capability ’ to adjust the alignment of one of the receiving serdes by 1 bit . the pattern will then start to pass testing verification ; change to 1100 1100 1100 1100 . this time there are 4 possible alignments . 0 , 1 , 2 or 3 jogs may be required on one of the serdes receivers in order to get the pattern to pass ; repeat the process , first with 1111 0000 1111 0000 , and then with 1111 1111 0000 0000 . at this point , both receiving serdes have the same word alignment . however , because the data from the two receiving serdes are using separate recovered clocks , and are passed through a clock domain crossing fifo before being recombined into the single clock domain of the line - side serdes ( test ) transmitter , this is not yet sufficient to ensure the data stream is correct . for example , consider the data stream to have been demuxed into words numbered a 0 , a 1 , b 0 , b 1 , c 0 , c 1 , etc . with all the odd words sent via one serdes link , and all the even words via the other . after the alignment process above , the recombined data stream may be correct , or it may be offset by one word as a result of the clock domain crossing ( e . g . a 1 , a 0 , b 1 , b 0 , c 1 , c 0 , etc .). this can be corrected for by adjusting the fifos to add or delete one word . this approach is well known in the art for inter - lane alignment , but generally relies on some form of alignment symbol in the data stream that can be used to identify the amount of mis - alignment that needs to be corrected for . in this example , the same effect is achieved using an extension of the pattern verification technique described above , by switching from a clock pattern to a prbs ( pseudo random ) pattern after the word alignment process is complete . the key difference is that with the word alignment process , all the words ( a 0 , a 1 , b 0 , b 1 , etc .) are the same , but with a prbs they are not . when aligning 2 lanes , there are 3 possible alignments : both lanes aligned ; even lane is ahead of the odd lane ; odd lane is ahead of the even lane . if they are aligned , the prbs verifier will pass . if they are not aligned , there is no way of knowing which of the other cases it is , so just try them both . the full sequence would be something like this : advance even fifo by 1 ; if still fail , retard even fifo by 2 . having described my invention and exemplary embodiments thereof , what i claim is set forth in the appended claims . | 7 |
polycrystalline memory material refers to a material that is polycrystalline after deposition , or deposition and annealing , which is suitable for non - volatile memory applications . polycrystalline memory material has grain boundaries between adjacent crystallites . these grain boundaries form at least one gap between crystallites . the polycrystalline memory material also has a rough upper surface . when a top metal electrode is deposited overlying the polycrystalline memory material , the metal may deposit into the gaps between crystallites . metal in the gaps causes the distance between the top electrode and any bottom electrode to be smaller than the distance between metal at the top of the crystallite and the bottom electrode . the deposited metal may continue to diffuse further into the gap along the grain boundaries during subsequent processing . the metal in the gap between crystallites may produce a short between the top electrode and the bottom electrode . even if a short is not formed , the electric field intensity due to metal in the gap is substantially larger than that at the top surface of the crystallite . the increased electric field intensity is one possible source of increased leakage current and low breakdown voltage . in some cases , the leakage current may be sufficiently large to severely affect the charge retention of the memory device . the presence of metal in the gap between crystallites presents a severe fabrication yield and device reliability problem for individual memory cells . this problem is amplified with regard to arrays of memory cells , where the failure of only a few cells causes the loss of an entire memory array . the problem of gaps between crystallites and the effect of metal filing those gaps applies to a variety of polycrystalline memory materials , including perovskite materials , ferroelectric materials , colossal magneto - resistive ( cmr ) materials , and high temperature superconducting ( htsc ) materials . referring now to fig1 a device structure 11 is shown during processing . a bottom electrode 12 has been formed overlying a substrate 14 . the substrate 14 is a silicon substrate , or other suitable substrate material , including other semiconductor materials or semiconductor on insulator substrates . in one embodiment , the substrate is formed by depositing a layer of oxide 16 and etching a trench where the bottom electrode 12 is to be formed . the metal used to form the bottom electrode 12 is deposited overlying the oxide 16 and the substrate 14 to fill the trench . the metal is then planarized , for example using a cmp process , to form the bottom electrode . the bottom electrode 12 is preferably a noble metal or a conductive noble metal oxide , for example platinum , iridium , iridium oxide , ruthenium oxide , or iridium tantalum oxide . after forming the bottom electrode 12 , a polycrystalline memory layer 18 is formed by depositing material overlying the bottom electrode and annealing the material . the polycrystalline memory layer has grain boundaries which forms gaps 20 . the gaps 20 may vary in size and depth , and may extend completely through the polycrystalline memory layer 18 to the bottom electrode 12 . the polycrystalline memory material is a perovskite material , a ferroelectric material , a cmr material , or a htsc material . the polycrystalline memory material may be selected from pbzr x ti 1 − x o 3 ( pzt ), ( pb , la )( zrti ) o 3 ( plzt ), ( pbla ) tio 3 ( plt ), srbi 2 ta 2 o 9 ( sbt ), srbi2 ( ta 1 − x nb x ) 2 o 9 ( sbtn ), ( ba , sr ) tio 3 ( referred to as bst or bsto ), pb 5 ge 3 o 11 ( pgo ), ( pb 1 − x sn x ) 5 ge 3 o 11 ( psgo ), or other perovskite material , ferroelectric material , or suitable polycrystalline memory material . referring now to fig2 an insulating layer 24 is deposited overlying the polycrystalline memory layer 18 . the insulating layer 24 at least partially fills the gaps 20 to plug the gaps and reduce , or eliminate , the amount of subsequently deposited metal entering the gaps 20 . although , the insulating layer 24 , may in some cases completely fill one or more gaps , it is not necessary for the insulating layer 24 to completely fill the gaps 20 . the insulating layer will either partially block the opening of the gaps 20 , or completely block the opening of the gaps 20 , to reduce or eliminate , the amount of subsequently deposited metal entering the gaps . this insulating layer 24 may comprise silicon oxide , silicon nitride , or high - k insulating materials such as hafnium oxide , zirconium oxide , aluminum oxide , aluminum nitride , tantalum oxide , aluminum - doped hafnium oxide , aluminum - doped zirconium oxide . the insulating layer 24 is deposited using chemical vapor deposition ( cvd ), sputtering , or other suitable method for depositing the desired material . as used here , cvd refers to any method of cvd , for example , plasma - enhanced cvd , atomic layer cvd , metal oxide cvd , or other cvd processes . referring now to fig3 the insulating layer 24 is planarized , for example using a cmp process . by planarizing the insulating layer 24 , the polycrystalline memory layer 18 may be exposed . during the planarization of the insulating layer 24 , a portion of the polycrystalline memory layer 18 may also be planarized . in another embodiment , a portion of the insulating layer 24 may remain over the polycrystalline memory layer 18 . although , this may reduce the memory window and require the drain to be operated at higher voltages , the memory device is still operational without degrading reliability . referring now to fig4 a top electrode layer 26 is deposited over the insulating layer 24 and the polycrystalline memory layer 18 . the top electrode layer may be a noble metal , or a conductive noble metal oxide , such as , platinum , iridium , iridium oxide , ruthenium oxide , or iridium tantalum oxide . the top electrode layer 26 is then patterned and etched to form a top electrode 28 . the polycrystalline memory layer 18 is also patterned to complete the polycrystalline memory gate stack 30 , which comprises the bottom electrode 12 , a remaining portion of the polycrystalline memory layer 18 , a remaining portion of the insulating layer 24 , and the top electrode 28 , as shown in fig5 . additional well known processes may then be performed on the resulting device structure 11 to form a polycrystalline memory structure . an alternative embodiment of the device structure 11 , utilizing a trench structure , is shown in fig6 - 10 . as shown in fig6 a bottom electrode layer 40 is deposited overlying the substrate 14 . a silicon nitride layer , or other suitable sacrificial material , is deposited and patterned to form a sacrificial gate structure 42 . the bottom electrode layer 40 is then etched , possibly using the sacrificial gate structure 42 as a mask . alternatively , the bottom electrode layer may be etched using the same mask as that used to pattern the sacrificial gate structure . referring now to fig7 after etching , a portion the bottom electrode layer remains as a bottom electrode 44 . a layer of oxide 46 , or other suitable insulating material , is then deposited overlying the substrate and the sacrificial gate structure . the oxide is then planarized , for example using a cmp process . referring now to fig8 the sacrificial gate structure is then removed leaving a trench 48 . for example , if the sacrificial gate structure is composed of silicon nitride a hot phosphoric acid etch may be used to remove the sacrificial gate structure . referring now to fig9 the polycrystalline memory layer 50 is then deposited to fill the trench . referring now to fig1 , the polycrystalline memory layer is then planarized to form a polycrystalline memory gate structure 52 , for example using a cmp process . the polycrystalline memory gate structure 52 has gaps 20 formed at the boundaries of adjacent crystallites . the insulating layer 24 is then deposited over the polycrystalline memory layer , to block , or fill , the gaps 20 . in one embodiment , the insulator layer is planarized and the top electrode 28 is formed by depositing and patterning a top metal layer . the above illustrated embodiments illustrate a simple mfm capacitor . the present invention also applies to mfis devices where an additional layer of insulating material , for example hafnium oxide or zirconium oxide , is deposited over the substrate instead of the bottom electrode and patterned . in another embodiment , the additional layer of insulating material is deposited over the substrate prior to forming the bottom electrode , such that the additional layer of insulating material is interposed between the substrate and the bottom electrode . this forms a mfmis structure . the additional layer of insulating material may be silicon dioxide , silicon nitride , or a high - k insulator material such as , hafnium oxide , zirconium oxide , aluminum oxide , aluminum nitride , tantalum oxide , aluminum - doped hafnium oxide , or aluminum - doped zirconium oxide . the above examples are provided to illustrate aspects of the present invention . one of ordinary skill in the art may be able to adapt the invention to structures other than those identified above . accordingly , the scope of the invention is to be determined by the following claims . | 7 |
referring to the attached drawings , embodiments of the present invention will be described below . a review apparatus according to a first embodiment prepares a plurality of coordinate correction tables to switch to one of the coordinate correction tables statically depending on a checking apparatus and its check mode . on the other hand , a review apparatus according to a second embodiment prepares a plurality of coordinate correction tables to always switch dynamically to one of the coordinate correction tables evaluated as an optimal one by performing the evaluation in parallel to the review , thereby obtaining a better correction result . fig1 is a cross - sectional view of configuration of an sem - based semiconductor defect review apparatus ( a review apparatus ) according to an embodiment of the present invention . the sem - based defect review apparatus in fig1 consists of an electron gun 101 , a lens 102 , a deflector 103 , an objective lens 104 , a sample 105 , a stage 106 , a secondary particle detector 109 , an electro - optic system control unit 110 , an a / d converting unit 111 , a stage control unit 112 , a central control unit 113 , an image processing unit 114 , a display 115 , a keyboard 116 , a storage device 117 , a mouse 118 and the like . an electron beam 107 emitted by the electron gun 101 converges on the lens 102 , is deflected on the deflector 103 , converges on the objective lens 104 and then is radiated onto the sample 105 . secondary particles 108 such as secondary electrons or reflected electrons are generated from the sample 105 radiated with the electron beam 107 depending on a form or materials of the sample . the generated secondary particles 108 are detected by the secondary particle detector 109 and converted into digital signals by the a / d converting unit 111 to form an sem image . the produced sem image is subjected to image processing such as defect detection executed by the image processing unit 114 . the lens 102 , the deflector 103 and the objective lens 104 are controlled by the electro - optic system control unit 110 . a sample is positioned on the stage 106 controlled by the stage control unit 112 . the central control unit 113 interprets an input from the keyboard 116 , the mouse 118 or the storage device 117 to control the electro - optic system control unit 110 , the stage control unit 112 , the image processing unit 114 and the like , and outputs details of the processing on the display 115 and to the storage device 117 as necessary . the storage device 117 stores coordinate correction tables and a control program illustrated in flowcharts in fig4 and 6 as described below . fig2 is a diagram of network connection between higher - level checking apparatuses and a review apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention . a network ( 201 ) connects to a checking apparatus ( id : 1 ) ( 202 ), a checking apparatus ( id : 2 ) ( 203 ), a checking apparatus ( id : 3 ) ( 204 ) and a review apparatus ( 205 ). the network 201 can also connects to a plurality of review apparatuses . a review apparatus connects to a storage device ( 206 ). the storage device can be integrated into the review apparatus or separated from the review apparatus for the network connection . the storage device saves coordinate correction tables ( 207 , 208 and 209 ) corresponding to the checking apparatuses . the storage device switches to an optimal coordinate correction table based on an id of a checking apparatus when the review is executed . in fig2 , the coordinate correction tables correspond to the checking apparatuses one - to - one . for example , a coordinate correction table a is selected when the checking apparatus ( id : 1 ) is used to detect a defect , a coordinate correction table b is selected when the checking apparatus ( id : 2 ) is used to detect a defect , and a coordinate correction table c is selected when the checking apparatus ( id : 3 ) is used to detect a defect . since the checking apparatuses correspond to the coordinate correction tables one - to - one as described in the above , one of the checking apparatuses sends information of a defect position and a checking apparatus id to at least a review apparatus , and the review apparatus selects a coordinate correction table corresponding to the checking apparatus id . fig3 is a drawing illustrating processing in the case of different tendencies of deviations of detected coordinates depending on check modes of higher - level checking apparatuses . hereinafter , a check mode means a manner to detect a defect including , for example , a mode to detect a defect by exposing light onto a wafer at an angle , a mode to detect a defect by looking a wafer from the above and the like ( such as a mode to detect a defect by scanning a wafer on xy coordinates or a mode to detect a defect by scanning a wafer on rotating coordinates ). fig3 a is one example of display of differences between coordinate values detected by the higher - level checking apparatus and coordinate values detected by the review apparatus using vectors ( also disclosed in jp patent publication ( kokai ) no . 2001 - 338601 ( 2001 )). fig3 a shows that , for example , when a position is farther apart from the center of the wafer , the deviation tends to be larger toward the wafer periphery in a check mode 1 ( 301 ), while a deviation toward the left tends to be larger in the left side of the wafer in a check mode 2 ( 302 ). in such instances , when the coordinate correction table switching depends on only an id of a checking apparatus , it is difficult to obtain good correction results in both of the check modes because of different tendencies of deviations on coordinates depending on check modes . in view of the above difficulty , this embodiment has a function of switching to a coordinate correction table depending on a check mode of the checking apparatus in addition to the function of switching to a coordinate correction table based on a checking apparatus id . although an instance of different deviation tendencies depending on check modes is assumed herein , the different deviation tendencies depending on check modes may be due to a defect position identify algorithm of a checking apparatus or operation of a sample stage of the checking apparatus . furthermore , the accuracy may decrease in detecting a defect position by a checking apparatus over time , so that the apparatus generally needs to be maintained regularly . fig3 b illustrates a function of switching to a correction table depending on a check mode ( a condition for a checking apparatus to detect a defect and calculate coordinates of the defect ). a checking apparatus ( 304 ) and a review apparatus ( 308 ) connect to a network 303 . the review apparatus connects to a storage device ( 309 ). the storage device can be integrated into the review apparatus or separated from the review apparatus for the network connection . the checking apparatus 304 sends coordinates of a detected defect and information of a check mode together to the review apparatus . the information of a check mode includes , for example : information of a mode to detect a defect by exposing light onto a wafer at an angle , a mode to detect a defect by looking a wafer from the above and the like ( such as a mode to detect a defect by scanning a wafer on xy coordinates or a mode to detect a defect by scanning a wafer on rotating coordinates ) as described in the above ; information of sensitivity of the checking apparatus in the detection ; information of a serial number of the detecting apparatus and the like . the review apparatus 308 receives the information of a check mode from the checking apparatus 304 and determines a check mode of the checking apparatus from the information . then , the review apparatus 308 switches to one of the coordinate correction tables ( 310 , 311 and 312 ) based on the determined check mode . the coordinate correction tables are configured to perform coordinates correction optimally for any of the check modes . for example , the tables are used to obtain a deviation between coordinates actually detected in a check mode of the checking apparatus and coordinates detected by the review apparatus by a statistically process . as described in the above , the correction table switching depends on a pre - determined check mode of a pre - determined checking apparatus , enabling to obtain a good correction result in an instance with different deviation tendencies depending on the check modes . as described above , the review apparatus according to the first embodiment selects a coordinate correction table statically in correspondence to a check mode of the checking apparatus . that is , a checking apparatus and a check mode uniquely decide a coordinate correction table . however , because of temporal changes or the like in the apparatus , a coordinate correction table decided uniquely depending on a check mode is not always an optimal table . although periodical maintenance is effective to the temporal changes as described above , its steps must be extremely complicated . to address the above problem , according to a second embodiment , even if a checking apparatus and / or a review apparatus change with a certain tendency over time , a plurality of coordinate correction tables are prepared in correspondence to the temporal changes , or a plurality of coordinate correction tables are prepared in correspondence only to a plurality of check modes to always switch dynamically to a coordinate correction table evaluated as an optimal one by performing the evaluation in parallel to the review , thereby obtaining a better correction result . the system configuration ( fig2 ) and the configuration of the review apparatus ( fig3 ) are similar to those of the first embodiment , and therefore will not be further described herein . fig4 is a flowchart illustrating a function of automatically switching to a coordinate correction table . this function is operated by the central control unit 113 unless otherwise noted . the coordinate correction table switching is automatic herein although a user can set for the coordinate correction table switching . that is , this embodiment is characterized in that a deviation tendency is evaluated based on a coordinate value outputted by a checking apparatus and a coordinate value of a sample position detected in the review to switch to an optimal coordinate correction table in the review . in fig4 , at the start of the review ( 401 ), a coordinate correction table in its initial setting is in use ( 402 ). the coordinate correction table in its initial setting can be configured as any table , or configured based on a previous processing result as described below ( see fig6 ). during the review ( 403 to 409 ), if the coordinate correction table selecting function is enabled ( the function is on ) ( 404 ), evaluation values of the coordinate correction tables are calculated ( 405 ), a maximum evaluation value is further calculated ( 406 ), and a coordinate correction table with the maximum evaluation value is selected ( 407 ). these processes allow for review using an optimal coordinate correction table even if a tendency differs from a default coordinate correction table . an equation ( 1 ) is an exemplary formula of calculating an evaluation value e of a coordinate correction table . the evaluation value is defined so as to be higher for a smaller deviation amount d after the correction by a coordinate correction table . generally , a review order is often decided such that the amount of stage movement is minimum to improve throughput . in that case , samples will be reviewed from the closest sample in order . since deviation tendencies are local in most cases , close samples often have similar deviation tendencies . a value is effective that is evaluated by weighting the tendency of the closest deviation in the case of a review order with the minimum distance of a movement . in that case , an increasing function of a weighting coefficient w for the review order is effective . for example , it is effectual to ignore the deviation amount previous to closer points . alternatively , in the case of a sufficient calculation cost including a processing time , the weighting function can be effectually a function of a distance between a review point to calculate an evaluation value and a review point with the previously calculated deviation amount . fig5 shows one example of switching to a coordinate correction table with considering the weight coefficient described in the above . in fig5 a , there are seven review points on a wafer . a point on the wafer indicates checked coordinates ( x 0 , y 0 ) outputted by a checking apparatus , and also indicates detected coordinates ( x , y ) detected by the review apparatus as shown by the head of the arrow . two coordinate correction tables are evaluated herein and coordinates corrected according to the tables are correction coordinates 1 ( x 1 , y 1 ) and correction coordinates 2 ( x 2 , y 2 ). for simplicity , a correcting equation for the correction tables are simplified to calculate the correction coordinates 1 by the equation ( 2 ) and the correction coordinates 2 by the equation ( 3 ): set the weight coefficient w to be ½ for two previous points and ignore deviation tendencies of points previous to the two points to get the equation ( 4 ): the evaluation value e of a correction table is calculated using the following equation ( 5 ) based on the equations ( 1 ) and ( 4 ): fig5 b shows coordinates checked by the checking apparatus and the review apparatus , corrected coordinates calculated using the equations ( 2 ) and ( 3 ), and specific numerical value examples of evaluation values calculated using the equation ( 5 ). setting a table 1 ( equation ( 2 )) as an initial correction table , the review is executed using the correction table 1 from the first point through the fifth point inclusive , and a correction table 2 will be used after the fifth point where an evaluation value of the table 2 exceeds that of the table 1 . referring to fig6 , the switching to a table will be described more conceptually . fig6 is an exemplary graph representing a correction result using coordinate correction tables a ( 604 ), b ( 605 ) and c ( 606 ) with a review order ( 601 ) on the abscissa axis and deviation amounts ( 602 ) on the ordinate axis . inverse numbers of evaluation values ( 603 ) instead of the deviation amounts ( 602 ) on the ordinate axis can also yield the same graph tendency . if the coordinate correction table a ( 604 ) is selected as an initial table , the coordinate correction table c ( 606 ) is used after the second point according to an evaluation result at the first point . further , the coordinate correction table b ( 605 ) is selected after a crossing point ( 607 ) according to an evaluation result at the crossing point ( 607 ). similarly , if the coordinate correction table c ( 606 ) is selected as the initial table , the coordinate correction table c ( 606 ) continues to be used till the crossing point ( 607 ); the coordinate correction table b ( 605 ) is used after the crossing point ( 607 ) according to an evaluation result at the crossing point ( 607 ). further , if the coordinate correction table c ( 606 ) is selected as the initial table , the coordinate correction table c ( 606 ) continues to be used after the second point according to an evaluation result at the first point , and the coordinate correction table b ( 605 ) is used after the next point to the crossing point ( 607 ) according to an evaluation result at the crossing point ( 607 ). in this way , an optimal correction table is used during the review to allow search for a defect with the minimum deviation amount . in addition , the computational complexity of the comparison and evaluation processing on the coordinate correction tables is so small that the processing can be executed without reducing adr throughput . fig7 is a flowchart illustrating a function of automatically updating the correction tables . this function is operated by the central control unit 113 unless otherwise noted . in fig7 , at the end of the adr ( 701 ), if an automatic update function for the coordinate correction tables is enabled ( 702 ), evaluation values of the coordinate correction tables to be compared are calculated ( 703 ). next , a coordinate correction table with the maximum evaluation value among the coordinate correction tables are calculated ( 704 ), and then the table is set as an initial coordinate correction table for adr ( 705 ). the coordinate correction tables for the comparison can be newly created coordinate correction tables to be added based on a tendency of deviation measured in previous adr , or coordinate correction tables to be added that are updated by adding measurement data to the existing coordinate correction tables . the coordinate correction and the creation of the coordinate correction tables can be performed as described in jp patent publication ( kokai ) no . 2001 - 338601 ( 2001 ), or otherwise . the equation 6 is an exemplary calculating formula of an evaluation value to automatically update the coordinate correction tables . as opposed to the equation 1 , the weight coefficient w reflecting a sample position is fixed ( w = 1 ). fig8 is an exemplary display screen for an evaluation result of coordinate correction tables . a name or id of a checking apparatus to be evaluated is displayed in a box 801 and a check condition is displayed in a box 802 . coordinate correction tables to be evaluated can be selected in boxes 803 , while deviation tendencies are displayed as vectors in circles 804 on a wafer map . average values of deviation amounts are displayed in boxes 805 , while values 3σ ( triple of variance ) ( statistically , most information is included within a range of 3σ ) are displayed in boxes 806 . values fov ( field of view ) representing sizes of recommended fields of view obtained from the values 3σ are displayed in boxes 807 . further , recommended magnifications corresponding to the recommended fov are displayed in boxes 808 . to notify a checking apparatus of the information as described above , one of send buttons 809 is pushed . a sending function is preferably automatic sending , but a user can push the send button 809 to notify the checking apparatus when the user desires to notify . in the automatic sending , the sending is performed only if a condition is satisfied , for example , a deviation is over a certain value or difference from a previous deviation is more than a certain value . such automatic sending can be used to determine whether or not the checking apparatus needs maintenance . although direct notification to a checking apparatus calculating coordinates is described herein as an example , notification to a system managing the checking apparatus has similar effect . as described hereinabove , in the review apparatus according to the second embodiment , the coordinate correction table switching is dynamic in correspondence to the change , thereby obtaining a good correction result even if a desired correction result cannot be obtained using a coordinate correction table initially selected depending on , for example , temporal changes in a checking apparatus or a review apparatus . further , a coordinate correction table is automatically updated in the second embodiment , thereby allowing to use an optimal correction table and obtain a good correction result after the start of the coordinates correction processing . furthermore , in the second embodiment , the amount of a deviation of a defect detected positions between a checking apparatus and a review apparatus is notified to the checking apparatus . if the deviation amount is too large , an administrator can maintain the checking apparatus . meanwhile , the present invention can also be embodied in a software program code for realizing the functions of the embodiments . in that case , a system or an apparatus is provided with storage media recording the program code , and the program code is read out that stores a computer ( or cpu , mpu ) for the system or the apparatus in the storage media . the program code read out from the storage media realizes the functions of the previously mentioned embodiments , and the present invention is embodied in the program code and the storage media storing the code . the storage media for supplying the program code includes , for example , a floppy ( r ) disc , a cd - rom , a dvd - rom , a hard disk , an optical disc , an optical magnetic disc , a cd - r , a magnetic tape , a non - volatile memory card , a rom and the like . an os ( operating system ), for example , running on the computer can perform part or whole of actual processing based on indications by the program code , such that the previously mentioned functions of the embodiments can be realized by the processing . the cpu in the computer can also perform part or whole of actual processing based on indication by the program code after the program code read out from the storage media is written into a memory on the computer , such that the previously mentioned functions of the embodiments can be realized by the processing . the functions can be also achieved such that the software program code for realizing the functions of the embodiments is distributed via a network , stored in storage means such as the hard disk or the memory in the system or the apparatus or storage media such as a cd - rw or a cd - r , and executed after the program code is read out that is stored in the relevant storage means or the relevant storage media by the computer ( or cpu , mpu ) for the system or the apparatus . | 6 |
the following detailed description refers to the accompanying drawings . the same reference numbers in different drawings may identify the same or similar elements . also , the following description does not limit the invention . the term “ component ,” as used herein , is intended to be broadly interpreted to include software , hardware , or a combination of hardware and software . fig2 illustrates an exemplary wireless network 200 . as illustrated , wireless network 200 may include a core network ( cn ) 202 , a radio access network ( ran ) 204 , radio network subsystems 206 - 1 and 206 - 2 ( collectively referred to as rns 206 ), radio network controllers ( rncs ) 208 - 1 and 208 - 2 ( collectively referred to as rnc 208 ), radio base stations ( rbss ) 210 - 1 , 210 - 2 , 210 - 3 , and 210 - 4 ( collectively referred to as rbs 210 ), user equipment ( ue ) 212 - 1 , 212 - 2 , 212 - 3 , and 212 - 4 ( collectively referred to as ue 212 ), iu interfaces 214 - 1 and 214 - 2 ( collectively referred to as iu interface 214 ), iub interfaces 218 - 1 , 218 - 2 , 218 - 3 , and 218 - 4 ( collectively referred to as iub interface 218 ), and uu interfaces 220 - 1 , 220 - 2 , 220 - 3 , and 220 - 4 ( collectively referred to as uu interface 220 ). in one implementation , wireless network 200 may correspond to a wideband code division multiple access ( wcdma )- based network . in other implementations , wireless network 200 may correspond to a network other than a wcdma - based network . cn 202 may be , for example , a network that includes circuit switched and packet switched domains that provide various services to ue 212 subscribers . for example , although not illustrated , the circuit switched domain may include mobile switching centers ( mscs ), visitor location registers ( vlrs ), and gateways . the packet switched domains may include , for example , serving general packet radio service ( gprs ) support nodes ( sgsn ) and gateway gprs support nodes ( ggsns ). cn 202 may also include home location registers ( hlrs ), authentication centers ( aucs ), equipment identity registers ( eir ), etc . ran 204 may be a part of wireless network 200 that is responsible for the radio transmission and control of a radio connection between ue 212 and cn 202 . in one embodiment , ran 204 may include one or more rnss 206 . rns 206 may manage resource allocations of a radio link to a subscriber . each rns 206 may include an rnc 208 and a group of rbss 210 . rnc 208 may control radio resource management and radio connectivity within a set of cells . for example . rnc 208 may manage radio access bearers for user data transfer ( e . g ., between cn 202 and ue 212 ), manage and optimize radio network resources ( e . g ., outer - loop power control and admission and congestion control ), and / or control mobility , including soft handovers . rnc 208 may determine load information for purposes of admission and congestion control , as further described below . rnc 208 may control rbs 210 via iub interface 218 . rnc 208 may also connect ran 204 to cn 202 via iu interface 214 . rnc 208 may include a controlling rnc and a serving rnc . for example , rnc 208 - 1 may be the controlling rnc , and rnc 208 - 2 may be the serving rnc . the controlling rnc may have overall control of a particular set of cells and their associated rbs 210 . in instances , for example , when ue 212 may need to utilize resources in a cell not controlled by its serving rnc , the serving rnc ( e . g . rnc 208 - 2 ) may issue a request to the controlling rnc ( e . g ., rnc 208 - 1 ) for such resources via iur interface 216 . rbs 210 ( sometimes referred to as node b ) may handle radio transmission and reception within one or more cells . each cell may be identified by a unique identifier , which may be broadcast in the cell . in some instances , there may be more than one cell covering the same geographical area . rbs 210 may perform various functions , such as calculations of timing advance , measurements in the uplink direction , scheduling headroom , channel coding , encryption , decryption , frequency hopping , inner - loop power control , softer handover combining and splitting , and operation and maintenance . ue 212 may include a mobile terminal by which subscribers may access services by maintaining a radio link with one or more cells in ran 204 . ue 212 may include a mobile phone , a personal digital assistant ( pda ), a mobile computer , a laptop , and / or another type of handset or communication device . in other instances . ue 212 may include a vehicle - mounted terminal . iu interface 214 may connect cn 202 with ran 204 . iur interface 216 and iub interface 218 may connect the different nodes in ran 204 , as illustrated in fig1 . uu interface 220 may connect ue 212 to rbs 144 . user data may be transported on transport bearers on these interfaces . depending on the transport network employed , the transport bearers may be mapped to for example , asynchronous transfer mode ( atm ) adaptation layer type 2 ( aal 2 ) connections for an atm based transport network , or user datagram protocol ( udp ) connections for an internet protocol ( ip ) based transport network . although fig1 illustrates an exemplary wireless network 200 , in other implementations , fewer , additional , or different devices may be employed . additionally , or alternatively , one or more devices of wireless network 200 may perform one or more functions described as being performed by one or more other devices of wireless network 200 . fig3 is a diagram illustrating exemplary components of a device 300 that may correspond to one or more of the devices depicted in fig1 . for example , device 300 may correspond to rnc 208 , rbs 210 , and / or ue 212 . as illustrated , device 300 may include a bus 310 , a processor 320 , a memory component 330 , a storage component 340 , an input component 350 , an output component 360 , and / or a communication interface 370 . bus 310 may include a path that permits communication among the components of device 300 . for example , bus 310 may include a system bus , an address bus , a data bus , and / or a control bus . bus 310 may also include bus drivers , bus arbiters , bus interfaces , and / or clocks . processor 320 may include a general - purpose processor , a microprocessor , a data processor , a co - processor , a network processor , an application specific integrated circuit ( asic ), a controller , a programmable logic device , a chipset , a field programmable gate array ( fpga ), or any other component or group of components that may interpret and execute instructions . memory component 330 may include any type of component that stores data and instructions related to the operation and use of device 300 . for example , memory component 330 may include a storing component , such as a random access memory ( ram ), a dynamic random access memory ( dram ), a static random access memory ( sram ), a synchronous dynamic random access memory ( sdram ), a ferroelectric random access memory ( fram ), a read only memory ( rom ), a programmable read only memory ( prom ), an erasable programmable read only memory ( eprom ), an electrically erasable programmable read only memory ( eeprom ), and / or a flash memory . storage component 340 may include a storing component , such as a hard disk ( e . g ., a magnetic disk , an optical disk , a magneto - optic disk , etc . ), a compact disc ( cd ), a digital versatile disc ( dvd ), a floppy disk , a cartridge , a magnetic tape , another type of storage medium , or another type of computer - readable medium , along with a corresponding drive . memory component 330 and / or storage component 340 may also include a storing component external to and / or removable from device 300 , such as a universal serial bus ( usb ) memory stick , a hard disk , a subscriber identity module ( sim ), etc . input component 350 may include a mechanism that permits a user to input information to device 300 , such as a keyboard , a keypad , a mouse , a button , a switch , voice recognition , etc . output component 360 may include a mechanism that outputs information to a user , such as a display , a speaker , one or more light emitting diodes ( leds ), etc . communication interface 370 may include any transceiver - like mechanism that enables device 300 to communicate with other devices and / or systems . for example , communication interface 370 may include an ethernet interface , an optical interface , a coaxial interface , a radio interface , or the like . communication interface 330 may allow for wired and / or wireless communication . communication interface 330 may implement industry promulgated protocol standards , such as transmission control protocol / internet protocol ( tcp / ip ), asynchronous transport mode ( atm ), digital subscriber line ( dsl ), integrated services digital network ( isdn ), fiber channel , synchronous optical network ( sonet ), ethernet , institute of electrical and electronic engineers ( ieee ) 802 standards , etc . additionally , or alternatively , communication interface 330 may implement non - standard , proprietary , and / or customized interface protocols . communication interface 330 may contain a plurality of communication interfaces to handle multiple traffic flows . as will be described in detail below , device 300 may perform certain operations relating to the system and services described herein . device 300 may perform these operations in response to processor 320 executing software instructions contained in a computer - readable medium , such as memory component 330 . a computer - readable medium may be defined as a physical or a logical memory device . the software instructions may be read into memory component 330 from another computer - readable medium or from another device via communication interface 370 . the software instructions contained in memory component 330 may cause processor 320 to perform processes that will be described later . alternatively , hardwired circuitry may be used in place of or in combination with software instructions to implement processes described herein . thus , implementations described herein are not limited to any specific combination of hardware circuitry and software . although . fig3 illustrates exemplary components of device 300 , in other implementations , device 300 may include fewer , additional , and / or different components than those depicted in fig3 . in still other implementations , one or more components of device 300 may perform one or more other tasks described as being performed by one or more other components of device 300 . fig4 is a diagram of an exemplary component of rbs 210 that may perform calculations for modifying iub 218 measurements . for purposes of discussion , the component will be referred to as an iub measurement modifier 405 . iub measurement modifier 405 may modify iub 218 measurement values , such as the rtwp , the rrtwp , and / or the rseps , according to the expressions provided below . in one implementation , iub measurement modifier 405 may implemented as software stored in storage component 340 . in another implementation , iub measurement modifier 405 may be implemented as hardware , such as processor 320 . in still other implementations , iub measurement modifier 405 may include a combination of hardware and software . although fig4 illustrates an exemplary component of rbs 210 , in other implementations , iub measurement modifier 405 may be a component of a device other than rbs 210 . additionally , or alternatively , the functionality associated with tub measurement modifier 405 , as to be described more fully below , may be employed in a distributed fashion between or among more than one device , including or excluding rbs 210 . fig5 is a diagram illustrating exemplary load contributions . as illustrated , load information may include a l_scheduled portion 505 ( i . e ., a scheduled load ), a l_non - scheduled portion 510 that may include a l_non - scheduled load , own , and an other - cell load ( l_other ), and a l_other , min 515 that may include a load corresponding to δ , as described below . further . fig5 illustrates a l_nr 520 and a l_nr , max 525 that correspond to a relative load and a maximum relative load , respectively . referring to fig5 , the non - scheduling load l non - sched may be separated into non - scheduled load from the own cell l non - sched , own and load from other - cells l other as discussed above . thus , in one implementation , the scheduling headroom may be expressed as : l sched , headroom = l nr , max − l non - sched , own − max ( l other , l other min )= l nr , max − l non - sched , own − l other − max ( 0 , l other min − l other ) ( 1 ) in some instances , the scheduling headroom considered in rbs 210 may be ( artificially ) reduced according to the following expression : in order to be robust to the inter - cell interference contribution as described above . however , when δ is greater than zero , there may be a discrepancy between the scheduling headroom calculated by rbs 210 and the scheduled headroom that can be estimated in rnc 208 . that is , in instances where l other min is greater than l other , δ may have a value greater than zero . for example , as illustrated in fig5 , the value of l_other , min 515 may exceed l_other . thus , as indicated in expression ( 2 ) above , δ may have a value greater than zero . based on the load contribution illustrated in fig5 , the lea of rnc 208 may need to consider the non - scheduled load according to the following expression : since , however , rnc 208 may compute the non - scheduled load according to the following expression : the impact or effect from a non - zero a may be accounted for by modifying either rseps or l nr . that is , iub measurement modifier 405 may modify either rseps or l nr . as previously described above , l nr may be expressed as : thus , l nr may be computed from rrtwp and rtwp . accordingly , the impact or effect from a non - zero δ may be accounted for by modifying either of rseps . rtwp , or rrtwp . based on expressions ( 3 ) and ( 4 ), the rseps may be modified according to the following expression : in this regard , increasing the used load margin by reducing the used scheduled load measurement may appear to be an illogical approach . however , the rationale to this approach is that this measurement may be used to compute the non - scheduled load , which is increased as a consequence . based on expressions ( 3 ) and ( 4 ), ( l nr — mod )=+ δ , thus as noted from expression ( 6 ) above , the rtwp may be modified according to the following expression : in one implementation . iub 218 measurement of the rrtwp may be reported by rbs 210 infrequently to rnc 208 since the rrtwp may not change frequently . additionally , or alternatively , the rrtwp measurement may be updated based on an event - trigger so that reporting occurs only when there is a change of the rrtwp . on the other hand , measurement modifications to the rseps or the rtwp may be considered . for example , a modified rtwp may be reported in the same report as the modified rseps . also , a non - modified rtwp may be reported in a separate message . in either instance , modifications to the iub 218 measurements may be utilized and reported to rnc 208 so that rnc 208 may be informed about the margins affecting rbs 210 scheduling headroom . further , in instances when rbs 210 employs a multi - user detector or an interference cancellation receiver , the effective interference measurement may be modified . for example , the effective interference may be determined after detection , signal regeneration and subtraction has been carried out . rbs 210 may then determine the efficiency of the cancellation , and consider the effective interference in the calculations of the rtwp and the rseps . for example . rbs 210 may separate the received scheduled power i sched and non - scheduled power i non - sched into powers from connections subject to interference cancellation . i sched ic and i non - sched ic , and not subject to cancellation . i sched notic and i non - sched notic according to the following expressions : further , rbs 210 may define the effective interference from connections subject to interference cancellation as i sched iceff and i non - sched iceff respectively . that is , i sched iceff and i non - sched iceff may correspond to the interference power that remains after a last step of an interference cancellation scheme . in such an instance , the measured interference values may be adjusted according to the following expressions : hence , as noted from expressions ( 9 ), ( 10 ), ( 11 ), and ( 12 ) above , the rtwp may be modified according to the following expression : rtwp _mod = rtwp + i sched iceff − i sched ic + i non - sched iceff − i non - sched ic . ( 13 ) further , as noted from expressions ( 9 ), ( 10 ), ( 11 ), ( 12 ), and ( 13 ) above , the rseps may be modified according to the following expression : again , it may be beneficial to use the combined rseps and rtwp measurement report to provide the modified measurements , while the dedicated rtwp measurement report may include the unmodified measurement since this may be of specific interest for coverage determination . alternatively , measurement modifications may be determined by rnc 208 based on additional information received over iub 218 together with rtwp and / or rseps measurements . for example , the additional information may include cancelled scheduled f - dch interference and cancelled non - scheduled e - dch interference , which may be expressed according to the following expressions : then , rnc 208 may be able to modify rseps based on the following exemplary procedure . for example , rnc 208 may calculate the received scheduled e - dch power ( rsep ) using the rseps and rtwp measurements according to the following expression : rnc 208 may calculate cancelled interference in total according to the following expression : rnc 208 may modify rsep and rtwp based on the information related to cancelled interference according to the following expressions : rnc 208 may calculate a modified rseps according to the following expression : in another embodiment , interference cancellation may never be employed to connections other than scheduled e - dch connections in which case only cancelled scheduled e - dch interference may be reported . similarly , the cancelled interference from connections other than scheduled e - dch connections may be neglected and / or treated as being negligible . fig6 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary process 600 that may be employed when calculating the scheduled headroom load . in one implementation , iub measurement modifier 405 of rbs 210 may perform one or more of the operations of process 600 . in other implementations , process 600 may be performed by another device or group of devices including or excluding rbs 210 . process 600 may begin with calculating the other - cell load ( block 605 ). as described in reference to expression ( 1 ), when calculating the scheduled headroom load , other - cell load may be considered . in some instances , rbs 210 may provide a margin for inter - cell interference corresponding to expression ( 2 ). for example , as indicated in expression ( 2 ), rbs 210 may calculate the other - cell load based on a delta margin . a determination whether the delta margin is non - zero may be made ( block 610 ). for example , based on expression ( 2 ), the delta margin may yield a zero or non - zero value , as illustrated in fig5 . if the delta margin is non - zero ( block 610 yes ), then the measurements of at least one of the rseps , rrtwp , or the rtwp may be modified ( block 615 ). for example , the rseps measurement may be modified based on expression ( 5 ), the rrtwp measurement may be modified based on expressions ( 6 ) and ( 7 ), and the rtwp measurement may be modified based on expression ( 8 ). the modified rwtp and the rseps measurement report may be transmitted ( block 620 ). in one implementation , the modifications of the rwtp and the rseps measurements may be transmitted to for example , rnc 208 , in the same measurement report . in other implementations , the modified rrtwp may be transmitted to for example , rnc 208 , in a measurement report . additionally , or alternatively , a non - modified rtwp measurement may be reported in the same or different message than the modified rtwp and rseps . if the delta margin is zero ( block 610 — no ), then the process may end . for example , the scheduled headroom may be calculated without modifying measurements associated with iub 218 measurements . although fig6 illustrates an exemplary process 600 , in other implementation , fewer , different , or additional operations may be performed . fig7 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary process 700 that may be employed when calculating the effective interference . in one implementation , iub measurement modifier 405 of rbs 210 may perform one or more of the operations of process 700 . in other implementations , process 700 may be performed by another device or group of devices including or excluding rbs 210 . process 700 may begin with determining connections to which interference cancellation may be performed ( block 705 ). for example , as described in connection to expressions ( 9 ) and ( 10 ), flows may be separated into scheduled flows and non - scheduled flows . additionally , flows may be separated into scheduled flows subject to interference cancellation and scheduled flows not subject to interference cancellation . further , non - scheduled flows may be separated into non - scheduled flows subject to interference cancellation and non - scheduled flows not subject to interference cancellation . the interference power before interference cancellation is performed may be determined ( block 710 ). for example , in one implementation , received schedule power and non - scheduled power may each be determined before an interference scheme is employed based on power connections subject to interference cancellation and connections not subject to interference cancellation . in one implementation , the interference power may be determined based on expressions ( 9 ) and ( 10 ). the effective interference for connections subject to interference cancellation may be determined ( block 715 ). for example , rbs 210 may determine the effective interference for connections subject to interference cancellation after an interference cancellation scheme is employed . in one implementation , the measured effective interference may be based on expressions ( 11 ) and ( 12 ). the measurement of the rtwp may be modified ( block 720 ). for example , the rtwp may be modified based on expression ( 13 ). the measurement of the rseps may be modified ( block 725 ). for example , the rseps may be modified based on expression ( 14 ). the modified rwtp and rseps measurement report may be transmitted ( block 730 ). in one implementation , the modifications of the rwtp and the rseps may be transmitted to , for example , rnc 208 , in the same measurement report . additionally , or alternatively , a non - modified rtwp measurement may be reported in the same or different message than the modified rtwp and rseps . although fig7 illustrates an exemplary process 700 , in other implementation , fewer , different , or additional operations may be performed . fig8 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary process 800 that may be employed when calculating the effective interference . process 800 may begin determining connections to which interference cancellation may be performed ( block 805 ). for example , as described in connection to expressions ( 9 ) and ( 10 ), flows may be separated into scheduled flows and non - scheduled flows . additionally , flows may be separated into scheduled flows subject to interference cancellation and scheduled flows not subject to interference cancellation . further , non - scheduled flows may be separated into non - scheduled flows subject to interference cancellation and non - scheduled flows not subject to interference cancellation . the interference power before interference cancellation is performed may be determined ( block 810 ). for example , in one implementation , received schedule power and non - scheduled power may each be determined before an interference scheme is employed based on power connections subject to interference cancellation and connections not subject to interference cancellation . in one implementation , the interference power may be determined based on expressions ( 9 ) and ( 10 ). the effective interference for connections subject to interference cancellation may be determined ( block 815 ). for example , rbs 210 may determine the effective interference for connections subject to interference cancellation after an interference cancellation scheme is employed . in one implementation , the measured effective interference may be based on expressions ( 11 ) and ( 12 ). the effective interference for e - dch connections subject to interference cancellation may be determined ( block 820 ). for example . rbs 210 may determine the effective interference for connections subject to interference cancellation after an interference cancellation scheme is employed . in one implementation , the measured effective interference may be based on expressions ( 15 ) and ( 16 ). a measurement report and the effective interference for e - dch connections may be transmitted ( block 825 ). for example , rbs 210 may transmit the measurement report and the effective interference associated with e - dch connections to rnc 208 . measurements of the rtwp and the rseps may be modified ( block 830 ). for example , rnc 208 may modify the rtwp and the rseps measurements based on expressions ( 17 ), ( 18 ), ( 19 ), ( 20 ), and ( 21 ). although fig8 illustrates an exemplary process 800 , in other implementation , fewer , different , or additional operations may be performed . for example , as previously described above , in some instances , interference cancellation may not be employed to connections other than scheduled e - dch connections . in such instances , process 800 may be modified to where only cancelled e - dch interference may reported . in contrast to other implementations where the scheduled headroom may be smaller than what is reflected by iub 218 measurements ( e . g . the rtwp , the rrtwp , and the rseps ), the concepts described herein may provide that rnc 208 and rbs 210 have the same view of the scheduled headroom , as well as the effective interference ( e . g ., the actual balance between the e - dch and the dch ). that is , given the margin information provided from , for example , the lea , the scheduler , interference cancellation performance of the receiver , and / or knowledge about how rnc 208 calculates the non - scheduled load , rbs 210 may recognize discrepancies ( in terms of view ) and modify the iub 218 measurements , as well as effective interference measurements so that rnc 208 and rbs 210 may have a corresponding network state view . as a result , a variety of advantages may be realized . for example , admission control decisions by rnc 208 may be more accurate based on the modified iub 218 measurements , which may prevent a scenario where too many subscribers may be admitted . for example , in instances when there are too many subscribers admitted , a significant portion of the uplink resources may be utilized based on the continuous transmission over the dpcch , which may lead to excessive non - scheduled load . additionally , or alternatively , admission control by rnc 208 may provide for sufficient headroom for scheduled data since the estimation of the non - scheduled load may be more accurate . additionally , or alternatively , congestion control of rnc 208 may be improved . additionally , or alternatively , dch radio resource management ( rrm ) may be more efficiently managed . the foregoing description of implementations provides illustration , but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the implementations to the precise form disclosed . modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of the teachings . for example , the concepts described herein may be applied to any type of network where a functional split exists ( e . g . a base station and a base station controller ) so that discrepancies of one or more network states ( e . g ., headroom ) between respective devices may be mitigated . more generally , even a single device or node that includes a functional split ( e . g ., a scheduling component and an admission component ) may benefit from the concepts described herein . in addition , while series of blocks have been described with regard to processes illustrated in fig6 and fig7 , the order of the blocks may be modified in other implementations . further , non - dependent blocks may be performed in parallel . further one or more blocks may be omitted . it will be apparent that aspects described herein may be implemented in many different forms of software , firmware , and hardware in the implementations illustrated in the figures . the actual software code or specialized control hardware used to implement aspects does not limit the invention . thus , the operation and behavior of the aspects were described without reference to the specific software code — it being understood that software and control hardware can be designed to implement the aspects based on the description herein . even though particular combinations of features are recited in the claims and / or disclosed in the specification , these combinations are not intended to limit the invention . in fact , many of these features may be combined in ways not specifically recited in the claims and / or disclosed in the specification . it should be emphasized that the term “ comprises ” or “ comprising ” when used in the specification is taken to specify the presence of stated features , integers , steps , or components but does not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features , integers , steps , components , or groups thereof . no element , act , or instruction used in the present application should be construed as critical or essential to the implementations described herein unless explicitly described as such . also , as used herein , the article “ a ” and “ an ” are intended to include one or more items . where only one item is intended , the term “ one ” or similar language is used . further , the phrase “ based on ” is intended to mean “ based , at least in part , on ” unless explicitly stated otherwise . as used herein , the term “ and / or ” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated list items . | 7 |
referring to fig2 the zigzag wavelength division multiplexer includes an intermediate block 20 , an input end 30 and a plurality of output ends 40 a , 40 b , 40 c and 40 d . the input end 30 and the plurality of output ends 40 a , 40 b , 40 c and 40 d are disposed on two sides 20 a and 20 b of the intermediate block 20 . after multi - channel light enters the intermediate block 20 via the input end 30 , the first output end 40 a outputs a first channel beam λ 1 , the second output end 40 b outputs a second channel beam λ 2 , the third output end 40 c outputs a third channel beam λ 3 , and the fourth output end 40 d outputs a residual channel beam λ 4 . referring to fig3 a , the optical collimator 50 includes at least a grin lens 51 and a glass ferrule 52 . an optical fiber 53 is disposed in the glass ferrule 52 . the optical collimator 50 further includes a glass tube 54 to fix the grin lens 51 and the glass ferrule 52 . referring to fig3 b , the input end 30 has the optical collimator 50 and a first sleeve 60 . a fixing portion 61 having a hole 62 is formed on the inner wall of the first sleeve 60 . the optical collimator 50 is disposed in the first sleeve 60 and fixed to the fixing portion 61 by hot solidified resin . the axis of the first sleeve 60 is tilted to the plane of the opening of the first sleeve 60 at a predetermined angle θ . preferably , the angle θ is between 75 ° and 90 °. referring to fig4 a , the output end 40 has a grin lens 41 , a glass ferrule 42 , a wave filter 43 , a first pad 44 , a second pad 45 and a second sleeve 80 . the second sleeve 80 has a first portion 81 , a second portion 82 and a fixing portion 83 . the fixing portion 83 has a hole 84 connected between the first portion 81 and the second portion 82 . in the second sleeve 80 , the axis of the first portion 81 is coaxial to that of the second portion 82 . the axis of the second portion 82 is tilted to the plane of the opening of the second portion 82 at the predetermined angle θ . preferably , the angle θ is between 75 ° and 90 °. the wave filter 43 is disposed in the second portion 82 and fixed to the second pad 45 by hot solidified resin 70 , and the opening of the second portion 82 is fixed to the second pad 45 by hot solidified resin 70 . the grin lens 41 is disposed in the first portion 81 and fixed to the fixing portion 83 by hot solidified resin 70 . the first pad 44 is fixed to an end 41 a of the grin lens 41 by hot solidified resin 70 . the glass ferrule 42 is fixed to the first pad 44 by hot solidified resin 70 . as described above , an optical collimator 46 having the first pad 44 is disposed in the first portion 81 and fixed to the fixing portion 83 of the second sleeve 80 by hot solidified resin 70 . the second sleeve 80 and the wave filter 43 are fixed to the second pad 45 by hot solidified resin 70 . thus , the output end of the present zigzag wavelength division multiplexer is constructed . as shown in fig4 a , the output end of the present zigzag wavelength division multiplexer is disposed on one side of the intermediate block 20 by hot solidified resin 70 . referring to fig4 b and fig4 c , another output end of the present zigzag wavelength division multiplexer includes a grin lens 41 , a glass ferrule 42 , a wave filter 43 , a first pad 44 and a second sleeve 80 . the second sleeve 80 has a first portion 81 , a second portion 82 and a fixing portion 83 . the fixing portion 83 has a hole 84 connected between the first portion 81 and the second portion 82 . in the second sleeve 80 , the axis l 1 of the first portion 81 is tilted to the axis l 2 of the second portion 82 at a predetermined angle θ ′. the axis l 2 of the second portion 82 is perpendicular to the plane of the opening of the second portion 82 . as shown in fig4 b , the wave filter 43 is disposed in the second portion 82 and fixed to the fixing portion 83 by hot solidified resin 70 . because of the predetermined angle θ ′ between the axis l 1 of the first portion 81 and the axis l 2 of the second portion 82 , the wave filter 43 is substantially parallel to the side of the intermediate block 20 . the grin lens 41 is disposed in the first portion 81 and fixed to the fixing portion 83 by hot solidified resin 70 . the first pad 44 is fixed to an end 41 a of the grin lens 41 by hot solidified resin 70 . the glass ferrule 42 is fixed to the first pad 44 by hot solidified resin 70 . thus , the glass ferrule 42 , the first pad 44 and the grin lens 41 construct the optical collimator 46 having the pad . as described above , an optical collimator 46 having the first pad 44 is disposed in the first portion 81 and fixed to the fixing portion 83 of the second sleeve 80 by hot solidified resin 70 . in addition , the optical collimator 46 having the first pad 44 , the second sleeve 80 and the wave filter 43 construct the other output end of the present zigzag wavelength division multiplexer . as shown in fig4 b , the other output end of the present zigzag wavelength division multiplexer is fixed to the intermediate block 20 by hot solidified resin 70 . [ 0027 ] fig5 shows the pad of the zigzag wavelength division multiplexer of the invention . as shown in fig4 a , fig4 b and fig5 there is no effect on light penetration when the thickness t of the pad 45 is changed . on the other hand , light penetration is affected when the thickness t of the pad 44 is changed . [ 0028 ] fig6 is a schematic view showing the configurations of the pad . the pad is hollow and has circular , rectangular and polygonal configurations . additionally , the pad is made of metal , glass or other materials not deformed at temperatures over 200 ° c . the intermediate block is made of a transparent material such as glass or quartz . additionally , the intermediate block can be a hollow metal block . in addition , the length of the first sleeve of the input end is substantially equal to that of the optical collimator . furthermore , the depth of the first portion of the second sleeve of the output end is smaller than or equal to the length of the grin lens . while the invention has been described by way of example and in terms of the preferred embodiment , it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the disclosed embodiments . to the contrary , it is intended to cover various modifications and similar arrangements ( as would be apparent to those skilled in the art ). therefore , the scope of the appended claims should be accorded the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and similar arrangements . | 6 |
fig1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a blower system according to the present invention . the system is for use in conjunction with a vehicle air - conditioner and employs a direct current brushless motor for rotating a blower . a blower system 1 comprises a blower b supported rotatably by a supporting member ( not shown ) and a direct current brushless motor m for rotationally driving the blower b . in this embodiment the direct current brushless motor m is of the two phase type and has a magnet rotor r and exciting coils c1 and c2 provided on a stator ( not shown ). the blower system 1 is further provided with a position detecting unit 2 for obtaining information concerning the rotational position of the magnet rotor r . the position detecting unit 2 is of the conventional type having a hall element 3 for producing a detection signal showing the position of the magnet rotor r and an amplifier 4 for amplifying the output detection signal from the hall element 3 . although not shown in fig1 the hall element 3 is actually incorporated into the direct current brushless motor m where it senses leakage flux from the magnet rotor r . the position detecting unit 2 produces a pulse voltage signal whose level changes in relation to the rotational position of the magnet rotor r and outputs the same as a position signal h . although omitted from fig1 in the interest of simplicity , the position detecting unit 2 is also provided with a conventional direct current bias circuit for supplying a direct current bias current to the hall element 3 . the exciting coils c1 and c2 are connected through associated switching transistors t1 and t2 with a direct current power supply v m for driving the direct current brushless motor m . the conducting states of the switching transistors t1 and t2 are controlled by a pair of control signals s1 and s2 produced by a control circuit 5 which operates in response to the position signal h to selectively supply the necessary exciting current to the exciting coils c1 and c2 in a prescribed time and order . the control circuit 5 is configured to on - off control the switching transistors t1 and t2 in a conventional manner so as to supply the exciting currents required for maintaining the rotation of the magnet rotor r from the direct current power supply v m to the respective exiting coils at the appropriate times . since the circuit configuration of the control circuit 5 operating in the foregoing manner is known , it will not be described further here . a rotational speed setting unit 6 is used by the operator to set the desired rotational speed of the direct current brushless motor m or blower b . it produces a speed setting voltage s representing the set rotational speed and the speed setting voltage s is forwarded to the control circuit 5 and a discrimination circuit 7 . as shown in fig2 the rotational speed setting unit 6 has a variable resistor 8 with fixed terminals t1 and t2 across which is impressed a direct current voltage + v supplied from a direct current stabilized power supply ( not shown ), and the divided voltage appearing on a movable terminal t3 thereof is applied to a buffer amplifier 9 to produce the speed setting voltage s therefrom . as will be understood from the characteristic curve of the rotational speed setting unit 6 shown in fig3 the level of the speed setting voltage s increases as the speed set by the variable resistor 8 increases . as seen in fig1 the blower system 1 comprises the discrimination circuit 7 , which is responsive to the speed setting voltage s and the position signal h and serves to discriminate whether or not a motor locked state has occurred . a &# 34 ; motor locked state &# 34 ; is defined as a state in which the direct current brushless motor m does not rotate irrespective of the supply of driving current thereto . when the occurrence of a motor locked state is discriminated by the discrimination circuit 7 , the discrimination circuit 7 produces as a discrimination signal a current control signal l which in this embodiment is used for limiting the level of the driving currents supplied to the exciting coils c1 and c2 to less than a predetermined level so as to protect the direct current brushless motor m and the circuitry associated therewith . the circuit of the discrimination circuit 7 will now be described in detail with reference to fig4 . the discrimination circuit 7 receives the direct current voltage + v from the stabilized d . c . power supply ( not shown ). the circuit 7 comprises an inverting amplifying circuit 20 for inverting in level and amplifying the speed setting voltage s , a signal processing circuit 30 responsive to the position signal h for producing a detection output signal k whose peak level corresponds to the rotational speed of the magnet rotor r , and a comparator 40 for comparing the level of the detection output signal k with the level of an inverted output voltage rs produced by the inverting amplifying circuit 20 . the inverting amplifying circuit 20 is a circuit of known configuration comprising an operational amplifier 21 and resistors 22 and 25 , and , as will be understood from fig5 the level of the inverted output voltage rs decreases with increasing set rotational speed . the signal processing circuit 30 has a transistor 35 and an integration circuit 34 composed of a capacitor 31 and resistors 32 and 33 . the integration circuit 34 integrates the square wave position signal h and its output on - off controls the transistor 35 . the emitter of the transistor 35 is grounded and the direct current voltage + v is applied to its collector through resistors 36 and 37 . the connection point 39 between the resistors 36 and 37 is grounded through a capacitor 38 . as a result , the detection output signal k is obtained at the connection point 39 in the form of a saw - tooth wave whose peak value and cycle period vary with the period of the position signal h . the comparator 40 is composed of a voltage comparator 41 having an inverting input + to which the inverted output voltage rs is applied and a non - inverting input - to which the detection output signal k is applied . the operation of the discrimination circuit 7 will now be described with reference to fig6 and 7 . in the case where the set rotational speed of the direct current brushless motor m is high , the level of the inverted output voltage rs has a relatively small magnitude . when the direct current brushless motor m is rotating at a high speed corresponding to the set rotational speed , the cycle period of the saw - tooth wave of the detection output signal k is short and the peak value thereof is small . the wave form of the signal k at this time is illustrated in fig6 . if the direct current brushless motor m should for some reason lock while operating in this state , the level of the detection output signal k will rise as shown by the broken line in fig6 . as a result , it will quickly exceed the level of the inverted output voltage rs , which constitutes a reference level and is at a relatively low level at this time . the level of the current control signal l produced by the voltage comparator 41 will therefore drop to a low level after time ta . since the control circuit 5 responds to the drop in the level of the current control signal l by conducting a current limiting operation , the direct current brushless motor m and circuitry associated therewith are effectively protected . on the other hand , as will be understood from fig7 when the set rotational speed of the direct current brushless motor m is low , the inverted output voltage rs , which serves as a reference level , is set to a higher level than in the case shown in fig6 . as can also be seen in fig7 when the direct current brushless motor m is rotating at a low speed corresponding to the set rotational speed , the cycle period of the detection output signal k is longer and the peak value thereof is higher than in the case shown in fig6 . if the direct current brushless motor m should for some reason lock while operating in this state , the level of the detection output signal k will rise as shown by the broken line in fig7 . although in this case , too , the detection output signal k will eventually rise above the level of the inverted output voltage rs and cause the current control signal l to drop to a low level , the time tb required for it to do so is much longer than the time ta required in the case shown in fig6 . as will be understood from the foregoing description , the detection output signal k maintains its saw - tooth wave form so long as the direct current brushless motor m is rotating . when the direct current brushless motor m locks , however , its level increases to that of the power supply voltage + v . on the other hand , the reference voltage with which the detection output signal k is compared is not a voltage signal of prescribed constant level but the inverted output voltage rs whose level changes in accordance with the set rotational speed of the direct current brushless motor m as described with reference to fig6 and 7 . consequently , when the direct current brushless motor m is rotating at high speed , the discriminating time period ( the time period between the point at which motor m locks and the point at which the level of the signal l becomes low ) is short , as indicated by ta in fig6 . in contrast , when the motor m is rotating at low speed , the discriminating time period is longer than that during high - speed rotation , as indicated by tb in fig7 . as a result , in low - speed operating mode the system prevents erroneous discriminations to the effect that the motor m has locked before it has been able to start , while in high - speed operation mode it shortens the discrimination time period and thus protects the motor m and the circuitry associated therewith from damage by ensuring prompt limiting of the driving currents when locking occurs . | 7 |
embodiments of the present invention control the concentration of a chemical agent in a source . for example , embodiments of the present invention may be used to control the concentration of a biocide in process water at a fruit and vegetable processing plant , where a biocide is used to reduce or eliminate any microbes resident on the fruits and vegetables before sale and consumption by the public . as such , an embodiment of the present invention detects and modifies , i . e ., controls , the biocide concentration in the process water so that a proper concentration of biocide is maintained in the process water and , therefore , is applied to the fruits and vegetables . a further example of an embodiment of the present invention may be used to control the biocide concentration in solutions used to disinfect the internal surfaces of polyethylene telephthalate bottles . other uses for the methods and systems for controlling a concentration of a chemical agent in a source are envisioned , and are within the scope of the present invention . aspects of the invention are based on detecting a target chemical agent &# 39 ; s concentration in a solution by using volumetric titration . as known in the art , volumetric titration is based on analyzing a composition , i . e ., a chemical agent , of a solution by adding known amounts of a standardized solution until a given reaction ( for example , change in an optical characteristic , precipitation , change in conductivity , change in ph , and the like ) is produced . for purposes of illustration , the present invention will be described using a change in an optical characteristic , for example a color change , to signal the given reaction . however , other titration reactions are envisioned to be within the scope of the present invention , for example , using a ph meter to follow a change in ph based on the concentration of the target agent in the solution . a titrant is mixed in known increments with a sample from the solution , the sample having an unknown concentration of a target chemical agent , and an “ indicator ,” until a given reaction point , for example color change , is produced . the reaction point is typically termed the “ endpoint ,” and is directly indicative of the concentration of the target chemical agent in the solution , as is discussed in greater detail below . the analysis of the chemical agent is automated so that numerous concentration readings may be performed and analyzed over the course of a source run ( the period during which the solution containing the unknown concentration of chemical agent is being used to accomplish its predetermined goal ). a corrective action may be taken when the titration provides results showing that the target chemical agent concentration is outside a series of predetermined parameters . a chemical analysis is used to elicit the chemical agent &# 39 ; s concentration in the solution . as is known in the art , a typical chemical analysis involves adding a known concentration of an s oxidizing agent , i . e ., an agent that oxidizes , to an unknown concentration of a reducing agent , i . e ., an agent that reduces , ( or vice versa ). typically , an indicator having a distinctive colored reaction product serves to show the endpoint of the chemical reaction , i . e ., the point at which the electrons lost by the oxidized species equals the number of electrons gained by the reduced species . the “ indicator ” in the chemical reaction typically has a distinctive color in one oxidative state as compared to other oxidative states . by knowing the concentration and volume of the known chemical agents , as well as the balanced equation for the chemical reaction , one can determine the concentration of the unknown or target chemical agents by following the distinctive color change of the indicator . alternatively , as discussed in greater detail below , a standard curve using similar experimental conditions with known amounts of both titrant and target chemical agent may be plotted , to provide a relationship between the amount of titrant required to reach the endpoint of a known amount of target chemical agent ( see below ). an appropriate enzyme or catalytic device can be added to the solution being tested so as to reduce the background levels of species that interfere with the chemical agent being tested . for example , catalase enzyme or platinum can be added to a solution being tested for peracid levels ( biocide levels ) so as to reduce the background levels of hydrogen peroxide but not substantially effect the peracid levels . the reduction in hydrogen peroxide levels helps minimize its effects on the chemical analysis , thereby providing a more distinct endpoint of the chemical reaction . this system could also be used to measure more than one species in a solution . for example , hydrogen peroxide could be determined in the first step of the titration and peracid could be determined in the second step of the titration . fig1 illustrates a system 106 for controlling the concentration of a chemical agent in a source according to an embodiment of the present invention . a sample pump 108 receives a signal from a controller 110 to initiate the determination of the chemical agents concentration in the sample source 112 . the sample pump 108 may flush out a reaction cell 114 with a volume of solution from the sample source 112 . the flush of the reaction cell 114 may be accomplished by flushing from 20 to 50 volumes of solution through the reaction cell 114 . the flush should be adequate to remove residual reactants , i . e ., indicator , residual solution sample , in the reaction cell 114 from any previous use . solution from the sample source 112 is flushed through the reaction cell 114 through the combined effort of the sample pump 108 , which continually fills the reaction cell with solution and either a self primed drain pump 118 , aspirator or simple gravity overflow for removal of the solution . after the reaction cell 114 has been flushed , the reaction cell 114 is filled with solution to a predetermined level , termed the “ flushing level ” 120 . the flushing level 120 is typically near the top of the reaction cell 114 but may be modified dependent on the available sample source sizes and reaction volumes . a drain pump 118 is either self - activated or activated by the controller to remove solution from the reaction cell 114 until the solution volume corresponds to a predetermined level in the reaction cell 114 , termed the “ monitoring level ” 122 . note that the removal of solution from the reaction cell may also be accomplished by gravity overflow , for example by actuating a relief valve located at the monitoring level 122 or other like means . the monitoring level 122 represents a predetermined amount of solution to be tested on that particular run , i . e ., one determination / modification of the target chemical agent &# 39 ; s concentration , of the system 106 . the solution that fills the reaction cell to the monitoring level 122 is referred to as the solution sample 116 . as with the flushing level 120 , the monitoring level 122 can be altered between determinations of chemical agent concentration dependent on , for example , available sample volume , reaction parameters , etc . the monitoring level 122 in the reaction cell 114 provides a precisely regulated reaction volume for the volumetric titration that is not dependent upon adding predetermined volumes of solution to the reaction cell 114 , where residual solution may add up in the reaction cell 114 and change the reaction volume of the volumetric titration . typical sample sizes , as determined by the monitoring level 122 , are from 2 to 100 mls , and preferably from 10 to 20 mls . the reaction cell 114 is preferably , i . e ., where an optical characteristic is being followed , a light permeable reaction vessel having the capacity to hold a liquid . in one embodiment of the present invention , the reaction cell is a flow cell or cuvet . other types of reaction cells are within the scope of the invention as long as the cell is complementary with the system 106 . a reaction stirrer 124 is activated by the controller 110 during or soon after the sample 116 is delivered to the reaction cell 114 . the reaction stirrer 124 is typically a magnetic stirring device located below the reaction cell , having a teflon ™ coated stir bar within the reaction cell . the speed and timing of a reaction &# 39 ; s stirring is controlled by the controller and may be manipulated dependent upon reaction volume and speed with which the reagents 126 must be combined during a chemical agent detection run . alternatively , the reaction stirrer 124 may be a stand alone device that is manually turned on and left on during the entire course of a run or runs , thereby not receiving or dependent upon a signal from the controller 110 . note that the reaction stirrer 124 may also be or include a shaft stirrer , recirculation pump or other like devices . in one embodiment , a light - emitting diode ( led ) 128 / photosensor 130 ( termed the second photosensor ) assembly measures the initial light intensity of the sample . ( see also fig3 ) the led 128 emits light at a wavelength of from 380 nm to 800 nm through the reaction cell 114 . the second photosensor 130 receives the light and measures the received lights intensity and transmits this information to the controller 110 . this initial reading of the sample in the reaction cell 114 is the baseline ( comparison point ) mv response or i ( hi ) ( see below ). a reagent pump 132 receives a signal from the controller 110 to add a set of reagents 126 to the sample 116 in the reaction cell 114 . reagents 126 are typically used in a titration in order to optimize the sensitivity and precision of the detection of the target chemical agent in the sample source 112 , and so numerous different reagent combinations may be used dependent on the target chemical agent , sample source and indicator chemistries . titrations are based on a chemical reaction whereby the concentration of the chemical agent may be determined by adding a solution of known volume and strength until a reaction point is reached , usually indicated by a color change ( see below ). one example of a titration chemistry for use with the present invention is shown in fig2 where the concentration of a biocide , e . g ., peracid , may be detected in process water . an unknown concentration of peracid ( ch 3 coooh ) from a sample source is reacted with i − to form an unknown amount of i 3 − , which is further reacted with starch to form a dark blue i 3 − / starch complex . this portion of the reaction takes place when the reagents are added to the reaction cell . as discussed more fully below , a known amount of titrant ( 2s 2 o 3 2 − ) ( reducing agent ) is then added to the reaction cell where it reacts with the colored i 3 − / starch complex to dissociated i 3 − / starch complex to a colorless 3i − and starch mixture . the reaction produces a color change from dark blue ( i 3 − / starch complex ) to colorless ( 3i − plus starch ) which is followed by the led ( 128 ) and the second photosensor ( 130 ) until the endpoint of the reaction is reached . other titration chemistries can be used in conjunction with the present invention . titrations depend on the mode of detection , i . e ., optical characteristic , ph , conductivity , etc , so that a method of the present invention may also utilize naoh as the titrant and detect a change in the sample with a ph meter as well as other known means within the art . still referring to fig2 , the reagents 126 , for the presently illustrated embodiment , can include an acid ( h + ) to modify the reaction ph to between 1 and 4 , and an indicator ( 3i − and starch ) to sharply define the endpoint . acids for use with the reaction illustrated in fig2 include , but are not limited to , phosphoric acid , hydrochloric acid , sulfuric acid , etc . the preferable acid is phosphoric acid ( h 3 po 4 ). one preferable combination of reagents for detecting peracids using the chemical reaction illustrated in fig2 is to have a sample that contains 53 % phosphoric acid , 10 % potassium iodide and 2 % starch solution . further , a catalyst may be added to facilitate one or more aspects of the target chemical reaction , for example , ammonium molybdate may be used to facilitate the redox reaction or catalase enzyme can be used to reduce the background of hydrogen peroxide . preferably , the combined reagents 126 are mixed together into one solution for addition to the reaction cell 114 , and hence the solution sample 116 . surprisingly , sequential addition of each reagent to the reaction cell has proven to be less accurate , yielding larger data standard deviations . referring again to fig1 , the reagents 126 are mixed with the solution sample 116 for a predetermined amount of time by the action of the reaction stirrer 124 . if the sample contained peracid , the potassium iodide reacts with the peracid to form a carboxylic acid , water and iodine ( i 3 − ). ( see fig2 ). the iodine further reacts with the starch to form a complex having a dark blue color . it is important that the peracid is the limiting reagent so that all the peracid has reacted to form a quantitative amount of iodine / starch complex . after the reagents 126 react with any peracid in the sample , a second reading is taken through the reaction cell 114 by the led 128 / photosensor 130 assembly to measure the light intensity in mv , this is often termed the i ( lo ) point ( see below ). after the i ( lo ) reading has been communicated to the controller 110 , a signal is sent by the controller 110 to trigger a titrant pump 134 to add titrant to a titrant dropper 138 . the titrant pump 134 is activated and removes a predetermined amount of titrant from the titrant reservoir 140 and fills the titrant dropper 138 . a preferable amount of titrant for addition to the titrant dropper 138 is between 1 and 2 milliliters ( mls ). the titrant used to illustrate the embodiment of the present invention in fig2 is sodium thiosulfate ( na 2 s 2 o 3 ). note that as the sodium thiosulfate is added to the reaction cell it reacts with the dark blue iodine / starch complex to form colorless reaction products , i 3 − and s 4 o 6 2 − . the addition of titrant continues until the endpoint , or other such target point , of the reaction is reached . the endpoint of the reaction indicates the point where a known concentration of titrant causes a determinable number of electrons to be gained or lost from the target species , associated with a distinctive color change ( dark blue to colorless in the example discussed in fig2 ). again referring to fig1 , addition of titrant 136 to the reaction cell occurs when individual drops of titrant 136 are released from the titrant dropper 138 into the reaction cell 114 , and hence solution sample 116 / reagent mixture . a led 142 / photosensor 144 ( termed the first photosensor ) assembly detects the number of drops 136 released from the titrant dropper 138 by detecting each drop as an interruption of light — causing a substantial pulse of light for each drop that falls from the titrant dropper 138 into the reaction cell 114 . a pulse counter 143 relays the information to the controller 110 and counter 147 . in preferable embodiments , the release of each drop 136 of titrant is timed so that the drop is fully mixed into the solution sample 116 / reagent 126 mixture and a reading made by the led 128 / photosensor 130 before the next drop of titrant is released . one embodiment for facilitating the delay is to have a valve 146 in the titrant dropper 138 that is responsive to a signal from the controller 110 . as titrant is added to the reaction cell , the led 128 / 130 is continually transmitting the light intensity of the solution sample within the reaction cell to the controller 110 . fig3 illustrates a graphical representation of a titration using an optical characteristic , i . e ., light intensity , to follow the reaction . using the chemical reaction discussed in fig2 , in the absence of reagents , the solution sample allows the majority of light to pass through to the second photosensor 130 , as indicated by arrow 100 ( i ( hi )). addition of reagents 126 causes the peracid in the sample to induce the formation of a dark blue complex , e . g ., i 3 / starch complex , as indicated by arrow 102 ( i ( lo )). the dark blue complex causes a drastic reduction in the light intensity detected at the second photosensor 130 . addition of titrant to the sample causes the dark blue complex to react and form a colorless solution . as the colorless reaction species are formed , more light is detected by the second photosensor until the endpoint is reached , as indicated by arrow 104 . again referring to fig1 , once the endpoint is reached the controller 110 signals the titrant pump 134 to turn off . note that the endpoint is any reproducible point that avoids noise at the transition region , for example , at ½ [ i ( hi )+ i ( lo )], ⅓ [ i ( hi )+ i ( lo )], highest point of the 1 st derivative of the curve , and the like , and can be in a linear or log scale . once the controller 110 has determined the amount of titrant required to reach the endpoint of the reaction , it may send a signal to the reaction stirrer 124 to turn off . a second drain pump ( not shown ) or waste valve may be activated to remove the test sample . in preferred embodiments , a post flush of sample or water may be used to minimize any lingering starch or other contaminant in the reaction cell . the number of drops of titrant required to reach the endpoint of the reaction may then be compared to “ standard curve ” data stored in the memory of the controller 110 . note , the standard curve data stored in the controller 110 is determined by having previously taken a series of samples , each sample having a sequentially larger concentration of the target chemical agent , and testing each sample on the system 106 . the number of drops of titrant required to reach the endpoint ( as determined by light intensity ) or any standardized points of light intensity , for each sample is plotted to provide a relationship between chemical agent concentration and drops of titrant required to reach the endpoint . as shown in fig4 , parts per million of a chemical agent 149 in a sample are plotted against the number of titrant drops 151 required to reach the endpoint 153 for that chemical agent under the reaction conditions , and repeated for accuracy 155 . the data plot is referred to as a standard curve and is stored in a table in memory in the controller 110 . the controller 110 takes the data in memory and determines the unknown concentration of the target chemical agent from the number of drops of titrant required to reach the endpoint of the reaction . in preferred embodiments , a parametric fit , e . g ., linear least square , is performed and a conversion performed by equation with the parameters determined from the fit . note , as discussed previously , other standard curve data can be stored in the controller 110 , for example , the number of drops of titrant in relation to a target ph , etc . a user interface 148 is alerted at the completion of a sample run and the concentration results of the chemical agent are displayed . results can be transmitted to a field operator , to an operation facility , or to a central data base for future use , etc . for example , a central data base 157 can be created having data from previous sample runs . the stored data can be generated from the same or other like sources and can be used as a comparison point for tracking the performance of the system 106 at controlling the chemical agent &# 39 ; s levels in the source , for tracking the efficiency of how much chemical agent is added to the source as compared to how well the source &# 39 ; s chemical agent levels have been controlled , i . e ., the efficiency of sample run . the generated results from the sample run can be compared to the data in the central data base to determine if additional supplies need to be obtained for future runs / treatments , as well as like circumstances . when the concentration of the chemical agent is below or above certain predetermined critical parameters an alarm can be triggered , for example , if the chemical agent is at a toxic concentration in the sample source 112 , an alarm is set off , and optionally the sample source 112 drained . in a preferred embodiment , the user interface 148 can transmit manual instructions from the user to the controller 110 . for example , the user may request that the sample run be repeated , concentration parameters altered , sample size adjusted , etc . when the analyte concentration in the sample 116 , and hence the sample source 112 , is below a predetermined parameter , the controller 110 determines a corrective amount of agent to be added to the sample source 112 . controller 110 signals a dosing pump 150 to pull the corrective amount of agent from a supply 152 and release it into the sample source 112 . release of the agent is controlled into the sample source 112 to quickly and safely change the agent &# 39 ; s concentration . when the chemical agent concentration in the solution sample 116 , and hence the sample source 112 , is above a predetermined parameter , the controller 110 determines the corrective dilution required to bring the existing agent &# 39 ; s concentration within the predetermined parameters . controller 110 signals the dosing pump 150 to pull the corrective amount of water or other non - agent containing solution 154 from a supply and release it into the sample source 112 . one method in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention is shown in fig5 . in operation 500 , the parameters for the target chemical agent are set and input into the controller . parameters include , for example , the sample size , reaction chemistry , the concentration of each reagent and volume of reagent required for each sample run , titrant concentration and volume of titrant to be loaded into the titrant dropper , delay time between each drop of titrant release , standard curve conversion between the number of titrant drops and the target agent concentration , the range for acceptable sample chemical agent concentrations , dosing data for corrective action , etc . operation 502 assumes control from operation 500 . in operation 502 , solution of appropriate volume is removed from the sample source for analysis , and a sample added to the reaction cell . the sample is mixed with the appropriate reagents for analysis . operation 502 surrenders control to operation 504 . in operation 504 , release of a titrant is triggered . the titrant is released one drop at a time so that the titrant drop falls into the sample . in one embodiment of the present method there is a sufficient delay between the release of each drop of titrant to allow the titrant to be mixed into the sample and a reading made of the sample . one embodiment for this delay is a valve in the titrant dropper that is triggered at appropriate preset intervals . operation 506 assumes control from operation 504 . in operations 506 and then operation 508 , the release of a drop of titrant is detected and transmitted to the controller as a counted drop , while the response to the drop of titrant in the sample is monitored . a preset reaction point , for example the endpoint , is compared by the controller to the monitored data received from the sample . when the preset reaction point is the same or within a preset range of the reaction point , the concentration of target chemical agent is calculated from the number of drops of titrant released into the sample . operation 510 assumes control from operation 508 . in operation 510 , a result from the run is displayed on a user interface . operation 512 assumes control from operation 510 . in operation 512 , a determination is made as to whether corrective action is required to either dilute or concentrate the agent &# 39 ; s concentration in the sample source . in one embodiment , the chemical agent is automatically released as a result of the determined concentration . another method in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention is shown in fig6 . in operation 600 , the measurement range for the next sample run is entered from either a preset menu of existing standardized ranges or new ranges entered . the ranges may be automatically entered , i . e ., use last data unless commanded otherwise , or may require a manual command for each sample run . operation 602 assumes control from operation 600 . in operation 602 , the concentration of the titrant is entered . preferably , the information obtained in operations 600 and 602 is sufficient to calculate a target chemical agent concentration from a number of titrant drops required to reach an endpoint for a particular titration run . operation 604 assumes control from operation 602 . in operation 604 , the reaction stirrer is turned on to a preset speed . sample volume size , titrant concentration , length of delay between release of each titrant drop , viscosity of the sample , etc , are factors in determining the reaction stirrer &# 39 ; s set speed . alternatively , a default speed may be set and used to accommodate the most extreme reaction conditions . operation 606 assumes control from operation 604 . in operation 606 , the sample pump is activated and solution is taken from the sample source and flushed through the reaction cell . the amount of solution flushed through the reaction cell is preset , and dependent on the size of the reaction cell , sample size , flow time , flow rate , sensitivity required for the chemical analysis , etc . the solution can be flushed through the reaction cell either passively , by allowing the solution to flow out of the reaction cell , or actively by siphoning or pumping the excess solution from the reaction cell as the reaction cell fills . operation 608 assumes control from operation 606 . in operation 608 , the drain pump is activated and solution removed from the reaction cell until a preset volume of sample remains for testing . after operation 608 is completed , operation 610 assumes control . in operation 610 , the light intensity through the sample is ascertained . the light intensity reading is the baseline ( i ( hi )) for further readings made on the sample during the course of the analysis . ( see fig3 ) in an embodiment of the present method , a determination operation 612 ascertains whether the light intensity of the sample is within a preset range of light intensity . a lower than expected light intensity suggests either a damaged light source or reaction cell , i . e ., scratched glass , smudged glass , etc , or possibly that contaminates from previous reactions remain in the reaction cell . operation control branches yes if the light intensity of the sample is within the appropriate range and operation control is assumed by operation 614 . operation control branches no if the light intensity of the sample is not within the appropriate range and operation 606 assumes control . if operation control branches no a second time in a row , operation control switches to operation 642 , and the system is switched off . in operation 614 , the reagent pump is activated and a preset volume of reagent is added to the reaction cell . operation 614 delays for a preset period of time to allow the added reagents to mix with the sample before surrendering control to operation 616 . in operation 616 , the light intensity is ascertained for the sample / reagent mixture ( i ( lo )). ( see fig3 ) operation 618 assumes control from operation 616 . in operation 618 the pulse counter is reset . operation 620 assumes control from operation 618 . operation 620 triggers the titration pump to add titrant to the titrant dropper . optionally , operation 620 may control a valve in the titrant dropper to regulate the release of each drop of titrant . operation 622 assumes control from operation 618 , a drop of titrant is released from the titrant dropper into the sample . operation 624 assumes control from operation 622 . operation 624 detects the drop of titrant released from the titrant dropper which is relayed to the pulse counter . the pulse counter counts the drop and relays the information to the controller / counter . operation 626 assumes control from operation 624 . in operation 626 , the light intensity of the sample / reagent / titrant mix is determined . operation 626 delays before ascertaining the light intensity so that the titrant is properly mixed into the reaction mixture , and the reaction allowed to come to an equilibrium . after operation 626 is completed , determination operation 628 ascertains whether the endpoint ( or other reaction stop point ) has been reached . operation control branches yes if the light intensity is within a predetermined range from the light intensity endpoint ( ½ ( i ( hi )+ i ( lo ) or other endpoints that avoid noise at the transition point ) and control is surrendered to operation 630 . operation control branches no if the light intensity is below the predetermined range from the light intensity endpoint and operation 622 assumes control . this cycle will continue until results allow operation control to branch yes . operation 630 assumes control from operation 628 to turn off the titrant pump and in embodiments with a titrant valve , to close the valve in the titrant dropper . operation 632 assumes control from operation 630 . operation 632 assimilates the number of drops of titrant required to reach the endpoint of the reaction with preset data from standard curves or other analyte conversions , to calculate the concentration of target analyte in the sample and hence the sample source . operation 634 assumes control from operation 632 and displays the chemical agent concentration for viewing by a field worker , facility manager or other interested user . after operation 632 is complete , determination operation 636 ascertains whether the sample source agent concentration is within the preset ranges . operation control branches yes if the agent concentration is within preset ranges and determination operation 638 assumes control . operation control branches no if the agent concentration is not within preset ranges and operation 640 assumes control . determination operation 638 ascertains whether multiple determinations for each sample are required . operation control branches yes where a next reading is required at some future time . variable delay periods may be present with operation control , so that a next sample is analyzed in 1 minute , 5 minutes , 15 minutes or any other desirable interval . when the delay period has expired operation control is surrendered to operation 606 . operation control branches no where a next reading is not required and operation 642 assumes control . operation 642 turns off the reaction stirrer , sample pump , drain pump , light sources , pulse counter , and display . when operation 640 has assumed control , operation control determines the amount of chemical agent required , or the dilution factor needed , to bring the agent &# 39 ; s concentration within predetermined agent concentrations . operation 644 assumes control from operation 640 once the appropriate corrective action has been determined . in operation 644 , the dosing pump is activated to release either chemical agent , to concentrate the chemical agent concentration , or water ( or other sample compatible liquid ), to dilute the chemical agent concentration , into the sample source . once complete , operation 638 assumes control from operation 644 . it will be clear that the present invention is well adapted to attain the ends and advantages mentioned as well as those inherent therein . while a presently preferred embodiment has been described for purposes of this disclosure , various changes and modifications may be made which are well within the scope of the present invention . numerous other changes may be made which will readily suggest themselves to those skilled in the art and which are encompassed in the spirit of the invention disclosed and as defined in the appended claims . | 8 |
the following discussion is directed to various embodiments of the invention . the embodiments disclosed should not be interpreted , or otherwise used , as limiting the scope of the disclosure , including the claims . in addition , one skilled in the art will understand that the following description has broad application , and the discussion of any embodiment is meant only to be exemplary of that embodiment , and not intended to intimate that the scope of the disclosure , including the claims , is limited to that embodiment . this disclosure may contain subject matter that may be subject matter disclosed in u . s . pat . no . 6 , 460 , 104 , 6 , 061 , 752 , and 5 , 241 , 630 , all of which are incorporated herein by reference . this application is also related to application ser . no . ______ , entitled “ communicating information in a computer system ” ( attorney docket number 200209653 - 2 ), which is incorporated herein by reference . referring now to fig1 , a rack or support structure 10 is shown . in general , the support structure 10 may house any structure that is capable of accommodating one or more chassis 12 . an exemplary chassis 12 is shown in fig1 containing one or more configurable components 14 and 16 that are capable of being physically rearranged in the chassis 12 . in addition , the configurable components 14 and 16 may be configured such that they perform a variety of functions . for example , in some embodiments , configurable components 14 and 16 may be configured as storage devices ( e . g ., hard disk , floppy disk , cd - rom ), but in other embodiments , they may be configured as switches , routers , or power supplies . also , the configurable components may comprise entire servers , such as blade - type servers . as shown in fig1 , the storage device 16 may permit easy removal and insertion into a corresponding slot of the chassis 12 . accordingly , as storage devices may be inserted and removed from the chassis 12 , a modular server may be built that is capable of adaptively meeting demand . additionally , the rack 10 may include multiple chassis 12 , which may further allow the overall capability of the system to be scaled to meet demand . fig2 shows a possible implementation of the storage device 16 . as shown , the device may include electrical connector pins 18 . the pins 18 preferably seat into a mating electrical connector 20 on a circuit board backplane 22 , thereby allowing the device to be inserted into and removed from the backplane 22 as indicated by the double headed arrow . backplane 22 may reside in the chassis 12 and the configurable components 14 and 16 may be inserted or removed from the backplane 22 during normal system operation . inserting and / or removing the device during normal system operation is termed “ hot swapping ”. hot swapping may be advantageous in that the entire system does not need to be rebooted in order to recognize when devices are added to and removed from the system . storage device 16 preferably includes status indicators , such as light emitting diodes ( leds ) 24 . although fig2 shows the leds on the face of the storage device 16 , the leds 24 may be integrated at any suitable location on the storage device 16 . using the leds 24 , information is conveyed to a user about the status of an individual storage device , regardless of the physical location of the leds 24 . for example , if the leds 24 indicate device failure , then the user may need to hot swap the device . fig3 a shows the backplane 22 including connectors 20 a - f . devices having dimensions and functions akin to storage device 16 may interface to the backplane 22 using connectors 20 a - f . with multiple storage devices coupled to the backplane 22 , a redundant array of independent disks ( raid ) may be formed . in general , raid techniques provide methods for redundantly accessing the multiple storage devices in the array as if the array were one large drive . using raid techniques , the time for retrieving data from storage devices may be reduced using “ striping ” techniques . striping refers to reading information from or writing information to multiple storage devices concurrently . performance of a storage device may be limited by the time it takes the storage device &# 39 ; s mechanical components ( e . g ., disk head ), to locate data . raid techniques allow the mechanical latency associated with the storage devices to be decreased by operating these storage devices in parallel . for example , large files may be broken up into smaller segments prior to writing them to the redundant array of storage devices . consequently , the smaller segments are preferably written to the redundant storage devices concurrently . similarly , to read stored information , the segments of information may be concurrently read from the redundant storage devices and the larger file may be reconstituted . reading and writing data in this manner may allow for faster performance . additionally , data integrity may be increased using raid techniques . one technique involves duplicating the contents of one storage device on a second storage device . thus , in the event of a failure of one storage device , the other storage device preferably provides a copy of the desired data . a second technique involves parity . parity entails writing data to several storage devices in a sequential manner , where the last storage device stores data that is a function of the first and second storage devices . for example , data may be written to a first storage device coupled to connector 20 c , and data also may be written to a second storage device coupled to connector 20 d . a third storage device coupled to connector 20 e may then store the exclusive or of the contents of the first and second storage devices . in the event of the failure of a storage device , the contents of the failed device may be recreated by exclusive or &# 39 ; ing the contents of the other storage devices . therefore , using raid techniques , data may be spread over the multiple storage devices so that the risks associated with device failure are reduced and the time for accessing data also are also reduced . referring still to fig3 a , devices coupled to backplane 22 may be configured into various arrangements using cable connectors 26 a - c . for example , fig3 a shows a ribbon cable 30 coupled between cable connectors 26 b and 26 c . with ribbon cable 30 configured in this manner , devices coupled to connectors 20 a - f may be interconnected over a common bus 28 as indicated by the dotted line . the common bus 28 preferably provides a communication channel over which the storage devices may communicate and form the redundant array described above . a backplane controller 31 couples to the bus 28 , and a terminator 32 may be used to electrically terminate the bus 28 . the backplane controller 31 preferably receives status and control information via the bus 28 . bus 28 may be any variety , including a small computer system interconnect ( scsi ) bus . a ribbon cable 34 preferably couples cable connector 26 a ( also coupled to bus 28 ) to a cable connector 35 a on an i / o board 36 as shown . i / o board 36 preferably includes cable connector 35 b , which may be used to divide or split bus 28 as described below . ribbon cable 34 preferably couples the bus 28 to a storage controller 40 , which may reside on the i / o board 36 . the storage controller 40 may implement raid techniques on bus 28 . i / o board 36 preferably includes board connectors 37 for expansion boards . for example , board connectors 37 may contain an expansion board with another storage controller to be used in conjunction with storage controller 40 , or instead of storage controller 40 . storage controller 40 may implement raid techniques over bus 28 . in addition , the storage controller 40 preferably couples to an auxiliary bus 42 . bus 42 may be any variety , including a two wire i 2 c bus . a ribbon cable 44 preferably couples the bus 42 to the backplane 22 . on the backplane 22 , the bus 42 couples to a secondary backplane controller 45 . in general , backplane controllers 31 and 45 receive status and control information regarding the storage devices coupled to the backplane . the backplane controllers 31 and 45 may indicate the status of the various storage devices by illuminating the appropriate led 24 . the arrangement of the ribbon cables 30 and 34 on the backplane 22 shown in fig3 a is referred to as a “ single bus ” bus arrangement because bus 28 comprises a single continuous bus . with backplane 22 configured in this manner , the storage devices coupled to connectors 20 a - f may operate as a single storage array , and backplane controller 31 may be used to receive and / or process status and control information for the various storage devices . fig3 b shows cable connectors 26 a - c configured in a “ dual bus ” arrangement , where separate busses 28 a - b may be formed by dividing or splitting bus 28 . busses 28 a - b may be any type of bus , such as a scsi bus . in the dual bus arrangement , cable connector 26 b couples to a terminator 46 , which may electrically terminate bus 28 a . cable connector 26 c couples to the cable connector 35 b on i / o board 36 via ribbon cable 48 . connection between cable connector 26 a and cable connector 35 a preferably remains unchanged from the single bus configuration shown in fig3 a . in this manner , storage controller 40 couples to bus 28 a via ribbon cable 34 and also couples to bus 28 b via ribbon cable 48 . ribbon cable 44 and bus 42 may be configured similar to the configuration shown in fig3 a such that storage controller 40 may couple to backplane controller 45 via bus 42 . note that alternate configurations for cable connectors 35 a - b and cable connectors 26 a - b are possible . for example , cable connector 26 a may couple to cable connector 35 b to form one bus , and likewise cable connector 26 c and 35 a may be coupled together to form another bus . with the backplane 22 configured in a dual bus arrangement , the storage controller 40 preferably implements raid techniques on each bus . for example , the storage devices coupled to the connectors 20 a - b ( i . e ., the devices on bus 28 a ), may form a first array of storage devices . the devices on bus 28 a preferably include an operating system ( os ) where the os may be mirrored onto each storage device on bus 28 a . with the storage devices on bus 28 a configured in this manner , the storage devices coupled to connectors 20 c - f ( i . e ., the devices on bus 28 b ), preferably form a second array of storage devices that contain data . in this arrangement , the data may be spread across the various storage devices on bus 28 b using the parity techniques described above . therefore , using a dual bus arrangement , data redundancy is separately provided for the os and also for the data . the secondary backplane controller 45 preferably receives status and control information , from the storage controller 40 , via bus 42 . backplane controller 45 preferably indicates the status of the storage devices coupled to bus 28 a . the status and control information may be used by the storage devices coupled to bus 28 a to communicate information about each storage device to the user . for example , if the storage device coupled to connector 20 a fails , the storage controller 40 may detect this via bus 28 a . consequently , the storage controller 40 may issue a status update to the backplane controller 45 via bus 42 . backplane controller 45 may then indicate the failure of the storage device coupled to connector 20 a by illuminating the leds 24 . backplane controller 31 preferably receives status and control information , from the storage controller 40 , via bus 28 b . the status and control information preferably is used by the storage devices on bus 28 b to communicate information about each storage device on bus 28 b to the user . for example , if the storage device coupled to connector 20 c fails , the storage controller 40 may detect this via bus 28 b . accordingly , the storage controller 40 may issue a status update to the backplane controller 31 via the bus 28 b . backplane controller 31 may then indicate the failure of the storage device coupled to connector 20 c by illuminating the leds 24 . therefore , under normal operating conditions in the dual bus configuration , backplane controller 45 utilizes two busses ( i . e ., bus 28 a and bus 42 ), and backplane controller 31 utilizes one bus ( i . e ., bus 28 b ). however , under normal operating conditions in the single bus configuration ( shown in fig3 a ), backplane controller 31 utilizes one bus ( bus 28 ). fig4 a and 4b depict block diagrams of an exemplary bus switch in single bus mode and dual bus mode , respectively . mode detect logic 50 determines the bus configuration of backplane 22 ( i . e ., single bus versus dual bus ). for example , if a ribbon cable is connected between connectors 26 b and 26 c ( as shown in fig3 a ), then the mode detect logic 50 determines a single bus configuration . the mode detect logic 50 may accomplish this , for example , by determining the electrical resistance of connectors 26 b and 26 c , where the value of the resistance is related to whether a ribbon cable is present or whether a the bus is terminated using a terminator . the mode detect logic 50 preferably coordinates with a bus switch 51 in order to couple the appropriate backplane controller ( i . e ., backplane controller 45 or backplane controller 31 ) to the appropriate bus depending on the determined bus configuration . fig4 a depicts the single bus arrangement in which the storage controller 40 couples to the storage devices d 0 - d 5 and backplane controller 31 via bus 28 . the storage controller 40 also may couple to the secondary backplane controller 45 via bus 42 . the switch 51 preferably couples to backplane controllers 31 and 45 as well as storage devices d 0 - d 1 . mode detect logic 50 preferably determines the configuration of the various busses in the system and conveys this information to the switch 51 . the switch 51 then may couple different backplane controllers to different storage devices depending on the bus configuration information provided by mode detect logic 50 . in the single bus configuration shown in fig4 a , the mode detect logic 50 may determine the single bus configuration , and in response , the switch 51 will convey status and control information to devices d 0 - d 1 from backplane controller 31 using bus 28 . furthermore , the backplane controller 45 and bus 42 are shown with dashed lines in fig4 a to indicate that they generally are not used in the single bus configuration . in the dual bus configuration of fig4 b , the mode detect logic 50 may determine the single bus configuration , and in response , the switch 51 will convey status and control information to devices d 0 - d 1 from backplane controller 45 using bus 42 . in addition to conveying status and control information to devices d 0 - d 1 , the switch 51 will convey status and control information to devices d 2 - d 5 from backplane controller 31 using bus 28 b . in this manner , the storage devices d 0 - d 1 may form one array of and storage devices d 2 - d 5 may form a separate array , where raid techniques are implemented on each array separately . the above discussion is meant to be illustrative of the principles and various embodiments of the present invention . numerous variations and modifications will become apparent to those skilled in the art once the above disclosure is fully appreciated . for example , other standards may be employed to implement the secondary bus which allow a reduction in the amount of physical space used . it is intended that the following claims be interpreted to embrace all such variations and modifications . | 6 |
the preferred embodiment of the apparatus of the present invention , apparatus 10 , is shown in fig1 - 5 . referring to fig1 apparatus 10 is a means for imparting various centrifugal forces to an end of a fiber , preferably an optical fiber 100 , and includes a drum 20 and a centrifuge motor 31 which are interconnected by a shaft 32 having a bore 33 therethrough . apparatus 10 also includes a heating means 39 , preferably including a high voltage arc 40 ; a portion for advancing the fiber 100 into and retracting the fiber from the heating means 39 , including an advancing motor 53 ( fig2 ) and a thumbwheel 50 ; and a rotational means 37for rotating the heating means 39 about the longitudinal axis of the fiber 100 , the rotational means 37 including a rotational motor 62 . apparatus 10further preferably includes a gas chamber 70 within which portions of the heating means 39 including the high voltage arc 40 are disposed , the chamber 70 being closable with a cap 71 . the centrifuge motor 31 is fixedly attached to a board or platform 80 whichmay be part of or attached to , for example , a table . the drum 20 has a vertical bore 29 through the center thereof , with the shaft 32 of the centrifuge motor 31 disposed in bore 29 . the drum 20 has a transverse bore27 leading from a central well 28 to the exterior of the drum 20 allowing the optical fiber 100 to pass to the remaining portions of the apparatus 10 . the central well 28 preferably has a conical shape with the narrow end36 opening on the drum face 35 opposite the centrifuge motor 31 so that an optical fiber 130 coiled in the central well 28 does not have a tendency to escape from the central well 28 when the drum 20 is rotated . the drum 20 has a first set of electrically conductive slip rings 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 and 25 and a first hollow , open - bottom slip ring 26 attached to thebottom thereof . the electrical slip rings 21 - 25 are used to conduct electrical signals whose function will be described in further detail , while hollow slip ring 26 is used to allow transmission of an inert gas whose use will be described in further detail . the electrical rings 21 - 25 are in electrical contact with corresponding brushes 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 and 85 , disposed in the board 80 . the hollow slip ring 26 is in gas - flow contact with , and may freely rotate with respect to , a first hollow ring 86 disposed in the board 80 . the hollow ring 86 has an open top to allow it to communicate with the hollow slip ring 26 . the rotational motor 62 is fixedly attached to the interior of a spinning housing 90 , the spinning housing 90 being fixedly attached to the outer surface or periphery of the drum 20 so that the spinning housing 90 is spun about the drum 20 central axis when the centrifuge motor 31 rotates . a rotational shaft 61 interconnects the rotational motor 62 and a revolving housing 110 . the rotational shaft 61 fixedly attached to the revolving housing 110 so that when the rotational motor 62 rotates , the revolving housing 110 revolves about its central axis . the rotational shaft 61 is preferably hollow with a bore 63 , and extends from spinning housing 90 into a heating chamber 70 where the optical fiber 100 is heated . a second set of electrically conductive slip rings 111 , 112 , and 113 are fixedly attached to the revolving housing 110 , and are in electrical contact with a second set of brushed 91 , 92 and 93 , respectively , which are disposed on or in the spinning housing 90 , for communication of various electrical signals . a second hollow slip ring 116 is attached to the revolving housing 110 , and is in gas - flow contact with a second hollowring 96 attached to the spinning housing 90 for transmission of the inert gas . a first gas conduit 56 interconnects the first hollow slip ring 26 with thesecond hollow ring 96 . a second gas conduit 76 interconnects the second hollow slip ring 116 and the heating chamber 70 . a third gas conduit ( not shown ) connects the first hollow ring 86 with a supply of inert gas such as argon or nitrogen . the advancing motor 53 ( fig2 ) has a drive wheel 54 ( fig1 ) disposed on an end thereof . the drive wheel 54 , and a thumbwheel 50 for manual use , are made of or coated with a pliable synthetic rubber or other material which allows the wheels 54 and 50 to firmly grip the fiber 100 , yet yieldsenough to allow a larger diameter structure to pass therebetween and does not scratch or mar the fiber 100 surface . the advancing motor 53 is preferably a reversible motor so that the fiber 100 can be advanced into or retracted from the heating chamber 70 as desired . centering tabs 55 ( fig3 and 4 ) are disposed in the end of the bore 63 ofshaft 61 , and serve to releasably center the optical fiber 100 in the bore 63 . the centering tabs 55 are sufficiently flexible so that various diameters of optical fibers 100 can be utilized and so that the fiber 100 can be advanced , retracted , or rotated without marring or damaging the finish of the fiber 100 or breaking the fiber 100 . the centering tabs 55 can be manually operated or can be modified and connected to other devicesto allow automatic operation . a high voltage arc apparatus 40 is located in the heating chamber 70 and includes two electrode heads 41 , each electrode head 41 having a pin 42 extending outwardly therefrom so that the pins 42 are separated by a gap across which an arc is formed . the electrode heads 41 each preferably havea dovetail - shaped foot portion 43 ( fig4 ) which is mounted in and slidablyengaged with a rail 117 in the revolving housing 110 to allow positive positioning of the pins 42 with respect to the distance from the end of the rotational shaft 61 and yet allow the pins 42 to be moved laterally with respect to the fiber 100 longitudinal axis . a u - shaped bar 44 interconnects the two electrode heads 41 . the u - shaped bar 44 includes two legs 57 connected by a straight bar 58 . the legs 57 are pivotally connected to the foot portion 43 of each electrode head 41 by a pinned joint so that the leg 57 can pivot with respect to the electrode head 41 but not move laterally with respect to the head . the foot portion 44 is pivotally connected by means of a pinned joint to a plate 45 which is rigidly attached to a plunger 121 of a solenoid or linear motor 120 or other means of providing a variable , controlled linearmotion . the solenoid 120 is itself fixedly attached to the revolving housing 110 . the revolving housing 110 has a threaded bore 118 ( fig5 ) aligned with theslidable direction of the foot portion 43 of each electrode head 41 . a screw 119 and a tension spring 122 are disposed in each bore 118 so that the spring 122 biases the electrode head 41 , with the screw 119 being usedto adjust the zero position of the electrode head 41 by changing the position of the spring 122 . preferably , the screws 119 are adjusted such that when no current flows through the solenoid 120 , the longitudinal axesof pins 42 are perpendicular to and intersect the longitudinal axis of fiber 100 . in this manner , retracting the solenoid 120 causes the electrode heads 41 to be displaced laterally from the fiber 100 with the springs 122 allowing a smooth movement . wires ( not shown ) or other suitable conductive means electrically connect slip rings 24 and 25 to the advancing motor 53 and the rotational motor 62to transmit motor control signals from controlling circuitry ( not shown ) tothe motors . slip rings 21 , 22 and 23 are electrically connected to brushes 91 , 92 and 93 , respectively , with brush 93 being connected with slip ring 113 , which is connected to solenoid 120 to transmit a control signal to the solenoid 120 . slip rings 111 and 112 are electrically connected to high voltage terminals 47 and 48 ( fig3 ), respectively , which in turn areconnected to the pins 42 to provide the signal necessary to develop the arc . the various motors 31 , 53 , and 62 , the solenoid 120 , the high voltage arc 40 , and the gas supply means ( not shown ) may be controlled by manual switches . preferably , however , they are controlled by a microcomputer or other computer - based system , by coupling the gas supply means , motor 31 , and slip rings 81 - 85 to switching means controlled by the microcomputer orother computer - based system . the use of computers allows more repeatable and accurate control of the apparatus 10 , allowing uniform shapes to be formed on the fiber 100 . the control exercised by the computer can be of an open loop form or can beclosed loop . in open loop form , the computer simply activates the various motors , the solenoid 120 and the arc 40 in a programmed sequence , with no feedback of the actual qualities of the lens being formed . in closed loop form , a light can be transmitted along the fiber 100 , reflected in the heating chamber 70 and returned along the fiber 100 . this returned signal can be analyzed to allow determination of the shape formed on the fiber 100 , with appropriate changes to the various control signals made as necessary to develop the desired shape . alternately in a closed loop form , the light can be transmitted by the fiber 100 to a receiver located in the heating chamber 70 , with this receiver being linked to the control system , or a light can be transmittedto the fiber 100 and the signal produced by the fiber 100 analyzed by the control system to allow optimal design and production of the shape or lenson the fiber 100 . in addition , combinations of open and closed loop controlcan be utilized during different portions of the operation . in operation , the cap 71 is opened to allow an operator access to the heating chamber 70 if desired and if manual alignment of the fiber 100 is utilized . a first end 102 of the fiber 100 is inserted through the bore 33in the centrifuge motor shaft 32 and then through the bore 27 in the drum 20 . when the fiber is short enough to coil up inside the well 28 , the fiber 100 can be coiled in the well 28 and the end 102 can be inserted directly into the bore 27 in the drum 20 . the fiber 100 is advanced until it contacts the wheels 50 and 54 which are rotated from the outside housing 90 manually or turned by the advancing motor 53 , as appropriate , to cause the fiber 100 to advance further until its first end 102 is adjacent the pins 42 of the electric arc 40 . the cap 71 is then closed , and the inert gas is caused to flow from a gas source ( not shown ) through the hollow ring 86 to the gas slip ring 26 , through conduit 56 to the hollow ring 96 to the slip ring 116 into the conduit 76 , and through the conduit 76 into the heating chamber 70 . the centrifuge motor 31 is then turned on , causing the drum 20 , the spinning housing 90 and the revolving housing 110 to rotate in a plane parallel to the board 80 and about the drum axis , imparting a centrifugal force to the first end 102 of fiber 100 , the force being aligned with the longitudinal axis of the fiber 100 . the rotational motor 62 is then turned on , causing the revolving housing 110 , and the high voltage arc 40 disposed therein , to rotate about the longitudinal axis of fiber 100 , providing uniform heating about the end 102 . an electric current is supplied to the high voltage terminals 47 and 48 , causing an arc to flow from one pin 42 to the other , which causes the end 102 of the fiber 100 to heat up if the end 102 is sufficiently close to the arc . as the heat applied to the end 102 causes the end 102 to melt , the advancing motor 53 is turned on , causing the drive wheel 54 to rotate , which causes the fiber 100 to advance longitudinally through the bore 63 ofthe shaft 61 of the rotational motor 62 . when a sphere 101 of a desired size is formed on the first end 102 of the fiber 100 , the size being determined by the size of the fiber 100 and by the amount of time fiber 100 has been heated and advanced in an open loop circumstances , or by viewing the first end 102 of the fiber 100 in a closed loop circumstance , and a roughly spherically shaped ball has been formed , the various motors 31 , 53 , and 62 and the solenoid 120 are controlled to move the end 102 as necessary to produce the desired lens orshape by moving the end into and out of the arc and varying the various centrifugal forces to cause the molten material to solidify or flow where desired . for example , if a spherical lens or shape is desired , the high voltage arc 40 can be shut off , the rotational and advancing motors 62 , 53 stopped andthe centrifuge motor 31 controlled until the end 102 solidifies . once the end 102 has cooled enough to solidify , the centrifuge motor 31 is shut off , gas flow in the heating chamber 70 is stopped , and the fiber 100 is removed from apparatus 10 . the fiber 100 can be removed by opening the cap71 and pulling the fiber 100 out , so that its second end follows the path first end 102 took in entering apparatus 10 or the end 102 by retracting in a manner opposite to its insertion . as mentioned before , the material making up the wheels 50 and 54 is preferably sufficiently resilient to yield when the sphere 101 passes between the wheels 50 and 54 , so that thesphere 101 does not become damaged . alternatively , the thumb wheel 50 couldbe made vertically adjustable so that it could be moved out of the way whenit is desired to pass the sphere 101 between the wheels 50 and 54 . if the desired end product is something other than a spherically - shaped lens , the procedure , once a melted ball of the desired size is formed , is somewhat different . if , for example , it is desired to form an ellipsoidal lens 103 ( fig6 ), once a molten sphere 101 is formed , the speed of the centrifuge motor 31 is increased , increasing the amount of longitudinal centrifugal force exerted on sphere 101 . the arc 40 remains on and heatingthe end 102 until an ellipsoidal lens 102 is formed from the flowing , molten material . the arc 40 and the rotational and advancing motors 62 , 53are then shut off , and the speed of the centrifuge motor 31 is maintained until the lens 103 is hardened . the centrifuge motor 31 is then shut off , gas flow into the heating chamber 70 is stopped , and the fiber 100 is removed from the apparatus 10 . when a concave lens 104 ( fig7 ) is desired , the centrifuge motor 31 is sped up and the arc 40 is moved away from the longitudinal axis of the fiber 100 . the solenoid 120 is activated , causing the plunger 121 to be retracted into the solenoid 120 . this movement of the plunger 121 pulls the straight bar 58 of the u - shaped bar 44 downward , and causes the legs 57 of the u - shaped bar 44 to become more vertically oriented . this causes the electrode heads 41 and the pins 42 to move laterally away from the longitudinal axis of the fiber 100 and toward the outer edge of the end 102 . this removal of the arc from the center of the end 102 allows the center to solidify and the edges to remain molten . the longitudinal centrifugal force causes the edges of the end to continue to extend , resulting in a concave shape 104 . when the desired shape is formed , the arc 40 is shut off , and the speeds of the centrifuge motor 31 and the rotational motor 62 are maintained until the lens 104 hardens . the centrifuge motor 31 , the rotational motor 62 and the flow of gas are then shut off , and the fiber 100 is removed from apparatus 10 . when it is desired to make , for example , a multiply ringed or a fresnel lens 108 ( fig1 ), the sphere 101 is moved by the advancing motor 53 , andpins 42 are moved by the solenoid 120 , so that the arc passes through the edge of sphere 101 at a position forward of the equator , that is , on the opposite side of the equator of sphere 101 from the unaltered portion of fiber 100 , and offset from the longitudinal axis of fiber 100 ( fig9 ). the speed of centrifugal motor 31 is increased . the portions of the sphere101 closer to the longitudinal axis harden and the portions under the arc 40 remain molten . when the first projection 105 ( fig1 ) is formed by thelongitudinal centrifugal force , the arc is shut off and the projection 105 cools and solidifies . the fiber 100 and the pins 42 are then manipulated such that the arc passes through the edge of the modified sphere 106 at a position closer to the equator of sphere 106 . the arc 40 is then turned on , and remains on until a second projection 107 is formed , at which time the arc 40 is shut off and the second projection 107 solidifies . this process is repeated until the desired number of projections or gratings ofthe fresnel lens 108 are formed . the foregoing are only examples of several lenses or shapes that can be formed on the end 102 . various other shapes can be formed by appropriatelycontrolling , varying and alternating the speeds of the various motors 31 , 53 , 62 , the position of the solenoid 120 and the activation of the arc 40 in cooperation , so that the viscosity and surface tension and thermal massand conductivity of the material can be controlled and used as necessary and appropriate to develop the desired shapes , as will be apparent to those skilled in the art . additionally , a second lens can be formed on each end of the fiber 100 . optical fibers having integral lenses formed thereon by the apparatus and method of the present invention can be used , for example , in optical disk drive heads , medical imagery , and telephone splices and other uses in which an optical fiber having an integrally formed lens is an improvement over multiple piece elements and lenses . while the above examples involve forming an integral lens on an optical fiber , the present invention can be used to form integral structures on other types of fibers . in view of the numerous modifications which could be made to the preferred embodiments disclosed herein without departing from the scope or spirit ofthe present invention , the details herein are to be interpreted as illustrative and not in a limiting sense . | 6 |
as can be seen , in fig1 and 3 , a bladder prosthesis according to the invention , indicated as a whole by reference number 10 , comprises a bag 12 made of flexible biocompatible material , with the bottom comers 11 , 13 rounded when viewed from the front , as can be observed in fig1 and a rounded bottom edge 14 , as can be observed in fig3 . a band of biocompatible fabric is applied to the upper sealed edge , with a looped weave such as to promote ingrowth of body tissue in order to incorporate it . the band is indicated by reference number 16 . further portions of biocompatible anchoring fabric can be disposed on the surface of the bag , for example as on the areas indicated by 18 and 19 in the figures . a filing and emptying valve , indicated as a whole by reference number 20 , is applied in proximity to the lower edge of the bag and co - operates with a funnel - shaped conduit 22 . the bag is preferably made of thin silicone , obtained by spraying silicone material dispersed in solvent , then evaporated , and is then cured in an oven at high temperature . the bag , however , can be obtained in whichever other known way or in a way within the reach of a skilled person . a preferred material for the bag is a medical grade silicone . the measurements of the bag are preferably 200 × 130 × 40 mm , with a proper wall thickness . the band 16 and bands 18 and 19 if used are preferably made of a dacron ( dupont de nemours trademark ). fabric woven in a special per se known manner to obtain a surface dense with loops of thread , within which tissue growth can take place for final stabilisation of the prosthesis . the valve 20 will now be described in greater detail with reference to fig4 and 6 . it comprises an adapter 24 , a positioning cylinder 26 , a valve body 28 , a mushroom - type open - close or shutter valve member 30 , and a pusher element 32 guided by a transverse guide pin 34 . the adapter is an element made of flexible material shaped with a thin - walled widened head , indicated by 36 , applied in any per se known manner to the bottom wall of the bag 12 , around an aperture in it ( not shown ). the adapter 24 further comprises a cylindrical part or coupling sleeve 38 into which connections or entrances 40 and 42 for nephrostomic catheters open , said connections preferably being disposed so that the angle between them is slightly less than 180 °. the nephrostomic catheters are indicated with reference numbers 44 , 46 and are made of flexible , biocompatible , tubular material since said catheters are of any per se known type , they will not be described in greater detail , here . within the cylindrical part 38 of the adapter is contained the relatively rigid positioning cylinder 26 , provided with holes 48 , 50 in its skirt portion , said holes being in positions coinciding with the connections 40 , 42 for the catheters , in the adapter . the valve body 28 is housed in an inner chamber defined by cylinder 26 and is closed tight against said cylinder 26 by means of two o - rings , indicated respectively by 52 , 54 , accommodated in seats on the outer surface of the valve body , on opposite sides with respect to the openings 48 , 50 . the valve body has an end chamber or chamber for the open - close valve member , indicated by 56 , and a valve chamber or pusher chamber , indicated by 58 , between which chambers extends a perforated portion or septum 60 . the chamber 56 for the valve - member is defined by a cylindrical outer wall 61 with peripheral openings 62 . the pusher chamber 58 has inlet openings 64 , 66 in register with the connections 40 , 42 for the catheters in the adapter . partition 60 has a central opening 65 and side openings 67 . the valve body also has further through openings 68 , 68 and 70 , 70 with axes at right angles to each other . the openings 68 , 68 accommodate the ends of the pusher guide pin 34 , whilst the openings 70 accommodate plugs 72 , 72 , the function of which will be described below . an end part of the valve body is shaped with a screw thread 74 or other engaging means , to releasably engage a cap or cap 80 ( shown in fig5 ) which closes the chamber 58 with a tight seal by means of a gasket 81 . the valve body accommodates a stem of valve member 30 in the opening 65 . said valve member is mushroom - shaped with a stem 83 having a bulge 84 in an intermediate position and an enlarged cap or diaphragm portion 86 , said cap preferably having a frusto - conical or tapered shape , with an edge or lip 87 having an external diameter sufficient to completely cover openings 67 . member 30 is inserted into opening 65 so that a part of its stem remains inside it with the bulge 84 on one side of partition 60 and the tapered widened partition 86 on the other side . the valve body also accommodates the pusher 32 , which is substantially cylindrical in shape with two diametrically opposed operating protrusions 88 , 88 , spaced from each other and sized as to be able to pass through openings 67 of the partition , 60 , and also has opposed guide grooves 90 , 90 , substantially of the same or a slightly greater width than the diameter of guide pin 34 and engaged on it , so that the pusher can slide axially with respect to the valve body , and be guided by said pin arranged transversally therein . the pusher has elastic return cords 96 , tied to the valve body by means of the above - mentioned plugs 72 , 72 . the guide pin is preferably mounted on the valve body by means of cylindrical gaskets 35 or with end plugs 35 &# 39 ; and a retaining ring 98 is arranged around the ends of said pin and the plugs . according to the invention a valve opening device is also provided , comprising a cap unscrewing element and a pushing element to open the valve member , said elements preferably being interchangeable on a handle having a channel that can also serve as an emptying channel . this accessory device is shown in fig5 and 6 in sectional view along the axis of the emptying channel element , and will be , described below . the device thus comprises an emptying channel and handle element conduit , indicated by 100 , a locking ring 102 , a cap engaging element 104 and a pushing and discharge element 106 for the pusher ( fig6 ). the cap engaging element has a shank 107 that can be engaged in the conduit 100 , a cup - shaped part 108 and a projection 110 designed to be engaged in a radial groove or hollow 111 on the bottom of cap 80 . it will be seen that by arranging the cup - shaped part 108 around cap 80 so that projection 110 engages the hollow 111 and turning the conduct 100 which is accessible from the outside , it is possible to unscrew cap 80 . once cap 80 has been unscrewed , it is possible to apply pushing and discharge element 106 to element conduit 100 , said pushing and discharge element 106 comprising an attachment shank 112 , a cup - shaped part 114 that can be screwed onto the thread of the valve body , and an inner cylindrical pushing part 116 , all these parts defining a through channel 118 . the urine coming from the kidneys is conveyed inside the valve body 28 through the nephrostomic catheters 44 , 46 . here the fluid could take two different opposite routes , but one , the one communicating with the outside , is functionally sealed , at this stage , by the suitably tightened , threaded cap 80 . the second route is towards the reservoir or bladder bag 12 , to reach it has to pass through the valve lumen proper , formed by openings 65 , 67 . the silicone valve member 30 presses on the edges of the valve body partition with the retaining lip 87 , creating a tight seal against the passage of fluids up to a certain head pressure . the diaphragm 86 is held elastically in a closed position by means of a force inherent in the shape and material of valve member 30 and / or imparted by an elastic element ( for example a thin cable -- not shown ) which exerts its force , preferably adjustable , parallel to the valve axis . when the force due to the pressure exerted on the undersurface of the valve diaphragm by the urine coming from the catheters exceeds the force due to the elasticity of the materials , the fluid enters the bladder and begins to fill it . this mechanism operates whether the patient remains in an upright or a supine position . obviously , the pressure within the bladder increases as the bladder fills , putting up an increasing resistance to entry of the fluid . once the bladder is full the pressure of the fluid from the catheters will no longer be sufficient to overcome the resistance of the valve member and the inflow of urine will therefore stop . to completely empty the prosthesis bag , it is sufficient to unscrew the plug 80 . as soon as this is removed there is a slight limited discharge of fluid . this small amount is that always present in the valve body , coming directly from the catheters . with the bladder bag completely or partially filled , its internal pressure is greater than the external pressure ( which coincides with that of the valve body ) therefore the mushroom - shaped diaphragm continues to adhere firmly to the passage section . in order to remove said diaphragm from its perfectly sealed position , the pushing and discharge element 106 with the handle conduit 100 is screwed onto the valve body . this connection raises the pusher element 32 which thus raises the mushroom - shaped diaphragm with the points 88 ( fig6 ), allowing the fluid in the bag 12 to pass through valve 20 to the conduit 100 and to the outside . if , before emptying is complete , the connection is removed ( by unscrewing it ), the system of unbalanced pressures immediately re - establishes the tight seal of the bladder , interrupting the flow . the emptying operation nevertheless ends regularly when there is no fluid in the bladder . removal of the pushing and discharge element 106 in any case causes the return of the diaphragm to the position in which the filling - emptying lumen is sealed , the diaphragm being returned to that position by elastic force , and the return of the pusher to the situation in fig5 because of the elastic cords 96 . once emptying has been carried out the screw plug is again fitted . the funnel - shaped conduit that serves to prevent emptying in unwanted directions can be cleaned , dried , washed and lastly folded beneath the clothes . it will be appreciated that the valve body with the pusher and attachments can easily be periodically removed for cleaning . with the valve body removed the catheters can also be accessed for cleaning with a swab and / or cleaning fluid can be introduced into the bag . | 8 |
cho - wt cells : cho ( chinese hamster ovary ) cells are fibroblasts transfected with the wild - type cftr gene ( cftr - wt ). these cells will therefore overexpress the cftr protein . culture medium : mem alpha medium ( gibco )+ 7 % foetal calf serum + 0 . 5 % penicilline / streptomycin + 100 μm methotrexate ( amethopterine , sigma ). cf15 cells : cf15 cells are human nasal epithelial cells expressing the δf508 - cftr gene . culture medium : dmem + ham f12 medium + 10 % fcs + 0 . 6 % penicilline / streptomycin + growth factors ( 5 μg / ml insulin , 5 μg / ml transferrin , 5 . 5 μm epinephrin , 0 . 18 mm adenine , 10 ng / ml egf , 2 nm t3 , 1 . 1 μm hydrocortisone ). calu - 3 cells : calu - 3 cells are human lung epithelial cells expressing the wild - type cftr gene . culture medium : dmem / f12 medium with glutamax + 7 % foetal calf serum + 1 % penicillin / streptomycin . immunolabelling allows visualising the cellular localisation of the cftr protein by means of an anti - cftr primary antibody ( ab ), and a secondary cy3 - labelled fluorescent antibody directed against the primary antibody . the cells are first seeded on cover slips in an appropriate culture medium . the cells are then washed 3 times with tbs ( 157 mm nacl , 20 μm tris base , ph 7 . 4 ) for 5 min . each time and then fixed by adding 3 % tbs - paraformaldehyde for 20 min . after 3 washes with tbs ( 5 min . each ), the cells are incubated with 0 . 1 % tbs - triton ( 10 min ) to make holes in the cell membrane , and then washed 3 times with tbs before being exposed to 0 . 5 % tbs - bsa - 0 . 05 % saponin for 1 hr . the cells are then incubated with the primary anti - cftr c terminal antibody ( 2 μg / ml ) for 1 hr . the cells are washed 3 times ( 5 min . each ) with tbs - bsa - saponin before incubating with the gam - cy3 secondary antibody ( 1 / 400 ) for 1 hr . after 2 tbs washes ( 5 min . each ), the nuclei are labelled by incubating with topro3 ( 1 / 1 , 000 ) for 5 min . finally , the cover slips can be mounted on a glass slide after 3 final tbs washes ( 5 min . each ). the slides are analysed with a confocal microscope ( bio - rad ) using laser excitation at appropriate wave - lengths . in order to differentiate cy3 from topro3 labelling , the colour of the topor3 fluorescence has been changed to blue ( colour of the nuclei ). measurements of chloride ion transport in the cells were performed using the radioactive iodide efflux technique ( becq and al ., 1999 ; dormer and al ., 2001 ). the 125 i tracer is incorporated into the intracellular milieu . the quantity of radiotracer coming out of the cell is then measured after adding various pharmacological agents . iodide is used as a tracer of chloride ion transport . 125 i has the advantage of being short - lived compared to other markers such as 35 ci ( respective half - lives : 30 days and 300 , 000 years ). the cells are incubated in an appropriate medium in 24 - well plates . the cells are rinsed twice with efflux medium ( 136 . 6 mm nacl , 5 . 4 mm kcl , 0 . 3 mm kh 2 po 4 , 0 . 3 mm nah 2 po 4 , 4 . 2 mm nahco 3 , 1 . 3 mm cacl 2 , 0 . 5 mm mgcl 2 , 0 . 4 mm mgso 4 , 10 mm hepes , 5 . 6 mm d - glucose ) in order to eliminate dead cells , which release radioactivity in an anarchic fashion . the cells are then incubated with a 500 - μl load ( 1 μci / ml 125 ina ) for 30 min for cho - wt or 1 hr for cf15 and calu - 3 cells . the iodide equilibrates on either side of the cell membrane . the following steps are performed using a multiprobe probe ( packard ): the loading medium is rinsed with efflux medium in order to eliminate extracellular radioactivity . the supernatant is collected every minute into haemolysis tubes and the medium is replaced by an equivalent volume of medium ( 500 μl ). no drug is added to the samples taken in the first three minutes in order to obtain a stable baseline characterising the passive exit of i ions . the 7 samples that follow are obtained in the presence of the molecule to be tested . at the end of the experiment , the cells are lysed by adding 500 μl of 0 . 1 n naoh / 0 . 1 % sds ( 30 min ), which allows determining the level of radioactivity remaining inside the cell . the radioactivity present in the haemolysis tubes is measured as counts per minute ( cpm ) using a cobra ii gamma counter ( packard ). the results ( cpm ) are expressed as velocity of radioactive iodide efflux ( r ) according to the formula : r ( min − 1 )=[ in ( 125 i t 1 )− in ( 125 i t 2 )]/( t 1 − t 2 ) where 125 i t 1 = at time t 1 and 125 i t 2 = at time t 2 . this iodide flux is represented by a graph . in order to quantify the iodide efflux due to administration of the tested molecule , the relative flux is calculated as follows in order to ignore the basal flux : relative velocity ( min − 1 )= rpeak − rbasal . finally , these results are normalised in order to compare the effect of one drug versus another . the results are presented in the form of a mean +/− sem . student &# 39 ; s statistical test is used to compare the effect of the various drugs with the controls ( the corresponding p & lt ; 0 . 01 values are considered to be statistically significant ). the mtt cytotoxicity test is a calorimetric test based on the capacity of mitochondrial dehydrogenases to metabolise mtt ( a yellow tetrazolium salt ) into formazan ( purple ). the absorbance is proportional to the concentration of converted dye and can then be measured by spectrophotometry . the cells are incubated in 96 - well microplates in the presence of the agent to be tested for 2 hours . three controls are performed : 100 % live cells ( cells without any agent ); 0 % live cells ( cells left under normal atmosphere ); blank ( medium without cells ). the cells are rinsed with rpmi medium without phenol red in order for the colour of the medium not to interfere with absorbance measurements . the cells are then incubated for 4 hours with 100 μl rpmi solution supplemented with mtt ( 0 . 5 mg / ml ). the medium is eliminated and 100 μl dmso is added to dissolve the converted dye ( formazan ). the absorbance is measured by spectrophotometry at 570 nm ( purple ); 630 nm ( background noise ). in order to ignore the background noise , the following calculation is performed : do reelle = do 570nm − do 630nm . the results are then normalised with respect to the controls ( 100 % and 0 % live cells ) and presented in the form of a mean +/− sem . the study of delf508 - cftr protein addressing is performed in the laboratory by using a combination of pharmacological , cellular imagery , biochemical and electrophysiological tests on cf15 human lung epithelial cells homozygous for the delf508 deletion . results of immunoprecipitation and western - blot analyses of non mutated cftr from wild - type cho cells and delf508 cells treated for 2 hrs with 100 μm of the tested compound ( fig3 c ) or untreated cells ( control ). cf15 cells treated for 24 hrs at 27 ° c . ( fig3 b ) or for 2 hrs with 10 μm thapsigargin ( tg ) were used as a positive control . for each experiment , the addition of a cocktail ( 10 μm forskoline + 30 μm genisteine ) allows activation of the cftr when the latter is localised in the membrane . this allows an iodide efflux to be observed if delf508 addressing has been restored . the results , presented in the form of a histogram , were normalised with respect to a standard treatment ( treatment of the cells with 250 μm mpb - 91 for 2 hrs ), considered to represent 100 % cftr activity . the results obtained show that treatment of cf15 cells with the two forms ( r and s ) of roscovitine for 2 hrs at 37 ° c . restores addressing of the delf508 protein and allows it to function as an ion transporter ( fig1 ). when the cells are not treated , the delf508 protein is not localised in the membrane and no iodide efflux is observed as a result of stimulation with the 10 μm forskoline + 30 μm genisteine cocktail . the ec50 ( molecular concentration giving 50 % of maximal efficiency ) for roscovitine was found to be 34 ± 1 . 9 μm ( r - roscovitine , fig1 a , c ) and 32 ± 1 . 4 ( s - roscovitine , fig1 b , c ) ( n = 4 , in each case ). cellular imagery showed that the delf508 protein was localised in the plasma membrane compartment after treatment with roscovitine . fig3 a to 3c also illustrate the immunolocalisation of delf508 - cftr after 2 hrs of treatment with roscovitine or in the absence of treatment . this involves confocal visualisation of cftr - delf508 in cf15 cells using a mouse anti - cftr monoclonal antibody . cf15 cells treated for 24 hrs at 27 ° c . were used as a positive control ( fig3 a ). fig4 a illustrates the activation of delf508 - cftr in cf15 cells after treatment with roscovitine . the iodide efflux was observed after 2 hrs of incubation with 100 μm of the tested compound or in the absence of treatment . cf15 cells treated for 24 hrs at 27 ° c . were used as a positive control and untreated cf15 cells as a negative control ( 37 ° c .). fig4 b shows that the response to roscovitine depends on the incubation time . roscovitine ( 100 μm ) was used for treating cf15 cells . the cells were then stimulated with 10 μm fsk + 30 μm gst . fig5 a shows the dose - response results after 2 hrs of treatment with roscovitine . fig5 b shows the pharmacological profiles of cftr channels in cf15 cells after 2 hrs of incubation with 100 μm of roscovitine . these results show that after treatment with roscovitine , the following is observed : maturation of delf508 - cftr ( band c appears in the western - blot ) after treatment with cftr - t1 , correct delf508 - cftr relocation to the plasma membrane , and maximal correction of delf508 - cftr chloride ion channel function after 2 hrs of treatment . the competition between cftr - t1 and the er chaperone machinery is illustrated by fig6 a and 6b . fig6 a illustrates the inhibition of cftr - t1 action by brefeldine a ( bfa ), an inhibitor of the ergic vesicular traffic , which shows that roscovitine induces readdressing of the delf508 - cftr protein . fig6 b shows that no modulation is observed in the presence of mg132 , a proteasome inhibitor , which shows there is competition between roscovitine and mg132 . the table below summarises the roscovitine and er chaperone machinery competition experiments performed by the iodide efflux technique . — inhibition , ** p & lt ; 0 . 01 , * p & lt ; 0 . 1 , ns p & gt ; 0 . 1 ( student &# 39 ; s t - test these results show that roscovitine induces delf508 - cftr readdressing , inhibits the cftr - t1 degradation pathway and is able to modulate the interaction between cftr - t1 and calnexin ( calcium - dependent mechanism ). in order to show that the effect of roscovitine is specific for delf508 addressing and does not alter other chloride channels , roscovitine was tested as a potential activator in calu - 3 cells . these results were obtained using the iodide efflux technique . the controls used were forskoline ( 5 μm , n = 8 ) and mpb - 91 ( 250 μm , n = 8 ). roscovitine ( n = 8 ) was not found to be an activator of wild - type cftr or any other anionic transporter in these cells ( no significant difference ). in order to show that the effect of roscovitine is specific to delf508 addressing , roscovitine was tested as a modulator of wild - type cftr addressing in calu - 3 cells . these results were obtained by measuring iodide efflux in calu - 3 cells treated for 2 hrs with roscovitine ( 100 μm ). the cftr activity under such experimental conditions is not significantly different from the controls . these results demonstrate that roscovitine does not affect the addressing pathway of the wild - type cftr or other chloride channels , nor does it alter cftr activity in non - cf human lung epithelial cells . in order to test the cytotoxicity of roscovitine , cho - wt cells were incubated for 2 hrs with different concentrations of inhibitors before being tested for viability with mtt . the results show that the cells are viable at all concentrations of roscovitine . therefore , this molecule does not present any cell cytotoxicity . efflux tests revealed that roscovitine allows relocation of the delf508 - cftr protein to the membrane and therefore represents a pharmacological mean of re - addressing delf508 in human lung epithelial cells . a 2 - hr treatment with 100 μm of roscovitine results in the appearance of the mature cftr band ( as shown by the immunoprecipitation and western - blot techniques ), indicating that roscovitine allows the liberation of the delf508 - cftr protein from the er and its maturation in the golgi apparatus . immunofluorescence experiments confirmed that a 2 - hr treatment with 100 μm of roscovitine allowed relocation of the delf508 - cftr protein to the membrane . finally , iodide efflux and patch - clamp experiments on whole cells showed that the readdressed protein was functional . a 2 - hr treatment with roscovitine gives an ec 50 of 56 μm and allows maximal readdressing . in addition , competition experiments to determine the mechanism of action of roscovitine have shown that roscovitine competed with inhibitors of calnexin / delf508 - cftr binding as well as inhibitors of the degradation pathway . these various results show that roscovitine can correct the delf508 - cftr protein addressing defect . treatment of cf cells with roscovitine should therefore allow interference with the capacity of the control machinery to interact with and retain the delf508 - cftr protein in the endoplasmic reticulum , via inhibition of calnexin and the chaperon molecules involved in the degradation pathway . an inhalation solution is prepared with an ampoule spray starting with sodium chloride , dehydrated calcium chloride and water for injectable preparations . roscovitine is then added as active ingredient . the solution is formulated in 2 . 5 - ml ampoules . ampoules including 5 , 10 mg or 20 mg of roscovitine can be prepared in this way . becq et al . ( 1999 ) journal of biological chemistry 274 , 27415 - 27425 . dormer et al . ( 2001 ) journal of cell science 114 , 4073 - 4081 . | 0 |
fig1 schematically shows an assembly kit 1 , as described in the document de 10 2009 023 285 , with the individual components for producing a fixing agent 2 which is shown in the mixed together state in fig2 . the assembly kit 1 comprises a tube 3 with therein stored aerobic adhesive 4 . in the present case , the aerobic adhesive 4 may be composed of silane - modified ( ms ) polymers . the assembly kit 1 furthermore contains an amount of hydrophilic materials , which in this case are hydrophilic carrier fibers 5 , stored inside a bag 6 or the like , wherein non - dried cotton is used here for the hydrophilic carrier fibers 5 . a spatula 7 and , if applicable , an operating manual that is not shown herein complete this assembly kit 1 . just prior to using it for attaching objects , the fixing agent 2 is produced by mixing together the components , namely the aerobic adhesive 4 and the hydrophilic carrier fiber 5 . for this , the aerobic adhesive 4 and the hydrophilic carrier fibers 5 are poured into a vessel 8 or the like , as shown in fig2 , and are then mixed homogeneously with the spatula 7 . the spatula 7 is preferably a wooden spatula . this wooden spatula 7 is first submerged in water to obtain the moisture content which is suitable for a complete hardening of the mixture . the moisture contained in the spatula 7 is then transferred to the hydrophilic material , whereupon this hydrophilic material is mixed together with the aerobic adhesive 4 by stirring it with the spatula 7 . it is preferable if the volume share of hydrophilic carrier fibers 5 in the mixture is approximately 30 to 40 %, wherein the weight share of the hydrophilic carrier fiber 5 in the mixture is on the order of 10 %. immediately after preparing the fixing agent 2 , this fixing agent is used for attaching two objects . fig3 discloses one example of this , wherein fig3 shows a detail of a wall 9 in a building , in particular in a room inside an apartment building , which is covered with a wall covering 10 in the form of tiles . attached to the wall covering 10 on the wall 9 is a fastening element 11 to which an equipment item is subsequently attached , in particular a sanitary equipment item such as a towel holder , a shelf , a shower armature or the like . several such fastening elements 11 for attaching an equipment item can generally be provided . fig3 schematically shows a locking element 12 which forms a component of the equipment article and can be secured on the fastening element 11 . the fastening element 11 essentially has a circular disc - shaped contour . the underside , which faces the wall 9 , contains a receptacle 13 which is delimited by an edge segment 14 along the complete circumference of the fastening element 11 . the freshly prepared fixing agent 2 , shown in fig2 , is filled with the spatula 7 into the receptacle 13 of the fastening element 11 , for example while the fastening element 11 is removed from the wall 9 , thereby forming a defined moldable layer of the fixing agent 2 . the fastening element 11 with the layer of fixing agent 2 is then fitted onto the wall covering 10 of the wall 9 . owing to the fact that the aerobic adhesive 4 in the fixing agent 2 immediately exhibits a certain adhesive force , the fastening element 11 , which has a diameter of only a few centimeters and very low inherent weight , is held securely in place on the wall covering 10 . to prevent the fixing agent 2 from exiting along the sides of the fastening element 11 during the operation of attaching the element to the wall covering 10 , axially extending boreholes that end in the receptacle 13 can be provided in the fastening element 11 into which the excess fixing agent 2 can flow during the operation of attaching the element to the wall covering 10 . even though the fixing agent 2 is located inside a completely enclosed space once the fastening element 11 is attached to the wall covering 10 , meaning it has no contact with the ambient air , the aerobic adhesive 4 in the fixing agent 2 can harden completely from the inside out as a result of the admixture of the hydrophilic carrier fiber 5 since the required amount of moisture and / or the required amount of oxygen is stored in the hydrophilic carrier fiber 5 . once the fixing agent 2 has hardened , the attachment of the fastening element 11 to the wall 9 provides a connection capable of withstanding loads , so that the equipment item can be mounted on it . the locking element 12 in the present case is attached to the fastening element 11 with the aid of a screw connection or a snap - in connection . the locking element 12 , in turn , is provided with an element 16 on which the equipment article , such as a towel holder , can be secured . fig4 shows a one embodiment of the assembly kit 1 according to the invention . the assembly kit 1 comprises a sachet or bag 15 and a clamp 16 . the sachet 15 may comprise a dense , especially gas - impermeable , material which may be , for example a plastic material , embodied as a flexible , bendable foil . the sachet 15 may forms a flat container with rectangular cross section . the clamp 16 , which is fitted on from the outside , divides the inside space of the sachet 15 into two completely separate chambers 15 a , 15 b , meaning the clamp 16 forms a tight separating wall between the chambers 15 a , 15 b . one chamber 15 a contains the hydrophilic material with a specified admixture of moisture , for example water . the admixture of moisture is selected so as to ensure sufficient moisture for producing the fixing agent 2 . relative to its weight , the hydrophilic material may contain 8 - 12 % moisture . the other chamber 15 b contains the aerobic adhesive 4 . for producing the fixing agent 2 with the components stored in the chambers 15 a , 15 b , the clamp 16 is removed from the sachet 15 , meaning the separating wall between the chambers 15 a , 15 b is removed . the aerobic adhesive 4 can then be mixed outside of the sachet 15 with the hydrophilic material . as a result , the fixing agent 2 is ready for use and , in particular , no additional admixture of moisture is required . fig5 shows a another embodiment of the assembly kit 1 according to the invention . the assembly kit 1 may comprise a cartridge 17 which forms the receptacle and a nozzle 18 that functions as a removal element . the cartridge 17 may be provided on the top with a stopper or seal 19 that closes off an opening . the cartridge 17 contains a mixture of hydrophilic material and aerobic adhesive , wherein the hydrophilic material is dry enough , so that the hydrophilic material does not react with the aerobic adhesive . the hydrophilic material is preferably dried so that the residual moisture is only approximately 0 %. the mixing ratio of hydrophilic material to aerobic adhesive is suitably selected such that the fixing agent can be produced without further admixture of hydrophilic material or aerobic adhesive . for the present case , the nozzle 18 is composed of a porous material , at least in the region of its side walls , which functions as a liquid or moisture store . the liquid or moisture store contains sufficient amounts of water so that the mixture in the receptacle can react with the water . during the storage , the seal 19 of the cartridge 17 remains closed . in order to produce the fixing agent with the mixture stored inside the cartridge 17 and then use it , the seal 19 is opened by fitting the nozzle 18 onto the cartridge 17 . once the mixture is removed from the cartridge 17 and reaches the inside of the nozzle 18 , it comes in contact with the liquid or moisture store . as a result , the liquid , for example water , from the liquid or moisture store of the nozzle 18 comes in contact with the mixture , thereby allowing the hydrophilic material to react with the aerobic adhesive . ready - to use fixing agent 2 then flows from the nozzle 18 and can be used immediately thereafter for connecting objects . | 8 |
in the following the basic environment of a code generator for generating hardware logic shall be described in connection with fig1 . as represented in fig1 by the round element on the right - hand side , it is possible to use a graphical description for coding what are referred to as finite state machines which describes the functional linking of input signals , states and output signals in a clearly structured way . this graphical representation is based on a permanently defined syntax . from this graphical representation a code generator now generates an hdl code , e . g . vhdl or verilog code or similar . as shown in fig1 , it is equally possible to generate the hdl code directly and by hand using a text editor . after the generation of the hdl code , the latter is supplied to a synthesis tool which thereupon generates a description of the hardware logic . an example of such a graphical representation for coding a finite state machine is shown in fig2 . the lozenge - shaped boxes are typically queries whose results influence the further behavior of the state machine and therefore represent state transitions . the rectangular boxes represent states . an important advantage in the use of a graphic of this kind is to be seen in the uniqueness of the generated code and the freedom from syntactical errors or , alternatively , in the generation of a functionally correct vhdl code . a problem with the previous code generation methods based on these graphics is to be seen in the fact that the generated code exhibits a lack of efficiency , even if a one - hot coding technique is used in which one state is described in each case by one bit in the state vector . with one - hot coding , the entire state vector is usually realized in code , resulting overall in performance losses . manual coding has the disadvantage that ambiguous state machines can easily be produced . fig3 a shows an example of a case state vector construct which is used in the prior art code generation methods . with this case state vector construct , state transitions are generally executed as a function of the entire state vector . the query structure of the existing case state vector constructs that are used in the existing prior art methods is a forward - directed query which , starting from an initial state and corresponding input signals , leads to a target state . in contrast thereto , a different query structure is used according to the invention , as illustrated by way of example in fig3 b . fig3 b shows an individual bit of the state vector , the entire state vector being represented as an aggregate of the individual bits . according to the invention this is a backward - directed query which , starting from a target state ( the relevant bit ), queries which combination of input signals and initial states must be fulfilled in order to reach said target state . the starting point of the query structure according to the invention is therefore the target state . the end point of the query structure according to the invention is the input state , where applicable with respectively assigned input signals . this represents the core point of the solution according to the invention , which is to say that a modified query structure in respect of input signals , output signals , input state and end state is used . the result is that the code generated using this query structure no longer requires decoding . a further feature of the solution according to the invention is to be seen in that internal intermediate signals are dispensed with to the greatest possible extent . an example is seen in the modified signal declaration . fig4 a shows a signal declaration according to a method from the prior art . in contrast thereto , fig4 b shows a signal declaration according to the inventive method , which is self - evidently considerably shorter . in the signal declaration according to the invention , only what is absolutely necessary is declared and used , although the full functionality is preserved . as already mentioned , it is possible , in an advantageous development of the invention , to include the existing state vector which is based on a forward - directed query structure ( and is used in the prior art ) merely as a comment so that , although it is contained in the generated code and may possibly facilitate a subsequent debugging , it is not taken into account in the subsequent synthesis . as shown in fig5 , the state vector is embedded in what is referred to as a pragma construct , which essentially acts as a comment that is not to be executed in an hdl code . the code embedded in the pragma construct remains hidden from the synthesis tool and consequently serves merely to simplify debugging in the course of the simulation ; advantageously this does not lead to additional gates . the previous code ( or synonymous therewith : the code with the prior art query structure ) performs a check for each query of an input signal in order to verify whether the input signal has a defined or , as the case may be , specific value ( 0 or 1 ) and interprets the input signal only after said query . the result of this is that the finite state machine with the query structure from the prior art is very sensitive to undefined signals during the simulation . with the known query structure from the prior art it is not possible , for example , to suppress the undefined signals e . g . by means of a logical combination with another signal . in contrast thereto , in the case of the code generated according to the invention ( and synonymous therewith : with the code with the query structure according to the invention ) the processing or , as the case may be , handling of the undefined signals is determined by the logic equation . that is to say that undefined signals are only propagated if the logic equation allows this . this is much closer to the real behavior of the logic . this is shown by way of example in fig6 . a number of advantages are produced with the solution according to the invention : improved processing of undefined signals , as already mentioned in the foregoing . a much higher simulation speed can be achieved , since less code needs to be processed and it is not necessary to evaluate multiple , so - called multithreaded statements . the prior art code has e . g . 570 lines of vhdl text , whereas the code generated according to the invention comprises only 159 lines . further advantages lie in the generation ( synthesis ) of fewer cells ( lcs — logic cells ), and in the fact that less decoding logic ( lut ) is necessary , and not least in that a higher clock frequency of the circuit can be achieved . a further advantage of the solution according to the invention is to be seen in that the code generator according to the invention is totally independent of the content of the code that is to be produced or , as the case may be , independent of the logic circuit and so can be used for different applications with complete flexibility . fig7 a shows a section of a compilation report which represents the result of a synthesis of a known code generator from the prior art . in this case the number of logic cells is 43 , the number of lc registers 7 , the number of pins used 12 , the number of lut - only lcs 36 , and the number of lut / register lcs 6 . in contrast thereto , fig7 b shows the result that can be achieved by means of a method according to the invention . in this case the number of logic cells is now only 17 ( as opposed to 43 formerly ) and the number of lut - only lcs has decreased from 36 to 11 . this clearly demonstrates the significant increase in performance which is reflected both in the higher clock frequency ( 266 mhz to 377 mhz ) and in the combinatorial signals ( tpd from 7 . 8 ns to 6 . 9 ns ). in an advantageous development it is provided that the vhdl or verilog code is generated in such a way that said generated code is mapped by a known synthesis tool from the prior art ( e . g . from mentor graphics , altera or xilinx or synopsys or synplicity ) to what are termed ram cells of an fpga . this is interesting in particular in the case of such state machines in which , in spite of an optimized description , the decoding logic ( for state vector and output signals ) becomes so large that a number of look - up tables must be cascaded . in such a case , where cascading of this kind is necessary , this disadvantageously leads with the existing systems from the prior art to a slowing of the clock frequency . for this reason a mapping to ram cells is proposed which have a fast timing and can map 12 or more inputs ( in comparison therewith , a look - up table comprises only 4 to 6 inputs , depending on the ic family ). with this form of description the logic equation must be mapped into a table for a memory cell , e . g . a rom . as an alternative to the foregoing declaration , the ram can , of course , also be instantiated from the vendor - specific libraries . said ram can then be initialized by means of initialization files during the loading of the fpga . as already mentioned , a state machine of this kind can also be modified dynamically , in particular when a fast switching of algorithms is necessary . in conclusion it should be pointed out that the above description of the invention and the exemplary embodiments shown are fundamentally not to be understood as restricting in terms of a particular physical implementation of the invention and consequently can also be modified in the most diverse ways without leaving the scope of the invention . for a person skilled in the art it is obvious in particular that the invention can also be realized as a heterogeneous system , partially or entirely on the basis of software and / or hardware modules and / or distributed over a plurality of physical products , in this case in particular also as computer program products . furthermore it is possible to utilize the solution according to the invention as a module in order to integrate it into existing systems . | 6 |
referring to fig1 fig2 fig3 fig4 and fig5 the invention herein includes a plurality of shoelace winding sheaves 13 disposed on the left vamp 11 and the right vamp 12 of a shoe 1 , with a shoelace 15 of an appropriate length routed tensively between a shoelace adjustment mechanism 2 capable of automatic shoelace tightening or loosening and the plurality of shoelace winding sheaves 13 . each said shoelace winding sheave 13 is a hollow tubular construct having an axial hole 131 through the center and an annular binding groove 132 formed around the exterior that are mounted in the left vamp 11 or the right vamp 12 and , furthermore , an annular bearing groove 133 formed around the said shoelace winding sheave 13 . there is a bearing block 14 , a hollow tubular component having a load flange 141 along the upper level , interior side , and an annular binding groove 142 around the exterior that is mounted in the right vamp 12 , with the said shoelace adjustment mechanism 2 seated on the load flange 141 at the upper level of the bearing block 14 . referring to fig6 the said shoelace adjustment mechanism 2 is comprised of a push button 3 , a cover plate 4 , a coupling component 5 , a reel 6 , a lower base 7 , a helical and a coil spring 8 and 9 , and the shoelace 15 , wherein : the said push button 3 , referring to fig7 has an arcuate prominence 31 across the top edge , a bore 32 formed within its tubular body and , furthermore , two holes 33 disposed through the tubular body , and a semicircular lock tab 34 situated on two sides at the bottom edge of the said push button 3 . the cover plate 4 , referring to fig8 has a circular opening 41 through its center ; a semicircular notch 42 is reticulated at two extremities of the cover plate 4 inner surface and , furthermore , a plurality of semicircular locating indentations 43 are arrayed at equal intervals along the inner surface of the cover plate 4 . the coupling component 5 , referring to fig9 has a round recess 51 disposed in one end and a square recess 52 in its other end ; a lock tab 53 projects from each of the two sides of the said coupling component 5 , a pin 54 is situated on one side of each said lock tab 53 and , furthermore , a beveled surface 55 is formed at the extreme lateral edges of the said lock tabs 53 . the reel 6 , referring to fig1 , has a round recess 61 formed inside one end and , furthermore , with a plurality of check blocks 62 protruding inward from its top extent ; an annular spooling groove 63 is disposed around the exterior of the said reel 6 and a clasp tab 64 protrudes from one side of the said spooling groove 63 ; a circular recess 65 is formed inside one end of the said reel 6 and a hole 60 is fabricated through the center ; a retaining tab 67 is situated on the inner lateral extent of the circular recess 65 and a concentric spring 68 of a multi - wound arrangement is contained in the circular recess 65 with its outermost extremity secured onto the restraining tab 67 . the lower base 7 is discoidal in shape and has a perforation 71 through one side and a spindle shaft 72 projecting from the center of its bottom extent , the said spindle shaft 72 having a rectangular mounting column 73 at the tip , a hole 74 in the center , and a slot imposed along the center . to enable the said shoelace adjustment mechanism 2 of the invention herein , one extremity of the shoelace 15 is inserted through the perforation 71 of the lower base 7 and attached to the clasp tab 64 at one side of the reel 6 spooling groove 63 , while the opposite extremity of the shoelace 15 is inserted through the holes 33 of the push button 3 and restrained at one side of the push button 3 by means of a clip 151 ; the said reel 6 is sleeved onto the lower base 7 spindle shaft 72 , wherein the center extremity of the concentric spring 68 is inserted into the slot of the spindle shaft 72 , the spindle shaft 72 is extended through the round recess 61 of the reel 6 , the coil spring 9 is placed into the hole 74 in the center of the rectangular mounting column 73 at the tip of the spindle shaft 72 and , furthermore , such that the said coil spring 9 protrudes slightly from the mounting column 73 ; the square recess 52 in the bottom extent of the coupling component 5 is snug fitted onto the rectangular mounting column 73 at the tip of the spindle shaft 72 and , furthermore , the said lock tabs 53 engage the check blocks 62 at the top extent of the reel 6 ; the helical spring 8 is placed within the round recess 51 in the top extent of the coupling component 5 , the bore 32 formed within the push button 3 sleeved onto the top end of the coupling component 5 , and the cover plate 4 and the lower base 7 are conjoined to complete the entire shoelace adjustment mechanism 2 . following the assembly of the said structural components , the said shoelace 15 is routed between the plurality of shoelace winding sheaves 13 on the left vamp 11 and the right vamp 12 and the shoelace adjustment mechanism 2 ; the said shoelace 15 is of an appropriate routing length according to differences in shoe size , one extremity of the shoelace 15 is attached to the clasp tab 64 at one side of the reel 6 and the opposite extremity of the shoelace 15 is inserted through the holes 33 of the push button 3 and restrained at one side of the push button 3 with a clip 151 ; the concentric spring 68 contained in the circular recess 65 is capable of powerfully and automatically revolving the reel 6 , since the lock tab 53 projecting from each of the two sides of the coupling component 5 engage the check blocks 62 protruding inward from its top extent of the reel 6 , when the user depresses the push button 3 of the shoelace adjustment mechanism 2 , the coupling component 5 is shoved down at the same time , causing the disengagement of the lock tabs 53 at the two sides of the coupling component 5 from the reel 6 check blocks 62 and releasing the torque of the concentric spring 68 such that the reel 6 automatically draw in the shoelace 15 , with said shoelace 15 moved in the direction indicated by the arrowheads shown in fig1 to simultaneously pull the left vamp 11 and the right vamp 12 closer together ; to loosen the shoelace 15 , the push button 3 is depressed once again , after which the vamps are spread apart by the slipping out the feet . the push button 3 of the invention herein can also be partially depressed to disengage the lock tabs 34 situated on two sides at the bottom edge of the said push button 3 from the semicircular locating indentations 43 of the cover plate 4 and then rotated clockwise or counter - clockwise to tighten or loosen a small section of the shoelace 15 and thereby finely vary the degree of overall shoelace tension . in summation of the foregoing section , since the invention herein improves upon the shortcomings of the conventional product , is an original arrangement among products in the same category , provides even greater practicality , and the disclosed structure is definitely capable of achieving its claimed objectives , the present invention is submitted for review and the granting of the commensurate patent rights . | 0 |
referring to fig1 - 4 and 6 there is shown a control panel and system which is arranged for the control of two variables or parameters in a dialysis system which includes a dialyzer , a dialysis fluid inlet line , a dialysis fluid outlet line and a dialysis fluid bypass line for directly connecting the inlet line to the outlet line , and hence bypassing the dialyzer . the control panel , as illustrated in fig1 - 4 , includes a pictorial representation of the actual fluid flow path in the system , and hence includes a pictorial element 1 representing the dialyzer , pictorial elements 2 and 2a representing the fluid inlet lines to the dialyzer , and pictorial elements 3 and 3a representing the fluid outlet lines . also , a pictorial representation 4 depicts the bypass line . a bypass alarm signal light 5 is provided between the pictorial representation 4 of the bypass line and the pictorial representation 1 of the dialyzer itself . the single manually rotatable knob or maneuvering element 6 is disposed on the front surface of the panel . two graphic displays 9 and 10 are also provided , with each such display being associated with one operating parameter of the system . display 9 is thus associated with a parameter denominated &# 34 ; xxx &# 34 ;, which pertains to the conditions prevailing at the inlet conduit 2 , and graphic display 10 is associated with a parameter denominated &# 34 ; yyy ,&# 34 ; which pertains to the conditions prevailing at the outlet conduit 3 . graphic display 9 is disposed adjacent inlet conduit 2 and includes a common linear scale 9a with associated numerals . the display also includes illuminated indicia 7a , 7c and 7d , representing the values of control constants for par - meter xxx , in this case the set point represented by indicia 7a , the lower limit represented by indicia 7c , and the upper limit represented by indicia 7d . the positions of these indicia along scale 9a represent the values of these control constants . graphic display 9 also includes a bar display 7b for displaying the actual measured value of parameter xxx . the length of bar 7b , and hence the position of the right hand edge of the bar along scale 9a represents the actual value of parameter xxx . a manually operable actuator or button 7 , marked with the name of the parameter or &# 34 ; xxx &# 34 ;, is disposed adjacent display 9 . in a similar fashion , the display 10 for parameter yyy , pertaining to the outlet conduit of the system , is disposed adjacent the pictorial representation 3 of the outlet conduit . display 10 is generally similar to display 9 , and includes a scale 10a , illuminated indicators 8a , 8c and 8d for displaying the set point , lower limit and upper limit for parameter yyy , and a bar graph 8b for indicating the actual value of parameter yyy . an actuator 8 is disposed adjacent display 10 and is labeled with the name of the associated parameter yyy . also arranged on the front of the control panel are control constant selector buttons 12 , which include an upper limit selector button 12 &# 39 ; and a lower limit selector button 12 &# 34 ;, both disposed adjacent manually rotatable knob or maneuvering element 6 . an alphanumeric display 11 is disposed on the panel face immediately above knob 6 . as illustrated in fig6 actuators 7 and 8 are linked to parameter selection means 31 , which in turn is connected to interpretation means 32 . maneuvering element knob 6 is linked to a potentiometer 34 , which in turn is connected to an analog - to - digital converter 36 . converter 36 is also connected to interpretation apparatus 32 . control constant selector buttons 12 &# 39 ; and 12 &# 34 ; are linked to control constant selection means 38 which in is also linked to interpretation means 32 . interpretation means 32 is in turn connected to a comparison and substitution apparatus 40 , which is linked to a bounding value storage register 42 . as explained below , these components provide new values of the control constants to the control system . the control system includes a supervisory microprocessor 44 incorporating a storage register 46 and duplication means 48 . the control system also includes a control microprocessor 50 incorporating a further storage register 52 . both of the microprocessors are linked to transducers 54 arranged to measure the actual values of the various operating parameters of the actual system . supervisory microprocessor 44 is arranged to control graphic displays 9 and 10 and bypass alarm 5 . the supervisory microprocessor is also arranged to control pictorial illumination unit 56 so as to selectively illuminate each segment of the pictorial representation 1 , 2 , 2a , 3 , 3a and 4 with red light or with green light , as instructed by the supervisory microprocessor , or to leave each segment unilluminated . the supervisory microprocessor is also connected , via appropriate drivers ( not shown ) to illuminators 58 and 60 disposed physically within actuator buttons 7 and 8 . the control microprocessor 50 is linked to alpha - numeric display 11 , and is also to linked to the adjustable element 62 of the dialyzer and associated flow conduits . these adjustable elements typically include valves , variable electric resistance heaters , and the like . although parameter selection means 31 , interpretation means 32 , control constant selection means 38 , analog - to - digital converter 36 , bounding value storage means 42 , and comparison and substitution means 40 are illustrated in fig6 as being separate from the microprocessors , it should be clearly understood that such depiction is solely for the sake of clarity of illustration . in actual practice , some or all of these elements can actually be incorporated in one or both of the microprocessors . fig1 illustrates the condition of the panel face during normal operation , without adjustment of any of the control constants . in this condition , illuminators 58 and 60 ( fig6 ) are inactive , so that actuator buttons 7 and 8 are not illuminated . pictorial illumination means 36 ( fig6 ) illuminates the pictorial representations of the dialyzer 1 , the inlet conduits 2 and 2a , and the outlet conduits 3 and 3a with green light , and leaves the pictorial representation 4 of the bypass conduit unilluminated . the bypass alarm light 5 is likewise unilluminated . alphanumeric display 11 is blank , and graphic display 9 is actuated to display the values of set point , lower limit and upper limit for parameter xxx stored in the storage register 46 of the supervisory microprocessor 44 , and also to display the actual value of parameter xxx as measured by the transducers 54 . likewise , graphic display 10 displays the set point , lower limit and upper limit for parameter yyy , also as stored in register 46 , and also displays the actual value of parameter yyy . during normal operation , the actual value of each parameter is close to its set point and within the range defined by the upper and lower limits for this parameter . inasmuch as the set point , actual value and limits for each parameter are clearly displayed along a common scale on a single graphic display , normal operation of the system is readily verifiable and the system condition as a whole can be readily determined by mere visual inspection of the panel . fig2 illustrates the condition of the panel during adjustment by the operator of the set point for parameter yyy . upon manual actuation by the operator of actuator or button 8 associated with parameter yyy , parameter selection means 31 selects parameter yyy . this selection is conveyed to supervisory microprocessor 44 , which in turn instructs graphic display 10 to flash the illuminated indicia 8a , 8c and 8d , for the control constants associated with parameter yyy . in the condition illustrated , the operator has not depressed either upper limit selector button 12 &# 39 ; or lower limit selector button 12 &# 34 ;. accordingly , control constant selection means 38 selects the set point for parameter yyy , rather than the upper limit or lower limit for that parameter as the particular control constant to be adjusted , and signals interpretation means accordingly . the interpretation means thus interprets the manually variable signal generated by manual adjustment of maneuvering element or knob 6 and operation of analog - to - digital converter 36 as a new value for the set point for parameter yyy . the new value of parameter yyy is passed to comparison and substitution means 40 . the comparison and substitution means compares the new value with preset , invariant upper and lower bounding values for the set point of parameter yyy stored in bounding value storage means 42 . if the new value of the set point generated by interpretation means 32 is outside the range defined by these bounding values , then the comparison and substitution means 40 would substitute a value within such a range for the new value generated by the interpretation means . in the situation illustrated in fig2 however , the new value generated by the interpretation means is within this range , so that the new value passes unaltered from the interpretation means to the supervisory microprocessor 44 . the duplication means incorporated in the supervisory microprocessor digitally duplicates this value and enters the same value into both storage registers 46 and 52 . in one arrangement , microprocessor 44 may be arranged so that the new values are entered into register 46 and then copied from that register by duplication means 48 into register 52 . control microprocessor 50 drives alphanumeric display 11 to show both the actual measured value of parameter yyy , as obtained from transducers 54 , and also to show the value of the set point for this parameter last entered into register 52 . because the values of the set point are duplicated digitally , the exact same value will be stored in register 46 and in register 52 . moreover , because the value as stored in register 52 is fed back to the operator via alphanumeric display 11 , as illustrated in fig2 the operator will control his actuation of knob 6 according to the set point values as actually input into the storage registers . accordingly , inaccuracies in 34 or analog - to - digital converter 36 are of little consequence . such errors will not result either in the storage of divergent values in the two storage registers 46 and 52 , or in the storage of incorrect values . also , if the operator attempts to set an incorrect value such that the comparison and substitution means replaces the manually set value with one of the preset bounding means , the bounding limit rather than the manually set value will be displayed on display 11 . accordingly , the displayed value will not change as the operator adjusts the knob further in the wrong direction , thus warning the operator of his error . additional indications of such an error can also be provided . during the setting process , the supervisory microprocessor adjusts the position of the indicia 8a for the set point along the scale 10a of display 10 , so as to reflect the new set point value . as the set point is thus adjusted , and thereafter , the control microprocessor 50 will compare the actual value of parameter yyy from the transducers from the new set point and will adjust the system adjuster components 62 to drive the actual value of this parameter towards the set point value . when upper alarm limit selector button 12 , is depressed , the control constant selection means 38 selects the upper limit control constant for adjustment . thus , if the upper limit selection button 12 &# 39 ; is actuated in conjunction with parameter selection button 8 , the interpretation means will interpret these signals derived from manually adjustable maneuvering element or knob 8 via potentiometer 34 and converter 36 as a new value for the upper limit of parameter yyy . in that event , the comparison and substitution means will compare the new value with bounding values appropriate to the upper limit , rather than to the set point for parameter yyy and control microprocessor 50 will cause alphanumeric display 11 to display both the actual value of parameter yyy and the new upper limit value input into and stored in register 52 . likewise , with combined actuation of parameter selection button 8 and lower limit selection button 12 &# 34 ;, the variable signal derived from operation of knob 6 will be interpreted as a new value and for the lower limit of parameter yyy . as will be appreciated , the same action pertains to the setting of those parameters which requires actuation of button 7 , rather than button 8 . in each case , the signal derived from operation of knob 6 is interpreted as a new value for the particular control constant selected by the control constant selection means for the particular parameter selected by the parameter selection means . the identity of the parameter and of the control constant being set is displayed , along with the value of the constant as set , on alphanumeric display 11 . fig3 illustrates the appearance of the front panel when parameter yyy falls outside the upper and lower limits associated with that parameter , and the control microprocessor adjusts the system to bypass the dialyzer . the bar graph 8b reflecting the actual measured value of parameter yyy shows the out - of - limit value . thus , the right hand edge of the bar graph is at a low level on the scale 10a and is outside the range encompassed by indicia 8a and 8d , corresponding to the lower and upper limits , respectively . to provide a conspicuous alarm signal indicating that parameter yyy is outside of the limits , supervisory microprocessor 44 ( fig6 ) causes illuminator 60 to illuminate actuator 8 with a red light . at the same time , the supervisory microprocessor illuminates bypass alarm indicator 5 . the supervisory microprocessor also adjusts pictorial illumination means 56 to illuminate the pictorial representation 2 of the inlet conduit , the pictorial representation 4 of the bypass conduit , and the pictorial representation 3 of the outlet conduit with a red light . the pictorial representations 2a and 3a of the branch conduits leading to and from the dialyzer are left unilluminated . these pictorial representations thus instantly inform the operator that the system is in a bypass condition . the red color of the illuminated representation provides a further signal that the bypass condition is the result of an abnormal , out - of - limit condition . these signals are supplemented by the bypass alarm light 5 . the alarm indication provided by illuminated actuator 8 guides the operator to instant identification of the particular parameter which is out - of - limits , and which has caused the abnormal condition . because all of the actual values and control constants for the various parameters are continually displayed on the associated graphic displays , the operator can promptly diagnose the nature of the malfunction . as is illustrated in fig4 the system may be deliberately switched into a bypass mode , for example as part of a predetermined schedule of operations , and this can be done even where none of the parameters is in an out - of - limit condition . in this case , the illuminators associated with actuators 7 and 8 are left unilluminated , so that no alarm signal is given . also , although the pictorial representation means is adjusted by the supervisory microprocessor to illuminate pictorial representations 2 , 3 and 4 to show the bypass flow , and to leave representations 2a and 3a unilluminated to show that no flow is going through the dialyzer , the pictorial representation is illuminated in green light , rather than red light . thus , whether or not there is an alarm condition , the pictorial representation can be employed to show the actual flow path in use within the system . typically , the systems controlled by the apparatus in accordance with the present invention require control of more than two parameters as is employed in the systems of fig1 - 4 and 6 . fig5 thus depicts the front face of a control panel , as can be used in controlling dialysis fluid flow in a hemodialysis system . the panel of fig5 incorporates the same elements as mentioned above in connection with fig1 - 4 and 6 . elements common to both embodiments are denoted in fig5 by the same reference numerals as those employed in fig1 - 4 and 6 . however , display 9 is associated in fig5 with the real parameter of fluid conductivity , and the associated adjacent actuator 7 is marked with the legend &# 34 ; cond &# 34 ;, rather than with the nominal legend appearing on the corresponding actuator appearing in fig2 . likewise , the graphic display 10 is associated with the real parameter transmembrane pressure , and the associated adjacent actuator 8 is marked with the legend &# 34 ; tmp &# 34 ;, rather than with the nominal legend &# 34 ; yyy ,&# 34 ; as in the other figures . the pictorial representation on the front face of the panel in fig5 includes the same elements as the pictorial representation of fig1 - 4 but also includes a pictorial representation 13 of an additional branch conduit carrying an ultrafiltrate flow . additional graphic representations 22 and 23 associated with ultrafiltrate volume and ultrafiltration rate parameters , both of which pertain to the flow in the ultrafiltrate conduit represented by branch 13 , are disposed on the panel front face adjacent this branch of the pictorial representation . actuators 18 and 19 which are associated , respectively , with ultrafiltrate volume and ultrafiltration rate , are disposed adjacent to graphic displays 22 and 23 , respectively . furthermore , additional graphic displays 20 and 21 for incoming dialysis fluid temperature in the inlet represented by pictorial representation 2 , and fluid flow in the inlet 2 , respectively , are disposed adjacent to the pictorial representation of the inlet conduit . actuators 14 and 15 relating to these parameters are disposed adjacent to these additional displays . the panel of fig5 incorporates additional buttons 26 for setting the system to operate in different modes . thus , each of these buttons may be linked to the control and supervisory microprocessors of the system , so that these microprocessors , and hence the system as a whole , can operate according to different programs , depending upon which of the buttons is actuated . for example , depression of the button 26 marked &# 34 ; tmp mode &# 34 ; sets the system to operate so as to maintain the transmembrane pressure constant , whereas operation of the button 26 marked &# 34 ; auto uf mode &# 34 ; sets the system to perform a dialysis procedure with accurately controlled ultrafiltration . operation of the button marked &# 34 ; isolated uf mode &# 34 ; sets the system to perform a pure ultrafiltration procedure without any dialysis fluid flow . likewise , the buttons marked &# 34 ; heat disnf &# 34 ;, &# 34 ; chem disnf &# 34 ;, &# 34 ; rinse &# 34 ; and &# 34 ; drain &# 34 ; sets the system to perform the corresponding heat sterilization , chemical sterilization , rinsing or emptying of functions the panel of fig5 also includes a clock display 27 . this clock display is associated with and adjacent to an actuator 16 marked &# 34 ; time &# 34 ;. operation of this actuator combined with adjustment of the knob or maneuvering element 6 sets the time in internal clocks within the microprocessors of the system . the panel of fig5 also includes additional displays for showing information other than the values and control constants for the parameters set from the panel . thus , digital display 28 marked &# 34 ; water lev &# 34 ; indicates the fluid level in a vessel for containing dialysis fluid . the panel of fig5 also includes a start button 24 and a button 25 marked &# 34 ; confirm &# 34 ; disposed adjacent maneuvering element or knob 6 . operation of the panel shown in fig5 is substantially the same as operation of the panel described above with reference to fig1 - 4 and 6 . thus , to set the upper limit for transmembrane pressure , the operator actuates actuator 8 adjacent display 10 for transmembrane pressure , and also actuates the high limit button 12 &# 39 ; adjacent to maneuvering element or knob 6 . the variable signal produced upon actuation of this element is interpreted as a new value for the transmembrane pressure upper limit , which is displayed on alphanumeric display 11 . however , in operation of the panel according to fig5 the control system does not begin to apply the new value so set until the operator signals that he is satisfied with the new value displayed on display 11 by pressing confirm button 25 . to permit this function , each of the storage registers associated with the microprocessors may be provided with a temporary storage location , distinct from the storage locations for the parameters actually in use , and each microprocessor may be arranged to shift the newly set value from the temporary storage location to the storage location assigned to the parameter when the confirm button is depressed . numerous variations and combinations of the features described above can be employed in accordance with the present invention . thus , in one variant of the invention , the upper and lower limits are not set directly . instead , the system is arranged to calculate upper and lower limits for each parameter from the set point selected by the operator for such parameter . the upper and lower limits may be calculated from the set point according to a predetermined formula or algorithm . in this case , the control constant selection means may be omitted and the high limit and low limit selector buttons 12 &# 39 ; and 12 &# 34 ; may likewise be omitted . also , the layout of the fluid flow path and the control panel face may make it impossible to dispose each graphic display and the associated actuator immediately adjacent the pictorial representation of the pertinent portion of the fluid flow path . thus , some of the graphic displays may be disposed adjacent related pictorial representations , whereas other graphic displays may be disposed at more remote locations . in less preferred embodiments , the pictorial representation may be omitted entirely , and the graphic displays may be replaced by other forms of display . in another less preferred embodiment , alphanumeric display 11 may be omitted entirely , and the supervisory microprocessor may be arranged to display the new value set for each control constant only on the related graphic display . as will be readily appreciated , the layout of the panel face , and the particular parameters and actual constants employed , will vary with the nature of the system to be controlled . typically , in control of the dialysis fluid portion of a hemodialysis system , the control panel should be arranged to set control constants for one or more of the following functions : conductivity , temperature , fluid flow , transmembrane pressure , ultrafiltrate volume , ultrafiltration rate , time , chemical composition , ph and blood leakage monitoring . in control of the blood - handling portion of a hemodialysis system , control constants for one or more of the following parameters should be set by use of a control panel in accordance with the present invention : temperature , blood flow , transmembrane pressure , venous pressure , arterial pressure , chemical composition and the presence of air . in a particularly preferred arrangement , the control panel according to the present invention is configured to control both blood handling portion and the hemodialysis fluid flow portion of the system . a control panel for such use would typically incorporate pictorial representations of the flow paths for both blood and dialysis fluid . as the present invention provides important improvements in monitoring and control of operating parameters in hemodialysis fluid flow and / or blood flow in hemodialysis operations , the invention provides improved methods of controlling these functions . in the improved methods control panels and systems in accordance with the present invention are employed and operated as described above . in the embodiments described above , particularly with reference to fig6 the digital duplication means takes the new value for each control parameter , duplicates it and enters the new value into the storage registers associated with both the supervisory and the control microprocessor . however , in a variant to this approach , a &# 34 ; dummy &# 34 ; storage register is provided which is not operatively associated with either of the microprocessors . the input means may be arranged to direct new values into the dummy storage register and the digital duplication means may be arranged to copy the values from the dummy storage register into the storage registers associated with the supervisory and control microprocessors . in the apparatus described above , the comparison and substitution means checks the new value for every control constant . however , the apparatus can be arranged so that the less significant or non - critical control constants are not so checked . as these and other variations and combinations of the features described above may be employed , the foregoing descriptions of the embodiments should be taken as illustrating , rather than as limiting , the present invention as defined by the claims . | 6 |
while the invention is susceptible of embodiment in many different forms , there is shown in the drawings and will herein be described in detail a preferred embodiment of the invention . it is to be understood that the present disclosure is to be considered only as an example of the principles of the invention . this disclosure is not intended to limit the broad aspect of the invention to the illustrated embodiments . the scope of protection should only be limited by the accompanying claims . referring to fig1 there is provided an electrical circuit 10 having a light detector 12 and a resistor r 1 connected in series between a voltage source vcc and ground g . the light detector 12 may be any commercially available light detector and may have an internally adjustable or fixed signal gain . the light detector 12 generates a light detector output signal 14 which corresponds to the amount of light to which the light detector 12 is exposed . the value of r 1 is selected to deliver a voltage across r 1 that is suitable for processing by the remaining circuitry given the range of light to be detected . a buffer u 1 is connected at a point between ri and the light detector 12 to receive the light detector output signal 14 . because the buffer u 1 has unity gain , its output and input are identical . a differentiator 16 receives the light detector output signal 14 . preferably , the differentiator 16 is a rc high pass filter comprising a resistor r 2 and a capacitor c 1 . rc high pass filters are well known in the art . the resistor r 2 and the capacitor c 1 are selected such that the cutoff frequency of the filter is 1 . 5 khz . this type of differentiator is preferred due to its simple and inexpensive structure . however , there are numerous types of differentiators , and any type of differentiator may be used in accordance with the present invention . the output of the differentiator 16 is a differentiated light detector signal 18 . a comparator u 2 is connected to the differentiator 16 output to receive the differentiated light detector signal 18 . the comparator u 2 compares the differentiated light detector signal 18 to a reference voltage vref . the proper value of reference voltage vref will vary depending on the values of the resistor and capacitor chosen for the differentiator and the desired sensitivity of the circuit to changes in the light detected . when the value of the differentiated light detector signal 18 is larger than the value of the reference voltage vref , the comparator will generate a comparator output signal 20 indicating that an arc fault has been detected . in a system incorporating alternating current , arc faults are not continuous arcs , but are intermittent arcs . an arc generated by a sinusoidal alternating voltage source will occur whenever the voltage is near its peak . therefore , the light created by an arc fault is not continuous , but rather a short pulse of light which occurs every half cycle of the alternating voltage source ( i . e . an arc occurs at the voltage &# 39 ; s sinusoidal peak and at the voltage &# 39 ; s sinusoidal trough ). as a result , the comparator output signal 20 will pulse in unison with the detected light from the arc fault . however , it is normally desired that the comparator output signal 20 remain active during an entire arc fault episode and not return to an inactive state during points of the voltage source &# 39 ; s sinusoidal zero - crossing . as a result , a pulse extender circuit 21 may optionally be used with the present invention . the pulse extender circuit 21 is preferably a capacitor c 2 having a large value of capacitance which is connected between the comparator output signal 20 and a ground point g of the circuit . the capacitor c 2 charges during peaks of the comparator output signal 20 and discharges during troughs of the comparator output signal 20 , thereby holding the comparator output signal 20 active during the period between arc faults . referring to fig2 a circuit 22 is provided . the circuit 22 comprises the circuit 10 of fig1 with two additional components — a second comparator u 3 and a logic circuit 23 . the second comparator u 3 is connected to the output of the buffer u 1 and a second reference voltage signal vref 2 . when the output of the buffer u 1 ( the light detector signal 14 ) exceeds the reference voltage vref 2 , the second comparator u 3 provides a second comparator output signal 24 which indicates a threshold light value has been reached . in the circuit 22 of fig2 the comparator output signal 20 and the second comparator output signal 24 are attached across a resistor r 3 to the voltage source vcc to form a trip indicator output signal 26 . if the comparators u 1 , u 2 are open collector operational amplifiers , when only one of comparator u 1 or second comparator u 2 is high , the voltage of the trip indicator output signal 26 is low . when both comparators u 1 , u 2 are high , the voltage of the trip indicator output signal 26 is high . as a result comparators u 1 , u 2 and resistor r 3 act to form the logic circuit 23 which performs a logical and operation . while in the present embodiment open collector operational amplifiers are used with resistor r 3 as the logic circuit 23 , the logic circuit 23 could be implemented in many other ways by one of ordinary skill in the art , such as with truth table logic circuits . with reference to fig3 the circuit 10 of the present invention is located inside a switchgear enclosure 30 . the light detector 12 is situated inside a switchgear enclosure 30 such that light from an arc fault , if one occurred , would be cast upon the light detector 12 . more than one light detector 12 and / or light detector circuit 10 can be placed within the switchgear enclosure 30 in locations prone to arc faults . an electrical switch 32 inside the switchgear enclosure 30 receives the comparator output signal 20 of the circuit 10 . in response to comparator output signal 20 , the electrical switch 32 interrupts power coming into the switchgear enclosure 30 through an electrical line 34 . the circuit 10 and the comparator output signal 20 can be replaced by the circuit 22 and the trip indicator output signal 26 , respectively . while the specific embodiments have been illustrated and described , numerous modifications come to mind without significantly departing from the spirit of the invention , and the scope of protection is only limited by the scope of the accompanying claims . | 7 |
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