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In general, absorbent articles should comfortably fit the body of a wearer. Most absorbent articles include an absorbent pad formed by an absorbent core contained in a wrap comprising a barrier tissue and/or a forming tissue. The subject invention discloses an absorbent article generally having extensibility in at least one direction, preferably the cross-direction. Such extensibility permits an absorbent article to extend and expand about the wearer and thus to better conform to the body of the wearer. Such extension and expansion about the wearer is feasible because both the bodyside liner and the outer cover are extensible in at least the one direction. In conventional structures, the outer cover is typically adhesively secured to the forming tissue of the absorbent pad. In such embodiments, extending the outer cover in the cross-direction extends the forming tissue in the cross-direction. The force used to extend the outer cover, and thence the absorbent pad, can tear or otherwise damage the forming tissue or the barrier tissue of the absorbent pad. Since the absorbent pad is typically a sealed enclosure, namely an absorbent core enclosed within the combination of a forming tissue and a barrier tissue, tearing the absorbent pad, namely either the forming tissue or the barrier tissue, can release superabsorbent particles and other absorbent materials, such as cellulose fluff into contact with the body of the wearer. Superabsorbent particles can irritate the skin of the wearer. Such tearing of the absorbent pad indicates failure of the absorbent article to perform properly. Therefore, it is critical to find a way to prevent tearing or other structural failure of the absorbent pad.

This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-159163, filed Mar. 31, 2000, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. The present invention relates to a method of forming a composite member, in which a conductive portion is formed in an insulator, the composite member being used in, for example, a wiring board in the fields of electric appliances, electronic appliances and electric and electronic communication. The present invention also relates to a photosensitive composition and an insulating material that can be suitably used in the manufacturing method of the composite member. Further, the present invention relates to a composite member manufactured by the manufacturing method of the present invention and to a multi-layer wiring board and an electronic package including the particular composite member. In recent years, increase in the degree of integration and miniaturization of various electric and electronic parts including a semiconductor device are being promoted. The particular tendency will be further promoted in the future without fail. In this connection, various measures are being proposed and tried in an attempt to apply a high density mounting to a printed circuit board including formation of a fine pattern and a fine pitch of a metal wiring and formation of a steric wiring. Particularly, the steric wiring is indispensable to a high density mounting and, thus, various methods are being proposed in an attempt to manufacture a wiring board having a steric wiring. In general, the steric wirings are of a multi-layered structure such as a built-up wiring board prepared by laminating two dimensional printed wiring boards and a multi-layered wiring board. It is difficult to form a steric wiring having a free three dimensional shape. The built-up wiring board or the multi-layered wiring board has a structure that adjacent wiring layers are connected to each other by a conductive column called via. The via is formed by processing an insulating layer by a photolithography process using a photosensitive polyimide or resist, followed by selectively applying a plating to the via or by filling the via with a conductive paste. For forming a via by such a method, it is necessary to repeat a plurality of times the steps of resist coating, light exposure and etching, making the via formation highly laborious. In addition, it is difficult to improve the yield. It is also possible to form the via by forming a through-hole (via hole) of a predetermined size in an insulating substrate constituting a printed wiring board by using a drill or a CO2 laser, followed by applying plating to the via hole or by filling the via hole with a conductive paste. In these methods, however, it is difficult to form freely a fine via having a size of scores of microns or less at a desired position. In the method disclosed in Japanese Patent Disclosure No. 7-207450, a compound having a hydrophilic group is introduced into pores of three dimensional porous film such as a PTFE film. Under this condition, the film is subjected to a light exposure in a predetermined pattern by using a low pressure mercury lamp (wave lengths of 185 nm and 254 nm), thereby forming the hydrophilic group on the three dimensional porous film. Further, a metal plating is applied to the three dimensional porous film. In the conventional method described above, however, the material forming the three dimensional porous film is deteriorated because a light beam having a short wavelength is used for the light exposure. Also, the light for the light exposure is absorbed by the three dimensional porous film and, thus, fails to reach the inner region of the porous body, resulting in failure to form fine vias. Further, in the conventional method described above, the PTFE forming the three dimensional porous film reacts with the light for the light exposure so as to selectively form hydrophilic groups. However, PTFE is defective in that the molding workability is low and that PTFE is costly. Another method of forming a via is disclosed in Japanese Patent Disclosure No. 11-24977. In this method, the entire surface of a porous insulating member is impregnated with a photosensitive composition containing, for example, a photosensitive reducing agent and a metal salt. Then, a light exposure is applied in a predetermined pattern to the impregnated insulating member so as to reduce the cation of the metal salt in the light exposed portion to a metal nucleus, followed by removing by washing the photosensitive composition in the non-light exposed portion. Further, an electroless plating or a soldering is applied to the residual metal nuclei so as to form vias of a predetermined pattern. In the method described above, however, the entire surface of the porous insulating member is impregnated with a photosensitive composition containing a metal salt as described above, making it difficult to remove completely the metal salt adsorbed on the portion corresponding to the non-exposed portion after the light exposure step. As a result, a difficulty is brought about that the metal nuclei are precipitated on undesired portions in the subsequent reducing step. Such an abnormal deposition of the metal nuclei gives rise to a problem in terms of the insulating properties between adjacent vias and between adjacent wiring layers with progress in the fine pulverization of the pattern. Also, in the via formed in the insulating substrate by the conventional method of manufacturing a wiring board, the insulating body and the conductive portion are brought into a direct contact. In this case, since the adhesion between the insulating body and the conductive portion is poor, a problem is generated that the conductive portion is peeled off the insulating substrate during the use. Further, where a multi-layered wiring board is prepared by laminating a plurality of wiring boards manufactured by the conventional method of manufacturing a wiring board, it is required to further improve the electrical connection between the wiring layers of the wiring boards and the conductivity of the wiring. An object of the present invention is to provide a method of manufacturing a composite member, which has a high degree of freedom in the design of a conductive circuit, in which deterioration of the insulating body is not brought about by the light exposure, and which is free from an abnormal deposition of a metal on the insulating body so as to form a conductive portion having a fine pattern. Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of manufacturing a composite member, which has a high degree of freedom in the design of a conductive circuit, which permits manufacturing a composite member at a low manufacturing cost without giving adverse effects to the selectivity of the material of the insulating portion and to the molding workability, and which is free from an abnormal deposition of a metal on the insulating body so as to form a conductive portion having a fine pattern. Another object of the present invention is to provide a photosensitive composition and an insulating material used for the manufacturing method of a composite member described above. Another object of the present invention is to provide a composite member manufactured by the method described above. Another object of the present invention is to provide a multi-layered wiring board comprising a composite member manufactured by the method described above. Still another object of the present invention is to provide an electronic package using a composite member or a multi-layered wiring board manufactured by the method described above. According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of manufacturing a composite member in which a conductive portion is selectively formed in an insulating body, comprising: (1) forming a photosensitive composition layer within or on the surface of said insulating body, said photosensitive composition containing a compound forming an ion-exchange group upon irradiation with light having a wavelength not shorter than 280 nm; (2) exposing selectively the photosensitive composition layer to light having a wavelength not shorter than 280 nm so as to form ion-exchange groups in the light exposed portion; and (3) forming the conductive portion by bonding a metal ion or metal to the ion-exchange group formed in the light exposed portion by the exposing. According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of manufacturing a composite member in which a conductive portion is selectively formed in an insulating body, comprising: (1) forming a photosensitive composition layer within or on the surface of said insulating body, said photosensitive composition containing a compound having an ion-exchange group; (2) exposing selectively the photosensitive composition layer to light having a wavelength not shorter than 280 nm so as to cause ion-exchange groups in the light exposed portion to disappear and to cause the ion-exchange groups to remain in the unexposed portion; and (3) forming the conductive portion by bonding a metal ion or metal to be bonded to the ion-exchange group remaining in the unexposed portion after the exposing. According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of manufacturing a composite member in which a conductive portion is selectively formed in an insulating body, comprising: (1) forming a photosensitive composition layer within or on the surface of said insulating body, said photosensitive composition containing a compound forming an ion-exchange group upon irradiation with light, and said compound being selected from the group consisting of an onium salt derivative, a sulfonium ester derivative, a carboxylic acid derivative and a naphthoquinone diazide derivative; (2) exposing selectively the photosensitive composition layer to light so as to form ion-exchange groups in the light exposed portion; and (3) forming the conductive portion by bonding a metal ion or metal to the ion-exchange group formed in the light exposed portion by the exposing. According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of manufacturing a composite member in which a conductive portion is selectively formed in an insulating body, comprising: (1) forming a photosensitive composition layer within or on the surface of said insulating body, said photosensitive composition containing a compound having an ion-exchange group; (2) exposing selectively the photosensitive composition layer to light so as to cause ion-exchange groups in the light exposed portion to disappear and to cause the ion-exchange groups to remain in the unexposed portion; and (3) forming the conductive portion by bonding a metal ion or metal to the ion-exchange group remaining in the unexposed portion after the light exposure in a pattern. According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of manufacturing a composite member in which a conductive portion is selectively formed in an insulating body, comprising: (1) forming a photosensitive composition layer within or on the surface of said insulating body, said photosensitive composition containing a compound forming an ion-exchange group in the presence of acid and a photo acid generating agent; (2) exposing selectively to light and heating the photosensitive composition layer so as to form ion-exchange group in the light exposed portion; and (3) forming the conductive portion by bonding a metal ion or metal to the ion-exchange group formed in the light exposed portion by the exposing. It is desirable for the method of the present invention to further comprise the step of applying an electroless plating to the surface of the conductive portion formed in the third step. According to another embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a photosensitive composition used for manufacturing a composite member, the composition containing a naphthoquinone diazide derivative and a polycarbodiimide derivative. According to another embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a porous insulating body having the inner surface of the pore covered with a photosensitive composition containing a naphthoquinone diazide derivative. According to another embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a composite member having a conductive portion formed on at least one of the surface and the inner region of a porous insulating body via an organic compound, wherein the amount of the organic compound, which is present between the insulating body and the conductive portion, per unit area of the surface of the insulating body is larger than the amount of the organic compound that is not in contact with the conductive portion. According to another embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a multi-layered wiring board including a plurality of substrates that are laminated one upon the other, wherein the substrate comprises a porous insulating body having fine pores and a conductive portion formed on at least one of the surface and the inner region of the fine pore of the porous insulating body, and a layer formed of a conductive body that does not contain the component of the insulating body is formed on the outermost surface of the conductive portion of each substrate. Further, according to still another embodiment of the present invention, there is provided an electronic package comprising a wiring board consisting of the composite body described above or a multi-layered wiring board described above and an electronic part electrically connected to the wiring board.

The present invention relates generally to improved means and methods for processing documents using electronic imaging, and more particularly, to the use of electronic imaging for processing financial documents, such as checks and related documents in a banking environment. Today's financial services industry is facing the immense challenge of processing huge amounts of documents efficiently. Predictions that document payment methods would decline have not been realized. In fact, document payment methods have grown worldwide and are expected to continue increasing. There is thus a vital need to devise improved means and methods for processing such documents. The use of imaging technology as an aid to document processing has been recognized as one way of significantly improving document processing, as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,205,780, 4,264,808, and 4,672,186. Generally, imaging involves optically scanning documents to produce electronic images that are processed electronically and stored on high capacity storage media (such as magnetic disc drives and/or optical memory) for later retrieval and display. It is apparent that document imaging provides the opportunity to reduce document handling and movement, since these electronic images can be used in place of the actual documents. However, despite technological advances in imaging in recent years, prior art document processing systems employing imaging, such as disclosed in the aforementioned patents, do not realized sufficient improvements to justify the added implementations costs.

1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a motor drive apparatus which is, for example, used for driving an X-Y table of a monolithic wire bonder or a die bonder serving as one of IC manufacturing apparatus, and a method of controlling the same. 2. Description of the Related Art There is known a method of accurately stopping a motor at a target position, as disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application No. 55-77384/1980. In this prior art, after the motor passes through the target position, an error extreme point is obtained in order to determine a current value to be supplied to the motor to correct the error. Then, a rectangular current is supplied to the motor so as to eliminate the error and stop the motor at the target position. Hereinafter, a background technology of the present invention will be explained. FIG. 10 is a block diagram showing one example of a motor drive apparatus controlling a typical three-phase synchronous motor. FIG. 11 is a detailed view showing a motor 1 of FIG. 10. FIG. 12 is a view showing inductive voltages of the motor 1 of FIG. 10. FIG. 13 is a view showing output signals from an encoder 2 shown in FIG. 10. FIG. 14 is a view showing an operation of a pulse converter 3 shown in FIG. 10. And, FIG. 15 is a detailed view showing a magnetic pole detector 4 of FIG. 10. In FIG. 10, a reference numeral 1 represents a three-phase synchronous motor equipped with 9 slots and 6 poles. More specifically, as shown in FIG. 11, this three-phase synchronous motor comprises a stator 5 and a rotor 6. The stator 5 is associated with three coils of U-phase 7, V-phase 8, and W-phase 9 windings. This motor 1 has nine slots 10 disposed on an inside surface of the stator 5 which are spaced at intervals of 40 degrees. These nine slots 10 are wound by the coil windings in the order of U-phase, V-phase, and W-phase repetitively so as to form a star connection. On the other hand, the rotor 6 has six permanent magnet poles 11 disposed on the outer circumferential surface thereof. An operational principle of the motor 1 will be explained below. The rotor 8 causes a magnetic field corresponding to its rotational position, which interacts with three, U-phase 7, V-phase 8, and W-phase 9, windings on the stator 5. Therefore, these three windings 7, 8, and 9 generate voltages due to Lorentz's force. Namely, three, U-phase 12, V-phase 13, and W-phase 14, inductive voltages of sine waveform are generated at intervals of 120 degrees as shown in FIG. 12 because a magnetic field to each winding is cyclically increased and decreased in response to spatial positioning of the permanent magnet 11 which cyclically approaches to and departs from each winding during one complete revolution of the rotor 6. If sine-wave currents being in-phase with these inductive voltages of FIG. 12 are supplied to the U-phase 7, V-phase 8, and W-phase 9 windings, respectively, the rotor 6 generates a torque in a clockwise (abbreviated as CW) direction due to Fleming's left-hand rule. The magnitude of the torque generated is proportional to an amplitude of the current supplied. Moreover, if the above currents are further multiplied with -1 and delayed 180 degrees in phase before being supplied to respective windings, the rotor 6 generates a torque in a counterclockwise (abbreviated as CCW) direction. In FIG. 10, a reference numeral 2 represents an optical encoder having three channels and installed on a rotor shaft of the motor 1. When the motor i rotates in the clockwise (CW) direction, the encoder 2 generates an A-phase signal 15 and a B-phase signal 18 having a mutual phase difference of 90 degrees therebetween as shown in FIG. 12, together with a Z-phase pulse signal 17 corresponding to one of zero-crossing 20 points of the U-phase inductive voltage 12. If the motor 1 rotates in the counterclockwise (CCW) direction, the phase relationship between the A-phase signal 15 and B-phase signal 16 are reversed. Therefore, the rotational direction of the motor 1 is easily judged by checking the phase relationship between the A-phase signal 15 and the B-phase signal 18. A reference numeral 3 represents a pulse converter connected to the encoder 2. This pulse converter 3 converts the A-phase and B-phase signals 15 and 18 into a CW pulse signal 18 as shown in FIG. 14 when the motor 1 rotates in the clockwise direction. On the contrary, this pulse converter 3 converts the A-phase and B-phase signals 15 and 16 into a CCW pulse signal 19 as shown in FIG. 14 when the motor 1 rotates in the counterclockwise direction. A reference numeral 4 represents a magnetic pole detector comprising a counter 20, a U-phase current phase command table 21, and a W-phase current phase command table 22. As shown in FIG. 15, the counter 20 receives the signals fed from the pulse converter 3 so as to effect its count-up and count-down operations in response to the CW pulse 18 and the CCW pulse 19, respectively. Furthermore, the counter 20 is connected to the encoder 2 so as to effect its clear operation in response to the Z-phase signal 17. The U-phase current phase command table 21 memorizes the phase of the U-phase inductive voltage 12 with respect to the Z-phase signal 17 of the encoder 2. The W-phase current phase command table 22 memorizes the phase of the W-phase inductive voltage 14 with respect to the Z-phase signal 17. An operation of the magnetic pole detector 4 will be explained below. The counter 20 is cleared at the zero-cross point of the U-phase inductive voltage 12 in response to the Z-phase signal 17 fed from the encoder 2. When the motor 1 rotates, a rotational displacement or shift amount from the above zero-cross point of the U-phase inductive voltage 12 is counted by the counter 20. The counted value becomes a pointer 23 of the U-phase current phase command table 21 for outputting a phase value of the U-phase inductive voltage 12 corresponding to the present rotational position of the motor 1. In the same manner, the counted value of the counter 20 becomes a pointer 23 of the W-phase current phase command table 22 for outputting a phase value of the W-phase inductive voltage 14 corresponding to the present rotational position of the motor 1. The magnetic pole detector 4 is connected to two multipliers 24U, 24W so that the phase values of the U-phase and W-phase inductive voltages 12 and 14 can be multiplied with an output of a speed control calculator 25. The speed control calculator 25 outputs a torque command value, i.e. a current amplitude command value. The multipliers 24U, 24W, therefore, multiply the current amplitude command value with the U-phase and W-phase current phase command values. The resultant two outputs from respective multipliers 24U, 24W are, then, fed to two D/A converters 28U, 28W so as to generate U-phase and W-phase current commands, respectively. These U-phase and W-phase current commands are, subsequently, fed to current amplifiers 27U, 27W in which drive currents to be supplied to the U-phase winding 7 and the W-phase winding 9 are generated in response to the U-phase and W-phase current commands, respectively. The U-phase winding 7, the V-phase winding 8, and the W-phase winding 9 are connected with each other so as to constitute a star connection; therefore, the sum of currents flowing through these three-phase windings 7, 8, and 9 becomes 0. A current command for the V-phase winding 8 is, accordingly, identical with -(U-phase current command +W-phase current command). A subtracter 28 is therefore provided to obtain a V-phase current command equal to -(U-phase current command +W-phase current command). Thus obtained V-phase current command is, thereafter, fed to another current amplifier 27V in which a drive current to be supplied to the V-phase winding 8 is generated in response to the V-phase current command. A reference numeral 29 represents a speed detector connected to the pulse converter 3. This speed detector 29 detects the speed of the motor 1 by counting the number of pulses generated during a time measured by a timer 38 when the motor 1 rotates at a high speed and measuring an interval between successive pulses generated when the motor 1 rotates at a low speed. Reference numerals 31 and 32 represent a positive-direction position command pulse and a negative-direction position command pulse, respectively, fed from an external device. Reference numerals 33 and 34 represent subtracters. A reference numeral 35 represents a positional deviation reading sampler which is open-or-close controlled at predetermined intervals in response to an output signal from a timer 37. A reference numeral 38 represents a speed deviation reading sampler which is open-or-close controlled at predetermined intervals in response to an output signal from the timer 38. If these samplers 35 and 38 are closed, the speed control calculator 25, the magnetic pole detector 4, the multipliers 24U, 24W, and the D/A converters 28U, 28W are activated to renew the current commands to be supplied to the current amplifiers 27U, 27W. The subtracter 34, constituted by an up-down counter, is counted up in response to the positive-direction position command pulse S1 and is counted down in response to the negative-direction position command pulse 32. The subtracter 34 is further counted down in response to the CW pulse 18 fed from the pulse converter S and is counted up in response to the CCW pulse 19. The subtracter 34 calculates a positional deviation through these count-up and count-down operations. A reference numeral 39 represents a position control calculator which amplifies the positional deviation obtained. The speed control calculator 25 amplifies a value supplied from the speed deviation reading sampler 38 to obtain a torque command, i.e. a current amplitude command. An operation of the above-described motor drive apparatus will be explained below. First of all, the subtracter 34, constituted by an up-down counter, is counted up in response to the positive-direction position command pulse 31 and counted down in response to the negative-direction position command pulse 32, and is further counted down in response to the CW pulse 18 fed from the pulse converter 3 and counted up in response to the CCW pulse 19, in order to obtain the positional deviation. Furthermore, the position control calculator 39 inputs the positional deviation through the positional deviation reading sampler 35 being open-or-close controlled by the timer 37. The position control calculator 39 amplitudes this positional deviation and outputs a speed command so as to reduce the positional deviation. Next, the subtracter 33 subtracts this speed command by a feedback speed obtained from the speed detector 29 to generate a speed deviation. The speed control calculator 25 inputs the speed deviation through the speed deviation reading sampler 36 being-open-or-close controlled by the timer 38. The speed control calculator 25 amplitudes this speed deviation and generates a torque command, i.e. a current amplitude command. On the other hand, when the motor 1 rotates in the clockwise (CW) direction, the encoder 2 generates the A-phase signal 15 and the B-phase signal 16 having a mutual phase difference of 90 degrees therebetween as shown in FIG. 12, together with the Z-phase pulse signal 17 corresponding to one of zero-crossing points of the U-phase inductive voltage 12. This A-phase signal 15 and B-phase signal 16 are, then, inputted into the pulse converter 3. These A-phase signal 15 and B-phase signal 16 are converted into the CW pulse 18 when the motor 1 rotates in the clockwise (CW) direction, and are converted into the CCW pulse 19 when the motor 1 rotates in the counterclockwise (CCW) direction. Next, the CW pulse signal 18 and the CCW pulse signal 19 outputted from the pulse converter 3, and the Z-phase signal 17 outputted from the encoder 2 are supplied to the magnetic pole detector 4. The counter 20 shown in FIG. 15 is counted up by the CW pulse signal 18 and counted down by the CCW pulse signal 19. Furthermore, the counter 20 is cleared by the Z-phase signal 17 fed from the encoder 2 to be 0. Namely, an arrival of the designated zero-cross point of the U-phase inductive voltage 12 is known by checking the Z-phase signal 17. And, a displacement or shift amount of the motor 1 from the designated zero-cross point of the U-phase inductive voltage 12 is known from the count value of the counter 20. The count value of the counter 20 becomes the pointer 23 of the U-phase current phase command table 21 for outputting the phase value of the U-phase inductive voltage 12 corresponding to the present rotational position of the motor 1. Moreover, the count value of the counter 20 becomes the pointer 23 of the W-phase current phase command table 22 for outputting the phase value of the W-phase inductive voltage 14 corresponding to the present rotational position of the motor 1. In the multipliers 24U, 24W, the phase values of the U-phase and W-phase inductive voltages 12 and 14 are multiplied with the torque command outputted from the speed control calculator 25. Namely, the multipliers 24U, 24W multiply the current amplitude command value with the U-phase and W-phase current phase command values, respectively. The resultant two outputs from respective multipliers 24U, 24W are, then, fed to two D/A converters 26U, 26W so as to generate U-phase and W-phase current commands, respectively. These U-phase and W-phase current commands are, subsequently, fed to current amplifiers 27U, 27W in which the drive currents to be supplied to the U-phase winding 7 and the W-phase winding 9 are generated in response to the U-phase and W-phase current commands, respectively. On the other hand, the subtracter 28 obtains the current command for the V-phase winding 8 by calculating the value identical with -(U-phase current command +W-phase current command). Thus obtained V-phase current command is, thereafter, fed to the current amplifier 27V in which the drive current to be supplied to the V-phase winding 8 is generated in response to the V-phase current command. If the torque command is a positive value, the motor 1 generates a torque in the clockwise (CW) direction. On the contrary, if the torque command is a negative value, the motor 1 generates a torque in the counterclockwise (CCW) direction because the multipliers 24U and 24W generate U-phase and W-phase current commands having 180-degree phase difference with respect to respective U-phase and W-phase current phase commands. Thus, the speed deviation is decreased. In accordance with the reduction of the speed deviation, the positional deviation becomes small. FIG. 9(A) shows a sampling interval of the speed deviation reading sampler 36 applied to both moving and stationary conditions of the motor 1. FIG. 9(B) shows a sampling interval of the positional deviation reading sampler 35 applied to both moving and stationary conditions of the motor 1. When the motor 1 is in a moving condition, in order to stabilize the motor drive operation by the above-described motor drive apparatus, the speed control must be performed by using three times or more sampling with respect to the calculated speed command as shown in FIG. 9. The reason why three times or more sampling are required when the motor 1 is in a moving condition is as follows. If the speed command sampling interval is identical with the control sampling interval in the speed control operation, the motor 1 will not be able to sufficiently follow up the speed command because, even if the speed of the motor 1 is controlled to coincide with the speed command value, the speed command value itself may vary at the next coming control sampling timing. Thus, the speed of the motor 1 cannot be stabilized. Especially, as the positional command varies widely when the motor 1 is in a moving condition, the speed command will correspondingly cause wide variation. Hence, three times or more sampling are required for allowing the motor 1 to follow up the speed command. For this reason, the speed of the timer 37 is set 1/3 or less compared with that of the timer 38. In accordance with the above motor drive apparatus, the sampling interval of the positional deviation reading sampler 35 will be sufficiently extended or elongated so as to stabilize the motor speed control during the moving condition of the motor. However, when the motor 1 is in a stationary condition, the sampling interval of the positional deviation reading sampler 35 will be too long to accurately detect a small positional deviation if this small positional deviation varies at a period smaller than that of the positional deviation reading sampler 35. Consequently, there is a problem that the positioning control cannot be accurately and responsively performed when the motor is in a stationary condition.

1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to particularly an optical coherence tomography apparatus including an interference optical system which is used in the medical field, an optical coherence tomography method, an ophthalmic apparatus, a method of controlling the ophthalmic apparatus, and a storage medium. 2. Description of the Related Art Currently, various types of ophthalmic apparatuses using optical devices are used. Such apparatuses include, for example, an anterior ocular segment imaging apparatus, a fundus camera, and a scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO). Among them all, an optical coherence tomography (OCT) apparatus (to be referred to as an “OCT apparatus” hereinafter) is an apparatus capable of obtaining a high-resolution tomogram of an object to be examined. This OCT apparatus has been becoming an indispensable apparatus for dedicated retinal outpatient clinics. For example, the OCT apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-325849 uses low-coherent light as a light source. Light from the light source is split into measurement light and reference light through a splitting optical path such as a beam splitter. Measurement light is light to irradiate an object to be examined such as the eye through a measurement light path. Return light of this light is guided to a detection position through a detection light path. Note that return light is reflected light or scattered light containing information associated with an interface relative to the irradiation direction of light on the object. On the other hand, reference light is light to be guided to the detection position through a reference light path by being reflected by a reference mirror or the like. It is possible to obtain a tomogram of an object to be examined by causing interference between this return light and reference light, collectively acquiring wavelength spectra by using a spectrometer or the like, and performing Fourier transform of the acquired spectra. An OCT apparatus which collectively measures wavelength spectra is generally called a spectral domain OCT apparatus (SD-OCT apparatus). In an SD-OCT apparatus, a measurement depth Lmax is represented, as an optical distance Lmax, by a pixel count N of the image sensor of a spectrometer and a spectrum width ΔK of the frequency detected by the spectrometer according to equation (1). Note that the spectrum width ΔK is represented by a maximum wavelength λmax and a minimum wavelength λmin. The pixel count N is often an even number, and is generally the factorial of 2, that is 1024 or 2048. L max = ± N 4 ⁢ ⁢ Δ ⁢ ⁢ K Δ ⁢ ⁢ K = 1 λ min - 1 λ max } ( 1 ) If, for example, a central wavelength of 840 nm, a band of 50 nm, and a pixel count of 1024 are set, λmax=840+50/2=840+25=865 nm, λmin=840−50/2=840−25=815 nm, and N=1024. In this case, optical distance Lmax=3.6 mm. That is, it is possible to perform measurement up to about 3.6 mm on the plus side relative to the coherence gate. The coherence gate is the point at which a reference light path coincides with an optical distance in a measurement light path. When a desired region (a distance in the depth direction) is sufficiently smaller than 3.6 mm (for example, 1 mm or less), the measurement depth can be reduced by decreasing the pixel count of the spectrometer. Decreasing the pixel count is important in order to speed up processing and reduce the data amount. This is because, when measuring a three-dimensional image of the retina, it takes much measurement time and produces a large amount of data. When an object to be examined is a moving object like the eye, in particular, it is required to further shorten the measurement time. On the other hand, changing the pixel count of a spectrometer is equivalent to changing the resolution of the spectrometer. A problem in this case will be described with reference to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a graph obtained by plotting, for each spectrometer resolution, the light intensity measurement results obtained when the position of the coherence gate is moved while a mirror is located at the position of an object to be examined. The ordinate corresponds to the light intensity, and the abscissa to the distance. With an increase in distance from the coherence gate, light intensity attenuation called Roll-Off occurs. The degree of attenuation of a light intensity Int mainly depends on the resolution of a spectrometer and the pixel count of an image sensor. Letting x be a distance variable and a be a coefficient proportional to the resolution of the spectrometer, the degree of attenuation is proportional to a sinc function given by Int ∝ sin ⁢ ⁢ 2 ⁢ ⁢ π ⁢ ⁢ x ⁢ ⁢ α π ⁢ ⁢ x ( 2 ) As is obvious from FIG. 1, as a value indicating a resolution increases (from 0.1 nm to 0.2 nm, 0.5 nm, and 1.0 nm), the cycle in which plotted points approach zero is shortened. As described above, images formed from spectrum data from spectrometers having different resolutions differ in light intensity in the depth direction. Differences in light intensity are differences in image contrast. This makes images in the same region look different. That is, with spectrometers having different resolutions, obtained images look different. In consideration of the above problems, the present invention provides a technique of correcting the contrast differences between images which are caused when wavelength resolutions differ (spectrometers differ in resolution in the case of an SD-OCT) in an FD-OCT apparatus such as an SD-OCT apparatus.

This invention relates to a metal-cutting milling tool. Such tools are known that comprise a body rotatable around a central geometric axis, which body has a peripheral envelope surface extending between opposite end surfaces. In the envelope surface, recesses are provided which open outwards, each recess defined by a front wall, a rear wall and a bottom wall and has the purpose of receiving a machining element (e.g., a cassette which carries a cutting insert) as well as at least one clamping wedge arranged in the recess for fixing the machining element in place. The clamping wedge can be tightened by means of a clamping screw which enters a threaded hole formed in the bottom wall of the recess. The rear wall of the recess has first serrations arranged to co-operate with second serrations disposed on a rear side of the machining element, while the front wall is smooth in order to cooperate with a similar smooth front surface on the clamping wedge. A contact surface on the clamping wedge and a front contact surface on the machining element are both smooth in order to allow a substantially radial displacement of the clamping wedge in relation to the machining element during the clamping thereof.

It is a truism that modern cell phones feature a multitude of features that expand on the traditional cell phone functionality. For example, today cell phone users are able to use their phones to connect to the Internet, manage meetings, appointments, and other aspects of their every day lives, listen to music and watch videos, etc. In essence the cell phone—which began as a single-function communicator—has grown into a fully functioning multimedia device. However the fundamental function of a cell phone remains communication. It should be noted that cell phones are also sometimes referred to as mobile phones, which in the proper meaning of the word indicates that the user of that phone is mobile, and is supposedly always available for anyone who might want to contact him or her. The core functionality of mobile/cell phones has been basically the same since the first devices were made available to consumers. Although there has been a rapid expansion in the feature set of most cell phones, the core functionality has not seen a similar expansion. The reasons for the development discrepancy likely have to do with the fact that the core functionality is sufficient for most users and that there are not just that many ways of enhancing the person-to-person communication experience on a mobile device Arguably, the most important enhancement in the cell phone, at least as it relates to interpersonal communication, has been the development of the capability of sending short text messages from one phone to another. Otherwise, the main improvements in communications have been largely concerned with connectivity. For example, communications protocols such as infrared and Bluetooth have become de facto requirements for all but the most inexpensive phones. In addition advances have been made in connectivity to the Internet (for example) and now it is routine for users to be able to access their e-mail and browse the web via their phones. However, these improvements in connectivity, as welcome as they might be, do not expand on the one-to-one personal communication aspect of the phone. One thing that would be a leap forward in such communications would be the ability to quickly and easily assemble a multi-user communication session that is hardware independent and, further, does not require the user to purchase additional hardware. Although the prior art has provided multi-user communications in the form of, for example, conference calls—the present technology of conference calls is quite limiting to the user. For example, it is typically limited to a predetermined number of user connections (e.g., 5). Further, a start time must be communicated to each user so there is little opportunity for spontaneity. Further, adding more users to the session may be very difficult or impossible. Finally, the conference call will ultimately be limited to known users, i.e., those who are known to one of the participants and have been invited. Additionally, exchanging short messages between users is a time-delayed communication mode that typically involves a one-to-one communication. Even though some software providers have offered solutions that allow a user to send one short message to multiple participants, such is not the same as real time voice communication between these same users. Of course, such group messaging is a time-delayed communication mode too, in which at least one participant is always in a waiting position. Thus, this communication option also offers little in the way of spontaneity or flexibility to the user. As was mentioned previously, over the last few years several attempts have been made to enhance the communication options available to owners of mobile devices, for example infrared and Bluetooth have been added but they have been used so far mostly for communication with other devices, i.e. for data transfer—not for direct communication between users. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that infrared is limited to communications over a relative short line-of-sight distance between potential communication partners. As a consequence, the infrared protocol has typically been implemented as a simple data exchange protocol which is useful, for example, in synchronizing data between a mobile phone and a personal computer. On the other hand, the Bluetooth protocol provides for the creation of networks, so called piconets, in which up to 255 participants can be combined, of which only 8 participants can be active simultaneously, these 8 participants consist of one so called “master” device and seven so-called “slave” or secondary devices. The master device controls the communication and assigns so-called “sendslots” to participants. Additionally, communications within a piconet are based on the client server principle, which imposes the restriction that the master (server) is needed for on-going communications. Thus, when a master device looses the connection the piconet ceases to exist until a new master is selected and re-establishes the piconet by starting the creation process at the beginning. Although a Bluetooth device can be registered in multiple piconets, it can only be registered as master in one piconet. Additionally, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that the term scatternet is often used to refer to a combination of up to 10 piconets in which each piconet is associated with a different identification frequency. However, the technical specifications of the Bluetooth communication protocol limit the functionality of that communication option. For example, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that a piconet can accommodate a maximum of 8 active participants. Further, a piconet will collapse if the server (master) looses the connection. Others have sought, with varying degrees of success, to deliver enhanced communication functionality despite the limitations of the Bluetooth protocol. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,674,995 teaches the creation of a virtual ball game that utilizes data that is passed between participants via Bluetooth, thereby delivering to them the illusion that they are playing a ball game. As another example, U.S. patent application No. 20020151320 describes a method of giving users in a user community additional functionality when using a software package in a community environment. That is, certain functions are provided to the users depending on the number of participants, with higher user numbers being associated with the unlocking of additional program functionality. However, these sorts of approaches are still fundamentally limited by the nature of the Bluetooth protocol. As an example of an alternative approach to the use of Bluetooth, consider U.S. patent application 2005/0063409 that teaches a method for allowing users to communicate across several scatternets. However, this invention utilizes multiple interconnected servers and is not suitable for users that wish to quickly arrange and participate in an ad hoc communications group. None of the prior art communication options, however, deliver a flexible way of communicating with an arbitrary number of individual users. In each case either the users are restricted by the technical limitations of the Bluetooth standard or the communication options necessary to create a group chat are too involved for the average user to accomplish. Note that for purposes of the instant disclosure, the term enhancement of the communication options will be taken to refer to any approach that allows a user to communicate with a mobile device in addition to the already existing communication options. Thus what is needed is a method that gives the user of a cell phone or users of mobile devices the ability to create multi-user communications on that device without a need for elaborate equipment configurations, planning, or installation and which is not bound by the technical limitations of a specific communication protocol. Preferably the method will extend an invitation to others to join a communications group and will automatically provide the appropriate software for use by new users who do not already have it. Preferably the method will use a commonly available wireless protocol such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Accordingly it should now be recognized, as was recognized by the present inventors, that there exists, and has existed for some time, a very real need for a system and method that would address and solve the above-described problems. Before proceeding to a description of the present invention, however, it should be noted and remembered that the description of the invention which follows, together with the accompanying drawings, should not be construed as limiting the invention to the examples (or preferred embodiments) shown and described. This is so because those skilled in the art to which the invention pertains will be able to devise other forms of the invention within the ambit of the appended claims.

1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to multi-chamber process equipments for fabricating semiconductor devices. 2. Description of the Prior Art In recent years, the advance in device miniaturization and IC complexity is increasing the need for more accurate and more complicated processes, and wafers of larger diameters. Accordingly, much attention is focused on multi-chamber process equipments (or systems) in view of increase of complex precesses, and enhancement of throughput in an individual wafer processing system. FIG. 14 shows one conventional example. A multi-chamber process equipment of this example includes a wafer transfer chamber 1, a plurality of process chambers 3 connected with the transfer chamber 1 through respective gate valves 2, a load lock chamber (preliminary evacuation chamber) 5 connected with the transfer chamber 1 through a gate valve 4, and a wafer load chamber 7 connected with the load lock chamber 5 through a gate valve 6. In the wafer transfer chamber 1 and the load lock chamber 5, there are provided wafer transfer arms 9 and 10 for carrying a wafer 8, as shown in FIG. 14. The transfer arm 10 is designed to take each wafer 8 from wafer cassettes 11, 11 placed in the wafer load chamber 7, through the gate valve 6, and bring the wafer into the wafer transfer chamber 1. The transfer arm 9 is arranged to receive the wafer 8 from the arm 10, and insert the wafer through one of the gate valves 2 into a predetermined one of the process chambers. The wafer 8 is shifted from one process chamber to another by the transfer arm 10 according to the sequence of processes. Another conventional example is shown in "NIKKEI MICRODEVICES", May, 1990, page 47. A multi-chamber process equipment of this example includes a wafer transfer chamber, a plurality of parallel PVD or other process chambers connected with the transfer chamber, a cooling chamber, a preclean chamber, a buffer chamber, and RTP/etching/CVD chamber (or chambers), a load lock chamber, and other chambers. The pressure of each chamber is held at a predetermined degree of vacuum (base pressure) according to the object of the chamber. For example, the wafer transfer chamber is held at 10.sup.-8 Torr (1.3.times.10.sup.-6 Pa), the PVD chamber is held at 10.sup.-9 Torr (1.3.times.10.sup.-7 Pa), and the load lock chamber is held at 10.sup.-5 Torr (1.3.times.10.sup.-3 Pa). Japanese Patent Provisional Publication (TOKKAI) No. 61-55926 shows still another conventional example. In these equipments, the pressures of the different chambers are determined so as to ensure the clean wafer processing environment. In general, the pressures are made closer to the atmospheric pressure in the following order; (Process chamber)<(Wafer transfer chamber)<(Load lock chamber). In the conventional process equipments, however, a wafer is readily affected by dew condensation especially in a low temperature etching chamber which is cooled to -20.degree. C..about.-70.degree. C. if the chamber is not evacuated sufficiently before loading of the wafer. Therefore, it is required to reduce the pressure in the chamber below a base pressure of the chamber (10.sup.-6 Torr, for example). Moreover, the degree of vacuum of the wafer transfer chamber is lower (that is, the pressure is higher) than that of the process chamber. Therefore, when the process chamber is opened, there arises a flow of residual water content from the wafer transfer chamber to the process chamber, resulting in the dew condensation. The conventional equipments cannot prevent condensation satisfactorily even if the pressure of the process chamber is decreased sufficiently below the base pressure. On the other hand, cross contamination is caused by a flow of residual gases from a process chamber for heat treatment or photo-assisted CVD, to the wafer transfer chamber if the degree of vacuum in the wafer transfer chamber is too high. Furthermore, the conventional equipments cannot sufficiently reduce variations of wafer properties such as sheet resistance from wafer to wafer, especially when the wafers are processed in a high temperature silicide CVD chamber. It is possible to reduce the variations of the sheet resistance by decreasing the pressure in the load lock chamber below the above-mentioned level. However, the pumping operation must be continued for three hours or more.

(a) Field Embodiments of the present system and method relate to a stereoscopic image display device, and more particularly, to a stereoscopic image display device with an enhanced display quality. (b) Description of the Related Art In general, a display device that can display a three-dimensional (3D) image expresses a 3D effect of objects by using binocular parallax. That is, different 2D images are displayed to the left eye and the right eye of a user viewing the display. When the image displayed to the left eye (hereafter referred to as “left-eye image”) and the image displayed to the right eye (hereafter referred to as “right-eye image”) are processed by the user's brain, the brain recognizes the combination of the left-eye image and the right-eye image as a three-dimensional image having depth perception. A display device capable of displaying 3D images using binocular parallax is generally referred to as a stereoscopic 3D image display device. Some stereoscopic 3D image display devices may require the user to wear special headgear or eye glasses (e.g., shutter glasses and polarized glasses). Other stereoscopic 3D image display devices, referred to as autostereoscopic 3D image display devices, however, do not require the user to wear special head gear or eye glasses. An autostereoscopic 3D image display device generally includes an optical system (e.g., a lenticular lens and a parallax barrier having a plurality of openings) in the display device itself that divides a 3D image into several viewpoints so as to realize a 3D image.

The present invention relates generally to digital copy protection, digital rights management, and conditional access, and more particularly but not exclusively to enabling transferable entitlements using Entitlement Management Messages (EMMs) for providing content to different network devices. Today a consumer can readily purchase an entitlement to content such as a ticket to the opera, a sports event, movie, or the like. Often, the purchased ticket can be redeemed at some later stage and location. Similarly a consumer may purchase an airline ticket and redeem it for an airplane flight. However, there is a difference of transferability between these two ticket transactions. For various reasons, of both pricing and security, airline tickets represent non-transferable entitlements, where only the named recipient of the entitlement may redeem it, whereas movie tickets, or the like, are typically transferable. Transferability is an attribute of the entitlement granted by an original owner to the recipient. It means that the recipient may be free to resell or transfer title to the entitlement prior to its redemption. It also typically means that the owner or its distributors agree to honor the redemption of the entitlement from whoever presents the entitlement. Thus, in some situations, a transferable entitlement may become an object of trade. However, in today's realm of content, such as in the Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) domain, or the like, entitlements do not readily support transferability. If a recipient were to purchase an entitlement on one set top box (STB) there presently is no mechanism to enable the transfer of that entitlement to another set top box or other network device for redemption. Transfer of entitlements between devices on the same or different networks may open a wealth of opportunity for consumers and for content providers. Moreover, IPTV, and the like, may be currently served in discrete networks—so-called ‘walled-garden’ networks. These networks typically ensure a level of quality of service and security. However the walls often impose a barrier to a market of consumers inside the wall. The broader commercial motivation of this invention therefore includes allowing third-party content providers outside the walls to gain access to this market. Thus, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made

This invention relates to a method for applying normally dry relatively large particle size (granular) fertilizers to crops, such as lawns. Lawn fertilizers are available in various forms including solutions of nutrients in water, dispersions (suspensions) of fine powders (70-80 mesh and smaller) in an aqueous medium, dry powders and dry granules. In some cases, the nutrient materials are supported on an inert carrier, e.g. sand or clay. Both liquid fertilizers and dispersions of fine powders in aqueous mediums are usually spray applied using conventional types of liquid solution fertilizer spraying equipment. A typical example of a spray applied dispersion of a powdered fertilizer material is illustrated by the U.S. Pat. No. to Funk 4,036,627. This patent discloses a high analysis fertilizer formulaton of low bulk density powdered ureaformaldehyde having soluble and insoluble portions combined with soluble monopotassium phosphate in which the resultant mixture is a dry homogeneous blend, free of fillers and binding agents, and which may be carried in a liquid medium for application to surface or subsurface areas by conventional liquid solution fertilizer applying equipment. The suspension generally has a fairly high concentration of the fine powder particles in the liquid medium. Dry fertilizers in the powder form or the granular form are conventionally applied by dry spreaders. Numerous examples of dry powdered and granular fertilizer compositions are well known to those skilled in the art. Recently, these have begun to be formulated with provisions for timed (slow) release of the nutrients to avoid "burning" the crop and to reduce the number of applications in a growing season. Each of the various physical forms of fertilizer compositions has its advantages and disadvantages. Spray applied liquid fertilizer solutions and dispersions of powdered nutrient materials are characterized by the ability to be applied evenly and from a tank truck, for example. These fertilizer forms usually provide nutrients which are immediately available to the lawn, and therefore enable quick response of the lawn to the application, i.e. quick "greening" of the lawn. However, such liquid solutions are often too rich in immediately available nutrients, particularly nitrogen. A solution which is too rich in nutrients can cause "burning" of the lawn. Additionally, insect and fungus growth may be accelerated. Still further, liquid solution type fertilizers do not often possess long life on or in the ground and their effect is quickly lost. Frequent application is required to maintain a desired nutrient level in the soil during a growing season. With the finely divided powder or dispersion, a principal problem is retention on the leaves or blades of grass. This can also cause burning. Additionally, ambient conditions and normal lawn care procedures may result in loss of a significant value of the fertilizer. For example, application of dry powder is usually accompanied by considerable dusting and wind loss. Moreover, when the lawn is cut, and the clippings collected, a substantial portion of a powdered fertilizer, whether dry or dispersion applied, is carried away and lost. With a rotary lawn mower, dusting of a powdered fertilizer can also be a problem. Granular fertilizers which are spread on the lawn in a dry condition, do not generally have the foregoing types of application problems encountered with powdered fertilizers. Because of the larger particle size, dusting is not a problem. Further, retention on the blades of grass or on leaves is not generally a problem with granular fertilizers. Thus, loss on removal of grass clippings is negligible. However, like any spreader applied fertilizer, application is usually uneven because of turns at the end of a row, skips, overlaps, etc. Without care, overfertilizing can occur in certain areas and under fertilizing in others. A blotchy appearance results. Furthermore, the immediate nutrient availability of granular fertilizers may be lost due to leaching. Thus, with granular fertilizers obtaining quick "greening" can be a problem. Thus, as can be seen from the foregoing discussion the problems which are often encountered in the application of liquid, liquid dispersion or dry spread granular fertilizers are also manifested in the quality of performance of the fertilizer.

Conventional methods for producing metal powder include a water atomizing method, which provides metal powder by injecting a high pressure water jet to a flow of a molten material; a gas atomizing method, which employs spraying of N2 gas or Ar gas in place of the water jet used in the atomizing method; and a centrifugation method, in which a molten material jet is injected into cooling water present in a rotary drum rotating at high speed. Fine particles are also produced through a breakdown method such as mechanical formation employing a mill or the like and also through a buildup method such as a precipitation method or a sol-gel method. However, in the water atomizing method and the gas atomizing method, the nozzle structure is complicated and an excessive load is imposed on nozzles, resulting in lowered durability of the nozzle, since the molten material is formed into powder form by a flow of high pressure cooling water or cooling gas. Meanwhile, in the centrifugation method, the structure of the apparatus is complicated, in order to enable high-speed rotation of the rotary drum. Furthermore, in these methods, the molten metal is pulverized on the basis of collision energy. Thus, the resulting particle size is varied, and the yield of fine particles is poor. The breakdown method employing mechanical formation or the like can produce only large particles having a minimum size of, for example, approximately 100 μm. The buildup method such as a precipitation method can produce fine particles having a maximum size of approximately 1 μm, and particles which are larger than approximately 1 μm cannot be obtained. Therefore, when conventional methods and apparatuses for producing fine particles are employed, fine particles having a size ranging from several micrometers to the order of 10 μm, particularly fine particles having a size of about 3 μm, are difficult to obtain. Also, in the breakdown method, a large portion of the molten metal cannot be converted into fine particles and remains as a lump, thereby deteriorating the yield thereof. In addition, the particle size distribution assumes a broaden profile, causing the problem that fine particles having a desired particle diameter cannot be obtained in a large amount. Conventionally, a liquid quenching method has been known for producing amorphous metal. According to the liquid quenching method, a molten material is cooled and solidified by, for example, causing a molten metal liquid to spout into a coolant, whereby amorphous metal is produced. Even when a centrifugation method, which can attain a relatively large cooling rate, is employed in combination with the liquid quenching method, the heat flux between two liquids (i.e., molten material and coolant) is limited to the critical heat flux in the case where heat conduction is induced by cooling based on convection or a conventional boiling method. Thus, the cooling rate is limited to 104 to 105 K/s, which problematically imposes limitation on the type of metal which can be converted into an amorphous material. Previously, the present applicant filed a patent application for a method for producing fine particles and amorphous material of molten material which includes supplying into a liquid coolant a molten material which has been formed by melting a raw material to be converted into fine particles or amorphous material, with a small difference in flow speed of the two liquids, to thereby cause boiling by spontaneous bubble nucleation and employing the resultant pressure wave for producing fine particles and amorphous material thereof (see Patent Documents: WO 01/81033 and WO 01/81032). However, according to the method for which the present applicant previously filed a patent application, when a high-melting material having a melting point of, for example, 800° C. or higher is used, vapor film cannot be broken satisfactorily through condensation. Thus, formation of fine particles or amorphous material of molten material cannot be fully achieved. Thus, an object of the present invention is to provide, on the basis of improvement of the previously developed technique, a method for producing fine particles, the method being capable of producing fine particles from a high-melting-point raw material and readily producing submicron fine particles which have not been readily produced through the previously developed technique. Another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus therefor.

This invention relates generally to enzymes that convert sucrose to isomaltulose. More particularly, the present invention relates to novel sucrose isomerases, to polynucleotides encoding these enzymes, to methods for isolating such polynucleotides and to nucleic acid constructs that express these polynucleotides. The invention also relates to cells, particularly transformed bacterial or plant cells, and to differentiated plants comprising cells, which express these polynucleotides. The invention further relates to the use of the polypeptides, polynucleotides, cells and plants of the invention for producing isomaltulose. Isomaltulose α-D-glucopyranosyl-1,6-D-fructofuranose (also called palatinose) is a naturally occurring structural isomer of sucrose (α-D-glucosyl-1,2-D-fructose). Isomaltulose is a nutritive disaccharide, with sweetness and bulk similar to sucrose. Several characteristics make isomaltulose advantageous over sucrose for some applications in the food industry: 1) noncariogenic (not causing dental decay); 2) low glycemic index (useful for diabetics); 3) selective promotion of growth of beneficial bifidobacteria among human intestinal microflora; 4) greater stability of isomaltulose-containing foods and beverages; 5) less hygroscopic; 6) simple conversion into sugar alcohols with other useful properties as foods. The safety of isomaltulose has been comprehensively verified, resulting in unqualified approval as human food, and it is widely used commercially as a sucrose substitute in foods, soft drinks and medicines (Takazoe, 1989, Palatinose—an isomeric alternative to sucrose. In: Progress in Sweeteners (T H Grengy, ed.) pp 143-167. Elsevier, Barking, UK). Furthermore, because isomaltulose has an accessible carbonyl group, it has attracted attention as a renewable starting material for the manufacture of bioproducts such as polymers and surfactants with potential advantages over substances manufactured from petroleum (Cartarius et al., 2001, Chemical Engineering and Technology 24: 55A-59A; Kunz, 1993, From sucrose to semisynthetical polymers. In: Carbohydrates as Organic Raw Materials II (G Descotes, ed.) pp 135-161. VCH, Weinheim; Lichtenthaler et al., 2001, Green Chemistry 3: 201-209; Schiweck et al., 1991, New developments in the use of sucrose as an industrial bulk chemical. In: Carbohydrates as Organic Raw Materials (F W Lichtenthaler, ed.) pp 57-94. VCH, Weinheim). Commercial isomaltulose is produced from food-grade sucrose by enzymatic rearrangement from a (1,2)-fructoside to a (1,6)-fructoside followed by crystallization. Sucrose isomerase (SI) enzymes (also known as isomaltulose synthases), which are able to convert sucrose to isomaltulose, have been demonstrated in Protaminobacter rubrum, Erwinia rhapontici, E. carotovora var atroseptica, Serratia plymuthica, S. marcesens, Pseudomonas mesoacidophila, Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Klebsiella spp., Agrobacterium sp., haploid yeast and Enterobacter sp. (Avigad 1959, Biochemical Journal 73: 587-593; Bornke et al., 2001, Journal of Bacteriology 183: 2425-2430; Cheetham et al., 1982 Nature 299: 628-631; Huang et al., 1998, Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology 21: 22-27; Lund and Waytt, 1973, Journal of General Microbiology 78: 331-3; Mattes et al., 1998, U.S. Pat. No. 5,786,140; McAllister et al., 1990, Biotechnology Letters 12: 667-672; Miyata et al., 1992, Bioscience Biotechnology and Biochemistry 56: 1680-1681; Munir et al., 1987, Carbohydrate Research 164: 477-485; Nagai et al., 1994, Bioscience Biotechnology and Biochemistry 58: 1789-1793; Nagai-Miyata et al., 1993, Bioscience Biotechnology and Biochemistry 57: 2049-2053; Park et al., 1996, Revista De Microbiology 27: 131-136; Schmidt-Berg-Lorenz and Maunch, 1964, Zeitung fur die Zuckerindustrie 14: 625-627; Stotola et al., 1956, Journal of the American Chemical Society 78: 2514-2518; Tsuyuki et al., 1992, Journal of General and Applied Microbiology 38: 483-490; Zhang et al., 2002, Applied and Environmental Microbiology 68: 2676-2682). Isomaltulose is currently produced in industrial scale column reactors containing immobilized bacterial cells. Initially, natural isolates have been used for this purpose but it is anticipated that higher yields of isomaltulose may be achieved using recombinant techniques. Mattes et al. (1998, supra) disclose isolated polynucleotides from Protaminobacter rubrum (CBS 547,77), Erwinia rhapontici (NCPPB 1578), the microorganism SZ 62 (Enterobacter species) and the microorganism MX-45 (Pseudomonas mesoacidophila FERM 11808 or FERM BP 3619) for producing recombinant partial or full-length sucrose isomerase enzymes in host cells such as Escherichia coli. Mattes et al. also disclose conserved amino acid sequences for designing degenerate oligonucleotides for cloning sucrose isomerase-encoding polynucleotides by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In addition to isomaltulose, reported SIs produce varying proportions of the isomer trehalulose (1-O-α-D-glucopyranosyl-D-fructose) along with glucose and fructose as by-products. Some purified SIs produce predominantly isomaltulose (75-85%), others predominantly trehalulose (90%). The ratio of these products varies with reaction conditions, particularly temperature and pH, and under some conditions small quantities of other products such as isomaltose and isomelezitose may be formed (Véronèse and Perlot, 1999, Enzyme and Microbial Technology 24: 263-269). The formation of multiple products lowers the yield and complicates the recovery of the desired isomer. Slow conversion of sucrose into isomaltulose, and a narrow range of optimal reaction conditions also limit the industrial efficiency of isomaltulose production (Cheetham, 1984, Biochemical Journal 220: 213-220; Schiweck et al., 1990, Zuckerindustrie 115: 555-565.). An ideal SI would show high speed, complete conversion, high specificity and a wide window of reaction conditions for isomaltulose production.

1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates generally to wireless communication systems, and more particularly, to the reporting of Power Headroom (PH) from a User Equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system that supports carrier aggregation. 2. Description of the Related Art Mobile communication systems were originally designed to provide users with voice communication services while they are on the move. Current mobile communication systems are capable of supporting both voice communication services and data communication services for mobile users. Standardization for a next generation of mobile communication technology for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is being conducted for Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is a broadband packet-based communication technology that is expected to provide download speeds that improve upon existing data transmission rates by up to 100 Megabytes/second (Mbps). In attempting to achieve such a high data rate, studies have been conducted that use a minimum number of nodes in connection with a simplified network topology, and that place a radio protocol as close as possible to radio channels. FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an LTE wireless communication system. The LTE wireless communication system includes a plurality of Evolved Node Bs (ENBs) 105, 110, 115 and 120, a Mobility Management Entity (MME) 125, and a Serving Gateway (S-GW) 130. ENBs 105, 110, 115 and 120 are coupled to the S-GW 130, enabling a UE 135 to connect to a core network. The ENBs 105, 110, 115 and 120 correspond to Node Bs of a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and perform more complex functions than those of a legacy Node B. In the LTE system, all user traffic, including real time services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), are provided through a shared channel. Each of the ENBs 105, 110, 115 and 120 manage one or more cells, and are responsible for the collection of status information from UEs and for the scheduling of traffic. In order to support transmission bandwidths of up to 20 megahertz (MHz), LTE employs Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as its basic modulation scheme. LTE also uses Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) to improve data throughput. AMC varies downlink modulation and coding schemes based on channel conditions for each UE. The S-GW 130 is responsible for managing data bearers and establishes or releases data bearers under the control of the MME 125. The MME 125 is in communication with the S-GW 130 and is responsible for control plane functions. FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a user plane protocol stack for use in the LTE architecture of FIG. 1. A mobile terminal, or UE, 200 has a protocol stack having a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) layer 205, a Radio Link Control (RLC) layer 210, a Media Access Control (MAC) layer 215, and a Physical (PHY) layer 220. A base station, or ENB, 201 has a protocol stack having a PDCP layer 240, an RLC layer 235, a MAC layer 230, and a PHY layer 225. The PDCP layers 205 and 240 are responsible for Internet Protocol (IP) header compression/decompression. The RLC layers 210 and 235 pack the PDCP Packet Data Units (PDUs) into a size appropriate for transmission and perform an Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) function. The MAC layers 215 and 230 serve multiple RLC layer entities. These layers are capable of multiplexing the RLC PDUs into a MAC PDU, and demultiplexing the MAC PDU into the RLC PDUs. The PHY layers 220 and 225 perform encoding and modulation on upper layer data for transmission through a radio channel, and perform demodulation and decoding on the OFDM symbol received through the radio channel for delivery to upper layers. A data unit that is input to a protocol entity is referred to as a Service Data Unit (SDU) and a data unit that is output from the protocol entity is referred to as a Protocol Data Unit. A voice communication service of a wireless communication system requires a relatively small amount of dedicated bandwidth. However, a data communication service must allocate resources in consideration of a data amount and a channel condition so that transmission throughput may increase. Thus, a mobile communication system is provided with a scheduler that manages resource allocation with respect to available resources, channel conditions, an amount of transmission data, etc. Resource scheduling is also required in LTE, and a scheduler that is incorporated into a base station, or ENB, is used to manage radio transmission resources. In order to meet International Mobile Telephony (IMT)-Advanced requirements that extend beyond those of IMT-2000, further technological advancements have allowed for the evolution of LTE into LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). LTE-A is provided with technological components, such as carrier aggregation, to fulfill the IMT-Advanced requirements. Carrier aggregation aggregates multiple carriers to form a larger bandwidth, thereby allowing a UE to transmit and receive data at higher data rates. FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating an LTE-A wireless communication system supporting carrier aggregation. An ENB 305 operates on two different carriers 310 and 315, having center frequencies of f3 and f1, respectively. A conventional wireless communication system allows a UE 330 to communicate with the ENB 305 using only one of carriers 310 and 315. However, the LTE-A system supporting carrier aggregation enables the UE 330 to use both carriers 310 and 315 in order to increase transmission throughput. The maximum data rate between the ENB 305 and the UE 330 increases in proportion to the number of carriers that are aggregated. Due to the fact that uplink transmissions cause inter-cell interference, it is preferable for a UE to calculate an uplink transmission power using a predetermined function, and to control uplink transmission based on the calculation. The predetermined function may utilize variables such as an allocated transmission resource amount, a Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS), and a path loss value in calculating a required uplink transmission power. The uplink transmission power is limited to a UE maximum transmission power. When the required uplink transmission power is greater than the UE maximum transmission power, the UE performs the uplink transmission using the UE maximum transmission power. However, use of the maximum transmission power instead of the required transmission power degrades the uplink transmission quality. Thus, it is preferable for the ENB to perform scheduling for UE transmissions such that a required transmission power for the UE transmission will not exceed the UE maximum transmission power. Some parameters utilized in scheduling at the ENB, such as channel path loss, are not capable of being measured at the ENB. When required, the UE may transmit a Power Headroom Report (PHR) to the ENB to report UE Power Headroom (PH) with respect to path loss. However, conventional uplink transmission power determination procedures are performed with respect to a single downlink carrier and a single uplink carrier. Thus, the conventional procedures are not applicable to the LTE-A system supporting carrier aggregation.

Rigid stretchers for transporting injured patients are well known. Certain known rigid stretchers are partially collapsible. These stretchers include one or more rigid support panels or beams. Because of the rigid panels or beams, these stretchers can be relatively heavy and cumbersome when handled by emergency personnel during rescue operations, and these stretchers can occupy a relatively significant amount of space in vehicles and other storage areas. Also, these known stretchers do not include a patient covering which aids in the protection of emergency personnel from hazardous body fluids from the patient and which guards the front of patient's body during transport. One known rescue bag has been developed for keeping injured people warm while they are lying on stretchers. Though this rescue bag covers part of the patient's body, it is merely an accessory to a stretcher. Accordingly, one of the disadvantages of this rescue bag is that it does not function as a patient carrier. The emergency personnel must use a stretcher in conjunction with this rescue bag in order to pick-up, carry and transport an injured person to a desired location. In addition, such a rescue bag does not have medical treatment openings which provide emergency personnel with relatively quick access to select portions of the person's body, for example, to deliver essential treatments, such as IV solutions, heart defibrillation and the like. Therefore, there is a need to overcome the foregoing disadvantages and to provide improvements to patient transporters.

Various non-informational, non-programmable nanoparticles have been known in the art, such as those disclosed in Zhang, et al., Science 272:1777-1779, 1996; LaRue et al., Macromolecules 39:309-314, 2006; Ishihara et al., Chem. Eur. J. 13:4560-4570, 2007; Kim et al., Angew. Chem., Int. Ed 46:5779-5782, 2007; Li et al., Macromolecules 41:6605-6607, 2008; Roy et al., Chem. Commun. 2106-2108, 2009; and Fernyhough et al., Soft Matter 5:1674-1682, 2009. There is a need in the art for micelles that are capable of changing morphology in a predictable or programmable way. Provided herein are solutions to these and other problems in the art.

The prior art has proposed various methods and apparatus to produce composite materials. U.S. Pat. No. 2,931,082 to Brennan discloses a casting method and apparatus wherein a composite metal article is formed by continuously casting molten metal against a longitudinally moving base such as a metal strip or the like. In Brennan, a strip is disposed between the material being cast and a rotating casting wheel. U.S. Pat. No. 5,077,094 to McCall et al. discloses a process for applying a metal coating to a metal strip substrate. In this process, a melt pool of a metal coating material is deposited on a casting surface of the substrate material and rapidly cooled to form the coated metal strip. U.S. Pat. No. 4,224,978 to Klein discloses a twin roll casting method and apparatus for forming a composite material. In this method, a material having a mechanical strength and melting point substantially higher than that of aluminum is plated on at least one face of a continuously cast aluminum core material. Referenced in this patent is French Patent No. 1,364,758 which describes in principle a continuous casting method in which still liquid metal is introduced between two cooled work rolls and in which a metal plating strip is interposed between the liquid metal and the work rolls. The metal plating strip is thus plated onto the continuously cast material. This French patent discloses plating an aluminum blank with a strip of aluminum. In the prior art, it is also known to provide a brazing sheet comprising a core of an aluminum alloy and a brazing material, i.e. a coating of a lower melting point filler metal. Typically, the coatings are roll bonded to one or both sides of the core sheet during fabrication. Brazing sheet can then be formed without removing the coating, assembled, fluxed and brazed without placing additional filler metal at a joint site. In one type of roll bonding, the brazing material is bonded to a core material at an ingot stage. The bonded ingot must then be hot rolled to brazing sheet thicknesses, typically 0.125". This hot rolling step is conducive to the formation of surface oxides which impair the quality of the brazing sheet and can adversely affect brazing performance. Alternatively, the filler metal can be produced by casting into an ingot form and rolled to a thin gauge liner stock. After rolling, the wrought filler metal can be roll bonded to the aluminum core material using conventional techniques. This method requires numerous annealing and surface preparation steps to prepare the thin gauge liner stock for bonding. The core material may vary depending on the application. AA3003 or AA6951 aluminum alloys are typical examples of core materials. The brazing filler metals can also vary depending on the desired use, usually comprising an AA4XXX-type aluminum alloy. Besides the drawbacks noted above concerning excessive surface oxides in hot rolled brazing sheet and the additional processing steps of annealing and surface cleaning for wrought liner stock, prior art methods of making brazing sheet lack the ability to vary the cladding or filler metal composition for a given core material. In response to the drawbacks and disadvantages of the prior art discussed above, a need has developed to provide an improved method for making twin roll cast composite materials offering flexibility in choice of composition, cost effectiveness and energy efficiency. In response to this need, the present invention provides a method for making a twin roll cast clad material having an acceptable structure and quality in combination with low operating and capital costs and the ability to utilize different brazing filler materials with a single core material.

The VC-2 video compression standard is an open free-use video-decoding standard contributed by British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) standard. The VC-2 standard uses discrete-wavelet-transform (DWT) and interleaved exponential-Golomb (IEG) variable-length-encoding to achieve the desired video compression. Originally designed to compete with the prevailing H.264 standard, it is expected that DWT results in fewer blocky artifacts than the prevailing discrete-cosine-transform (DCT)-based systems. To achieve the low-delay requirement in a serial data interface (SDI) transmission system, SMPTE standardized two low-delay profiles, which include the level-64 using the (2, 2) DWT, and the level-65, using the overlapped (5, 3) DWT. It has been shown that in order to fit a high definition (HD) video into a standard definition SDI (SD-SDI) payload with excellent video quality, the level-65 compression is required. The VC-2 level-65 is a subset of the low-delay profile with the following attributes: 1. 4:2:2 10-bit sampling with supported resolutions 1920×1080i29.97, 1920×1080i25, 1280×720p59.94, 1280×720p50. 2. The codec uses only Low-Delay Profile. 3. The codec uses only the LeGall (5, 3) wavelet transform (wavelet index=1). 4. The wavelet depth is exactly 3 levels. 5. The slice size is fixed to be 16 (horizontal)×8 (vertical) in luminance and 8 (horizontal)×8 (vertical) in chrominance. Conventionally, overlapped DWT is used in the JPEG-2000 standard which is used extensively in digital cameras and medical imaging systems. In the literature, there are many publications on how to reduce the implementation complexity of 2-D DWT. A common property of this technology is that JPEG-2000 based implementation uses an external frame-buffer memory for processing the on-chip DWT/IDWT data. Thus, such publications have primarily focused on how to: minimize the read and write access to the external memory; reduce the on-chip internal memory; speed up data processing; and choose a scan scheme to minimize the memory usage. However, an external memory typically increases costs associated with the chip package size and power consumption, as well as the overall system complexity and bill-of-material (BOM) costs.

This application claims the benefit of Korean Application No. 98-54151, filed Dec. 10, 1998, in the Korean Patent Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a fluid jetting apparatus and a process for manufacturing the same, and more particularly, to a fluid jetting apparatus for a print head which is employed in output apparatuses such as an ink-jet printer, a facsimile machine, etc. to jet fluid through a nozzle, and a manufacturing process thereof. 2. Description of the Related Art A print head is a part or a set of parts which are capable of converting output data into a visible form on a predetermined medium using a type of printer. Generally, such a print head for an ink jet printer, and the like, uses a fluid jetting apparatus which is capable of jetting the predetermined amount of fluid through a nozzle to an exterior of a fluid chamber holding the fluid by applying a physical force to the fluid chamber. According to methods for applying physical force to the fluid within the fluid chamber, the fluid jetting apparatus is roughly grouped into a piezoelectric system and a thermal system. The piezoelectric system pushes out the ink within the fluid chamber through a nozzle through an operation of a piezoelectric element which is mechanically expanded in accordance with a driving signal. The thermal system pushes the fluid through the nozzle by means of bubbles which are produced from the fluid within the fluid chamber by the heat generated by an exothermic body. Recently, also, a thermal compression system has been developed, which is an improved form of the thermal system. The thermal compression system is for jetting out the fluid by driving a membrane by instantly heating a vaporizing fluid which acts as a working fluid. FIG. 1 is a vertical sectional view of a fluid jetting apparatus according to a conventional thermal compression system. The fluid jetting apparatus of the thermal compression system includes a heat driving part 10, a membrane 20, and a nozzle part 30. A substrate 11 of the heat driving part 10 supports the heat driving part 10 and the whole structure that will be constructed later. An insulated layer 12 is diffused on the substrate 11. An electrode 14 is made of a conductive material for supplying an electric power to the heat driving part 10. An exothermic body 13 is made of a resistive material having a predetermined resistance for expanding a working fluid by converting electrical energy into heat energy. Working fluid chambers 16 and 17 contain the working fluid, to maintain a pressure of the working fluid which is heat expanded, are connected by a working fluid introducing passage 18, and are formed within a working fluid barrier 15. Further, the membrane 20 is a thin layer which is adhered to an upper portion of the working fluid barrier layer 15 and working; fluid chambers 16 and 17 to be moved upward and downward by the pressure of the expanded working fluid. The membrane 20 includes a polyimide coated layer 21 and a polyimide adhered layer 22. Jetting fluid chambers 37 and 38 are chambers which are formed to enclose the jetting fluid. When the pressure is transmitted to the jetting fluid through the membrane 20, the jetting fluid is jetted only through a nozzle 35 formed in a nozzle plate 34. Here, the jetting fluid is the fluid which is pushed out of the jetting fluid chambers 37 and 38 in response to the driving of the membrane 20, and is finally jetted to the exterior. A jetting fluid introducing passage 39 connects the jetting fluid chambers 37 and 38. The jetting fluid chambers 37 and 38 and the jetting fluid introducing passage 39 are formed in a jetting fluid barrier layer 36. The nozzle 35 is an orifice through which the jetting fluid held using the membrane 20 and the jetting fluid chambers 37 and 38 is emitted to the exterior. Another substrate 31 (see FIGS. 4A and 4B) of the nozzle part 30 is temporarily employed for constructing the nozzle part 30, and should be removed before the nozzle part 30 is assembled. FIG. 2 shows a process for manufacturing the fluid jetting apparatus according to a conventional roll method. As shown in FIG. 2, the nozzle plate 34 is transferred from a feeding reel 51 to a take-up reel 52. In the process of transferring the nozzle plate 34 from the feeding reel 51 to the take-up reel 52, a nozzle is formed in the nozzle plate 34 by laser processing equipment 53. After the nozzle is formed, air is jetted from an air blower 54 so as to eliminate extraneous substances attached to the nozzle plate 34. Next, an actuator chip 40, which is laminated on a substrate to the jetting fluid barrier, is bonded with the nozzle plate 34 by a tab bonder 55, and accordingly, the fluid jetting apparatus is completed. The completed fluid jetting apparatuses are wound around the take-up reel 52 to be preserved, and then sectioned in pieces in the manufacturing process for the print head. Accordingly, each piece of the fluid jetting apparatuses is supplied into the manufacturing line of a printer. The process for manufacturing the, fluid jetting apparatus according to the conventional thermal compression system will be described below with reference to the construction of the fluid jetting apparatus shown in FIG. 1. FIGS. 3A and 3B are views for showing a process for manufacturing the heat driving part and FIG. 3C is a view for showing a process for manufacturing the membrane on the heat driving part of the conventional fluid jetting apparatus. FIGS. 4A to 4C are views for showing the process for manufacturing the nozzle part. In order to manufacture the conventional fluid jetting apparatus, the heat driving part 10 and the nozzle part 30 should be manufactured separately. Here, the heat driving part 10 is completed as the separately-made membrane 20 is adhered to the working fluid barrier layer 15 of the heat driving part 10. After that, by reversing and adhering the separately-made nozzle part 30 to the membrane 20, the fluid jetting apparatus is completed. FIG. 3A shows a process for diffusing the insulated layer 12 on the substrate 11 of the heat driving part 10, and for forming an exothermic body 13 and an electrode 14 on the insulated layer 12 in turn. Referring to FIG. 3B, working fluid chambers 16 and 17 and a working fluid passage 18 are formed by performing an etching process of the working fluid barrier layer 15 through a predetermined mask patterning. More specifically, the heat driving part 10 is formed as the insulated layer 12, the exothermic body 13, the electrode 14, and the working fluid barrier layer 15 are sequentially laminated on the substrate 11 (which is a silicon substrate). In such a situation, the working fluid chambers 16 and 17 (which are filled with the working fluid to be expanded by heat, are formed on an etched portion of the working fluid barrier layer 15. The working fluid is introduced through the working fluid introducing passage 18. FIG. 3C shows a process for adhering the separately-made membrane 20 to the upper portion of the completed heat driving part 10. The membrane 20 is a thin diaphragm, which is to be driven toward the jetting fluid chamber 37 (see FIG. 1) by the working fluid which is heated by the exothermic body 13. FIG. 4A shows a process for manufacturing a nozzle 35 using the laser processing equipment 53 (shown in FIG. 2) after an insulated layer 32 and the nozzle plate 34 are sequentially formed on a substrate 31 of the nozzle part 30. FIG. 4B shows a process for forming the jetting fluid barrier layer 36 on the upper portion of the construction shown in FIG. 4A, and jetting fluid chambers 37 and 38 and the fluid introducing passage by an etching process through a predetermined mask patterning. FIG. 4C shows a process for exclusively separating the nozzle part 10 from the substrate 31 of the nozzle part 30. The nozzle part 30 includes the jetting fluid barrier layer 36 and the nozzle plate 34. On the etched portion of the jetting fluid barrier layer 36, the jetting fluid chambers 37 and 38 filled with the fluid to be jetted are formed. The jetting fluid such as an ink, or the like, is introduced through the jetting fluid introducing passage 39 (see FIG. 1) for introduction of the jetting fluid. The nozzle 35 is formed on the nozzle plate 34 to be interconnected with the jetting fluid chamber 37, so that the fluid is jetted through the nozzle 35. The nozzle part 30 is manufactured by the processes that are shown in FIGS. 4A to 4C. First, the nozzle plate 34 inclusive of the nozzle 35, is formed on the substrate 31 having the insulated layer 32 through an electroplating process. Next, the jetting fluid barrier layer 36 is laminated thereon, and the jetting fluid chambers 37 and 38 and the jetting fluid introducing passage 39 are formed through a lithographic process. Finally, as the insulated layer 32 and the substrate 31 are removed, the nozzle part 30 is completed. The completed nozzle part 30 is reversed, and then adhered to the membrane 20 of a membrane, heat driving part assembly which has been assembled beforehand. More specifically, the jetting fluid barrier 36 of the nozzle part 30 is adhered to the polyimide coated layer 21 of the membrane 20. The operation of the fluid jetting apparatus according to the thermal compression system will be described below with reference to the construction shown in FIG. 1. First, an electric power is supplied through the electrode 14, and an electric current flows through the exothermic body 13 connected to the electrode 14. Since the exothermic body 13 generates heat due to its resistance, the fluid within the working fluid chamber 16 is subjected to a resistance heating, and the fluid starts to vaporize when the temperature thereof exceeds a predetermined temperature. As the amount of the vaporized fluid increases, the vapor pressure accordingly increases. As a result, the membrane 20 is driven upward. More specifically, as the working fluid undergoes a thermal expansion, the membrane 20 is pushed upward in a direction indicated by the arrow in FIG. 1. As the membrane 20 is pushed upward, the fluid within the jetting fluid chamber 37 is jetted out toward an exterior through the nozzle 35. Then, when the supply of electric power is stopped, the resistance heating of the exothermic body 13 is no longer generated. Accordingly, the fluid within the working fluid chamber 16 is cooled to a liquid state, so that the volume thereof decreases and the membrane 20 recovers its original shape. Meanwhile, a conventional material of the nozzle plate 34 is mainly made of nickel, but the trend in using the material of a polyimide synthetic resin has increased recently. When the nozzle plate 34 is made of the polyimide synthetic resin, it is fed in a reel type. The fluid jetting apparatus is completed by the way a chip laminated from the silicon substrate to the jetting fluid barrier layer 36 is bonded on the nozzle plate 34 fed in the reel type. According to the conventional fluid jetting apparatus and its manufacturing process, however, since the heat driving part, the membrane, and the nozzle part have to be separately made before such are adhered to each other by three adhering processes, the productivity has been decreased. Further; since the adhesion between the heat driving part and the membrane, and between the membrane and, the nozzle part are often unreliable, the working fluid and the jetting fluid often leak, so that a fraction defective has been increased, and the reliability and quality of the fluid jetting apparatus has been deteriorated. The present invention has been made to overcome the above-described problems of the prior art, and accordingly it is an object of the present invention to provide a fluid jetting apparatus and a manufacturing process thereof capable of improving the reliability, quality and the productivity of the fluid jetting apparatus by sequentially laminating a heat driving part, a membrane, and a nozzle part to form the fluid jetting apparatus, instead of adhering the same to each other. Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The above and other objects are accomplished by a method of manufacturing a fluid jetting apparatus according to the present invention, including: (1) forming a heat driving part having a sacrificial layer; (2) forming a membrane on the heat driving part which includes the sacrificial layer; (3) forming a nozzle part on the membrane; and (4) removing the sacrificial layer. The step (1) includes: (i) forming an electrode and an exothermic body on a substrate; (ii) laminating a working fluid barrier on the electrode and the exothermic body, and forming a working fluid chamber in the working fluid barrier; (iii) forming a protective layer on the working fluid barrier, the electrode, and the exothermic body; (iv) forming a sacrificial layer on the protective layer and within the working fluid chamber at the same height as the working fluid barrier. Further, the step (1) may otherwise include: (i) forming an electrode and an exothermic body on a substrate; (ii) forming a plane layer on the substrate at the same height as the electrode and the exothermic body combined; (iii) laminating a protective layer on the electrode and the plane layer; (iv) laminating the working fluid barrier on the protective layer, and forming a working fluid chamber in the working fluid barrier; and (v) forming the sacrificial layer on the protective layer and within an interior of the working fluid chamber at the same height as the working fluid barrier. The step (2) is performed through a spin coating process. The step (3) includes: (i) laminating a jetting fluid barrier on the membrane, and forming a jetting fluid chamber in the jetting fluid barrier; and (ii) laminating a nozzle plate on the jetting fluid barrier, and forming a nozzle in the nozzle plate. The nozzle plate is laminated through a process for laminating a dry film. The above and other objects of the present invention may further be achieved by providing a fluid jetting apparatus including a heat driving part which generates a driving force, a nozzle part having a jetting fluid chamber interconnected to an exterior of the fluid jetting apparatus through a nozzle, and a membrane which transmits the driving force generated from the heat driving part to the nozzle part, wherein the heat driving part comprises: an electrode and an exothermic body formed on a substrate; a plane layer formed on the substrate at the same height as the electrode and the exothermic body combined; a protective layer laminated on the plane layer; and a working fluid barrier laminated on the protective layer, and provided with the working fluid chamber for holding a working fluid which is expanded by the exothermic body to generate the driving force.

1. Field of the Invention The invention relates generally to a device that attaches to a telephone for the purpose of lifting up the receiver end of a telephone handset (hook-switching). 2. Description of the Prior Art Many of the newest telephone systems that are coming out on the market have what is called electronic hook-switching. This is basically a button, that when pressed, will give a dial tone for a telephone headset. This is a very convenient option for people who use telephone headsets, but the problem still remains that there are literally millions of telephones on the market that do not have this option. Until now, the only option that people have had to alleviate this problem is to physically pick up the handset every time the telephone rings, and place the headset off to the side of the telephone base. This procedure is time and space consuming. Another method that is commonly used when getting a dial tone, is to balance the telephone handset just up and to the side of the telephone""s hook-switch. The major problem with this solution is that if accidently bumped or moved, the handset will fall back into place and one will hang up the line. The present invention overcomes the prior art practices by providing a mechanical handset lift for lifting the receiver end of a telephone handset off the hook-switch and pivoting the handset about the microphone end, but leaving the handset centrally positioned over and about the telephone body. The general purpose of the present invention is to provide a mechanical device for lifting the receiver end of a telephone handset off the telephone hook-switch to allow electrical operation of a remote handset receiver/mouthpiece while still leaving the handset placed over and about the telephone base unit. According to one object of the present invention, there is provided a vertically oriented base for mounting to the side of a telephone base. A moveable pivot shaft extends through an upper region of the vertically oriented base end, which includes a lift rod secured to one end of the pivot shaft and a lift rod lever handle secured to the opposite end of the pivot shaft. A stop shaft limits the over center travel of the lift rod lever handle and the lift rod to allow on hook or off hook positioning of a telephone handset receiver. According to an alternate embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a vertical base member with a lift rod and lift lever secured about the base member in positive locked alignment and also having rotational stops aligned on a surface of the vertical base member. One significant aspect and feature of the present invention is mechanical handset lift that will mechanically lift up the receiver end of a telephone handset off the hook-switch so that a dial tone may be obtained for the telephone headset in use. Another significant aspect and feature of the present invention is a mechanical handset lift which will lift the receiver end of a telephone handset off the hook-switch so as to allow a user to use either the telephone handset or a telephone headset. A further significant aspect and feature of the present invention is a mechanical handset lift which will lift the receiver end of a telephone handset off the hook-switch and which will result in the environment on a person""s desk being less cluttered due to the absence of a telephone handset lying off to the side of the telephone base while the telephone handset is in use. Yet another significant aspect and feature of the present invention is a mechanical handset lift that will mechanically lift up the receiver end of a telephone handset in such a manner that will greatly increase the chances of not accidentally hanging up the telephone while a telephone headset is in use. Another significant aspect and feature of the present invention is a lift rod and lift rod handle in positive angular engagement with each other about a base unit. Another significant aspect and feature of the present invention is stops which define rotational movement of the lift rod and lift rod handle with respect to the base of a telephone. Having thus described the embodiments of the present invention, it is the principal object hereof to provide a mechanical handset lift. The present invention relates to a mechanical handset lift device that will enable the telephone user to enable and disable the telephone""s hook-switch capabilities without the inconvenience of picking up the telephone and placing it on the desk. Currently, the only means to do this is by placing the telephone handset on and off the hook-switch. The problems that arrive from this method are 1) one has to physically pick up the handset every time the telephone rings, 2) one has to lay the handset on the desk (for many people this takes up just too much room), 3) if the telephone allows one to balance the handset off to the right side of the hook switch, one may bump the telephone, and accidentally hang up. The invention uses the handset""s own mold to accomplish the goal of hook-switching, and allows the handset to be used as well. The present invention also creates an environment where it is virtually impossible to accidently hand up the telephone. This is a very common problem when the telephone is balanced to the side of the hook-switch. It is an object of the present invention to provide a device that will enable a telephone handset operator to use both the telephone handset or headset conveniently, without the problems that are currently plaguing the telephone headset industry.

In cranes, cargo-handling machinery or construction machinery, such as excavators for example, hydraulic quick couplings are widely used for the purpose of coupling structural components which have to be separated or reset for a specific use of for transport. The structural components are in most cases connected mechanically by quick-change systems, the coupling of the power transmission lines, especially those with large cross sections, being associated with considerable expenditure in terms of energy and in terms of time. One object of the present application is to make available a hydraulic quick coupling which on the one hand reduces the expenditure of energy and time and on the other hand avoids contamination of the hydraulic fluid by using individual couplings free from leakage oil. According to the one embodiment, the object is achieved by a hydraulic quick coupling. The coupling includes two interacting quick-coupling parts which are arranged respectively on the structural components that are to be connected or separated. One quick-coupling part has at least one guide bolt which can engage in a centering bore of the quick-coupling part lying opposite it, each quick-coupling part being provided with coupling plugs or coupling sleeves for the connection of the hydraulic lines, and at least one quick-coupling part being arranged movably on one structural component in order to connect or separate the two quick-coupling parts. Preferred embodiments are set out in the dependent claims following on from the main claim. Accordingly, one quick-coupling part can preferably be arranged fixedly on one structural component, while the other quick-coupling part is arranged movably on the second structural component. Particularly advantageously, at least one of the quick-coupling parts is spring-mounted in a support frame. In this way, the coupling can be kept free from forces acting on the structural components. The quick-coupling part spring-mounted in the support frame can, together with said support frame, be mounted movably on the structural component. At least one lock can be provided via which the quick-coupling parts can be locked to one another in the coupled state. The lock can secure the at least one guide bolt driven into the corresponding at least one centering bore. The movable quick-coupling part can sit displaceably on a linear guide. As has already been mentioned, the support frame in which the quick-coupling part is spring-mounted can also be guided on this linear guide. The movable quick-coupling part is advantageously displaceable via a piston/cylinder arrangement. To lock the quick-coupling parts in the coupled state, it is also possible for the coupled position to be fixed, for example, by a permanent pressure load of the piston/cylinder arrangement or by suitable shut-off valves. Advantageously, the movable quick-coupling part spring-mounted in the support frame can be fixed in its opened position by a guide. The guide can comprise a guide means, for example, a guide bolt which engages in the coupling sleeve in the opened position of the quick-coupling part. In this position, the guide means, that is to say for example a guide bolt, permits guiding of the spring-mounted quick-coupling part in such a way that the forces acting on the latter can be taken up. When attaching the quick-coupling part, that is to say when moving it into the closed position, the quick-coupling part moves with its centering bore onto the guide bolt of the other quick-coupling part lying opposite it. In the coupled position, the guide means, that is to say for example the guide bolt, frees the corresponding coupling sleeve. The securing of the quick-coupling part is taken over by the guide bolt of the opposite quick-coupling part. To provide a possibility of also being able to couple structural components which are angled about their bolted point, at least one of the two quick-coupling parts is arranged on a pivotable support bracket. The support bracket can be pivoted by its own piston/cylinder arrangement. The quick-coupling part arranged on the support bracket can in addition be driven along the support bracket and moved to and fro along the lengthwise guide with another piston/cylinder arrangement. In this way, the quick-coupling parts can also be coupled in an angled position.

The invention relates to a discharge lamp having an oval sectional shape, and more particularly to a circular fluorescent lamp. Research and studies for developing a circular fluorescent lamp having a non-circular sectional started many years ago for the purpose of increasing the illuminance of the lamp on a plane beneath its installed position, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publications Nos. 50-32785 (1975) and 51-11876 (1976). Also, Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 37-22455 (1962) proposes a straight fluorescent lamp in which the ratio between the larger and smaller tube diameters is selected to be 4:3 or 4:2, and the thickness of its phosphor film is made non-uniform, so as to improve its illuminance in a specific direction relative to its installation. Although a discharge tube having an oval sectional shape has been proposed for years and is well known in the art, as disclosed in the prior art publications, the mechanical strength of the discharge tube decreases inevitably due its oval sectional shape. However, no proposal has been made hitherto for solving the problem of an undesirable decrease in the mechanical strength of such a discharge tube.

A typical tire has a plurality of rubber components and a plurality of reinforcing components chiefly constituted by cords. As illustrated in FIG. 9, a typical example of the tire includes an inner liner 1, a tread 2, side walls 3, rim strips or chafers 4, under-belt pads 5, and other components, all of which are built by rubber materials having required characteristics. These rubber components are combined with a carcass layer 6 and a belt layer 7 as reinforcing components including cords to become a tire T. FIG. 8 illustrates an example of respective disassembled components of a tire. FIG. 8 shows the inner liner 1, a tread base 2a and a tread cap 2b constituting the tread 2, the side walls 3, the chafers 4, and the under-belt pads 5 laminated under both side ends of the belt, all of which are built by rubber materials having predetermined characteristics. The carcass layer 6 has first and second carcass plies 6a and 6b, and the belt layer 7 has a plurality of belts 7a and 7b. Each of bead members 8 has a bead core 8a made of wire or the like and a bead filler 8b made of rubber attached to the outer circumference of the bead core 8a. A squeegee 10 as a rubber layer laminated on the inner ply, tapes between plies 6c, belt edge tapes 7c are all made of rubber materials. A spiral tape 9 contains fiber cords. A double-stage building method is known as a method for building this type of tire. According to this method, the inner liner, the carcass ply and other components are affixed on an expansive and contractive band drum, and the beads and sides are built by a primary building drum to build a green case. The green case is shifted to a secondary building drum which modifies shaping to build the green case into a toroidal shape, onto which the belt, the tread rubber and other components are affixed to build a green tire. In addition, a single-stage building method which uses a single building drum swinging between the position at which both the band building and primary building are executed and the secondary building position is known. When the tire components in the respective processes are affixed and built at a different building position for each of the primary building step and the secondary building step in the double-stage building method, longer building cycle time is required and therefore improvement of productivity is difficult to achieve. As a technique for overcoming these drawbacks, a system which uses a plurality of movable building drums to build a green tire has been proposed. In this system, the movable building drums are shifted to predetermined building positions. Predetermined components such as an inner liner or other rubber components or carcass plies are supplied to build a green case in a primary building step, and rubber components such as a belt and a tread are supplied to build a green tire in a secondary building step. The system which shifts the building drums to execute the double-stage building method requires a complicated and large-scale structure and a large installation and operation space. Moreover, preparatory processes need to be performed for both the rubber components such as the inner liner and the tread and the reinforcing members such as the carcass and the belt before they are supplied for formation. Furthermore, the system requires a wide space for storing various types of plenty of components to facilitate arrangement switching at the time of size change of the tire. Recently, such a technique has been proposed which builds rubber components having predetermined cross sections by overlapping and spirally winding unvulcanized rubber strips formed by extrusion into ribbon shapes on a building drum (see Patent Reference Nos. 1 through 4 shown below, for example). According to the technique which builds the rubber components constituting the tire by winding the rubber strips discussed above, the rubber volume considerably differs depending on the types of rubber components. For example, the rubber volume of the components such as the tread and the side walls is relatively large, and the rubber volume of the components such as the under-belt pads and the chafers is relatively small. The rubber components having large rubber volume requires longer time for winding. In formation of the tire, therefore, the arrangement of the building positions of the respective rubber components is an important factor associated with time required for winding of the respective rubber components. When the building time is not equalized for each of the primary and secondary building steps, loss time is produced in the building cycle. According to the method disclosed in the Patent Reference No. 1, for example, a breaker corresponding to the belt and the tread are sequentially laminated at a position for building the final shape in the secondary building step. Thus, the side walls are built by winding rubber strips at a position for building the green case in the primary building step. However, since the under-belt pads are also built by winding rubber strips at the position for building the green case, the building cycle in the primary building step takes longer time as the rubber volume of the side walls increases. In this case, there is a possibility that prolongation of the entire building cycle time occurs. Patent Reference No. 1: JP-B-6-51367 Patent Reference No. 2: JP-A-9-29858 Patent Reference No. 3: JP-A-2002-178415 Patent Reference No. 4: JP-A-2002-205512

This invention relates generally to a portable humidifier and, more specifically, to a portable humidifier with an improved water tank. Various types of humidifiers are used to provide moisture to indoor air. Included among such humidifiers are ultrasonic humidifiers, steam humidifiers or vaporizers, and evaporative humidifiers. Ultrasonic humidifiers employ a high-speed oscillator, positioned a given distance below the water surface, to energize the water and break it into a fine mist. A fan carries the mist into the surrounding environment. It is critical that the distance from the oscillator to the water level be accurately maintained to ensure that the oscillation energy is efficiently transferred to the water. A drop in water level can result in permanent damage to the oscillator. The water level generally is maintained by the use of an inverted water tank such as that described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,210,818 and 5,247,604. The tank is sealed and includes a carrying handle on its top surface while a bottom surface includes an opening to which a cap is attached. When the tank is inverted beneath a spigot and the cap is removed the opening serves as a fill opening. Often the cap includes a valve system which seals the fill opening unless the tank is properly positioned on a humidifier base and the valve is engaged by a valve actuator in the base. The valve actuator opens the valve and allows water to escape from the tank into a reservoir defined by the base. Discharging water is exchanged for air which enters the tank through the same opening. As water flows into the base reservoir, the water level rises until it seals the valve and prevents air from getting into the tank. At this level, which is the normal operating water level for the humidifier, water flow from the tank ceases. The design of the humidifier is established to position the oscillator that given distance below this level. As the oscillator and fan cause dispersal of moisture from the reservoir, the water level attempts to drop creating a pathway for air into the tank and in turn allowing the release of a proportional amount of water from the tank into the reservoir to thereby return the water level to the normal operating level. This process repeats itself continually until the water supply in the tank is depleted, at which time the water level begins to drop increasingly lower. A float sensing shut-off switch mechanism senses the abnormally low water level and turns the humidifier off before the water level drops low enough to cause damage to the oscillator. This basic system is well known and often practiced in ultrasonic humidifiers of the prior art. Evaporative humidifiers come in several varieties. Some employ absorbent belts continuously rotating through first a water reservoir and then an air stream to cause humidity. Some employ pumps to lift water from a reservoir and pour it over a porous media through which air flows to cause similar humidification, and some employ wicking pads which are positioned partially below water level and partially above. In such humidifiers, the water level must be maintained for a different reason than that of the ultrasonic humidifier. Specifically, it is important that water level be maintained to ensure consistent humidity efficiency and maximum moisture output. Wick pads generally are capable of drawing water from the reservoir water level to a given height through capillary action. A relatively smaller portion of the wick pad must be positioned below the water level where water is absorbed, than above where air flowing through the pad causes the desired humidification. Excessive height of the pad above that height to which water will be drawn not only constitutes wasted wick material and is therefor inefficient by design, but also reduces the humidification efficiency of the humidifier by allowing a pathway for air which does not pass through the moistened portion of the pad, essentially constituting air leakage which reduces the total humidification rate. For this reason, wick type evaporative humidifiers are often designed to maintain a given water level which ensures that the most efficient amount of the wick pad lies above and below the water level to maximize efficiency and output. Accordingly, a water tank similar to that described above often is used with evaporative humidifiers. Steam humidifiers cause humidity by boiling water into vapor. A submersible heating element depends from a humidification unit into a boiling chamber within a base. A water tank similar to that described above is positioned on the base to both feed water to the boiling chamber and to maintain a given normal operating level therein. The boiling water maintains the temperature of the heating element at approximately two hundred and twelve degrees fahrenheit. It is important that the water level be maintained high enough to fully submerge the heating element, and not be allowed to drop while the heating element is energized or overheating will occur. A float sensing shut-off switch mechanism senses an abnormally low water level as the water tank is depleted and turns the heating element off before excessive overheating occurs. Most of the tanks described above and known in the prior art include a handle projecting from a tank top surface. Such positioning of the handle requires that the tank be carried from the humidifier to the spigot cap with the fill opening facing down. It is common for some leakage to occur from the cap during such movement. It is also common that, after being carried to a water supply, the tanks are rested on a surface with the fill opening facing down. Although usually protruding precariously from the bottom surface of the tank, prior cap/valve assemblies have not generally provided a great amount of structural support, and being that a filled water tank is relatively heavy, the weight of the tank resting on the cap/valve assembly can subject the valve to an enormously high amount of stress. Consequently, permanent damage to valves is relatively common and often results in water spillage that damages furnishings. It is the object of the present invention to overcome the deficiencies of the prior art and provide a humidifier tank having a tank support structure which serves both to protect the delicate cap/valve assembly and provides a means by which the tank can be carried hole side up to prevent leakage during transport.

Conventionally, in a rotary pump such as can be used for transporting liquid foods, a rotary drive shaft is formed with its leading end in a spline shaft, a spline hole formed through a rotor is engaged by the spline shaft of the rotors of the pump within a pumping chamber in a main rotor casing, and a fastening nut of the rotors is engaged and fixed at the end of the rotor drive shafts projected outwardly from the rotor, and a concave casing cover receives the rotor segments and the rotor fastening nut. In such a conventional rotary pump, a transported liquid flows in the pumping chamber, enters into the concave part inside the casing cover through a space between the rotor and the casing cover, and tends to be retained in that concave part, becoming trapped therein. Since the so trapped food can spoil, the pumps of this type have to be frequently disassembled and the pump with the concave part inside the casing cover cleaned after a day's use of the pump. Reassembly of such pumps after their disassembly, and their cleaning requires the expenditure of considerable time and labor thus increasing the cost of the product.

1. Field of Invention The present invention relates to a mounting case to accommodate an electro-optical device, such as a liquid crystal panel, which is used as a light valve of a projection display apparatus, such as a liquid crystal projector, an electro-optical device encased in a mounting case, in which the electro-optical device is accommodated and a projection display apparatus including the electro-optical device encased in the mounting case. 2. Description of Related Art In general in the related art, when a liquid crystal panel is used as a light valve of a liquid crystal projector, the liquid crystal panel is not provided in an exposed state on a console, etc., constituting the liquid crystal projector. But it is accommodated or encased in a suitable mounting case and then the mounting case including the liquid crystal panel is provided on the console, etc. This is because the liquid crystal panel can easily be fixed to the case by suitably providing screws in the corresponding mounting case. In the liquid crystal projector, the light emitted from a light source is projected onto the liquid crystal panel encased in the mounting case as focused light. Light passing through the liquid crystal panel is enlarged and projected on the screen to display images. In such a liquid crystal projector, since the enlarged projection is generally predetermined, relatively intense light emitted from a light source, such as a metal halide lamp is used. However, in this construction, first, there is a problem in that the temperature of the liquid-crystal-panel encasing mounting case, particularly of the liquid crystal panel rises. The rise in temperature causes a rise in temperature of the liquid crystal interposed between a pair of transparent substrates in the liquid crystal panel. Therefore, the characteristics of the liquid crystal are deteriorated. In addition, when the light emitted from the source light is uneven, the liquid crystal panel is partially heated, and then variations in the transmittance are generated at so-called hot spots. Thus, the quality of projected images deteriorates.

Integrated circuit memories, such as static random access memories (SRAMs) require increasingly short access times. SRAMs are often used in the portion of a processing system where speed is very important, such as a cache memory for microprocessor. Address transition detection is one method that has been used to decrease access time by allowing a memory access to begin as soon as a change in an address is detected. ATD decreases memory access times, and may also reduce power consumption, by providing both preconditioning signals and activation signals in the memory. For example, ATD may be used for a word line driving, bit line driving and precharge, data line sensing, and for data outputting. An address transition detector generates a pulse in response to an address change. It is typical to have a separate address transition detector for each address signal which transitions are to be detected. For example, if a transition of the row address is to be detected, then an address transition detector is commonly used for a row address signal. The output pulses of these detectors are then logically combined by logic gates to provide a single summation signal. This summation signal is then used to provide timing and control signals for the memory. In the past, the summation of ATD pulses has been accomplished by using centrally located ATD summation logic circuitry. Metal lines have been used to route the ATD summation signal to portions of the memory where the ATD summation signal is to be used, such as to the word line drivers or to the bit line loads. However, as memories increase in size and density, the distance from the centrally located ATD summation circuitry to the most distant circuits of the memory increases, resulting in the need for longer metal lines. A problem with using longer metal lines to route the ATD pulses is the increased parasitic capacitance that the centrally located ATD summation logic circuit must drive, increasing power consumption, and requiring the use of larger drive transistors in the centrally located ATD summation logic circuitry. In addition, the timing signals may be excessively skewed from one another in different portions of the memory because the signals have to travel different distance across the memory. Excessively skewed timing signals may seriously degrade the performance and reliability of the memory.

1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates, in general, to a shift control method for a vehicle having a double clutch transmission (DCT), and more particularly, to a technology for improving a response to a speed change during a kickdown. 2. Description of Related Art Unlike an automatic transmission (AT) which requires only clutch shifting, a DCT can enable clutch shifting only after gear shifting has been completed. Therefore, in the DCT, gear shifting performance is a key factor for an overall response to speed change. In particular, more rapid gear shifting is required for a kickdown that a driver regards most sensitive for a response to speed change. For reference, the gear shifting refers to a speed change operation that causes a sleeve to engage with a clutch gear due to them being synchronized using a synchronizer. The clutch shifting refers to a speed change operation that transmits power that has been supplied from an engine to drive wheels by changing its speed substantially using the sleeve, the clutch gear and shift gears by engaging the working parts of a clutch of an input shaft, the gear shifting of which has been completed as described above, with each other. In addition, gear releasing refers to the process in which the sleeve is released and disengaged from the clutch gear. In order to reduce a time required for the gear shifting, displacement optimization at a point where the synchronization by the synchronizer starts, a reduced time for the synchronizer to carry out the synchronization, displacement optimization at a point where the working parts of the clutch gear are to engage with each other, and the like are required. Among these, most time is consumed in the range of the synchronization by the synchronizer during the gear shifting. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the time it takes the synchronizer to carry out synchronization. The information disclosed in this Background of the Invention section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.

The present disclosure is related to battery systems. In the recent years, with shortage of fossil-fuel based energy and adverse environmental effects from the consumption of fossil fuel, both public and private sectors have poured valuable resources into clean technologies. An important aspect of clean technologies is energy storage, or simply battery systems. Over the past, many battery types have been developed and used, with their respective advantages and disadvantages. For its chemical properties, including high charge density, lithium material has been used in various parts of a battery. For example, in a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, lithium ions move from negative electrode to the positive electrode during discharge. In the basic operations of a lithium battery, a conversion material undergoes a conversion reaction with lithium, and the performance of the conversion material is an important aspect of a battery. Unfortunately, conventional battery systems and their manufacturing and processes result in relatively high cost, low energy density batteries that do not meet market demands for many applications. Therefore, it is desirable to have new systems and techniques for batteries.

Devices for transporting printed products such as sheets of paper are known in the prior art. These transporting devices are used, for example, in offset printing machines in order to transport the printed sheets. These transporting devices comprise hollow conveyor rollers which have a transporting surface in contact with the sheet that is to be transported. In order to cause the sheet to adhere to the conveyor roller, the transporting surface has cavities connected to a vacuum-creating device.

1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a manufacturing method of a semiconductor device, which forms semiconductor integrated circuit patterns by using charged particle beams. 2. Description of the Related Art A lithography technology has been used for pattern formation of a semiconductor integrated circuit. In such a case, a light, an electron beam or the like is used as an energy beam to expose a photo-sensitive film. In photolithography using a light as an energy beam, in order to deal with microfabrication of a semiconductor device, a wavelength of a light source has been made shorter from a g line (436 nm) to an i line (365 nm), and to KrF (248 nm). This has been carried out because of the fact that resolution of a micro pattern is increased in inverse proportion to a wavelength. In the photolithography, resolution has accordingly been increased by a shorter wavelength. However, performance of a photolithography device has become insufficient for a pattern size required as device performance. Thus, further shortening of a wavelength of the light source has been pursued so as to increase resolution. However, not only light sources but also new lens materials and resists must be developed, necessitating enormous development costs. Consequently, device prices and process costs are increased, creating a problem of a high price of a manufactured semiconductor device. On the other hand, electron beam lithography using an electron beam as an energy beam has an advantage of high resolution capability compared with the photolithography. In the case of a conventional electron beam lithography device, however, writing was carried out on a resist on a wafer by coating (direct writing) with a point (rectangular) beam or connecting a mask pattern of only several xcexcmxc3x97several xcexcm. In the case of the conventional electron beam, an electron source for obtaining high-density electron beams was not provided, and uniform electron beams were not provided in a wide range. Alternatively, aberration occurred between a center portion and a peripheral portion in the case of projecting an area of a large area. Consequently, resolution was deteriorated, making it impossible to project patterns of large areas all at once. Therefore, in a conventional electron beam writing method, since writing is carried out while connecting very small areas, many shots are necessary for writing on one wafer. In addition, since time is necessary until stabilization after an electron beam is deflected to a predetermined position for each shot, the increased number of shots causes a reduction in throughput. For such a reason, throughput has conventionally been low, about several pieces per hour (in 8-inch wafer), proving the method to be unsuitable as a mass-production technology. As one of the measures to improve throughput of the electron beam lithography, for example as described in pp. 6897 to 6901, Japan Journal Applied Physics, vol., 39 (2000), electron projection lithography has been presented, which forms all patterns on a mask original plate (referred to as a reticle, hereinafter), and then projects/transfers the patterns by using electron beams. In this electron beam projection lithography, a lens was developed, which prevents aberration from being generated even when high-density electron means are provided uniformly in a wide range, and large-area irradiation is carried out. As in the case of the photolithography, the development of the lens enables the mask to be irradiated with electron beams, and scanned, greatly reducing the number of shots. Thus, the electron projection lithography is similar to the photolithography in terms of projection, its image being similar to a change of a light source from a light to an electron beam. Compared with several pieces/hour of the conventional electron beam lithography, throughput of one digit higher, i.e., 35 pieces/hour (in 8-inch wafer) is estimated. A shape of the reticle for electron beam projection is descried in, for example pp.214 to 224 of Proceedings of SPIE vol. 3997 (2000). FIG. 2A is a bird""s eye view of a reticle for electron beam projection, FIG. 2B an expanded view of a area 203 of FIG. 2A, and FIG. 2C a view of the reticle seen from the above. The electron beam lithography has a limited projection range. Accordingly, circuit patterns constituting an LSI chip are divided at sizes 1000 xcexcmxe2x96xa1 on the reticle, and these circuit patterns are connected to form a pattern of the entire chip during projection. Hereinafter, one of such divided areas, i.e., a area on which the patterns are projected all at once, is referred to as a xe2x80x9csubfieldxe2x80x9d 201. A wafer, on which the circuit patterns are projected, is continuously moved, and each pattern projection is carried out by mechanically moving a reticle stage and deflecting electron beams corresponding to the wafer movement. A thickness of silicon (Si) of a pattern portion of the reticle is thin, 0.5 to 2 xcexcm, and consequently breaking easily occurs. Thus, a mechanical strength is increased by providing a silicon beam called a strut 202 between the subfields. Now, a manufacturing flow of a reticle for electron beam projection is described by referring to FIGS. 3A to 3D. As shown in FIGS. 3A to 3D, a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer having SiO2 buried in a Si substrate is used. The substrate has a thickness of about 400 to 800 xcexcm and, thereon, SiO2 is deposited by 0.1 to 0.5 xcexcm, and Si by 0.5 to 2 xcexcm. As methods of manufacturing a reticle for electron beam projection, there are available a preceding back etching method for carrying out back etching of the substrate before formation of a reticle pattern to manufacture the strut 202, and a succeeding back etching method for carrying out back etching of the substrate later. Here, the preceding back etching method is described. In the preceding method, first, a area of the strut 202 is subjected to patterning, and dry etching is carried out. According to the preceding back etching method, a reticle pattern is formed after blanks for a stencil mask are made. Thus, since blanks for a stencil mask can be made and stored, and only surface machining is needed thereafter, turn around time (TAT) can be shortened. On the other hand, in the succeeding back etching method, patterning is carried out on a normal thick substrate. Accordingly, the number of special steps for manufacturing an EPL mask is relatively small. However, if mismatching is present in membrane stress between an oxide film of an intermediate layer and silicon on the surface by execution of etching of back-side Si, which makes TAT longer, mask deformation may occur, causing a shift in projection position. This positional shift is prevented by adding boron or the like to an oxide film on the surface to generate tensile stress on the substrate surface as well, and reducing stress between the oxide film and the substrate. Both methods have own features different from each other as described above, and the preceding back etching method enabling TAT to be shortened is considered to be more suitable. The oxide film is removed after the execution of the back etching. Accordingly, membrane blanks for the reticle for electron beam projection are made (FIG. 3B). Then, circuit patterns are divided into predetermined subfields, and a resist pattern 301 is formed on the reticle for electron beam projection by a resist process (FIG. 3C). A predetermined pattern is formed by further carrying out dry etching. Lastly, the reticle for electron beam projection is made by carrying out cleaning (FIG. 3D). As described herein, the reticle having an opening pattern for passing the energy beam is called a stencil type. Representative features of the present invention can be summarized as follows. In the case of using the electron projection lithography device, throughput can be greatly improved up to 35 pieces/hour compared with the electron beam direct writing method. Compared with the conventional photolithography, however, the throughput is lower, about xc2xd. In the case of the stencil-type reticle, since the opening pattern for passing the electron beam is provided, a xe2x80x9csquare-shapedxe2x80x9d pattern called a doughnut-type pattern cannot be included. This is because the inside of the xe2x80x9csquare-shapedxe2x80x9d portion is surrounded with the opening pattern, and thus no supports are present, causing it to fall. Therefore, to carry out pattern projection for one area, it was necessary to use a so-called complementary reticle for dividing patterns into two or more reticles, and executing electron beam projection for the same area by a plurality of times. In such a case, projection must be carried out twice for pattern projection of one area, and a reduction inevitably occurs in throughput. A current value of an electron beam must be increased in order to achieve high throughput. In such a case, repulsion between electron beams enlarges beam blur, lowering resolution. Accordingly, even if an electron projection lithography device that has been under development conventionally and now is used, it has been difficult to obtain throughput as high as that of the photolithography. Thus, there is a need to properly use the photolithography having high throughput, and the electron projection lithography having low throughput but high resolution. However, no effective proper using methods have been available. In the electron projection lithography, it is necessary to properly use a complementary reticle having limited pattern constraints but low throughput, and a non-complementary reticle having many pattern constraints but high throughput. Thus far, however, no effective proper using methods have been presented. Therefore, objects of the present invention are to provide an effective method of properly using a photolithography device and an electron projection lithography device, and an effective method of properly using complementary and non-complementary reticles when electron projection lithography is used. In the case of the reticle for electron beam projection, in a conventional reticle for cell-projection, a projection area is small, and a thickness of the reticle is about 10 xcexcm, thus providing a high mechanical strength. However, a thickness of a reticle for electron projection lithography is about 2 xcexcm or lower, which is very thin, and accordingly a mechanical strength is low. Further, since patterns are projected all at one on a large area of 1 mm or more, patterns having a large aspect ratio are formed in the opening pattern of the reticle. For example as shown in FIG. 20A, in a non-opening portion 2002 for scattering electron beams, openings 2001 for projecting patterns with electron beams non-scattered are densely formed at a large aspect ratio. Thus, a state before a cleaning step of the reticle was similar to that shown in FIG. 20A. After the cleaning step, however, as shown in FIG. 20B, surface tension of cleaning solution brought about bending 2003, chipping 2004, and adhesion of a foreign object caused by the chipping. Consequently, breaking or short-circuiting, and shifting in projection position occurred in a manufactured device circuit, creating a problem of impossible acquisition of initial performance. The problems including the bending and the like have become conspicuous, because projection of patterns carried out all at once on the large area in the electron projection lithography device or the like has increased the aspect ratio of the transcribed patterns by 50 times or more, and a thickness of the stencil mask has become thin to 5 xcexcm or lower. Therefore, another object of the present invention is to provide a method of setting a beam interval, which prevents bending in a stencil mask. A micro-beam provided for the purpose of preventing bending or the like can be made sufficiently thin to make projection of the patterns difficult. However, this may cause a problem such as narrowing, where the transcribed patterns become large or small in size locally at the micro-beam portion. Therefore, another object of the present invention is to suppress pattern deformation at a micro-beam portion by providing a forming place, a shape and a material of an optimal micro-beam, and a projection method. As described above, throughput and resolution greatly varied depending on projection devices and methods, and required throughput and resolution were never satisfied simultaneously. Thus, regarding the two types of devices, i.e., photolithography having high throughput, and electron projection lithography having throughput low compared with that of the photolithography but still relatively high, and a high resolution capability, the present invention presents a projection device and a projection method capable of obtaining highest throughput while satisfying required accuracy and required resolution for each type and layer. The invention also presents a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device, which makes effective selection of two types of projection methods, i.e., non-complementary and complementary reticles, so as to obtain highest throughput while satisfying required accuracy and required resolution, when the electron projection lithography device is selected. According to the invention, the electron projection lithography device is used at layers such as an isolation layer, a gate level, a contact hole layer, and a wiring layer just after the gate level, where pattern formation is difficult by the photolithography device. At other layers to be sufficiently processed even by the photolithography, the photolithography is used. In this way, pattern projection is carried out. According to the invention, conditions for selecting the photolithography and the electron projection lithography are decided depending on an exposure wavelength of the photolithography device and numerical aperture of an exposure system. According to the invention, for products small in number to be processed by one reticle or products with quick turnaround time, e.g., in small volume products or research developments, a variable-shaped electron writing system or a cell-projection electron beam writing system needing no manufacturing of reticles is used to directly write a pattern on a sample. Thus, it is possible to reduce mask manufacturing costs, and shorten mask manufacturing time. According to the invention, the electron projection lithography by the complementary reticle is used at the wiring layer just after the gate level or at a layer having a high ratio of a transcribed pattern area in a chip. Accordingly, an opening area of a pattern can be reduced by complementary splitting at the layer having the high ratio of the transcribed pattern area. Thus, it is possible to improve resolution. According to the invention, in order to increase a strength of a reticle for electron beam projection, if a short size of a non-opening pattern is Wnm, and a spacing with a non-opening pattern adjacent to the same is Snm, then a micro-beam formation interval Lnm is set equal to/lower than a predetermined interval so as to set 0 less than Lxe2x89xa6(S+Wxe2x88x9250)xc3x9750. However, each size is represented by nano meters. According to the invention, in order to increase a strength of a reticle for electron beam projection, a micro-beam forming place is set at an intersection portion between T-shaped opening patterns. According to the invention, as a material of the micro-beam, a material having a low electron scattering coefficient compared with that of a material of a reticle non-opening area is used. Thus, charged particles scattered at the micro-beam are suppressed to prevent projection of the micro-beam. According to the invention, in unit areas to be subjected to charged particle projection all at once, a width of a micro-beam in a unit area having a large opening area is set larger than that of a micro-beam in a unit area having a small opening area. Accordingly, a maximum micro-beam width can be set, which prevents projection in each unit area. Thus, mask manufacturing can be facilitated, and a mechanical strength of the mask can be increased. According to the invention, even in the same unit area, a width of a micro-beam at a place of a large opening pattern width is set larger than that of a micro-beam at a place of a small opening pattern width. Accordingly, a maximum micro-beam width can be set, which prevents projection, according to each pattern. Thus, mask manufacturing can be facilitated, and a mechanical strength of the mask can be increased. According to the invention, in order to prevent approaching between the micro-beam and a pattern edge, an area having a distance between the micro-beam and a non-opening pattern parallel to the micro-beam set less than 10 times of a width of the micro-beam is set as a micro-beam formation limiting area, and a position of the micro-beam is shifted so as to set the distance larger by 10 times or more than a width of the micro-beam. Thus, projection of micro-beam patterns caused by dense disposition of micro-beams can be suppressed. According to the invention, an area within a predetermined range, particularly an area requiring high pattern size accuracy, e.g., a gate pattern portion on an active area, is set as a micro-beam formation limiting area. Thus, it is possible to prevent pattern failures caused by micro-beams within the predetermined range. According to the invention, the micro-beam is disposed obliquely to a chip arraying direction, especially +45xc2x0 or xe2x88x9245xc2x0 to the chip arraying direction. Thus, a size changing amount at the micro-beam can be halved. According to the invention, a first round of projection is carried out by using a mask including a micro-beam having a non-opening area connected, and an opening pattern width shortened by a predetermined amount in a direction orthogonal to the micro-beam. A second round of projection is carried out by using the mask, and shifting a projection position in a direction orthogonal to an arraying direction of the micro-beam. Thus, it is possible to suppress formation of patterns of micro-beams on the semiconductor substrate. According to the invention, double exposure is carried out in a direction orthogonal to the micro-beam, and by using a reticle having an opening pattern width shortened by a predetermined amount in the same direction as a shifting direction. Thus, it is possible to suppress an increase in pattern size caused by the double exposure with positional shifting. According to the invention, as a method of carrying out the double exposure, shifting exposure is carried out by a deflector. Thus, it is possible to carry out the double exposure at a high speed. According to the invention, double exposure for suppressing projection of the micro-beam can be carried out by undulating a relative relation between an area to be projected by charged particles all at once, and the semiconductor device. Accordingly, it is possible to separately control projection position deflection and undulation for shifting exposure, achieving a simpler device configuration. According to the invention, a reticle having a larger opening width of an opening pattern adjacent to the micro-beam is used. Thus, it is possible to suppress projection of a micro-beam pattern.

1. Field of the Invention This invention relates in general to fuel cells and electrical motors and, more particularly, to a fuel cell powered electrical motor. 2. Description of the Related Prior Art The use of fuel cells to actuate electrical motors depends upon several factors. Among them efficiency and compactness are essential. Attempts have been made in the past to introduce a better fuel cell powered electrical motor. Thus, U.S. Pat. No. 5,678,647 dated Oct. 21, 1997 and granted to Wolfe et al. for a xe2x80x9cFuel Cell Powered Propulsion Systemxe2x80x9d describes a system for powering a vehicle. This system comprises an electrical motor for powering a vehicle, a fuel cell stack for providing fuel cell power and a turbine-generator unit. The latter includes a generator for supplying power output and a turbine for driving the generator. This system is believed to have an important disadvantage that resides in its lack of compactness, the components of the system being connected functionally, rather than structurally. U.S. Pat. No. 5,923,106, dated Jul. 13, 1999 and granted to Isaak et al. for an xe2x80x9cIntegrated Fuel Cell Electrical Motor with Static Fuel Cell and Rotating Magnetsxe2x80x9d describes a fuel cell with an electrical output integrated within a cylindrical form monopole electric motor. A rotor and a shaft are supported by a bearing attached to the top of the main body of the electrical motor, by another bearing attached to the cover of the body and by a third bearing attached to the bottom of the body. This motor has an important shortcoming. Structurally, the motor is not well engineered, since an accurate coaxiality of the three bearings mounted separately in three different components cannot be easily obtained. U.S. Pat. No. 6,005,322 dated Dec. 21, 1999 and granted to Isaak et al. for an xe2x80x9cIntegrated Fuel Cell Electric Motorxe2x80x9d relates to a motor similar to that described in the above United States Patent, wherein the cell is rotating. Besides the shortcoming of above United States Patent, the use of a rotating cell increases the mass to be balanced. Thus, it is more difficult to obtain and, especially, to maintain. the balancing of the rotating part of the system. There is accordingly a need for a fuel cell powered electrical motor which is well engineered, so that the components are easy to manufacture and reliable in operation. It is further desirable to have a compact, versatile and efficient fuel cell powered electrical motor. Broadly described, the present invention is directed to a fuel cell powered electrical motor which comprises an electrical motor including shaft means, stator means encircling the shaft means and rotor means encircling the stator means. Furthermore, the electrical motor incorporates a base plate means, located perpendicularly to the shaft means at a low part of the latter, and a flywheel means located perpendicularly to the shaft means at a top part of the latter. Fuel cell stack means are circularly disposed on the base plate means between the shaft and stator means, concentrically with both. The shaft means basically revolves together with the flywheel and rotor means with respect to the base plate means, while the fuel cell stack and stator means are attached to the base plate means. In one aspect of this invention, the fuel cell powered motor includes a commutator located under and attached to the flywheel means. The commutator is electrically connected to the fuel cell stack and rotor means. In another aspect of this invention, the fuel cell powered motor includes an annular brush disk attached to a top of the fuel cell stack means. The annular brush disk is provided at its upper surface with a plurality of brushes. The latter are adapted to be connected to an outside source of electrical power. In yet another aspect of this invention, the shaft assembly comprises: a main shaft having an upper flange provided with several apertures, equally spaced and circularly disposed; a flanged sleeve having a low flange provided with several openings, equally spaced and circularly disposed; and a bearing housing internally provided at both ends with a bearing. The bearing housing is mounted on the flanged sleeve. The upper flange is attached to the flywheel means and the bearing housing. The lower flange is attached to the flanged sleeve. In a further aspect of this invention, the base plate means incorporates a manifold and a sealing plate. The latter is disposed on top of the manifold plate. The manifold plate has a circular recess wherein the sealing plate is lodged. The circular recess is provided at its center with a shaft hole for a main shaft of the shaft assembly. Concentrical channel means is located coaxially with the shaft hole, while notch means extends radially from each of the concentrical channel means. Several downwardly extending apertures start from each of the concentric channel means and communicate with the exterior. Several manifold plate openings are located proximate to a periphery of the circular recess. The sealing plate is provided at its center with a passage hole, while four-hole row means are concentrically disposed around the passage hole. Each hole row means has a series of notch hole means, which correspond, with the notch means in the manifold plate. Both manifold and sealing plates are provided with a pair of coinciding slots: a first slot adapted for an electrical power output from the fuel cell stack means to an external controller and a second slot adapted for an electrical power input from the external controller to the stator and rotor means.

1. Field The present disclosure is directed to a method and apparatus for distinguishing cells with the same physical cell identifier. More particularly, the present disclosure is directed to distinguishing cells with the same physical cell identifier by using a radio frame timing offset. 2. Introduction Presently, in a cellular network, cells use physical cell identifiers to distinguish themselves from each other. An operator ensures that a physical cell identifier unambiguously identifies a base station. However, Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) base stations, such as access points, may use the same physical cell identifiers, which can result in physical cell identifier confusion. For example, CSG cells can be a collection of cells used for deployment in a campus or can be individual cells used for deployment in users' homes. The CSG cells co-exist with macro cells on the same carrier frequency. CSG cells have a smaller coverage area than macro cells. Unlike macro cells, the CSG cells are un-planned, in that the operator has much less control over their placement and configuration than with macro cells. Thus, two CSG cells that are located within the coverage of the same macro cell can use the same physical cell identifiers. Unfortunately, this results in physical cell identifier confusion. To elaborate, a mobile station uses physical cell identifiers (PCID) during synchronization and during cell ranking. The mobile station ranks cells by measuring the received signal strength and then uses the ranking to facilitate handover and reselection. If a PCID is not guaranteed to be unique within a macro cell, then PCIDs cannot be used for reselection and handover. If PCIDs cannot be used for reselection and handover, a mobile terminal would need to read system information of the target cell and acquire the cell global identity to determine if it is allowed to access the cell. Unfortunately, this requires considerable additional battery usage in idle mode and can seriously impact battery life. Another problem with using the same PCIDs is that mobile station cell handover will fail when there is more than one cell with the same PCID and a network cannot determine which cell is the right one for handover. A range of PCIDs can be reserved for CSG cells. Also, a mobile terminal can have a list of CSG PCIDs, such as a CSG white-list of cells that it is allowed to access. These restrictions limit the problem in the reselection case to when the target cell is a CSG cell in the CSG white-list. However, PCID confusion can still frequently occur in metropolitan areas where more CSG cells are deployed. Even in cases where the spatial likelihood of PCID confusion is low, when confusion occurs, it affects the same mobile terminal repeatedly. For example, if two homes within the coverage of the same macro cell use CSG cells with the same PCID, the corresponding users will experience handover failures when entering their homes and they will have substantially higher battery drain. In order to resolve the PCID confusion, a mobile terminal could read additional system information of a cell, which contains a unique cell identifier, which the mobile terminal could rely on to determine if the cell is suitable. Unfortunately, reading the additional system information in connected mode would cause substantial delay which negatively impacts handover performance. Also, a mobile terminal would have to read the additional system information every time it encounters a CSG PCID, because different encounters with the same PCID could correspond to different cells. Furthermore, the mobile terminal would lose data being sent through the serving cell as a result of reading the additional system information because the mobile terminal would have to synchronize to the target cell. It is also possible to ignore a cell based on the PCID if it has been found to be unsuitable after previously reading additional system information. However, this would not resolve the PCID confusion problem because a cell encountered later may be suitable to the mobile terminal but would be ignored if it has same PCID as a previously unsuitable cell. Furthermore, in connected mode, a mobile terminal would not measure and report the ignored PCIDs and the network would not know when interference from the PCID is significant and would not be able to take measures to prevent disruption of service. Thus, there is a need for a method and apparatus for distinguishing cells with the same physical cell identifier.

Computer systems typically comprise a combination of hardware, such as semiconductors, transistors, chips, and circuit boards, and computer programs. As increasing numbers of smaller and faster transistors can be integrated on a single chip, new processors are designed to use these transistors effectively to increase performance. Currently, many computer designers opt to use the increasing transistor budget to build ever bigger and more complex uni-processors. Alternatively, multiple smaller processor cores can be placed on a single chip, which is beneficial because a single, simple processor core is less complex to design and verify. This results in a less costly and complex verification process, as a once verified module, the processor, is repeated multiple times on a chip. Techniques known as multiple logical partitions take advantage of multi-processors. A logically partitioned computer comprises multiple logical partitions that implement virtual computers, which execute in separate memory spaces, may execute separate operating systems, and may use shared resources. Examples of shared resources are processors, memory, co-processors, network bandwidth, or secondary storage. Partitions are often implemented on computer systems that include multiple processors and/or on multiple computer systems (often called compute nodes or simply nodes) that comprise processors, which run the multiple partitions to accomplish tasks.

This invention relates generally to carbon-to-liquids systems, and more specifically to methods and systems for minimizing liquid product variation from a reactor portion of a system. The terms C5+ and “liquid hydrocarbons” are used synonymously to refer to hydrocarbons or oxygenated compounds having five (5) or greater number of carbons, including for example pentane, hexane, heptane, pentanol, pentene, and which are liquid at normal atmospheric conditions. The terms C4− and “gaseous hydrocarbons” are used synonymously to refer to hydrocarbons or oxygenated compounds having four (4) or fewer number of carbons, including for example methane, ethane, propane, butane, butanol, butene, propene, and which are gaseous at normal atmospheric conditions. At least some known Fischer-Tropsch (FT) units have been optimized to produce synthesis gas (syngas) from natural gas, also known as Gas-to-Liquids process (GTL). Typically, syngas refers to a mixture of H2, CO and some CO2 at various proportions. To improve C5+ selectivity and minimize selectivity to C4−, i.e. natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) production in known units, a FT reactor is operated with relatively high residence times, with relatively high per pass conversion, and with hydrogen to carbon monoxide (H2/CO) ratios below the consumption ratio. The remote location of most carbon-to-liquids plants makes natural gas and LPG co-production economically unattractive because of the relatively high transportation costs. Minimizing natural gas and LPG production generally results in a significant fraction (30-40%) of the FT liquids being over-converted to wax. The wax formed must then be converted back to a diesel range, typically C10-C20 hydrocarbons, using a separate hydrocracking reactor. Also, the relatively high per pass conversion that is used to increase C5+ production generally adversely limits the pressure of the FT reactor, and the byproduct water partial pressure increases with conversion and total pressure. As the water partial pressure is increased the catalyst can be generally deactivated through oxidation of the active catalyst sites. Low water partial pressure may cause competitive adsorption of water, CO, and H2 molecules on the catalyst active site, thus reducing syngas conversion. Iron-based FT catalysts in particular can be greatly affected by water. Cobalt-based FT catalysts are generally more resistant to oxidation by water. Other carbonaceous fuels may also be used to provide the syngas input to the FT process. However, undesirable product variations may be caused by the operating characteristics of the known FT gas-to-liquids systems described above.

Waste heat recovery in various types of combustion engines is a way to improve the overall efficiency of these systems. Waste heat recovery systems range from power plants that have bottoming cycles, to thermoelectric systems that generate electricity. Power plants that have bottoming cycles utilize the excess heat in the low pressure exhaust gases from the primary work generating cycle. Thermoelectric systems utilize similar waste heat sources. On piston engines, waste heat recovery systems can consist of a closed loop Rankine Cycle. A Rankine Cycle uses the heat from the exhaust to power the cycle. These systems typically have a separate, dedicated, expander that extracts power from the working fluid and is connected to the crankshaft of the engine.

The subject matter disclosed herein generally relates to an aircraft deicing system, and more particularly, to a deicing system for a rotor blade of a rotary wing aircraft. Rotary wing aircrafts may encounter atmospheric conditions that cause the formation of ice on rotor blades and other surfaces of the aircraft. Accumulated ice, if not removed can add weight to the aircraft and may alter the airfoil configuration, causing undesirable flying characteristics. A common approach to ice management is thermal deicing. Thermal deicing includes heating portions of the rotor blades, such as the leading edge for example, to loosen accumulated ice. Centrifugal forces acting on the rotor blades, and the airstream passing there over, remove the loosened ice from the rotor blades. Desired portions of the rotor blades are typically heated using electro thermal heating elements arranged at the leading edges of the airfoils, in direct contact with the blade spar. As a result of this direct contact, a malfunction of the electro thermal heating elements, such as by overheating or shorting for example, may damage the spar thereby affecting the structural stability and/or the airfoil of the rotor blade.

1. Technical Field Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to providing an on-board diagnostic port connector in an automobile with a lockable connection, and specifically to a lockable connection that is discreet and easy to operate. 2. Background of Related Art On-board diagnostic regulations require passenger cars and trucks to be equipped with a standardized connector to provide access to the vehicles diagnostic information. Since 1996, the standard required has been one published in Society of Automotive Engineers paper SAE J1962, known as OBD-II (or OBD2). This standard specifies the signal and message protocols, the pinout of the connector, and the details of the connector itself. This standard connector is the access point for the diagnostic and operational information about the vehicle. The OBD-II port is crucial in such tasks as checking and clearing diagnostic trouble codes, allowing for governmental vehicle inspection, and driver provided supplemental instrumentation and telematics. These applications generally involve temporary, and voluntary, connections to the car's OBD-II port, commonly referred to as plug and remove. In the car rental and fleet vehicle industries, there is often a desire to have a device connected to the vehicle's diagnostics. These devices can be hard-wired into the vehicle's electronics, or they can be plugged into the vehicle's OBD-II port. Each of these options has its own advantages and disadvantages. Devices that are hard-wired into the vehicle's electronics provide the most secure and least intrusive option. Such devices connect directly to the vehicle control unit or are spliced into the wiring harness of the vehicle. If done properly, these connections will be semi-permanent and very reliable. These devices also allow the OBD-II port to be unobstructed and be available for other devices to connect. Furthermore, since they are made in the vehicles wiring, they are rarely visible or otherwise evident without removing dashboard panels or looking in the engine bay. In a rental or fleet situation, the user not being aware of the device can be helpful to prevent tampering or removal. Though these hard-wired devices offer several advantages, their main drawback is the cost of time and labor associated with their proper installation. Proper installation of a hard-wired device requires a trained technician to first remove interior panels to access the wiring necessary. Once the technician has access to the wiring of the vehicle, great care must be taken to properly tap into the necessary inputs without doing permanent damage to the vehicle. This process can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days per vehicle. Additionally, mistakes made during this installation can cost thousands of dollars to repair. Once the vehicles are no longer to be used in the fleet, uninstalling them to be installed in other fleet vehicles (or to provide for the sale of the decommissioned vehicle) is an equally labor intensive process. The alternative to such laborious installation procedures is an OBD-II port connected device. These devices have the advantage of taking only minutes or hours to install and secure in the dash area of the vehicle. Similarly, they are easily uninstalled at the end of a vehicle's service time. Because they are so easily installed and uninstalled, their downside is that they are often disconnected before it is desired by the fleet owner. This could be from vibrations gradually loosening the connection, an operator accidentally knocking the plug out, or a driver intentionally unplugging a device. The standard for OBD-II requires that the port be located within reach of the steering wheel, which typically results in the port being located in or around the foot well of a passenger vehicle. As such, a driver may accidentally contact the plug, loosening or disconnecting the device from the vehicle. Furthermore, potential operators may seek to intentionally remove the devices, either to prevent the collection of vehicle data, or to steal the device. What is needed, therefore, is an OBD-II compliant connector that is easy for a technician to install and uninstall, but difficult for an operator to knock loose or remove without permission. It is to such systems and methods that embodiments of the present invention are primarily directed.

There are over 223,000 railroad grade crossings in the United States alone. Most of these crossings, especially those in rural areas, have only warning signs to alert motorists to the danger posed by an approaching train. Typical of railroad grade crossing warning signs is the familiar X-shaped "RAILROAD CROSSING" sign or "crossbuck." Warning signs, however, only alert motorists to the presence of a railroad crossing and do not alert them to the presence of an oncoming train. Often, a motorist may fail to see an approaching train because he was distracted or because his view of the train was obstructed by environmental conditions or darkness. Consequently, collisions between trains and automobiles at railroad crossings account for thousands of accidents each year, many of which result in extensive property damage and serious injury or death to motorists. Known to the art are active railroad crossing warning systems utilizing the railroad tracks themselves to detect an approaching train and activate warning signal apparatus such as flashing lights and bells. These systems warn motorists when a train is detected at a predetermined distance from the crossing. However, present active warning systems do no take into account the speed of the train and thus make no allowance for the time it will take the train to reach the crossing. For example, a fast moving train may reach the crossing in only a few seconds after it is detected, while a slow moving train may fail to reach the crossing until several minutes have passed. Motorists may become impatient waiting for slow moving trains to reach the crossing. Consequently, some motorists may begin to ignore the warnings and attempt to cross the tracks possibly causing an accident should a fast moving train be encountered. Further, installation of current active warning systems may require the insulation and resetting of great lengths of track. Additionally, these systems may require the installation of expensive high voltage transformers, relays, and batteries for backup systems. Unfortunately, many rural crossings are not conducive to the installation of active warning systems that requires AC electrical power and extensive grade preparation. Consequently, these crossings usually remain inadequately protected. High speed rail corridors being proposed across the United States will only exacerbate this problem. These corridors will require improved crossing warning systems to properly secure the safety of both passengers and motorists.

The present invention relates to the field of information technology, including, more particularly, to systems and techniques for simplifying access to different applications. Organizations look to their information technology (IT) department to plan, coordinate, and manage the computer-related activities of the organization. An IT department is responsible for upkeep, maintenance, and security of networks. This may include analyzing the computer and information needs of their organizations from an operational and strategic perspective and determining immediate and long-range personnel and resource requirements. Monitoring the computer-related activities of the organization is an increasingly difficult task because the modern workplace is a complex blend of multiple users and multiple applications which combine into a complex and dynamically evolving environment. For example, at any given time multiple applications may be executing on multiple machines or “in the cloud.” It can be hard to follow what is going on in the cloud, for an application, for a given user. Many organizations do not have systems for tracking how resources are used by applications and users. Thus, there is a need to provide systems and techniques to manage computing resources.

HotKnot is a near-field communication technology (which is mainly used in a capacitive touch screen) used in some smart terminal devices. This near-field communication includes two processes: proximity detection process and data transmission process. The proximity detection process of the near-field communication is: a touch screen terminal of one party sends a proximity detection sequence (for example, the proximity detection sequence includes six frequencies), and after receiving the proximity detection sequence, a touch screen terminal of the other party successively scans the multiple frequencies included in the proximity detection sequence. If signal strength at each frequency is greater than a preset signal strength threshold, it is considered that a signal source exists at the frequency. After the scan is completed, if signal sources exist at all frequencies, it is determined that the sequence is valid; otherwise, it is determined that the sequence is invalid. After it is determined that the sequence is valid, the receiving party feeds back a proximity response sequence to the sending party. After receiving the proximity response sequence, the sending party successively performs scan similarly, and determines whether the response sequence is valid. The determining manner is described above. When the two parties both consider that the sequence is valid, it is considered that sequence identification succeeds once. After the sequence identification succeeds for multiple times according to an interaction rule, it is determined that a touch screen terminal approaches. After the proximity detection succeeds, an interference source is turned off, and the data transmission process is started to send or receive data. During the proximity detection, the interference source such as an LCD is not turned off, there is a relatively big difficulty to correctly determine a frequency of the sequence, and setting of a signal strength threshold plays a particularly important role in determining of a signal. Therefore, it appears to be particularly important to be capable of setting a proper signal strength threshold according to a noise situation. During proximity detection of two HotKnot (which is a type of near-field communication and is mainly used in the capacitive touch screen) devices, a drive signal of LCD scan, or common-mode interference when a charger is connected interferes with signal detection of the capacitive touch screen, which may cause an error when the proximity detection is performed by using the touch screen, and a case in which the two parties cannot enter or one party enters by a mistake. Currently, to enable the capacitive touch screen to adapt to different LCD interference intensities, noise reduction processing is usually performed on detected data. After the noise reduction processing, a signal strength threshold determining policy is used. If signal strength is greater than the threshold, it is considered that a signal is valid; otherwise, it is considered that the signal is an invalid signal. In addition, for the foregoing interference cases, an interference frequency is detected by using an instrument, and then the interference frequency is not used as a determining basis, thereby avoiding an interference sources. However, in a current processing manner, there are at least two problems: 1) Although some problems can be solved by using a proper signal strength threshold, when interference occurs at some frequencies, signal strength of noise is sometimes greater than strength of a signal, and the frequencies are very difficult to be identified, which finally results in failure of entire sequence identification; and in addition, interference intensity often changes, detection reliability and sensitivity are difficult to be ensured if only one fixed signal strength threshold is used. 2) Interference in an actual environment often changes; if some fixed frequencies are not identified, although a situation of interference at the fixed frequencies can be improved, when the interference at the frequencies changes, the changed interference frequencies cannot be shielded, that is, a compatibility problem exists. Therefore, in the case of weak signal or strong interference, reliability and sensitivity of proximity detection are not high.

Power over Ethernet systems are seeing increasing use in today's society. Power over Ethernet, sometimes abbreviated PoE, refers to providing power to Ethernet devices over an Ethernet line that is also used to communicate data. Thus, power over Ethernet devices do not require separate power supply lines. In some instances, the power may be supplied by a power supply contained within an Ethernet switch. Because the power supply does not generally have the power capability to supply maximum power to every port, there is a limit on the number of power over Ethernet devices that can be connected to a given power supply. A port may be denied power, if it will result in oversubscription of the power supply. Example power over Ethernet devices that can benefit from receiving power over the Ethernet communication lines include an internet protocol telephone, a badge reader, a wireless access point, a video camera, and others. Traditionally, when a power over Ethernet device is connected to a power supply, the power over Ethernet device is allocated a maximum power class according to IEEE standard 802.3af denoted as class 0 thru 4. These maximum values correspond to the maximum amount of power that will be supplied by the power supply to the power over Ethernet device. IEEE standard 802.3af provides for three levels of 15.4 watts, 7.5 watts, and 4.0 watts for these power over Ethernet devices. In certain circumstances, such allocation prevents the power supply from being utilized to its full capability due to the coarse granularity in class. A software program referred to as Cisco Discovery Protocol allows for more granular specification of the limit for the power over Ethernet powered devices other than the above-described IEEE levels. However, the power supply still may have unutilized capacity.

This invention pertains to speed regulators for direct current DC motors and, more particularly, is concerned with open loop speed regulators for DC motors. DC motors find numerous applications because of their intrinsic variable speed characteristics and capabilities which offer very high speeds and small size. The rotating member of a DC motor is named the armature and the stationary member is named the field. The armature has windings and the field can have either windings or permanent magnets. Some applications have a need for constant speed regardless of torque. A general statement about DC motors is that with an increase in torque, speed will drop and current will increase, assuming a constant input voltage. The amount each parameter varies depends on the type of motor. For a motor with the armature and field winding connected in series the drop in speed will be more pronounced than the increase in current. For motors with shunt connected windings or permanent magnet fields the opposite is true, the speed will be more nearly constant while there is a marked increase in current. There will be some drop in speed however, and this amount may be undesirable in critical applications. For this reason, a number of constant speed controls have been devised over the years. Speed regulating systems may be classified as either closed loop or open loop. Closed loop systems derive a signal from the actual speed of the motor with a tachometer, for example, and use the signal in a feedback loop. An open loop system does not measure speed directly but measures some other parameter. In some open loop systems the measured parameter is current. A well known example of an open loop motor regulating system includes a resistor in series with the input of the motor. The voltage across the resistor corresponds to motor current and is directed to a control circuit. The resistor voltage influences a control circuit which supplies the input voltage to the motor. A change in resistor voltage indicates a change in torque and indirectly indicates a change in speed. In response to the resistor voltage the control circuit adjusts the voltage to the motor thereby supplying the right amount of power required to maintain a constant speed over variations in torque. The series resistor causes I.sup.2 R power losses particularly when during high torque conditions because current is high. These losses cause heat build-up and a need for a larger power supply capability. It will be seen that a speed regulator according to the present invention does not require a resistor in series with the motor and is thereby more efficient.

Cardiac ischemia is a condition that results from insufficient oxygenation to heart muscle and may pose an inherent risk in addition to potentially being a precursor to a life threatening event, such as myocardial infarction (MI). Detecting ischemia may be carried out by a variety of methods, some of which are amendable to implantable monitoring devices. Ischemia, and particularly, unstable ischemia, in a patient may be treated in a clinical setting by a variety of modalities. A patient with severe unstable ischemia may be a candidate for immediate intervention, such as coronary angioplasty or bypass surgery. However, less severe cases may be treated by pharmaceutical methods as well as others. Even with such treatment modalities available, most ischemic events occur initially outside the clinical environment or at a place or time when such clinical assessment and treatment is not immediately available. For ICD patients experiencing transient ischemia, standard ventricular pacing therapy in order to increase cardiac output is contraindicated as the increased heart rate induced as a result of the pacing will typically increase the oxygen demand on the heart tissue, and particularly the ischemic heart tissue, which may further exacerbate any damage caused by the ischemia. In addition, generally speaking, a paced rhythm is not as mechanically efficient as a normal sinus rhythm, and, as such, the blood flow output may even be further reduced. Thus, typical single chamber ventricle pacing therapy for an ischemic patient may increase oxygen demand of the heart tissue undergoing ischemic trauma and decrease the pumping efficiency of the heart overall or both. As such, what has been needed are methods and devices for treating a patient with transient ischemia immediately after onset of the ischemia that do not generate a substantial increase in oxygen consumption by the heart.