Abstract: A battery pack includes: a plastic-made, elongated outer casing composed of interconnected peripheral walls to define an interior battery storage portion; and a battery accommodated in the battery storage portion inside the outer casing. The outer casing has a mounting protrusion to be attached to and project outwardly from an electronic equipment casing. An inner casing is incorporated inside the outer casing of the battery pack. The battery pack is constructed and arranged so that an outer battery, located outside the electronic equipment, is accommodated inside the inner casing.

Abstract: The present invention provides a video coding method and a video decoding method which allow enhancement of coding efficiency and improvement in video quality. A video coding apparatus includes: a mode determination unit which determines a notification method for notifying a transform block size to be used in orthogonal transform of a current block to be either the implicit mode or the explicit mode, and outputs the ABT mode indicating the determined notification method; an orthogonal transformation unit which transforms the difference values between the input image and predicted image into frequency coefficients based on the transform block size determined in accordance with the determined notification method; a quantization unit which quantizes the frequency coefficients and output the quantized values; and a variable length coding unit which performs variable length coding on the quantized values, the ABT mode, and the like, so as to output a coded stream.

Abstract: A compound of the formula (I): or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof.

Abstract: A supply information management system comprises a reader/writer for writing process information on each of the processes to an IC tag and reading information out from the IC tag, the reader/writer being provided for a station for performing each of processes to supply a diaper product with an IC tag, and a host computer for receiving the information from the reader/writer. In the host computer, a product database which is a set of data elements each associating a serial number of an IC tag with process information thereof is stored and updated on the basis of the information from the reader/writer. The supply information management system makes it possible to specify an individual diaper product and perform a proper and easy management of information on supply of diaper products.

Abstract: A production method of an indentation curve is given, in which when an indentation curve showing a relationship between indentation force and indentation depth in a process of indenting an indenter into a surface of a sample is produced, a measurement range using an (i?n)th (here, i and n are natural numbers) measurement value as a reference is provided, and the indentation depth or indentation force is temporarily measured when the indentation force or indentation depth is gradually changed, respectively, and when a temporarily measurement value obtained by the temporarily measurement is out of the determination range, indentation depth at the relevant indentation force or indentation force at the relevant indentation depth is measured and set as an ith measurement value, or the temporarily measurement value is used as the ith measurement value.

Abstract: A polishing apparatus for polishing a substrate comprises a polishing table having a polishing surface, and a substrate holding apparatus for holding a substrate to be polished and pressing the substrate against the polishing surface. The substrate holding apparatus comprises a vertically movable top ring body for holding a substrate, and a fluid supply source for supplying a fluid under a positive pressure or a negative pressure to a hermetically sealed chamber which is defined in the top ring body so as to control pressure under which the substrate is pressed against the polishing surface. The substrate holding apparatus further comprises a measuring device disposed in a fluid passage interconnecting the hermetically sealed chamber and the fluid supply source for measuring a flow rate of the fluid in the fluid passage.

Abstract: A method of manufacturing electrode foil for aluminum electrolytic capacitors and an AC power supply unit used therewith are disclosed. An etching is performed on an aluminum foil immersed in an electrolytic solution by applying an AC current to a pair of electrodes in the electrolytic solution. A waveform of the AC current is a deformed sine wave including a period of time (a) when an electric current rises from zero to a peak value, and another period of time (b) when the electric current falls from the peak value to zero. With the periods of time (a) and (b) made different from each other, the surface area of the aluminum foil is efficiently expanded by the etching and an enhancement of electric capacity of the electrode foil is obtained.