Abstract: A sample speech is analyzed by a speech analyzing unit to obtain sample characteristic parameters, and a coding distortion is calculated from the sample characteristic parameters in each of a plurality of coding modules. The sample characteristic parameters and the coding distortions are statistically processed by a statistical processing unit to obtain a coding module selecting rule. Thereafter, when a speech is analyzed by the speech analyzing unit to obtain characteristic parameters, an appropriate coding module is selected by a coding module selecting unit from the coding modules according to the coding module selecting rule on condition that a coding distortion for the characteristic parameters is minimized in the appropriate coding module. Thereafter, the characteristic parameters of the speech are coded in the appropriate coding module, and a coded speech is obtained. When the coded speech is decoded, a reproduced speech is obtained.

Abstract: A zinc coating directly covers a bare ferrous base of parking meter housing parts. A non-epoxy thermosetting electrically insulating organic non-epoxy powder coating directly covers the zinc coating. The organic coating is directly applied to the zinc coating by electrostatically charging the powder and parts with opposite d.c. voltage polarities and by heating the powder so it adheres to and covers the zinc coating. Alternatively, the base is zinc, directly covered by the organic powder coating.

Abstract: Code words, which correspond to orthogonal-transform-resultant coefficients having order numbers equal to or higher than an order number “n+1”, are deleted from code words composing each 1-intra-frame segment of an input digital picture signal to generate special picture data with a frame period NS on the basis of the input digital picture signal. Estimation is made as to a code amount CF(nmin) of special picture data generated by deleting code words, which correspond to orthogonal-transform-resultant coefficients having order numbers equal to or higher than an order number “nmin+1”, from code words composing a 1-intra-frame segment of the input digital picture signal, where “nmin” denotes a lower limit of an order number “n”. The frame period NS of the special picture data and a target code amount C are decided so that the estimated code amount CF(nmin) will be equal to or smaller than the target code amount C.

Abstract: A dielectric layer is deposited on a workpiece by a chemical vapor deposition method in an electron cyclotron resonance vacuum plasma processor having a plasma chamber responsive to a repetitively pulsed microwave field and gases from a plasma source. A reaction chamber responds to at least one reacting gas containing at least one element that chemically reacts in the presence of the plasma with at least one element in at least one of the gases from the plasma source to form the deposited layer on the workpiece. The turn off periods are long enough to cause electrons in the plasma on the deposited dielectric layer to be cooled sufficiently (from about 3.5 eV to a lower value having a minimum value of about 0.1 eV) to reduce the tendencies for opposite polarity charges to be established across the deposited dielectric layer and for damaging discharge current to flow across the deposited dielectric layer.

Abstract: A method for powder spray-coating objects utilizes pneumatic conveyance of powder from an injector to a spraying system having a spray coating zone through which objects are consecutively conveyed in an automated system. Power conveyance is interrupted between the consecutive objects as object gaps enter the spray coating zone while the conveying air flow is maintained by injection of controlling air into a vacuum zone of the injector which reduces the injector vacuum to a degree causing interruption of powder conveyance. Flushing compressed air may be injected between the injector and the spray device of the spraying system to automatically flush powder to maintain system integrity. Equipment for powder spray coating of objects utilizing the above method is also disclosed.

Abstract: A ceramic element is provided which can be injection molded from an electrolyte and a binder. The ceramic element includes a tube support portion and a plurality of tubes extending from the tube support portion. The plurality of tubes are arranged in rows and columns. A plurality of vias extend from one surface of the tube support portion to an opposite surface of the tube support portion. The ceramic element is coated with an electrically conductive coating and a current collector coating. The vias are coated with the electrically conductive coating and plugged. After the coatings are removed in selected areas of the ceramic element, the tubes of the ceramic element form a series-parallel array because tubes in the same column are connected in parallel electrically and tubes in adjacent rows are connected in series electrically. Two ceramic elements are sealed together to form a modular electrochemical device. The electrochemical device can be either an oxygen generator or a fuel cell.

Abstract: A disposable diaper having a pair of cuffs longitudinally extending on the inner surface of the diaper along transversely opposite sides thereof across front and rear sections as well as a crotch section longitudinally interdisposed between these two sections, wherein each cuff has a substantially crescent-shaped elastic sheet bonded in its longitudinally stretched state to the inner surface along its longitudinally opposite ends and an outer arc defined between these ends.

Abstract: A low inductance large area coil (LILAC) is provided as a source for generating a large area plasma. The LILAC comprises at least two windings which, when connected to an RF source via impedance matching circuitry, produce a circulating flow of electrons to cause a magnetic field in the plasma. Because the LILAC employs multiple windings, few turns of winding are required to obtain a large area coil, so that the inductance of the LILAC is low. The low inductance of the LILAC ensures that the self-resonating frequency of the LILAC is kept at a level far above the RF driving frequency, allowing a broad frequency range for impedance matching. Thus, there is no difficulty in impedance matching, and power transfer can be maximized, permitting efficient generation of a large area plasma.

Abstract: The present invention aims to easily create multi-media title without requiring a high technique. A multi-media editing apparatus comprises: style creation 101 for creating a style that defines setups of all of layouts and display attributes; style storage 102 for storing a style acquired by the style creation element accumulation 103 for accumulating elements; element management 104; style interpretation 105 for interpreting a style; user input 107 for creating a title; and scenario storage 109 for storing a scenario of the title that is created.

Abstract: A virtual WWW (World Wide Web) server apparatus which can obtain a plurality of predetermined HTML files and combine these into a single HTML file in response to a specific URL sent from a WWW browser, can connect to WWW servers and the browser via a network such as the Internet, to thereby enable the browser to obtain via the network the contents of a plurality of data files each of which may be HTML files, acquired from respective WWW servers through the intermediary of the virtual WWW server apparatus as a single combined file, and to thereby display the respective file contents together on a single display screen. The virtual WWW server apparatus can further include a linkage file whose contents relate respective names of video cameras controlled by various WWW servers to URLs for sending control commands for these cameras, thereby enabling commands for respective cameras, sent from a browser, to be identified by the corresponding camera names.

Abstract: A collaborative navigation server is able to share network navigation information among a group of user terminals. The server can designate one of the user terminals as a leading terminal, so that the location information of information pages are relayed to all following terminals of the group, while a leading terminal is navigating through the information pages by using its browser. The server is also able to revoke the current leading terminal and designate a following terminal as a new leading terminal and re-designate the previous leading terminal as a following terminal.

Abstract: A single video camera is installed on a vehicle body. Two still pictures of an obstacle are obtained at different vehicle traveling positions. A picture memory stores the obtained still pictures. A feature point extracting section extracts at least one feature point from the data of the stored still pictures. A three-dimensional coordinate data calculating section calculates the distance from the vehicle body to the feature point and the height of the feature point based on the positional data of the feature point on the screen and the vehicle traveling distance data. A stereoscopic picture forming section forms a stereoscopic picture image of a detected obstacle based on three-dimensional coordinate data of the feature points. A monitor displays a plan view or a side view showing the relationship between the vehicle body and the obstacle, thereby allowing a driver to directly grasp the distance of the obstacle.

Abstract: A high-speed document retrieval system creates a regular expression dictionary and a word index on the basis of a retrieval document and a word dictionary to conduct retrieval to a document through the regular expression dictionary and the word index at a high speed. A regular expression dictionary expressing a set of character strings having the same length is created from a word dictionary. In terms of a character string included in a retrieval document and matching with a regular expression in the regular expression dictionary, an index element is recorded in a word index when there is no different index element which allows an observing index element to be deducible, which eventually produces a word index capable of achieving a high-speed full-text retrieval without the noticeable increase in the index capacity.

Abstract: A measurement and compensation system for thermal errors in a machine tool is disclosed. A module is provided to compensate thermal errors of the machine tool. The module comprises an operating part, a data bank, an analog to digital converter, a counter and a digital input/output part. The data bank stores in all the coefficients applied to a thermal error modeling equation which governs a relation between temperatures and thermal errors at various operating conditions. The operating part determines all the coefficients of the thermal error modeling equation which are stored in the data bank and calculates the thermal errors corresponding to the temperatures of a plurality of the thermocouples by the temperatures of a plurality of thermocouples inputted from the A/D converter and the positional coordinates of the bed inputted from the counter.

Abstract: A recording apparatus processes a stream of compressed video data to produce a recording signal which includes periodically occurring blocks of low-frequency video component data, for use in subsequent variable-speed playback operation. The processing is executed by selecting specific elements of low-frequency video components from the compressed video data, applying time-axis compression to the low-frequency video component elements to obtain successive data blocks, and to the compressed video data to obtain successive data blocks, between which the blocks of low-frequency video component elements are inserted.

Abstract: A method to manufacture a laminated chip capacitor by laminating and bonding elementary body sheets 14a, 14b which have via holes 17a, 17b and internal electrodes 11a, 11b, and are made of an insulating material, external electrode sheets 15a, 15b which are made of an insulating material, and a dummy sheet 16 which has via hole 17a and is made of an insulating material, treating the sheets to eliminate a binder, and calcining the sheets. This method allows the external electrode sheets 15a, 15b to form external terminal electrodes by themselves, thereby permitting the external terminal electrodes to be formed extremely easily only on two end surfaces of an elementary body opposed to each other.

Abstract: Disclosed is a rotating brush for surface treatment of working pieces. The rotating brush includes a brush fitting clamped between two clamping disks. The brush is so designed that the two clamping disks present on their opposing sides an axial shoulder of such inside and outside diameters that, when the disks are secured to each other, the axial shoulders of the one engages into that of the other to form an assembly, thereby forming a cylindrical holding element in which the brush fitting is inserted.

Abstract: A sample speech is analyzed by a speech analyzing unit to obtain sample characteristic parameters, and a coding distortion is calculated from the sample characteristic parameters in each of a plurality of coding modules. The sample characteristic parameters and the coding distortions are statistically processed by a statistical processing unit to obtain a coding module selecting rule. Thereafter, when a speech is analyzed by the speech analyzing unit to obtain characteristic parameters, an appropriate coding module is selected by a coding module selecting unit from the coding modules according to the coding module selecting rule on condition that a coding distortion for the characteristic parameters is minimized in the appropriate coding module. Thereafter, the characteristic parameters of the speech are coded in the appropriate coding module, and a coded speech is obtained. When the coded speech is decoded, a reproduced speech is obtained.

Abstract: A motion compensated prediction interframe coding system which first measures characteristics regarding the fineness of a pattern or texture of a picture, which is represented by an input television signal and is divided into a group of continuous blocks each quantized by using a quantization step size, and changes the quantization step size into a smaller one if quantizes a block having a picture pattern or texture finer than patterns of the other blocks. Thereby, an amount of generated codes can be limited but a motion compensated prediction frame coding operation can be performed without degrading the fineness of the texture of the original input picture.