Abstract: A hose for containing a vacuum, which hose has an impermeable flexible tube capable of holding a vacuum and a braided or interwoven flexible interior wall, said wall providing support to said interior wall of said impermeable flexible tube. Optionally, an exterior braided or woven wall may be provided to the hose for protection or to allow the hose to be used as a pressure hose. The hose may delimit a vacuum space through which may travel a thermal transfer line containing, for example, cryogenic fluid.

Abstract: The present invention provides a “solid” diamond, i.e. greater than 5&mgr; thick, electron emitter that has been “machined” using non-contact techniques to a point having a radius of less than about 100&mgr;, preferably below about 10&mgr; and most preferably between about 3 angstroms and about 3&mgr;. The solid diamond electron emitters of the present invention can perform, even at these small radii, as multi-point emitters depending upon the radius and roughness of the pointed tip and can be used in arrays to obtain relatively large area field emitters for applications where such larger field emissions are necessary. Production of the solid diamond emitters of the present invention is preferably accomplished using non-contact electron or ion beam machining techniques. Residual gas analyzers (RGA) and field emitter extractor gauge analyzers (FERGA) that use the solid diamond emitters are also described.

Abstract: The use of a slant-hole collimator in the gamma camera of dual mode stereotactic localization apparatus allows the acquisition of a stereo pair of scintimammographic images without repositioning of the gamma camera between image acquisitions.