Abstract: A process for producing an expanded article of a thermoplastic resin by extruding and expanding a foamable resin using an extruder equipped, on a resin channel in a die, with a nozzle having a number of apertures, which comprises flowing a resin mixture stream through an expansion zone while maintaining the resin mixture at a temperature above the melting point thereof, dividing the resin mixture stream into a plurality of separate streams, exiting these streams from the extrusion zone directly into a confined zone, thereby forming a plurality of soft expanded resin strands corresponding in number to the number of strands, bringing the strands into surface contact with each other to fuse and bond them together to form a bonded expanded resin mass while simultaneously removing gases generated in the course of extrusion and expansion, passing the bonded mass into an unconfined zone to permit the mass to further expand while still in a softened condition, passing the further expanded mass into a confined receivi

Abstract: An integrated circuit including an NPN transistor and a compound PNP transistor. The PNP transistor is of the form of a conventional vertical NPN transistor, in common base configuration, supplying base current to a lateral PNP transistor. The emitter of the vertical NPN is disposed in the emitter of the lateral PNP; the base and collector of the vertical NPN are the emitter and base regions, respectively, of the lateral PNP. The separate NPN transistor may be of conventional configuration, or may also be compound, with a lateral PNP supplying base current to an inverse vertical NPN. All conductivity types may be reversed from those listed, also.