Author: claimsbot

1. A focal plane shutter for cameras comprising:
two base plates each having an exposure aperture and defining at least one blade chamber therebetween;
at least one shutter blade comprising a plurality of arms and at least one blade rotatably supported by the arms; each of the plurality of arms is rotatably mounted their one end to one of the base plates, the plurality of arms and at least one shutter blade being arranged in the blade chamber; and
at least one drive unit mounted to one of the base plates to cause the shutter blade move reciprocally,
wherein the drive unit comprises: a motor having a rotor which can rotate reciprocally, a first drive member rotating reciprocally with the rotor, a second drive member having a drive pin which is connected to one of the arms in the blade chamber to cause the shutter blade move reciprocally, the second drive member being rotatably mounted to any one of the base plates; and a link member connecting its one end to the first drive member and the other end to the second drive member for transmitting reciprocal rotation of the first drive member to the second drive member, and
wherein the second drive member is in a state of being capable of coming into direct contact with the first drive member in the vicinity of the stop position thereof, so that a force from the second drive member acts substantially in the direction of an axis of rotation of the first drive member.
2. The focal plane shutter for cameras according to claim 1, wherein the first drive member comprises a cam portion in the vicinity of a joint with respect to the link member, and the second drive member comprises a cam portion in the vicinity of the joint with respect to the link member, so that when the rotor rotates in a first direction, the first drive member rotates the second drive member via the link member at the beginning and, from the midstream, rotates the second drive member via the cam portion of the first drive member which pushes the cam portion of the second drive member.
3. The focal plane shutter for cameras according to claim 2, wherein the first drive member comprises a second cam portion in the vicinity of the joint with respect to the link member, and the second drive member comprises a second cam portion at a position apart from the joint with respect to the link member, so that when the rotor rotates in the second direction, a second cam portion of the second drive member abuts against the second cam portion of the first drive member.
4. The focal plane shutter for cameras according to any one of the claims 1 to 3, wherein the rotor and the first drive member are capable of rotating integrally on the same axis of rotation.
5. The focal plane shutter for cameras according to any one of the claims 1 to 3, wherein the rotor and the first drive member are adapted to be rotated on different axes.
6. The focal plane shutter for cameras according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the link member is connected to one of the two drive members with a joint structure between a shaft and a round hole and to the other drive member with a joint structure between the shaft and an elongated hole.
7. The focal plane shutter for cameras according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the second drive member comes into contact with the first drive member when the second drive member abuts against a stopper when the operation of the shutter blade is ended.
8. The focal plane shutter for cameras according to claims 6, wherein the second drive member comes into contact with the first drive member when the second drive member abuts against a stopper when the operation of the shutter blade is ended.

The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.

1. A method for producing a fatty acid alkyl ester from a vegetable oil or animal fat, the method comprising:
(1) transesterifying a triglyceride comprised in the fat or oil with methanol or ethanol in the presence of an alkaline catalyst, to obtain a crude fatty acid alkyl ester;
(2) subsequently, washing the crude fatty acid alkyl ester with water to remove a water-soluble impurity, to obtain a washed ester and a wash fraction;
(3) subsequently, drying the washed ester by heating at atmospheric pressure or negative pressure, thereby reducing a water content of the washed ester, to obtain a dried ester;
(4) subsequently, removing a dissolved stearyl glycoside present in the dried ester by adsorption in the presence of at least one adsorbent comprising a clay mineral; and
(5) regenerating the at least one adsorbent, from a loaded absorbent, which is loaded with a loading composition comprising a stearyl glycoside, by treating the loaded absorbent with an ester-alcohol mixture comprising a fatty acid alkyl ester, a fatty acid alcohol, or a combination thereof.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the adsorbent comprises bentonite.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein the ester-alcohol mixture comprises methanol.
4. The method of claim 3, wherein the ester-alcohol mixture comprises a weight content ratio of fatty acid alkyl ester to methanol between 19:1 and 1:1.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein, subsequent to the regenerating, the removing further comprises treating the at least one adsorbent with an inert gas.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein the adsorption is carried out in at least two adsorption columns connected in parallel,
wherein at the same time the adsorption is carried out in at least one adsorption column and the regenerating is carried out in at least one further adsorption column.
7. The method of claim 1, the adsorption is effected at an operating temperature between 60 and 150\xb0 C.
8. The method of claim 1, wherein the regenerating effected at an operating temperature of 40 to 60\xb0 C.
9. The method of claim 1, wherein the ester-alcohol mixture, after the regenerating, comprises a stearyl glycoside and is processed by a method comprising:
(i) separating an alcohol fraction from a fatty acid alkyl ester fraction by distillation, wherein stearyl glycosides remain in the fatty acid alkyl ester fraction, to obtain a fatty acid ester mixture; and
(ii) splitting a stearyl glycoside into a stearyl alcohol fraction and a sugar fraction by mixing a strong acid into the fatty acid alkyl ester mixture.
10. The method of claim 9, further comprising passing the stearyl alcohol fraction into the wash fraction.
11. The method of claim 1, wherein the impurity comprises a soap, glycerol residue, salt, of a combination thereof.
12. The method of claim 1, wherein the adsorbent comprises calcium bentonite.
13. The method of claim 1, wherein the ester-alcohol mixture comprises ethanol.
14. The method of claim 13, wherein the ester-alcohol mixture comprises a weight content ratio of fatty acid alkyl ester to methanol between 19:1 and 1:1.
15. The method of claim 13, wherein the ester-alcohol mixture comprises a weight content ratio of fatty acid alkyl ester to ethanol between 9:1 and 4:1.
16. The method of claim 3, wherein the ester-alcohol mixture comprises a weight content ratio of fatty acid alkyl ester to methanol between 9:1 and 4:1.
17. The method of claim 5, wherein the inert gas comprises N2.
18. The method of claim 1, wherein the inert gas comprises CO2.
19. The method of claim 1, wherein the inert gas comprises N2 and CO2.
20. The method of claim 9, further comprising passing the sugar fraction into the wash fraction.
21. The method of claim 9, wherein the alcohol fraction in (i) is a methanol fraction.
22. The method of claim 1, wherein the ester-alcohol mixture, after the regenerating, comprises a stearyl glycoside and is processed by a method comprising:
(i) separating an alcohol fraction from a fatty acid alkyl ester fraction by distillation, wherein stearyl glycosides remain in the fatty acid alkyl ester fraction, to obtain a fatty acid ester mixture; and
(ii) splitting a stearyl glycoside into a stearyl alcohol fraction and a sugar by contacting the fatty acid alkyl ester mixture with an acidically acting ion exchanger.
23. The method of claim 22, further comprising passing the sugar fraction into the wash fraction.

1. A device, comprising:
a processing element configured to execute a flood fill routine in accordance with an updated flood map;
a software interface configured to direct the processing element to issue an input flood map for a given image block to be flood-fill processed; and
a flood-fill hardware primitive configured to receive and update the input flood map to include final pixel positions to be flooded, and to provide the updated flood map to the processing element.
2. The device of claim 1 wherein the device includes multiple processing elements, the device further comprising:
an arbiter operatively coupled between the processing elements and the flood-fill hardware primitive, so that processing element commands to the flood-fill hardware primitive can be acted upon pursuant to an arbitration scheme.
3. The device of claim 2 wherein the device further includes multiple flood-fill hardware primitives which are used in accordance with the arbitration scheme.
4. The device of claim 1 wherein the input flood map indicates pixels in the image block that can accept a flooded value.
5. The device of claim 4 wherein the input flood map further indicates surrounding pixels of the image block which represent connectivity to the image block.
6. The device of claim 1 wherein the device is configured to initially flood-fill an image block that includes a seed node, and to subsequently flood-fill neighbor image blocks of that seed node image block.
7. The device of claim 1 wherein the software interface is configured to produce parallel threads and issue each one to one of multiple processing elements, such that each thread can run independently until done.
8. The device of claim 1 wherein the flood-fill hardware primitive is implemented with a bitwise definition.
9. The device of claim 8 wherein the bitwise definition is tuned to meet at least one of power and processor cycle performance targets.
10. The device of claim 1 wherein the processing element is configured to early exit the flood fill routine if all connection points of the given image block are reset or if its updated flood map is completely reset.
11. The device of claim 1 wherein the flood-fill hardware primitive is configured to early exit flood map updating if it detects that flooding will make no change.
12. A media processing system comprising the device of claim 1.
13. A mobile computing system comprising the media processing system of claim 12.
14. A media processing system, comprising:
a plurality of processing elements, each configured to execute a flood fill routine in accordance with an updated flood map;
a software interface configured to produce parallel threads and issue each one to one of the processing elements, such that each thread can run independently until done and thereby directing each of those processing elements to issue an input flood map for a given image block to be flood-fill processed; and
a plurality of flood-fill hardware primitives, each configured to update an input flood map received from one of the processing elements to include final pixel positions to be flooded, and to provide the updated flood map back to that processing element.
15. The system of claim 14 further comprising:
an arbiter operatively coupled between the processing elements and the flood-fill hardware primitives, so that processing element commands to the flood-fill hardware primitives can be acted upon pursuant to an arbitration scheme.
16. The system of claim 14 wherein each input flood map indicates pixels in the corresponding image block that can accept a flooded value, and further indicates surrounding pixels of that corresponding image block which represent connectivity to that corresponding image block.
17. The system of claim 14 wherein the system is configured to initially flood-fill a given image block that includes a seed node, and to subsequently flood-fill neighbor image blocks of that seed node image block.
18. The system of claim 14 wherein the flood-fill hardware primitive is implemented with a bitwise definition.
19. The system of claim 14 wherein each processing element is configured to early exit flood-fill processing a given image block if all connection points of that image block are reset or if its updated flood map is completely reset.
20. The system of claim 14 wherein at least one of the flood-fill hardware primitives is configured to early exit flood map updating if it detects that flooding will make no change.
21. A method, comprising:
directing, via a software interface, a processing element to issue an input flood map for a given image block to be flood-fill processed;
updating, via a flood-fill hardware primitive, the input flood map to include final pixel positions to be flooded; and
providing the updated flood map back to the processing element.
22. The method of claim 21 wherein the directing includes multiple processing elements, the method further comprising:
acting upon processing element commands to the flood-fill hardware primitive pursuant to an arbitration scheme.
23. The method of claim 21 wherein the input flood map indicates pixels in the image block that can accept a flooded value, and further indicates surrounding pixels of the image block which represent connectivity to the image block.
24. The method of claim 21 wherein the method comprises initially flood-filling an image block that includes a seed node, and subsequently flood-filling neighbor image blocks of that seed node image block.
25. The method of claim 21 wherein directing a processing element comprises producing parallel threads and issuing each one to one of multiple processing elements, such that each thread can run independently until done.
26. The method of claim 21 wherein the flood-fill hardware primitive is implemented with a bitwise definition.
27. The method of claim 21 wherein directing a processing element comprises early exiting flood-fill processing the given image block if all connection points of that image block are reset or if its updated flood map is completely reset.
28. The method of claim 21 wherein further comprising early exiting the updating if flooding will make no change.

The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.

We claim:

1. A coating, comprising:
a silane and
a biopolymer, wherein said biopolymer is covalently linked to the silane.
2. The coating of claim 1, wherein the silane has functionality capable of reacting with a hydroxyl group.
3. The coating of claim 1, wherein the silane comprises at least one of isocyanate, isothiocyanate, ester, anhydride, acyl halide, alkyl halide, epoxide, or aziridine functionality
4. The coating of claim 1, wherein the silane comprises isocyanate functionality.
5. The coating of claim 4, wherein the biopolymer is derived from heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride.
6. The coating of claim 1, wherein the biopolymer is derived from a complex selected from the group consisting of heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride, heparin-benzalkonium chloride, heparin-stearalkonium chloride, heparin-poly-N-vinyl-pyrolidone, heparin-lecithin, heparin-didodecyldimethylammonium bromide, heparin-pyridinium chloride, and heparin-synthetic glycolipid complex.
7. The coating of claim 1, wherein the biopolymer has hydroxyl or amine functional groups that can react with isocyanate functionality.
8. The coating of claim 1, wherein the biopolymer comprises an adduct of heparin molecules.
9. The coating of claim 7, wherein the heparin is provided in a form capable of dissolving in an organic solvent.
10. The coating of claim 1, wherein the biopolymer provides thromboresistance.
11. The coating of claim 1, wherein the biopolymer is derived from heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride.
12. The coating of claim 1, further comprising at least one of a wetting agent and an additive.
13. The coating of claim 1, wherein the silane has an organic chain between isocyanate and silane functional groups.
14. A coating for a medical device, wherein thromboresistance activity can be modified, comprising
heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride;
a silane having isocyanate functionality; and
an organic solvent.
15. The coating of claim 14, wherein the quantity of at least one of the silane and the heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride complex is selected to provide desired thromboresistance.
16. The coating of claim 15, wherein the concentration of the silane is between about one-tenth percent and about twenty percent.
17. The coating of claim 15, wherein the concentration of the silane is between about one-tenth percent and about ten percent.
18. The coating of claim 15, wherein the concentration of the silane is between about one-tenth percent and about five percent.
19. The coating of claim 15, wherein the concentration of the silane is between about one-half percent and about four percent.
20. The coating of claim 15, wherein the concentration of heparintridodecylmethyl-ammonium chloride is between about one-tenth percent and about twenty percent.
21. The coating of claim 15, wherein the concentration of heparintridodecylmethyl-ammonium chloride is between about one-tenth percent and about ten percent.
22. The coating of claim 15, wherein the concentration of heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride is between about one-tenth percent and about five percent.
23. The coating of claim 15, wherein the concentration of heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride is between about one-tenth percent and about four percent.
24. The coating of claim 15, wherein the concentration, of the silane is about five-tenths percent and the concentration of the heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride is about two-tenths percent.
25. The coating of claim 14, wherein the organic solvent tetrahydrofuran is used to prepare the solution applied to the surface.
26. The coating of claim 14, wherein the silane and the heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride are provided in a single layer.
27. The coating of claim 14, further comprising a surface active agent.
28. The coating of claim 27, wherein the surface active agent is Triton.
29. A coated medical device, comprising:
a substrate, and
a coating derived from heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride, a silane having isocyanate functionality, and an organic solvent.
30. The coated medical device of claim 29, wherein the solution applied to the surface comprises silane and heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride, and said solution is applied directly to the substrate without the use of a primer.
31. The medical device of claim 1-9, wherein the silane and the heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride are applied in a single layer.
32. The device of claim 29, wherein the heparin is covalently bonded to the substrate.
33. The device of claim 19, wherein the device is a stent.
34. The device of claim 33, wherein the stent is made of at least one of stainless steel, nitinol, tantalum, glass, ceramic, nickel, titanium and aluminum.
35. A method of coating a medical device, comprising covalently bonding a heparin to the medical device.
36. The method of claim 35, further comprising:
applying a silane having functionality capable of reacting with a hydroxyl group to the medical device.
37. The method of claim 36, wherein the silane has isocyanate functionality.
38. The method of claim 35, wherein the heparin is derived from heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride.
39. The method of claim 36, further comprising:
dissolving heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride and the silane in an organic solvent prior to applying the solution to the substrate.
40. The method of claim 39, wherein the organic solvent is tetrahydrofuran.
41. The method of claim 36, further comprising:
applying the heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride and the silane to the medical device in a single layer.
42. The method of claim 36, further comprising:
adjusting the concentration, in the solution applied to the surface, of at least one of the silane and the heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride to provide desired thromboresistance.
43. The method of claim 42, wherein the concentration of the silane is between about one-tenth percent and about twenty percent.
44. The method of claim 42, wherein the concentration of the silane is between about one-tenth percent and about ten percent.
45. The method of claim 42, wherein the concentration of the silane is between about one-tenth percent and about five percent.
46. The method of claim 41, wherein the concentration of the silane is between about one-half percent and about four percent.
47. The method of claim 42, wherein the concentration of heparintridodecylmethyl-ammonium chloride is between about one-tenth percent and about twenty percent.
48. The method of claim 42, wherein the concentration of heparintridodecylmethyl-ammonium chloride is between about one-tenth percent and about ten percent.
49. The method of claim 42, wherein the concentration of heparintridodecylmethyl-ammonium chloride is between about one-tenth percent and about five percent.
50. The method of claim 42 wherein the concentration of heparintridodecylmethyl-ammonium chloride is between about one-tenth percent and about four percent.
51. The method of claim 42, wherein the concentration, of the silane is about five-tenths percent and the concentration of the heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride is about two-tenths percent.
52. The method of claim 36, further comprising:
oxidizing the medical device prior to applying the silane and the heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride.
53. A method of coating a medical device, comprising:
dissolving heparin-tridodecylmethylammonium chloride and a silane having isocyanate functionality in an organic solvent and applying said solution to the device to form a coating on the medical device.
54. The method of claim 53, further comprising:
oxidizing a surface of the medical device prior to applying the coating.
55. The method of claim 53, further comprising:
providing a wetting agent in conjunction with applying the coating.
56. The method of claim 53, further comprising:
adding a film-forming agent to the coating.
57. The method of claim 56, wherein the film forming agent is selected from the group consisting of cellulose esters, polydialkyl siloxanes, polyurethanes, acrylic polymers, elastomers, biodegradable polymers, polylactic acid, polyglycolic acid, copolymers of polylactic acid and polyglycolic acid and poly(e-caprolactone).
58. The method of claim 53, further comprising:
adding a non-functional silane to the coating.
59. The method of claim 58, wherein the non-functional silanes are selected from the group consisting of chain alkyltriakoxysilanes and phenyltriakoxysilanes.