| Patent application number | Description | Published |
|---|
| 20080218554 | LIQUID EJECTION APPARATUS AND LIQUID EJECTION SURFACE MAINTENANCE METHOD - A liquid ejection apparatus includes: a liquid ejection head which includes a nozzle ejecting liquid, a pressure chamber connected to the nozzle and arranged in a liquid ejection surface of the liquid ejection head, and a pressure application device applying pressure to the liquid inside the pressure chamber; an internal pressure adjustment device which adjusts an internal pressure of the liquid ejection head; and a pressure control device which controls the internal pressure adjustment device and the pressure application device so as to spread the liquid over the liquid ejection surface of the liquid ejection head. The internal pressure adjustment device adjusts the internal pressure of the liquid ejection head to a positive pressure so as to still hold the liquid on the nozzle while protruding the liquid from the liquid ejection surface. The pressure application device then applies the pressure to the liquid inside the pressure chamber for a pressure application duration so as not to cause the liquid to be ejected from the nozzle but to flow out the liquid from the nozzle onto the liquid ejection surface, while the internal pressure adjustment device is adjusting the internal pressure to the positive pressure. The pressure application device then stops applying the pressure to the liquid inside the pressure chamber after the pressure application duration, while the internal pressure adjustment device is adjusting the internal pressure to the positive pressure. | 09-11-2008 |
| 20080238734 | Fast Implementation Of Decoding Function For Variable Length Encoding - An embodiment of the present inventions is a method for encoding/decoding data of variable length format and is used to omit unnecessary pieces of data for the purpose of improving processing performance, reducing the size of data on communication paths and efficiently using limited physical memory. As examples of such variable length encoding, BER compression and UTF-8 encoding of UNICODE text, etc., are cited. While the amount of data can be reduced through encoding, before the data is actually used, it is necessary to restore (decode) it to the original data, which requires a great deal of processing time. One aspect of the present invention is improving decoding by reducing the processing time required to decode the encoded data. | 10-02-2008 |
| 20080238735 | Fast Implementation Of Decoding Function For Variable Length Encoding - An embodiment of the present inventions is a method for encoding/decoding data of variable length format and is used to omit unnecessary pieces of data for the purpose of improving processing performance, reducing the size of data on communication paths and efficiently using limited physical memory. As examples of such variable length encoding, BER compression and UTF-8 encoding of UNICODE text, etc., are cited. While the amount of data can be reduced through encoding, before the data is actually used, it is necessary to restore (decode) it to the original data, which requires a great deal of processing time. One aspect of the present invention is improving decoding by reducing the processing time required to decode the encoded data. | 10-02-2008 |
| 20080238990 | CLEANING APPARATUS AND LIQUID EJECTION APPARATUS AND LIQUID EJECTION SURFACE CLEANING METHOD - A cleaning apparatus which cleans a liquid ejection surface of a liquid ejection head, has: a liquid storage chamber which stores a first liquid; a vibrating device which converts the first liquid stored in the liquid storage chamber into fine particles of the first liquid; a fine liquid particle outlet port from which the fine particles of the first liquid is sprayed toward the liquid ejection surface; and a wiping device which wipes the liquid ejection surface after the fine particles of the first liquid sprayed from the fine liquid particle outlet port are deposited on the liquid ejection surface. | 10-02-2008 |
| 20080270772 | Reduced data transfer during processor context switching - Data transfer during processor context switching is reduced, particularly in relation to a time-sharing microtasking programming model. Prior to switching context of a processor having local memory from a first to a second process, a portion of the local memory that does not require transfer to system memory for proper saving of data associated with the first process is determined. The context of the processor is then switched from the first to the second process, including transferring all of the local memory as the data associated with the first process, to system memory—except for the portion of the local memory that has been determined as not requiring saving to the system memory for proper saving of the data associated with the first process. Therefore, switching the context from the first to the second process results in a reduction of data transferred from the local memory to the system memory. | 10-30-2008 |
| 20090046122 | MAINTENANCE APPARATUS, LIQUID EJECTION APPARATUS AND NOZZLE SURFACE MAINTENANCE METHOD - A maintenance apparatus for a nozzle surface in which a plurality of nozzles ejecting a liquid are formed, in an ejection head having a nozzle row in which the nozzles are aligned in a main scanning direction, has: a liquid storage member which is disposed in a position opposing the nozzle surface of the ejection head at a prescribed distance from the nozzle surface, and which has a liquid holding surface which has a length, in a sub-scanning direction perpendicular to the main scanning direction, corresponding to a length in the sub-scanning direction of a region in which the plurality of nozzles are provided; a liquid supply device which supplies a liquid to the liquid holding surface; a movement device which moves the liquid storage member through a whole length of the nozzle row in the main scanning direction, while bringing the liquid held on the liquid holding surface into contact with the nozzle surface; and a wiping device which wipes the nozzle surface that has been wetted by the liquid supplied to the liquid storage member, while moving subsequently to the liquid storage member, to remove adhering material attached to the nozzle surface. | 02-19-2009 |
| 20090130009 | METHOD OF REMOVING SULFUR COMPOUNDS FROM NATURAL GAS - All sulfur compounds can be efficiently removed from natural gas that contains hydrogen sulfide and other sulfur compounds such as mercaptan without using physical absorption. The process comprises an absorption step of treating natural gas by means of a chemical absorption method using an amine-containing solution to mainly remove hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, an adsorption step of flowing the natural gas from the absorption step through a packed bed of a molecular sieve to mainly remove mercaptan, a recovery step of recovering sulfur compounds by converting the hydrogen sulfide removed in the absorption step into sulfur by means of the Claus process, a regeneration step of desorbing the mercaptan adsorbed on the molecular sieve in the adsorption step using heated gas and a reaction step of converting the mercaptan in the regeneration exhaust gas exhausted from the regeneration step into hydrogen sulfide. The reaction step is conducted by injecting steam or water at a ratio of H | 05-21-2009 |
| 20090222644 | Merge Operations of Data Arrays Based on SIMD Instructions - A method and apparatus are provided to perform efficient merging operations of two or more streams of data by using SIMD instruction. Streams of data are merged together in parallel and with mitigated or removed conditional branching. The merge operations of the streams of data include Merge AND and Merge OR operations. | 09-03-2009 |
| 20100031259 | ESTIMATING POWER CONSUMPTION OF A VIRTUAL SERVER - Embodiments of the invention disclose a system and a method for estimating the power consumption of virtual servers that operate in various hardware configurations and making a charge. The system consists of a resource utilization measurement unit that measures utilization of a hardware resource by an operation of a virtual server. The system also includes a conversion unit that converts the utilization of the hardware resource measured by the resource utilization measurement unit to utilization of a hardware resource in a case where the operation of the virtual server is performed in a reference server including a preset hardware configuration. The system further includes a virtual power consumption calculation unit that calculates, on the basis of the utilization in the reference server obtained by the conversion by the conversion unit, as power that can be assumed to be consumed by the operation of the virtual server, power consumption in a case where a similar operation is performed in the reference server. The system further has an accounting unit that makes a charge for the operation of the virtual server on the basis of the power consumption calculated by the virtual power consumption calculation unit. Other embodiments are also provided. | 02-04-2010 |
| 20100214355 | CLEANING APPARATUS AND LIQUID EJECTION APPARATUS AND CLEANING METHOD - The cleaning apparatus cleans a nozzle surface of a liquid ejection head. The cleaning apparatus includes: a cleaning liquid supply device which supplies cleaning liquid to the nozzle surface while being not in contact with the nozzle surface; a liquid layer formation control device which causes the cleaning liquid supply device to supply a prescribed amount of the cleaning liquid to form a layer of the cleaning liquid that fills in a space between the cleaning liquid supply device and the nozzle surface; and a movement control device which controls a movement device so as to move the cleaning liquid supply device and the liquid ejection head relatively to each other at a relative speed in which a meniscus is not broken down, the meniscus being of the layer of the cleaning liquid in a portion of the layer of the cleaning liquid that makes contact with the nozzle surface. | 08-26-2010 |
| 20100238234 | INKJET RECORDING APPARATUS - The inkjet recording apparatus includes: an inkjet head having a nozzle surface in which inkjet nozzles are arranged, the nozzle surface being oblique to a horizontal plane; and a cleaner which wipes the nozzle surface. The cleaner includes: a supply spindle and a take-up spindle of which axes are horizontal; a band-shaped wiping member which is wound in a form of a roll and installed on the supply spindle, travels along a prescribed path of travel and is taken up onto the take-up spindle; a pressing roller of which axis is arranged in parallel with the nozzle surface, the wiping member being wrapped about a circumferential surface of the pressing roller; a front-stage guide device which is disposed between the supply spindle and the pressing roller and guides the wiping member supplied from the supply spindle so as to travel in a direction perpendicular to the axis of the pressing roller; and a rear-stage guide device which is disposed between the pressing roller and the take-up spindle and guides the wiping member wrapped about the pressing roller so as to travel in a direction perpendicular to the axis of the take-up spindle. The nozzle surface is cleaned by abutting the wiping member wrapped about the pressing roller against the nozzle surface. | 09-23-2010 |
| 20100245466 | HEAD CLEANING METHOD AND HEAD CLEANING APPARATUS - A head cleaning method of wiping and cleaning a nozzle surface of a head with a band-shaped liquid absorbing body by, while pressing and abutting a pressing member on which the liquid absorbing body that travels is wrapped against the nozzle surface of the head, sliding the pressing member over the nozzle surface of the head, includes: a first cleaning step of wiping and cleaning the nozzle surface of the head with a non-wet region of the liquid absorbing body; a wet region forming step of forming a wet region on the liquid absorbing body; and a second cleaning step of wiping and cleaning the nozzle surface of the head with the wet region of the liquid absorbing body. | 09-30-2010 |
