Author: claimsbot

1. An air conditioner comprising:
an input part to which a control signal for an operation of the air conditioner is inputted;
a display part having at least one sub-display part displaying an operational state of the air conditioner; and
a microcomputer controlling the air conditioner to be operated according to the control signal generated from the input part, the microcomputer controlling the operational state of the air conditioner to be displayed via the display part.
2. The air conditioner of claim 1, wherein the at least one sub-display part comprises a plurality of LEDs and wherein each of the LEDs is turned on to correspond to the operational state of the air conditioner.
3. The air conditioner of claim 2, wherein the LEDs are sequentially turned on according to the operational state of the air conditioner.
4. The air conditioner of claim 1, further comprising a remote controller receiving part receiving the control signal transmitted from a remote controller.
5. The air conditioner of claim 4, the microcomputer comprising:
an input control part controlling the operation of the air conditioner according to the control signal transferred from at least one of the input part and the remote controller receiving part; and
a display control part controlling the operational state of the air conditioner to be displayed via the display part.
6. The air conditioner of claim 1, the display part comprising:
a temperature sub-display part displaying a temperature of a blown air set in the air conditioner;
a time sub-display part displaying a reservation time set in the air conditioner; and
an operational mode sub-display part displaying an operational mode set in the air conditioner.
7. The air conditioner of claim 1, the input part comprising at least one button wherein the input part is controlled to change the operational state of the air conditioner according to a count of pressing the button.
8. The air conditioner of claim 1, the input part comprising:
a temperature adjusting part operated to control a temperature of an air blown from the air conditioner; and
an operational mode part operated to control a blow airflow rate and power supply of the air conditioner.
9. The air conditioner of claim 8, the temperature adjusting part comprising a thermostat operated to control the temperature by being rotated.
10. The air conditioner of claim 8, the operational mode part comprising a slide switch allowing the operation of the air conditioner to be selected.
11. The air conditioner of claim 8, the operational mode part comprising:
a fan regulating part operated to control a rotational speed of a fan for controlling an airflow rate blown into an indoor space; and
a power supply part operated to turn onoff a power supply to the air conditioner.
12. The air conditioner of claim 11, wherein each of the power supply part and the fan regulating part comprises a rocker switch.
13. The air conditioner of claim 11, wherein if the power supply part is turned on, the fan is driven at either a high step or a low step.
14. An air conditioner comprising:
a temperature adjusting part operated to adjust a current supplied to a compressor for a control of an air blown from the air conditioner and a selection of a blower function; and
an operational mode part operated to control a blown airflow rate and a power supply of the air conditioner.
15. The air conditioner of claim 14, the temperature adjusting part comprising a thermostat operated to control the temperature by being rotated.
16. The air conditioner of claim 14, the operational mode part comprising a slide switch slidable to allow the operation of the air conditioner to be selected.
17. The air conditioner of claim 16, the operational mode part comprising:
a fan regulating part operated to control a rotational speed of a fan for controlling an airflow rate blown into an indoor space; and
a power supply part operated to turn onoff a power supply to the air conditioner.
18. The air conditioner of claim 17, wherein each of the power supply part and the fan regulating part comprises a rocker switch.
19. The air conditioner of claim 17, wherein if the power supply part is turned on, the fan is driven at either a high step or a low step.

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 process for producing microparticles, characterized in that the process comprises feeding into a heat source a raw material in the form of a liquid stream, liquid droplets, or powder; capturing the formed product in the form of microparticles by means of an atomized liquid fluid; and collecting the microparticles in the form of slurry through gas-liquid separation.
2. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 1, wherein the raw material to be fed into the heat source is provided through forming a molten material into a liquid stream or liquid droplets.
3. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 1, wherein the raw material to be fed into the heat source is in the form of atomized powder.
4. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 1, wherein the gas-liquid separation is performed by means of a cyclone separator.
5. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 1, wherein the heat source is acetylene flame or DC plasma flame.
6. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 1, wherein the liquid fluid is water.
7. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 1, wherein the raw material is at least one member selected from among metals, alloys, oxides, nitrides, and oxide nitrides.
8. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 1, wherein the heat source is an oxidizing atmosphere or a nitrifying atmosphere, whereby oxide microparticles, nitride microparticles, or oxide nitride microparticles are produced.
9. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 1, wherein the raw material is an In\u2014Sn alloy or ITO powder, from which indium oxide-tin oxide powder is produced.
10. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 9, which produces indium oxide-tin oxide powder having a tin content of 2.3 to 45 mass % as calculated on the basis of SnO2.
11. A process for producing microparticles according to claim 1, wherein the product flows at a maximum speed of 150 msec or less, when the product is captured by means of the liquid fluid.
12. An apparatus for producing microparticles, characterized in that the apparatus comprises
an inlet for introducing, into the inside of the apparatus, a gas fluid and a product obtained through feeding a raw material in the form of a liquid flow, liquid droplets, or powder into a heat source;
a fluid jetting means for jetting an atomized liquid fluid to the introduced product;
a first gas-liquid separation means for subjecting, to gas-liquid separation, microparticles captured by the liquid fluid, to thereby form a slurry of the microparticles; and
a first circulating means for returning a part of an atmosphere fluid containing microparticles that have not been captured by the liquid fluid to a position where the fluid jetting means is disposed.
13. An apparatus for producing microparticles according to claim 12, which further comprises, on the downstream side of the first gas-liquid separation means, a second gas-liquid separation means, the second gas-liquid separation means being provided for introducing a part of an atmosphere fluid containing microparticles that have not been captured by the liquid fluid, for jetting an atomized liquid fluid to the atmosphere fluid, and for performing gas-liquid separation, to thereby obtain a slurry of the microparticles.
14. An apparatus for producing microparticles according to claim 13, which apparatus further comprises, on the downstream side of the second gas-liquid separation means, a second circulating means for returning a part of an atmosphere fluid containing microparticles that have not been captured by the liquid fluid to the inlet of the second gas-liquid separation means.
15. An apparatus for producing microparticles according to claim 12, wherein the first or second gas-liquid separation is a cyclone separator.
16. An apparatus for producing microparticles according to claim 12, wherein the particles flow at a maximum speed of 150 msec or less, when the microparticles are captured by the liquid fluid jetted by means of the fluid jetting means.

1. A backlight scanning method for controlling a backlight for a liquid crystal display panel, the backlight comprising light groups on left and right sides, the method comprising steps of:
determining a time period for turning on and off the light groups on the left and right sides in accordance with a control signal for pixels in the liquid crystal display panel; and
in scanning, turning on and off the light groups on the left and right sides alternately in sets, and during the course of displaying one frame by the liquid crystal display, turning on or off the light groups on the left and right sides at least two times.
2. The backlight scanning method claimed as claim 1, wherein the step of turning on or off the light groups on the left and right sides at least two times comprises:
at each time that one set is scanned, a light group corresponding to the scanned set and other light groups belonging to set (s) of a same partial area as the scanned set are turned on, and meanwhile the light groups in another partial area are turned off, wherein the sets of the light groups in these two partial areas are distributed alternately.
3. The backlight scanning method claimed as claim 2, wherein the step of turning on a light group corresponding to the scanned set and other light groups belonging to set (s) of a same partial area as the scanned set and meanwhile turning off the light groups in another partial area at each time that one set is scanned comprises:
when pixels in the last row in the scanned set start to respond stably, a light group corresponding to the set and other light groups belonging to the same partial area are turned on, and meanwhile light groups in another partial area are turned off.
4. The backlight scanning method claimed as claim 2, wherein one light group set correspond to one pixel set, and one pixel set comprises at least one row of pixels, and the whole pixel region comprises at least three pixel sets.
5. The backlight scanning method claimed as claim 4, wherein the three pixel sets have a same size.
6. A liquid crystal display comprising:
a liquid crystal display panel,
a backlight,
a backlight control unit, and
a pixel control unit,
wherein the backlight comprises light groups on left and right sides, and each of the light groups on the left and right sides are connected to the backlight control unit which is connected to the pixel control unit;
the pixel control unit is adapted to provide a control signal for liquid crystal response in pixels of the liquid crystal display panel to the backlight control unit; and
the backlight control unit is adapted to determine a time period for turning on and off the light groups on the left and right sides in accordance with the received control signal, and to turn on and off the light groups on the left and right sides alternately in sets, and
wherein during the course of displaying one frame by the liquid crystal display panel, the light groups on the left and right sides are controlled to be turned on or off at least two times.
7. The liquid crystal display claimed as claim 6, wherein at each time that the pixel control unit scans one set, the backlight control unit turns on a light group corresponding to the scanned set and other light groups belonging to set (s) of a same partial area as the scanned set, and meanwhile turns off the light groups in another partial area, wherein the sets of the light groups in these two partial areas are distributed alternately.
8. The liquid crystal display claimed as claim 7, wherein when pixels in the last row in the scanned set start to respond stably, the backlight control unit turns on a light group corresponding to the set and other light groups belonging to the same partial area, and meanwhile turns off light groups in another partial area.
9. The liquid crystal display claimed as claim 7, wherein one light group set correspond to one pixel set of the liquid crystal display panel, and one pixel set comprises at least one row of pixels, and the whole pixel region comprises at least three pixel sets
10. The liquid crystal display claimed as claim 9, wherein the three pixel sets have a same size.

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 process for execution on a computer to assist a user in making and validating IT service requests, comprising the steps of:
1) displaying an IT services catalog;
2) determining if a user that wishes to order an IT service selects an option for computer assistance in selecting a service action;
3) if a user requests assistance, displaying questions in an order dictated by a decision tree defined in advance by an IT professional, and traversing said decision tree based upon answers provided by the user via said computer input devices until one or more recommendations for service actions have been encountered;
4) gathering all recommended service actions and filling in fields in a data structure based upon answers given by said user;
5) upon completion of step 4, or if said user does not request assistance in step 2, soliciting said user to fill in all unpopulated fields of a data structure defining one or more service actions which are either selected by said user or which have been recommended by processing said decision tree and validating all user data input.
2. The process of claim 1 wherein step 3 further comprises the step of validating each answer provided by a user using constraints andor validation formulas, and rejecting the answer and providing the user with a chance to provide the answer again if the constraints are violated or the results of evaluating said validation formula indicates the answer is invalid.
3. The process of claim 2 wherein said validation process validates the answers given against constraints andor the results of evaluating validation formulas stored in attributes of a data field in a data structure pertaining to the answer.
4. The process of claim 2 wherein said validation process validates the answers given against constraints andor the results of evaluating validation formulas stored in a service advisor which is providing assistance to said user, said constraints andor validation formulas having been defined in advance by an IT professional when said service advisor was written.
5. The process of claim 1 wherein step 4 comprises the step of said computer automatically filling in fields in the data structures of one or more service action recommended by traversing said decision tree based upon answers supplied by said user.
6. The process of claim 1 wherein step 5 is implemented by displaying a dialog box for each unpopulated field of one or more data structures defining said one or more recommended or user selected service actions, and supplying a suggested answer as a default based upon configuration attribute data of each said field defined by an IT professional when said service action was defined.
7. A process for execution on a computer to assist a user in making and validating IT service requests, comprising the steps of:
(1) displaying on a computer an IT services catalog which contains all the IT services that are available to order;
(2) determining if a user who wishes to order an IT service knows the appropriate service action to select to create an instance of the desired IT service;
(3) if the user does not know the appropriate service action to select or simply chooses to pick a service advisor, launching a service advisor program in accordance with the user’s selection, said service advisor implementing a decision tree which has IT services as its \u201cleaves\u201d;
(4) looking up and displaying on said computer a first dialog box or other means of soliciting information from said user about the desired IT service by asking one or more questions;
(5) receiving user responses to said one or more questions via said computer, and validating said responses, and using the answer(s) to vector processing to and displaying on said computer another dialog box or other means of soliciting information from said user about the desired IT service;
(6) repeating the process of displaying questions and receiving responses and validating said responses and vectoring processing to the next question(s) based upon the response(s) to the previous question(s) until one or more recommendations for IT service actions are encountered in said decision tree;
(7) gathering all recommendations of any service action(s) encountered in traversing said decision tree in response to answers entered by said user;
(8) using said computer to automatically fill in all fields of one or more data structures defining one or more service actions recommended by said service advisor using information entered by said user in response to questions posed while traversing said decision tree;
(9) upon completion of step 8 or if the user does not pick a service advisor in step 3, using said computer to solicit said user to fill in any empty data fields including relationship fields of said one or more data structures defining one or more service actions recommended by said service advisor which were not filled in automatically by said computer and receiving information entered by said user and validating said data entered by said user and storing said data in the appropriate fields of said one or more data structures.
8. The process of claim 7 wherein step 9 comprises the step of:
automatically filling in any unpopulated relationship fields with pointers to the appropriate service action andor IT resource based upon answers previously entered in response to questions posed by said service advisor if said user selected a service action, or filling in said unpopulated relationship field with data supplied by said user if said user did not select a service advisor.
9. The process of claim 7 wherein the validation processes in step 4 and 5 comprise the steps of validating user input based upon constraints andor validation formulas stored in attributes of fields in a data structure defining a service action in which the data being validated is to be stored.
10. The process of claim 7 wherein the validation processes in step 4 and 5 comprise the steps of validating user input based upon constraints andor validation formulas stored in said service advisor by an IT professional who defines said service advisor.
11. The process of claim 7 wherein the steps of posing questions to said user are implemented by displaying dialog boxes which pose questions and provide icons which can be selected or fields which can be filled in by the user to reply to said questions.
12. An apparatus comprising:
a computer programmed with an operating system;
an application program programmed on said computer and structured to control said computer to perform the following steps:
1) displaying an IT services catalog;
2) determining if a user that wishes to order an IT service selects an option for computer assistance in selecting a service action;
3) if a user requests assistance, displaying questions in an order dictated by a decision tree defined in advance by an IT professional, and traversing said decision tree based upon answers provided by the user via said computer input devices until one or more recommendations for service actions have been encountered;
4) gathering all recommended service actions and filling in fields in a data structure based upon answers given by said user;
5) upon completion of step 4, or if said user does not request assistance in step 2, soliciting said user to fill in all unpopulated fields of a data structure defining one or more service actions which are either selected by said user or which have been recommended by processing said decision tree and validating all user data input.
13. An apparatus comprising:
a computer programmed with an operating system;
an application program programmed on said computer and structured to control said computer to perform the following steps:
(1) displaying on a computer an IT services catalog which contains all the IT services that are available to order;
(2) determining if a user who wishes to order an IT service knows the appropriate service action to select to create an instance of the desired IT service;
(3) if the user does not know the appropriate service action to select or simply chooses to pick a service advisor, launching a service advisor program in accordance with the user’s selection, said service advisor implementing a decision tree which has IT services as its \u201cleaves\u201d;
(4) looking up and displaying on said computer a first dialog box or other means of soliciting information from said user about the desired IT service by asking one or more questions;
(5) receiving user responses to said one or more questions via said computer, and validating said responses, and using the answer(s) to vector processing to and displaying on said computer another dialog box or other means of soliciting information from said user about the desired IT service;
(6) repeating the process of displaying questions and receiving responses and validating said responses and vectoring processing to the next question(s) based upon the response(s) to the previous question(s) until one or more recommendations for IT service actions are encountered in said decision tree;
(7) gathering all recommendations of any service action(s) encountered in traversing said decision tree in response to answers entered by said user;
(8) using said computer to automatically fill in all fields of one or more data structures defining one or more service actions recommended by said service advisor using information entered by said user in response to questions posed while traversing said decision tree;
(9) upon completion of step 8 or if the user does not pick a service advisor in step 3, using said computer to solicit said user to fill in any empty data fields including relationship fields of said one or more data structures defining one or more service actions recommended by said service advisor which were not filled in automatically by said computer and receiving information entered by said user and validating said data entered by said user and storing said data in the appropriate fields of said one or more data structures.
14. A computer readable medium having computer executable instructions stored thereon which are capable of controlling a computer to perform the following method:
1) displaying an IT services catalog;
2) determining if a user that wishes to order an IT service selects an option for computer assistance in selecting a service action;
3) if a user requests assistance, displaying questions in an order dictated by a decision tree defined in advance by an IT professional, and traversing said decision tree based upon answers provided by the user via said computer input devices until one or more recommendations for service actions have been encountered;
4) gathering all recommended service actions and filling in fields in a data structure based upon answers given by said user;
5) upon completion of step 4, or if said user does not request assistance in step 2, soliciting said user to fill in all unpopulated fields of a data structure defining one or more service actions which are either selected by said user or which have been recommended by processing said decision tree and validating all user data input.
15. The computer readable medium of claim 14 having further computer executable instructions stored thereon which are capable of controlling a computer to perform the additional steps of validating data provided by said user whether in answer to questions posed while traversing said decision tree or in response to solicitations displayed by said computer in performing step 5.