Author: claimsbot

1. A vehicle occupant restraint system, comprising:
an inflatable airbag arranged in a vehicle seat, wherein the airbag is configured to inflate and at least partially unfold in the direction of travel of the vehicle on a side of the vehicle seat that faces a middle of the vehicle,
wherein the vehicle seat includes a backrest frame that extends in a substantially vertical direction in the vehicle seat and is substantially aligned in the direction of travel,
wherein the airbag is connected to a front end of the backrest frame facing in the direction of travel, and
wherein the connection of the airbag to the backrest frame is formed by an auxiliary fabric layer connected to the airbag and to the front end of the backrest frame.
2. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the connection of the airbag to the backrest frame is located on the front end of the backrest frame.
3. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the connection of the airbag to the backrest frame is along a connecting line extending in a substantially vertical direction corresponding to the shape of the backrest frame.
4. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 3, wherein the airbag is connected to the backrest frame along the connecting line at a plurality of fastening points.
5. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the connection of the auxiliary fabric layer to the airbag comprises a stitched connection of the auxiliary fabric layer to a fabric layer along the periphery of the airbag.
6. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the connection of the auxiliary fabric layer to the airbag comprises an adhesively bonded connection of the auxiliary fabric layer to a fabric layer of the airbag.
7. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein, the auxiliary fabric layer is guided around a holding part connected to the front end of the backrest frame to connect the auxiliary fabric layer to the front end of the backrest frame.
8. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the holding part is screwed to the front end of the backrest frame.
9. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the holding part is connected to the front end of the backrest frame.
10. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the airbag comprises one or more darts to form one or more non-inflatable partial regions of the airbag.
11. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the airbag forms at least one column that is resistant to buckling and runs in a substantially vertical direction.
12. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the airbag forms at least one column that is resistant to buckling and runs in a substantially horizontal direction.
13. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein a region of the inflated airbag is connected to the auxiliary fabric layer and is supported on the backrest frame, thereby stabilizing and positioning the airbag.
14. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the internal pressure of the gas in the inflated airbag is greater than about 1.5 bar.
15. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 14, wherein the internal pressure of the gas in the inflated airbag is approximately 2 bar.
16. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the airbag has no gas outlet openings.
17. The vehicle occupant restraint system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the airbag, which is connected to the front end of the backrest frame over a defined length, is stored in the vehicle seat in a substantially vertical direction along the backrest frame when folded.

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

What is claimed is:

1. A ball valve comprising:
a valve body with a central cavity communicating between inlet and outlet ports;
a cartridge insert having separable sections joined together in the cavity with bores coaxial with the inlet and outlet ports;
a valve ball with a through passage slidingly rotatable in said cartridge insert from a closed position to a fully open position between said bores;
seat ring means contained within said cartridge insert on respective opposite sides of said ball, each of said ring means forming with a respective bore an annular chamber with opposed ends around the circumference of said ring; and
annular elastic seals respectively compressed between said opposed ends for urging said seat ring means axially in dynamic sealing contact with said ball.
2. A ball valve according to claim 1 wherein said elastic seals are made of a resilient and fluid impervious material from a group consisting of high density graphite and silicone rubber.
3. A ball valve to claim 2 wherein said graphite has a precompressed density in a range of about 1.4 to about 2.2 gcm3, and within said annular chamber, a compressed density in a range of about 0.9 to about 1.2 gcm3.
4. A ball valve according to claim I wherein each of said seals includes:
fastener means operatively connected to engaging surfaces of said bonnet and said cartridge for removably securing said cartridge to said bonnet during insertion and removal from the cavity.
11. A ball valve according to claim 10 wherein said fastener means includes:
holes formed in said cartridge insert surface;
studs extending from said bonnet surface with a portion inserted in said holes, said portions having opposed grooves; and
pins inserted through said cartridge insert into said grooves for holding said studs in place.
12. A ball valve according to claim 10 wherein said fastener means includes:
a circular recess in said bonnet surface;
a circular boss with a circumferential groove extending from said cartridge surface insertable in said recess; and
set screws extending through said cartridge into said groove for holding said boss in said recess.
13. A ball valve according to claim 1 wherein said sections of said cartridge insert are mating half-shells secured together on either side of said valve ball forming a frustoconical shape.
14. A ball valve according to claim 1 wherein one of said sections of said cartridge insert is a semicircular segment secured in a matching recess in another of said sections to form a frustoconical shape.
15. A ball valve according to claim 1 further comprising:
a channel encircling a seat ring means and communicating with an interface of said seat ring means and said valve ball; and
a conduit extending through said cartridge to said channel for introducing a cleaning fluid.
16. A ball valve according to claim 1 wherein said cartridge insert includes a portion extending through a bottom opening of the cavity;
a pull nut threadingly engages said extender portion to secure said cartridge in the valve body; and
set screws extending through said pull nut into the valve body locks said pull nut in place.
17. A ball valve comprising:
a valve body with a central cavity communicating between inlet and outlet ports;
a cartridge insert having separable sections joined together in the cavity with bores coaxial with the inlet and outlet ports;
a valve ball with a through passage slidingly rotatable in said cartridge insert from a closed position to a fully open position between said bores;
a valve bonnet removably mounted on said valve body; and
fastener means operatively connected to engaging surfaces of said bonnet and said cartridge for removably securing said cartridge insert to said bonnet during insertion and removal from the cavity.
18. A ball valve according to claim 17 wherein said fastener means includes:
holes formed in said cartridge insert surface;
studs extending from said bonnet surface and aligned with said hole with a portion inserted in said holes, said portions having opposed grooves; and
pins inserted through said cartridge insert into said grooves for securing said studs in place.
19. A ball valve according to claim 17 wherein said fastener means includes:
a circular recess in said bonnet surface;
a circular boss with a circumferential groove extending from said cartridge insert surface insertable in said recess; and
set screws extending through said cartridge insert into said groove for holding said boss in said recess.
20. A cartridge insert for a ball valve having a central cavity communicating between inlet and outlet ports, said insert comprising:
separable sections joined together in the cavity with bores coaxial with the inlet and outlet ports;
a valve ball with a through passage rotatable in said sections from a closed position to a fully open position between said bores;
valve seat means contained within on respective opposite sides of said valve ball, each of said seat means forming with a respective bore an annular chamber defining opposed ends around the circumference of said seat;
annular elastic seals compressed between said ends for urging said seat ring means axially in dynamic contact with said ball.
21. A cartridge insert according to claim 20 where in each of said seals includes:
a first spring abutting one of said chamber adjacent to said valve ball;
a second spring abutting an opposite one of said chamber; and
a push ring interposed under compression between said first and second springs.
22. A cartridge insert according to claim 21 wherein said first springs are made of a resilient and fluid impervious material from a group consisting of high density graphite and silicone rubber.
23. A cartridge insert according to claim 21 wherein said second spring is an annular coil.
24. A cartridge insert according to claim 21 wherein said second spring is made of an alloy of nickel, chromium and cobalt.
25. A cartridge insert according to claim 21 wherein said second spring is an alloy of Nimonic 90.
26. A cartridge inert according to claim 21 further comprising: means for limiting the compression of said springs.
27. A ball valve comprising:
a valve body with a central cavity communicating between inlet and outlet ports;
a cartridge insert having first and second sections joined together in the cavity with bores coaxial with the inlet and outlet ports, each of said bores having an inwardly facing first shoulder;
a valve ball including a through passage slidingly rotatable in said cartridge from a closed position to a fully open position between said bores;
valve seats disposed at respective opposite sides of said ball and said shoulders, each of said valve seats having an outwardly facing second shoulder axially spaced from said first shoulder to form an annular chamber;
a push ring between two annular springs respectively compressed within each of said chambers between said first and second shoulders for urging said seat rings in dynamic sealing contact with said ball.
28. A ball valve according to claim 27 wherein one of said springs is made of a resilient and fluid impervious material from a group consisting of high density graphite and silicone rubber.
29. A ball valve according to claim 27 wherein one of said springs is made of a nickel-chromium-cobalt alloy.
30. A ball valve according to claim 27 further comprising means for limiting the pressure applied to said valve seat.
31. A ball valve comprising:
a valve body having a ball element with a through bore;
a plurality of ball-receiving cartridge members removably mounted in said valve body with said ball element disposed therebetween, each of said cartridge members having a bore with an open end confronting said ball element and defined by a first radial seal shoulder spaced from said ball element and a cylindrical inner surface extending therefrom toward the ball element; and
a seal assembly carried by each cartridge member, said seal assembly including a tubular valve seat having a radial flange with a ball element engaging surface on one side and a second radial seal shoulder opposite said one side, said valve seat having a reduced diameter surface disposed in said cartridge bore and with said shoulders disposed in confronting relation forming a chamber, and a tubular seal element engaged between said shoulders and extending along said valve seat reduced diameter surface in said chamber, said seal element being formed of graphite and compressed between said shoulders when said cartridge members are secured together with said ball element operatively disposed therebetween.
32. A ball valve comprising:
a valve body having a ball element with a through bore;
a plurality of ball-receiving cartridge members removably mounted in said valve body with said ball element disposed therebetween, each cartridge member having a bore with an enlarged open end confronting the ball element and being defined by a first radial seal shoulder spaced from the ball element and a cylindrical inner surface extending therefrom toward the ball element;
a seal assembly carried by each cartridge member, said seal assembly including a tubular valve seat having a radial flange with a ball element engaging surface on one side and a second radial seal shoulder opposite said one side, said valve seat having a reduced diameter surface disposed in said cartridge bore and with said first and second seal shoulders disposed in confronting relation forming a chamber, and a tubular seal element engaged between said first and second seal shoulders and extending along said valve seat reduced diameter surface in said chamber, said seal element having a rectangular transverse cross-section formed of elastically-compressible expanded graphite, said seal element having a pre-compressed density in a range of about 0.9 to about 1.2 gcm3 and being compressed between said shoulders to a density in a range of about 1.4 to about 2.2 gcm3 when said cartridge members are secured together with the ball element operatively disposed therebetween.
33. A ball valve according to claim 17 further comprising:
positioning means for rotating said valve ball; and
an opening in said cavity at the side of said valve body proximal to said positioning means for receiving said cartridge insert.
34. A ball valve according to claim 17 further comprising:
positioning means for rotating said ball valve; and
an opening in said cavity on the side of said valve distal to said positioning means for receiving said cartridge.

1. An image processing apparatus comprising:
a reconfigurable circuit with a reconfigurable circuit configuration;
a compression unit configured as a circuit in the reconfigurable circuit to compress image data;
an image processing unit configured as a circuit in the reconfigurable circuit to perform image processing on the compressed image data by the compression unit, the compression unit being configured simultaneously with the image processing unit; and
a controller that changes the circuit configuration of the reconfigurable circuit so as to vary a compression rate of the compression unit in accordance with a processing capacity of the image processing unit,
wherein the image processing unit performs image processing while at the same time the compression unit is compressing image data.
2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:
a memory configured as a circuit in the reconfigurable circuit to store the image data;
an expansion unit configured as a circuit in the reconfigurable circuit to expand the compressed image data which have been subjected to the image processing; and
a memory controller configured as a circuit in the reconfigurable circuit to acquire the image data from the memory and output the acquired image data to the compression unit, and to acquire the expanded image data from the expansion unit and output the acquired expansion image data to the memory,
wherein the controller changes the circuit configuration of the reconfigurable circuit so as to vary the compression rate of the compression unit in accordance with a speed of transfer of the image data between the memory controller and the memory and the processing capacity of the image processing unit.
3. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1,
wherein the controller determines the compression rate of the compression unit such that a volume of the compressed image data output from the compression unit per unit time and a volume of the image data processed by the image processing unit per unit time are the same as each other.
4. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1,
wherein the compression unit performs a compression process in the case where values of adjacent pixels, among pixels constituting the image data, are the same as each other.
5. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1,
wherein the image processing unit is a color conversion unit that performs a color conversion on the compressed image data to generate output image data represented in an output color space.
6. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the image processing includes color image processing of the image data.
7. The image processing apparatus according to claim 6, wherein the color image processing of the image data includes color conversion.
8. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the controller changes the circuit configuration of the reconfigurable circuit so as to vary the compression rate of the compression unit so that a volume of image data being output from the compression unit matches a volume of image data being processed by the image processing unit.
9. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing a program causing a computer to execute a process comprising:
providing a reconfigurable circuit with a reconfigurable circuit configuration;
compressing image data through a compression unit configured in the reconfigurable circuit;
performing image processing on the compressed image data through an image processing unit configured in the reconfigurable circuit; and
simultaneously changing the circuit configuration of the compression unit and the image processing unit in the reconfigurable circuit so as to vary a compression rate of the compression unit in accordance with a processing capacity of the image processing unit,
wherein the image processing is performed while at the same time the image data is being compressed.
10. The non-transitory computer readable medium according to claim 9, wherein the image processing includes color image processing of the image data.
11. The non-transitory computer readable medium according to claim 10, wherein the color image processing of the image data includes color conversion.
12. The non-transitory computer readable medium according to claim 9, wherein the circuit configuration of the reconfigurable circuit is changed so as to vary the compression rate of the compression unit so that a volume of image data being output from the compression unit matches a volume of image data being processed by the image processing unit.
13. The non-transitory computer readable medium according to claim 9, wherein the image data compression and the image processing on the compressed image data are performed in parallel.

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 securing data in a network comprising a plurality of network devices, the method comprising:
receiving a request for an encryption key to secure the data;
querying the plurality of network devices for a plurality of keys, each network device storing a respective key;
receiving the respective key in a field associated with a loopback address from each of the plurality of network devices, wherein an associated hash value is received with each respective key, the hash value comprising a pointer to a location of its associated key within the respective network device;
selecting a key element from each of the plurality of keys, wherein the key element comprises a subset of each respective key that is less than the respective key and selecting the key element from each of the plurality of keys comprises selecting random subsets of each of the plurality of keys;
constructing the encryption key from the key elements; and
transmitting the encryption key to a client.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the field associated with the loopback address comprises a description field.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein transmitting the encryption key to the client comprises transmitting the hash value associated with each key and a location each selected key element within each respective key.
4. The method of claim 1 and further comprising building a lookup table comprising the received keys and their associated hash values.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein querying the plurality of network devices for a plurality of keys comprises querying a quantity of network devices in response to a desired size of the encryption key.
6. The method of claim 5 wherein querying the quantity of network devices in response to the desired size of the encryption key comprises querying random ones of the plurality of network devices.
7. A method for securing data in a network comprising a plurality of network devices including a key aggregation server, each network device comprising a plurality of key storage addresses, the method comprising:
receiving at the key aggregation server, from a client coupled to the network, a request for an encryption key to secure the data within the network;
randomly querying a subset of the plurality of network devices for a respective key from an associated key storage address from each network device of the subset of the plurality of network devices;
receiving from the queried network devices the respective keys in a field associated with a loopback address and associated hash values of the key storage addresses of each respective key, wherein the associated hash values include a pointer to a location of its associated key within the respective queried network devices;
randomly selecting a key element from each of the respective keys, wherein the key element comprises a subset of each respective key that is less than the respective key;
constructing the encryption key from the key elements; and
transmitting to a client, the encryption key, the hash values, and locations of the key elements of each respective key.
8. The method of claim 7 and further comprising generating a decryption key by:
receiving the hash values from the client;
decoding the hash values with a lookup table comprising the hash values and their associated key element locations in the network,
querying the plurality of network devices in response to the decoding;
receiving respective keys from queried network devices;
parsing the received keys for key elements in response to the decoding;
aggregating the key elements into the decryption key; and
transmitting the decryption key to the client.
9. The method of claim 8 wherein querying the plurality of network devices comprises requesting a key stored in a description field of a key storage address of respective queried network device.
10. A network device configured to generate an encryption key for securing data within a network, the network device comprising:
memory configured to store a hash value lookup table, keys, and hash values; and
processing circuitry coupled to the memory and configured to query each of a plurality of network devices, through physical layer circuitry, for a respective key stored in each queried network device, receive the respective key, from each of the queried network devices, in a field associated with a loopback address, randomly select a subset from each of the plurality of keys, wherein the subset is less than the respective key, generate the encryption key from the selected subsets, and control transmission of the encryption key, through the physical layer circuitry, to a requesting client, wherein an associated hash value is received with each respective key, the hash value comprising a point to a location of its associated key within each respective queried network devices.
11. The network device of claim 10 wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to store the hash value lookup table in the memory, distribute keys to the plurality of network devices through the physical layer circuitry, aggregate key responses from queried network devices, and send the encryption key to a requesting client through the physical layer circuitry.
12. The network device of claim 10 wherein the network device is a key aggregation server.
13. The network device of claim 10 wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to generate keys and control distribution of the keys to a plurality of key storage addresses of each of the plurality of network devices.
14. The network device of claim 10 wherein the plurality of network devices comprise one or more of routers or switches.
15. The network device of claim 10 wherein the processing circuitry and physical layer circuitry are further configured to receive a request for a decryption key, receive hash values associated with the encryption key, decode the hash values in response to the lookup table in memory, query the plurality of network devices for keys, parse received keys for subsets of the keys, aggregate the subsets into the decryption key, and transmit the decryption key to a requesting client.
16. The network device of claim 15 wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to validate the received hash values by comparing the received hash value to hash values stored in the lookup table, determine an associated key storage address for an associated network device for the received hash value, and request the respective key from the associated network device.