Abstract: A chair occupancy monitoring device having pressure sensitive switch housed within a flexible cover. A cushion formed by a pair of foam pads positioned between the cover and the switch protects the switch and increases patient comfort. The switch includes first and second oppositely disposed base members. First and second electrical conductors are mounted to an interior portion of the first and second base members, respectively, on the surface facing the opposing base member. A gap is created between the electrical conductors by a pair of separator members which are disposed intermediate the oppositely disposed surfaces of the first and second base members and are mounted to a side portion of at least one of the base members. At least one electrically non-conductive contact limiter member is disposed intermediate the electrical conductors, covering a portion of the second electrical conductor.

Abstract: A pressure-sensitive switch apparatus for use in monitoring the position of a patient in a bed or chair is provided. The switch includes a resilient conductor disposed between first and second conductors located at opposite surface areas of the switch. The resilient conductor provides varying degrees of electrical contact between the first and second electrical conductors in response to pressure applied to either of these conductors by shifting of the patient's weight.

Abstract: Continuous tone images, represented by original data files are compressed by (1) transforming by a lapped orthogonal transform the original file of data to generate a transform file of coefficients, (2) quantizing the transform coefficients, and (3) coding the quantized values to generate a compressed data file, the lapped orthogonal transform being arranged to compute all transform coefficients by means only of bit shifts, negations, and adds. In another aspect, the quantization and coding are performed on groups of transformed coefficients.

Abstract: Routing variables for near optimally controlling the distributed flow of information signals from a node s over a multinode communication network to a destination node d are generated in accordance with a prescribed heuristic among network path delays. A prescribed routing variable value (e.g. zero) is assigned to each route to a node n, representing that that node is not to be used to route information signals from node s to node d, for any node of the network that either is not directly connected to node s, has not established a connection path to a destination node d, or is using node s as part of its communication path to destination node d. The path delays from node s to neighboring nodes n are measured and a measurment of the path delay from node s to destination node d is obtained. In addition periodically updated measurements of the path delays from neighboring nodes n to destination node d are received.