Abstract: This invention relates to a water condition indication system for a swimming pool comprising a water condition sensor (110), a memory (130) and a processor (140) and alarm (150). The memory collects and stores the information. The data processor filters the water condition information, corrects for perturbations, and generates an alarm when a body fall into a pool causes a change in the water condition that exceeds a predetermined body entrance criterion. Analysis of the output of one or more filters reduces the occurrence of false alarms while still providing a substantially rapid response time under the prevailing conditions.

Abstract: A heterobifunctional linker that comprises (a) a moiety capable of reversibly coupling the linker to a selected epitope of a target molecule; and (b) a moiety or moieties capable of irreversibly coupling the linker to the target, and optionally a moiety or moieties capable of irreversibly coupling the linker to a solid surface. Also described is a method of orienting molecules, such as proteins, with respect to a surface and to each other, employing such a linker, and an array of such oriented molecules, which may be the same or different.

Abstract: A method for identifying one or more proteins or other macromolecules comprises contacting the proteins or other macromolecules or a material that contains them with soluble fluorescent labels and/or Raman labels that bind to at least two different functional groups, side chains or moieties that may be present on or in proteins or other macromolecules, determining the ratio of the two or more functional groups, side chains or moieties, and comparing that ratio with ratios of the said functional groups, side chains or moieties in known proteins or other macromolecules.

Abstract: Proteins and other analytes that have been separated by electrophoretic means in a gel are transferred to a membrane by conventional blotting techniques, the membrane being a composite of an analyte binding layer and a size retention layer. The pore size of the size retention layer is large enough to allow non-macromolecular ions to pass, yet not large enough to allow the passage of the analytes from the gel, nor antibodies or other macromolecules or reagents in general that might be used in the detection, imaging, or quantification of the analytes.

Abstract: A system for gathering information which may further facilitate electronic commerce is disclosed. In one embodiment, the invention is a method including: receiving requests from one or more users for a specification of a product or service desired by the one or more users; determining vendors who potentially possess the good or service of interest to the one or more users; and outputting e-mails to said vendors requesting information about said good or service. The method may include searching a database having at least a relationship between key words searched by the one or more users and a set of vendors, searching the Internet using a commercially available search engine, or both. The method may further include the step of extracting emails from a set of results of said searching.