Abstract: A liquid handling device having an axis of rotation about which the device can be rotated to drive liquid flow in the device. The device includes an upstream chamber having an outlet, a downstream chamber including a proximal portion radially inwards of a distal portion and including a first port disposed in the distal portion and a first conduit which connects the outlet of the upstream chamber to the first port of the downstream chamber. The first conduit extends radially inwards to a crest and radially outwards from the crest to the first port of the downstream chamber. A distance between the axis of rotation and the crest is greater than or equal to a distance between the axis of rotation and the outlet of the upstream chamber.

Abstract: The present invention relates to microbial host cells that have been engineered for increased tolerance to temperature shifts, for increased performance at temperatures different from the microorganism's optimal temperature and/or for changing at least one of the microorganism's cardinal temperatures by replacing an endogenous NAD+ biosynthesis gene by a heterologous gene encoding a corresponding enzyme with another temperature profile and/or from a microorganism with a different optimum growth temperature. The invention further relates to processes wherein the engineered microbial host cells are used for producing a fermentation product, and to the use nucleotide sequences encoding NAD+ biosynthesis gene for changing at least one of a microorganism's cardinal temperatures and/or for improving a microorganism's tolerance to temperature shifts.

Abstract: An inverse multiplexer device has an input port for receiving a stream of data packets, a plurality of output ports for connection to outgoing physical links, and transmit buffers for preparing outgoing packets. An expansion port can receive packets from the transmit buffers and transfer them through a corresponding expansion port on another like inverse multiplexer to designated output links on the other inverse multiplexer. A controller outputs the data packets on a group of any of the aid links in accordance with an inverse multiplex protocol. The multiplexers can be thus cascaded to increase the number of output links that can be accommodated.

Abstract: A termination device for connection to a group of TDM (time division multiplexed) trunks is capable of sending cells over one or more links either individually or as part of an inverse multiplexed group. The device includes a Utopia interface for receiving an incoming cell stream, a buffer for storing incoming cells at specific memory locations identified by pointers obtained from a queue of available pointers, a round robin scheduler for sequentially assigning cells to links forming an IMA group or individually in the UNI mode, and a pointer queue for each channel address, the pointer queue indicating the location of the next cell to be transmitted for each virtual channel. An adaptive shaper determines when a stuff cell is inserted and a per link output circuit places cells on the links, which can operate in CTC or ITC mode. The device can operate in mixed mode where up to four IMA and/or up to eight UNI channels can be supported concurrently. The links assigned to the IMA or UNI channels is programmable.