Abstract: A device for rinsing a container that dispenses a beverage includes the container that has a wall surrounding a volume that holds ingredients of the beverage and a magnet connected to the wall. A rinsing system includes a nozzle that sprays liquid and a switch that is attracted to the magnet so that when the magnet contacts the switch a rinse cycle is activated.

Abstract: A system for measuring an ingredient in a container of a beverage dispenser includes a scale having a base with the container supported on the base. The ingredient has a recipe weight equal to a weight of a total amount of the ingredient that will be dispensed into the container and an in-flight weight that is equal to a weight of the ingredient that has left the dispenser but is not yet supported within the container so that it is detected by the scale. A dispenser controller subtracts the in-flight weight parameter from the recipe weight to calculate a target weight of ingredient within the beverage container, thereby controlling the activation or deactivation of the ingredient dispenser(s).

Abstract: Coarticulated speech segment data are extracted from spoken carrier syllables and digitally compressed for storage using adaptive differential pulse code modulation (ADPCM). Beginning seed quantization and PCM values are generated for each coarticulated speech segment and stored together with the ADPCM encoded data in a coarticulated speech segment library. ADPCM encoded data are recovered from the coarticulated speech segment library and blown back using the initial quantization and PCM seed values to reconstruct and concatenate in real time the sequence of coarticulated speech segments required by a text to speech program to generate a desired high quality spoken message. In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the coarticulated speech segments are diphones.