Abstract: A controlled environment agriculture (CEA) solution that utilizes a planar layer of flowing air across an indoor crop tray or other planar surface containing crops. The flow of air is coupled with applications of fog. Crops include plants and fungi. The fog (e.g., via fogponics) delivers moisture and other embedded nutrients to a set of crops. In embodiments, the nutrients, moisture level, and temperature of the fog are adjusted for the optimized crop growth. Different laminar motions of air affect movement of different fog compositions. Thus, an indoor farming shelving unit, crop tray, etc., functions as tunable microenvironments, upon which divergent plants/fungi are grown.

Abstract: A mobile communication device (100) determines a background noise level at a microphone (104). If, after determining the noise floor, the input signal exceeds a threshold, the mobile communication device transmits the input signal. The threshold is established such that if it is exceeded, it is likely that voice energy is being received at the microphone, and the threshold, in a first embodiment, is increased as the background noise level increases. In a second embodiment the threshold is determined as the difference between the input signal and the background noise level. As background noise increases, the threshold actually decreases.

Abstract: A mobile communication device containing voice recognition capability is first enabled to perform voice recognition (102). The user then speaks the name of the party the user wishes to call (104), the name corresponding to a record the user has programmed into a memory of the mobile communication device. The mobile communication device then uses the output (106) of the voice recognition process to search the memory for a corresponding record (108). The record contains at least two calling numbers, each associated with a different mode of communication, such as dispatch and telephone communication. For a brief period of time after locating the record, the mobile communication device waits (118) for the user to initiate a call in the first communication mode (120) by, for example, pressing a dispatch call button (124). If, after a preselected duration of time has passed and no input is received from the user, the mobile communication device defaults to a second communication mode and makes a call (122).