Abstract: A top for a writing instrument comprises a body of transparent material, an insert encapsulated within the body, and at least one display face defined by portions of the insert for displaying an image through the body to the exterior. The transparent material is advantageously a clear silicone rubber.

Abstract: A technique is provided to delete a leaf from a Patricia tree having a direct table and a plurality of PSCB's which decode portions of the pattern of a leaf in the tree without shutting down the functioning of the tree. A leaf having a pattern is identified as a leaf to be deleted. Using the pattern, the tree is walked to identify the location of the leaf to be deleted. The leaf to be deleted is identified and deleted, and any relevant PSCB modified, if necessary. The technique also is applicable to deleting a prefix of a prefix.

Abstract: A method for increasing the capacity of a connection table in a firewall accelerator by means of mapping packets in one session with some common security actions into one table entry. For each of five Network Address Translation (NAT) configurations, a hash function is specified. The hash function takes into account which of four possible arrival types a packet at a firewall accelerator may have. When different arrival types of packets in the same session are processed, two or more arrival types may have the same hash value.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a highly efficient, high-throughput method for the identification and elimination of redundancy in a population of nucleic acid molecules using microarrays. This method involves a reiterative subtraction protocol that creates a library that becomes more biased toward unknown genes with each successive round. The removal of repetitive and previously characterized nucleic acids from the library allows the identification of low-abundance mRNA from sources of interest and enhances the rate of novel gene discovery. The present invention is also useful for the removal of contaminating nucleic acids from cloning libraries.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a highly efficient, high-throughput method for the identification and elimination of redundancy in a population of nucleic acid molecules using microarrays. This method involves a reiterative subtraction protocol that creates a library that becomes more biased toward unknown genes with each successive round. The removal of repetitive and previously characterized nucleic acids from the library allows the identification of low-abundance mRNA from sources of interest and enhances the rate of novel gene discovery. The present invention is also useful for the removal of contaminating nucleic acids from cloning libraries.

Abstract: A process for quantitating nucleic acids species in a sample is described which comprises co-amplification of a competitive template with the sample template wherein the competitive template utilizes primers identical to those utilized by the sample template and wherein the competitive template is distinguishable from the sample template.