Abstract: An electrically-assisted mechanical Braille writer includes a main solenoid to apply force to emboss Braille onto a printing medium, and advance an embossing mechanism to the next cell. A second solenoid engages a mechanical stop to prevent one or more embossing keys from being fully depressed, to prevent kickback from the keys mechanically coupling to the main solenoid. In unpowered operation, the mechanical stop is disengaged, and the embossing keys may be fully depressed to apply force to emboss Braille and advance the embossing mechanism. Accordingly, with electrical power, the user may supply a lesser amount of force and still fully emboss Braille cells, while without electrical power, the Braille writer remains fully operational.

Abstract: An image forming apparatus that prints and edits a document includes a user identification portion, a print management portion that records print management information indicating a user who performs abort operation of printing, an edit management portion that records edit management information, a determination portion that determines, based on the print management information, whether or not the user is a print suspended operator who has performed the abort operation previously, a page extraction portion that, when the print suspended operator performs reprinting operation for giving instructions to print the document that has been updated, extracts pages of the document which were printed successfully when printing of the document was suspended and have been updated thereafter, and a print controller that controls the image forming apparatus such that the image forming apparatus prints at least unprinted pages of the document and the pages extracted by the page extraction portion.

Abstract: Systems and methods for shifting the phase of incident light to induce a continuous phase variation in an azimuthal direction. A phase mask assembly has a first surface and a second surface. The first surface and the second surface are configured such that the distance between the first surface and the second surface varies continuously in an azimuthal direction around the phase mask. This mask can be used in a coronagraph system to effectively suppress the on-axis star image for the detection of off-axis planets.