A Portable Wireless Particulate Sensor System for Continuous Real-Time Environmental Monitoring

Airborne particulate matter has been shown to be associated with morbidity and mortality, and may interfere with certain sensitive experiment. Understanding the levels and movements of particulate matter in an enclosed space can lead to a reduction in the impact of this material on health and experimental results. A system of environmental sensors including particulate matter, selected gasses, humidity, temperature, and pressure can be used to assist in tracking air movement, providing real-time mapping of potential contaminants as they move through a space. In this paper we present a system that is capable of sensing these environmental factors, collecting data from multiple dispersed nodes and presenting the aggregated information in real-time. The highly modular system is based on a flexible and scalable framework developed for use in aircraft cabin environments. Use of this framework enables the deployment of a custom suite of sensors with minimal development effort. Individual nodes communicate using a self-organizing mesh network and can be powered from a variety of sources, bringing a high level of flexibility in the arrangement and distribution of the sensor array. Sensor data is transmitted to a coordinator node, which then passes the time-correlated information to a server-hosted database through a choice of wired or wireless networks. Presentation software is used to either monitor the real-time data stream, or to extract records of interest from the database. A reference implementation has been created for the National Institutes of Health consisting of a custom optical particle counter and off-the-shelf sensors for CO2, CO, temperature, humidity, pressure, and acoustic noise. The total environmental sensing system provides continuous, real-time data in a readable format that can be used to analyze ambient air for events of interest

Restoring the Fact/Law Distinction in Patent Claim Construction

Two decades ago, the Supreme Court sought to promote more effective, transparent patent litigation in Markman v. Westview Instruments by ruling that “the construction of a patent, including terms of art within its claim, is exclusively within the province of the court.” In so doing, the Court removed interpretation of patent claims from the black box of jury deliberations by holding that the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial did not extend to patent claim construction. Failing to find clear historical evidence of how claim construction was handled in 1791, the Court turned to “the relative interpretive skills of judges and juries and the statutory policies that ought to be furthered by the allocation.” It concluded that federal district court judges were better equipped than juries to resolve the mixed fact/law controversies inherent in construing disputed patent claim terms, thereby leading to more effective and transparent patent litigation. Fully achieving the Court’s goal of more effective and transparent patent litigation, however, depends on district judges having the flexibility to learn pertinent facts, build a reviewable record, and explain the basis for their claim constructions