However, Lau says it's hard to keep a pulse on the companies, since Nichia is private and Toyoda-Gosei also manufactures other items.

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Checking your heart rate, whether using a monitor or simply feeling your pulse immediately after a workout, can provide valuable information as to how hard you are working.

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While it's always hard to pin down the exact origins of an idea -- especially one like pulse-code modulation, where a number of parties were involved -- sifting out the large and significant contributions from the gold pan of history tends to bring up the same names time and again.

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