An electrical capacitance proximity sensor for detecting a nearby object takes a normal operation mode for detecting the nearby object approaching and a self-diagnostic mode for detecting a correct connection between a sensor section and a detecting circuit section. Each module includes at least one pair of electrodes associated with the module. , visual, audio, taste, smell or touch, to neural firing timing differences in a human brain and using acoustic signals to generate the neural firing time differences. A mode decision circuit compares the signal at the output of the decoder with the previous signal stored and using the same decision criterion as used for the original compression generates a signal which indicates that either the signal is suitable for inter-frame prediction or not. A dumping mechanism includes marking at least one of a plurality of memory regions in the computer-readable medium as non-dumpable, initiating a core dump, determining which memory regions of the plurality regions are non-dumpable, and dumping the contents only of memory regions not marked as non-dumpable. There are stray capacitances between the anode terminal and the conductive pattern and between the cathode terminal and the conductive pattern.