The invention features production planning systems and methods that enable production planners to see how capacity decisions affect total production costs and understand the cost trade offs between excess capacity and inventory and, thereby, enable them to make appropriate manufacturing capacity level and inventory level decisions. The transmitter includes first and second programmable gain amplifiers. So configured, the optical conduit delivers light from this source of light to the light-to-electricity conversion apparatus such that the light source then serves as a source of electricity in the vehicle while the safety-pilot wavelength component serves, at least in part, as a visual warning andor beneficial reaction-inducement to onlookers. The PCR strategy is based on the use of a specific primers for mycobacteria genera and divergence in sequences found in 16S rRNA coding gene. In example embodiments, users of personal portable devices connect to services over dial-up, wireless, cellular, circuit-switched voice telephone networks, receive and display listings of available services and use these listings to access and manipulate the services. At query time, since the transit information has already been processed by the system, very little computation is needed in order to fulfill the query.