Techniques and systems for receiving a signal at a first component with an adjustable gain, and adjusting the gain of the first component to a first gain value using a first gain step. The polymer electrolyte membrane 2 is a sulfonation product of a polymer, which comprises a main chain, wherein two or more divalent aromatic residues are bound to one another directly or through oxy groups or divalent groups other than aromatic residues, and side chains comprising aromatic groups to be sulfonated. To facilitate contiguous storage, each layer of the virtualized storage stack maintains additional metadata associated with data blocks. A data processing platform within the housing is programmed with instructions that enable the system to compare the counts from the first and second object counters. The probe card used for testing a plurality of semiconductor integrated circuits formed on a semiconductor wafer, comprises: a plurality of probes which can electrically conduct to the semiconductor integrated circuits; and a substrate comprising a plurality of welding portions having no plating layers, to which the probes are welded.