This paper describes the pFind 2.0 software package for peptide and protein identification via tandem mass spectrometry. Firstly, the most important feature of pFind 2.0 is that it offers a modularized and customized platform for third parties to test and compare their algorithms. The developers can create their own modules following the open application programming interface (API) standards an...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the value of first or second trimester placental growth factor (PlGF) as an additional antenatal screening marker for Down syndrome. DESIGN Nested case-control study. SETTING Antenatal screening service. POPULATION OR SAMPLE 532 Down syndrome pregnancies and 1,155 matched unaffected pregnancies. METHODS Stored maternal serum samples (-40°C) were assayed for PlGF. M...

The ENGINE study evaluated noninvasive skin fluorescence spectroscopy (SFS) for detection of abnormal glucose tolerance (AGT). The AGT detection performance of SFS was compared to fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and hemoglobin A1C (A1C). The study was a head-to-head comparison of SFS to FPG and A1C in an at-risk population of 507 subjects, with no prior diagnosis of diabetes, each of whom received...

Massively parallel sequencing (MPS) combined with bioinformatic analysis has been widely applied to detect fetal chromosomal aneuploidies such as trisomy 21, 18, 13 and sex chromosome aneuploidies (SCAs) by sequencing cell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) from maternal plasma, so-called non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT). However, many technical challenges, such as dependency on correct fetal sex pred...

Introduction Breast cancer is one of the most life-threatening conditions among women. Early detection of this disease is the only way to reduce the associated mortality rate. Mammography is a standard method for the early detection of breast cancer. Today, considering the importance of breast cancer detection, computer-aided detection techniques have been employed to increase the quality of ma...

The objective of this paper is to evaluate a panel of statistical algorithms for temporal outbreak detection. Based on a large dataset of simulated weekly surveillance time series, we performed a systematic assessment of 21 statistical algorithms, 19 implemented in the R package surveillance and two other methods. We estimated false positive rate (FPR), probability of detection (POD), probabili...

This prospective observational study compare urine nephrin:creatinine ratio (NCR, ng/mg) with serum soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1:placental growth factor ratio (FPR, pg/pg) for preeclampsia (PE) prediction among unselected asymptomatic pregnant women in 2nd trimester. NCR and FPR were determined in 254 paired urine/blood samples collected simultaneously from 254 women at median gestational...

The Two-photon Confocal Microscopy (TCM) is a new technology which is useful in nondestructive analysis of tissue. However its cell experiment images are excessive and difficult for machine processing since the low resolution and lots of noise. Thus nowadays such a work is mainly done manually and costs a lot of time and effort. This paper proposes a cell segmentation algorithm for this situati...

Drawing on the model on financial planning for retirement (FPR), the aim of this work is to explore how parental economic socialization both directly and indirectly affects FPR through the mediation of financial literacy, financial planning decisions and financial management. Data from a sample of 280 participants aged between 45 and 63 years were used. The results show that parental economic s...