SLIP: 10 years ago and 10 years from now

Founded in 1999, the ACM SLIP Workshop is now in its 12th year. The 2010 SLIP Panel session will highlight perspectives from three individuals who have had great influence on the course of SLIP, and provide an opportunity for lively discussion by workshop attendees of prospects for the next 10 years of SLIP. This panel summary records preliminary thoughts of the panelists on two starting questions

Similarity of polygonal curves in the presence of outliers

The Fréchet distance is a well studied and commonly used measure to capture the similarity of polygonal curves. Unfortunately, it exhibits a high sensitivity to the presence of outliers. Since the presence of outliers is a frequently occurring phenomenon in practice, a robust variant of Fréchet distance is required which absorbs outliers. We study such a variant here. In this modified variant, our objective is to minimize the length of subcurves of two polygonal curves that need to be ignored (MinEx problem), or alternately, maximize the length of subcurves that are preserved (MaxIn problem), to achieve a given Fréchet distance. An exact solution to one problem would imply an exact solution t

Development and validation of a NANOGold™ immunoassay for the detection of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in human serum using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

This work aimed to develop and validate a NANOGold based assay, quantified using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), for the detection of human vascular endothelial growth factor (hVEGF) in serum. The initial assay range based on calibration standards was 62.5-2000 pg/mL with a detection limit of approximately 30 pg/mL. After validation using spiked validation controls, a quantification range between 175 and 1928 pg/mL was obtained. The inter-assay precision was between 2.3 and 18.9% with accuracy between -8.8 and -3.1%. Additional performance parameters, including dilutional linearity, matrix specificity and time-factored drift, were within +/-20%, as defined by the validation acceptance criteria for the validation of macromolecule immunoassays used within our clinical environment. Serum samples from healthy donors were analysed to determine the endogenous levels of VEGF present; these ranged from 164 to 580 pg/mL with a mean of 273 pg/mL. The intra- and inter-assay precision obtained from the healthy donor samples were 1.3-10.7% and 4.2-17.5%, respectively. This demonstration of a validated immunoassay opens further possibilities, utilising the simultaneous detection capabilities of ICP-MS for the detection of multiple analytes in a single validated immunoassay, for routine use within a clinical environment