Title Participants Abstract "Quantity and quality of retrograde menstruation: a case control study" "Sophie Debrock, Willy Goossens, Thomas D'Hooghe" "BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that menstruation is associated with a higher concentration of endometrial cells in peritoneal fluid(PF) and with increased white and red blood cell concentration in PF when compared to nonmenstrual phases of the cycle. METHODS: PF was obtained at laparoscopy from 107 women with endometriosis (n = 59) and controls with a normal pelvis (n = 48) during the luteal (n = 46), follicular (n = 38) or menstrual (n = 23) phase of the cycle. Endometriosis was classified according to the classification of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (rAFS into minimal (n = 25), mild(n = 20), moderate(n = 6) and severe(n = 8) disease. Cell counts (leucocytes, erythrocytes, thrombocytes) were determined on a cell counter. In a subset of 32 patients (13 controls and 19 women with endometriosis), PF was fixed, processed and thinlayers were prepared and stained with Papanicolaou method and with immunocytochemistry using monoclonal antibodies against cytokeratin 7(CK 7), CK 8/18, Ber-Ep4, vimentin, calretinin and CD68. Ber-Ep4 is a marker for cells with epithelial origin (in some cases for mesothelial cells as well). CD68 is specific for cells from monocyte/macrophage lineage; CK7 and CK8/18 are markers for both endometrial epithelial and mesothelial cells, whereas calretinin and vimentin are markers for both endometrial stromal and mesothelial cells. RESULTS: In comparison with the nonmenstrual phase of the cycle, analysis of PF during menstruation showed an increased concentration of leucocytes (3.3 x 109/L vs 0.8 x 109/L, P = 0.03), erythrocytes (0.3 x 1012/L vs 0.02 x 1012/L, P = 0.006), hematocrit (0.03 L/L vs 0.003 L/L, P = 0.01) and hemoglobin (0.8 g/dL vs 0.1 g/dL, P = 0.01). Mesothelial cells stained positively with CK7, CK8/18, vimentin, and calretinin. Cells positive for Ber-Ep4 were not observed, except in 2 patients with endometriosis investigated during menses. In all patients 50-98% of single cells were strongly positive for both vimentin and CD68. CONCLUSION: When compared to nonmenstrual phases of the cycle, menstruation is associated with an increased concentration of red and white blood cells in PF. However, the presence of EM cells that are detectable by immunohistochemistry in PF is low during all phases of the cycle, including menstruation." "Vison based metric for quality control by comparing built reality to BIM" "Stan Vincke, Maarten Vergauwen" "Unsupervised Quality Assessment of Mass Spectrometry Proteomics Experiments by Multivariate Quality Control Metrics" "Wout Bittremieux, Pieter Meysman, Lennart Martens, Dirk VALKENBORG, Kris Laukens" "Despite many technological and computational advances, the results of a mass spectrometry proteomics experiment are still subject to a large variability. For the understanding and evaluation of how technical variability affects the results of an experiment, several computationally derived quality control metrics have been introduced. However, despite the availability of these metrics, a systematic approach to quality control is often still lacking because the metrics are not fully understood and are hard to interpret. Here, we present a toolkit of powerful techniques to analyze and interpret multivariate quality control metrics to assess the quality of mass spectrometry proteomics experiments. We show how unsupervised techniques applied to these quality control metrics can provide an initial discrimination between low-quality experiments and high-quality experiments prior to manual investigation. Furthermore, we provide a technique to obtain detailed information on the quality control metrics that are related to the decreased performance, which can be used as actionable information to improve the experimental setup. Our toolkit is released as open-source and can be downloaded from https:// bitbucket.org/proteinspector/qc_analysis/." "Unsupervised quality assessment of mass spectrometry proteomics experiments by multivariate quality control metrics" "Wout Bittremieux, Pieter Meysman, Lennart Martens, Dirk Valkenborg, Kris Laukens" "GC-C-IRMS in routine doping control practice: 3 years of drug testing data, quality control and evolution of the method" "Michaël Polet, Peter Van Eenoo" "On Metadata Quality in Sceiba, a Platform for Quality Control and Monitoring of Cuban Scientific Publications" "Eduardo Arencibia, Rafael Martinez, Yohannis Marti-Lahera, Marc GOOVAERTS" "It is introduced a platform for quality control and monitoring of Cuban scientific publications named Sceiba. To this end, it needs to collect scientific publications comprehensively at the national level. Metadata quality is crucial for Sceiba interoperability and development. This paper exposes how metadata quality is assured and enhanced in Sceiba. The metadata aggregation pipeline is worked out to collect, transform, store and exposemetadata on Persons, Organizations, Sources, and Scientific Publications. Raw data transformation into Sceiba's internal metadata models includes cleaning, disambiguation, deduplication, entity linking, validation, standardization, and enrichment using a semi-automated approach aligned with the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability principles. To meet the requirements of metadata quality in Sceiba, a three-layer structure for metadata is used, including 1) discovery metadata, which allows the discovery of relevant scientific publications by browsing or query, 2) contextual metadata, which allows a) rich information on persons, organizations and other aspects associated with publications, b) interoperation among common metadata formats used in Current Research Information Systems, journals systems or Institutional Repositories; 3) detailed metadata, which is specific to the domain of scientific publication evaluation. The example provided shows how the metadata quality is improved in the Identification System for CubanResearch Organizations, one of Sceiba ' s component applications." "Quality control, quality determinants and indication of geographic origin of Ethiopian coffee" "Multiallelic synthetic quality control material: Lessons learned from the cystic fibrosis external quality assessment scheme" "Sarah Berwouts, Els Dequeker" "Aim: With the arrival of increasingly complex molecular tests, we are obliged to create new ways to monitor and troubleshoot the underperformance of these multiplex assays. A synthetic multiallelic quality control material has been designed to augment genomic DNA controls. We aimed to evaluate the control on a large scale, testing it on a wide variety of oligonucleotide ligation assays, test protocols, and analysis software. In addition, we investigated how laboratories treat untried and complex materials. Methods: The synthetic control monitored 32 cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator mutations and polymorphisms simultaneously. Participants of a cystic fibrosis external quality assessment scheme were invited to analyze the quality control. Results: In total, 58 laboratories participated in this study. Twenty-seven (47%) laboratories detected 32 variants; another 27 laboratories (47%) detected from 31 to 4 variants and 4 participants reported no variants (6%). The main observations included administrative errors when indicating variants on a checklist, errors caused by misreading the instructions for use of the control or assay, and technical problems related to the assay used. Conclusion: Synthetic quality control materials proved to be valuable in troubleshooting underperforming assays and complement existing genomic controls. The study also revealed a strong need for increased quality control in the postanalytical phase of testing." "Unsupervised quality assessment of mass spectrometry proteomics experiments by multivariate quality control metrics" "Pieter Meysman, Lennart Martens, Dirk Valkenborg, Kris Laukens" "Despite many technological and computational advances, the results of a mass spectrometry proteomics experiment are still subject to a large variability. For the understanding and evaluation of how technical variability affects the results of an experiment, several computationally derived quality control metrics have been introduced. However, despite the availability of these metrics, a systematic approach to quality control is often still lacking because the metrics are not fully understood and are hard to interpret. Here, we present a toolkit of powerful techniques to analyze and interpret multivariate quality control metrics to assess the quality of mass spectrometry proteomics experiments. We show how unsupervised techniques applied to these quality control metrics can provide an initial discrimination between low-quality experiments and high-quality experiments prior to manual investigation. Furthermore, we provide a technique to obtain detailed information on the quality control metrics that are related to the decreased performance, which can be used as actionable information to improve the experimental setup. Our toolkit is released as open-source and can be downloaded from https://bitbucket.org/proteinspector/qc_analysis/." "Evaluation and use of a synthetic quality control material, included in the European external quality assessment scheme for cystic fibrosis" "Sarah Berwouts, Els Dequeker" "Assuring high quality within the field of genetic testing is fundamental, as the results can have considerable impact on the patient and his or her family. The use of appropriate quality control (QC) samples is therefore essential. Diagnostic laboratories mainly use patient samples as QC material, which of course include a maximum of two mutations per sample. Bearing in mind that some assays (such as for cystic fibrosis [CF] testing) can test for more than 100 mutations, multiplex QC materials including more than two mutations could save valuable time and reagents. Based on this need, synthetic multiplex controls have been developed by Maine Molecular Quality Controls, Inc. (MMQCI) for CF A synthetic control, containing six homozygous mutations and one polymorphism for CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), was evaluated by distributing it through the CF external quality assessment (EQA) scheme, along with the EQA samples in 2005. A total of 197 participants returned results of the yearly EQA scheme and 133 laboratories participated in the evaluation of the synthetic sample. Respectively, 76% and 73% of the participants were assigned as successful. This evaluation study revealed that the multiplex QC material performed well in the majority of assays and could be useful in method validation, as a tool to challenge interpretation skills, and as potential proficiency testing (PT) material."