BACKGROUND Increased urinary excretion of albumin reflects kidney damage and is a recognized risk factor for progression of renal and cardiovascular disease. Considerable inter-method differences have been reported for both albumin and creatinine measurement results, and therefore the albumin-to-creatinine ratio. Measurement accuracy is unknown and there are no independent reference measurement...

Reliable study results are necessary for the assessment of discoveries, including those from proteomics. Reliable study results are also crucial to increase the likelihood of making a successful choice of biomarker candidates for verification and subsequent validation studies, a current bottleneck for the transition to in vitro diagnostic (IVD). In this respect, a major need for improvement in ...

Bacillus anthracis spores have been used as biological weapons and the possibility of their further use requires surveillance systems that can accurately and reliably detect their presence in the environment. These systems must collect samples from a variety of matrices, process the samples, and detect the spores. The processing of the sample may include removal of inhibitors, concentration of ...

Accurate determinations of stable isotope ratios require a calibration using at least two reference materials with different isotopic compositions to anchor the isotopic scale and compensate for differences in machine slope. Ideally, the delta values of these reference materials should bracket the isotopic range of samples with unknown delta values. While the practice of analyzing two isotopica...

The purpose of this NIST-FDA workshop was to seek input on defining reference materials, reference data and reference methods for assessing analytical sensitivity, specificity, and relative performance of NGS-based pathogen detection devices/assays. These reference materials will be critical in addressing the challenges associated with mixed pathogen detection in complex samples (i.e. clinical,...

According to EU legislation pigs must have access to rooting material, and the aim of the study was to quantify growing pigs’ preferences among six different rooting materials. The relative attractiveness of six rooting materials was assessed in an operant conditioning set-up using concurrent schedules of reinforcement. Twelve pigs were tested with all six combinations of the reference material...