UNLABELLED: Mass spectrometers are sophisticated, fine instruments which are essential in a variety applications. However, the data they produce are usually interpreted in a rather primitive way, without considering the accuracy of this data and the potential errors in identifying peaks. Our new approach corrects this situation by dividing the LC-MS output into three components: (i) signature of the analyte, (ii) random noise and (iii) systemic noise. The systemic noise is related to the instrument and to the particular experiment; its characteristics change in time and depend on the analyzed substance. Working with these components allows us to quantify the probability of peak errors and, at the same time, to retrieve some peaks which get lost in the noise when using the existing methods. Our software tool, Expertomica metabolite profiling, automatically evaluates the given instrument, detects compounds and calculates the probability of individual peaks. It does not need any artificial user-defined parameters or thresholds. AVAILABILITY: MATLAB scripts with a simple graphical user interface are free to download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/expertomica-eda/. The software reads data exported by most Thermo and Agilent spectrometers, and it can also read the more general JCAMP-DX ASCII format. Other formats will be supported on request, assuming that the user can provide representative data samples.

It is pointed out that maze routers provide powerful and flexible routing algorithms, but require storage of information for every routing grid and layer. The number of these grids is often so large that routing programs either run out of memory or become very slow due to excessive paging. A data organization which, with certain modifications to the algorithm, reduces and possibly eliminates the entire grid map is presented. The router has been coded with a special data structure library.>

This paper describes a data management package called Organized C. The main feature of this package are simple and compact declarations which translates organizations into the definition of classes, pointers, and access functions. This method adds a new dimension to the inheritance mechanism, works with both C and C++, and is specifically useful for CAD software which often deals with large and complex data. It also leads to a unified coding style for algorithms and memory resident databases. Practical experience indicates that Organized C dramatically improves software quality and productivity in both C and C++: coding and debugging three times faster is common, while the run-time performance and memory remain as good as that of hand coded C. Resulting programs are strongly typed, protected against dangling pointers and, because of their clear organization, are much easier to maintain.

A channel router which is to be effective for general-purpose automatic routing must be able to use different sets of routing criteria priorities, in a controllable manner. We present an approach to channel routing with compaction in which channel compaction is adaptable to several routing criteria priorities. We show how overall channel routing performance can be improved by taking advantage of this versatility in channel compaction. We indicate some routing capabilities which cannot be effectively achieved by simply post-processing the output of a traditional gridded channel router. Our solution to this problem is outlined and some results obtained from our router are compared with those of other published channel routers.

In the hierarchical layout of rectangular blocks, the routing area naturally breaks into a set of adjacent rectangles. These rectangles can be used as a basis for both loose routing and the final track assignment. The paper explores some ways of structuring the required data. More details about generalized Lee routing, and practical results are left for verbal presentation.