Two Accreditation Options for Biorepositories.

Context.—: Biomedical research relies on available biomaterials and associated data, and the quality of this starting material can have a significant impact on the quality of the experimental results. In the 2000s, best-practice documents and guidelines for biorepositories were published, followed in the 2010s by standards documents used to support accreditation.

Comprehensive examination and comparison of machine learning techniques for the quantitative determination of adulterants in honey using Fourier infrared spectroscopy with attenuated total reflectance accessory.

Facile, robust, and accurate analyses of honey adulterants are required in the honey industry to assess its purity for commercialization purposes. A stacked regression ensemble approach using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic method was developed for the quantitative determination of corn, cane, beet, and rice syrup adulterants in honey. A training set (n=81) was used to predict the percent adulterant composition of the aforementioned constituents in an independent test set (n=32).

Consensus-Driven Development of a Terminology for Biobanking, the Duke Experience.

Biobanking at Duke University has existed for decades and has grown over time in silos and based on specialized needs, as is true with most biomedical research centers. These silos developed informatics systems to support their own individual requirements, with no regard for semantic or syntactic interoperability. Duke undertook an initiative to implement an enterprise-wide biobanking information system to serve its many diverse biobanking entities.

OBIB-a novel ontology for biobanking.

Background: Biobanking necessitates extensive integration of data to allow data analysis and specimen sharing. Ontologies have been demonstrated to be a promising approach in fostering better semantic integration of biobank-related data. Hitherto no ontology provided the coverage needed to capture a broad spectrum of biobank user scenarios.

Demonstration of a frozen sample aliquotter to prepare plasma and serum aliquots without thawing frozen parent samples.

Human biospecimens represent invaluable resources to advance molecular medicine, epidemiology, and biomarker discovery/validation, among other biomedical research. Biobanks typically cryopreserve biospecimens to safeguard their biochemical composition. However, exposing specimens repeatedly to freeze/thaw cycles can degrade their integrity in unforeseen ways.