August 25, 2000 Greetings to all the Mini Analysis Program supporters! This newsletter informs the users of Mini Analysis Program about the updates and changes in the program. Mini Analysis Program version 5.1 is just released. To upgrade from v4.x or v5.x to v5.1, download a MiniAnal.exe file from our upgrade home page at http://www.synaptosoft.com/MiniAnalysis/UpgradeOnly.html. In version 5.1, we added a a brand new algorithm for amperometric data analysis. It includes the analysis of foot duration and area as well as direct conversion of area to molecules. This opens up a new possibilities to the investigators who are interested in conducting experiments with carbon fiber amperometry. Please spread the words! Many users have been excited about the new main window interface that was added in v5. In this version 5.1.0, many new features are added to improve the group analysis and curve fitting. Many people have been asking about the satelite symposium at the upcoming neuroscience meeting in New Orleans. The title of the symposium is, "Analyzing Spontaneous Activities with Mini Anlaysis Program", and is scheduled for Saturday, Nov 4, at 3:00 - 5:00 PM. Please find the detailed information in your Preliminary Program. Please check out the demo of Mini Analysis Program version 5.1 now! And don't forget to send us any of suggestions! 1. Amperometric Data Analysis in Group Analysis 2. Improved Curve Fitting Interface. 3. Chart for Windows and Dataq dat file conversion routines for ABF Utility 4. Other improvements 5. Other bug fixes 6. Satelite symposium at SFN annual meeting in New Orleans 7. References --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Amperometric Data Analysis in Group Analysis The most exciting feature of this release is the addtion of amperometric data analysis. After initial detection of amperometric peaks in the main window. Users can now group the events and go to the Group analysis and curve fitting window to display the individual traces, average trace, or superimposed traces. From the Amperom. Tab, users can click on the button that says "Start Amperometric Peak Analysis" in order to initiate the analysis. For each trace, the program calculates risetime (you have selectable options of 10-90, 35-90, and 50-90%), halfwidth, amplitude, area, foot duration, foot area, etc. The program draws dots and x's to indicate the location of various parameters. Red x indicates the location of peak, Green x, baseline; blue dot, threshold (calculated by taking the 2nd differential); purple dots, location of 90-35% decay; two dark green dots, points where trace meets the green line (baseline). The total area is calculated by taking the integral of the trace from the initial dark green dot to the second dark green dot. The foot duration is calculated from the first dark green dot to the blue dot. And the foot area is calculated by taking the integral from the first dark green dot to the blue dot. The two areas are converted to molecules by using the formula; N=Q/(nf). These values are also listed in the results spreadsheet. Depending on the type of display selected, users can achieve automatic analysis of all the traces (with superimposed setting), the average trace, or individual trace. Another cool feature is the ability to select the three important points for manual analysis. By pressing green button that says, "Press to turn on manual detection", users can enter a manual mode and set the location of peak, baseline and threshold by clicking with the appropriate mouse click combination. Once all three points are clicked, pressing the "Amerometric Peak Analysis" button will analyze the trace with the three manually determined parameters. These additions should fullfill the apparently desperate need for a specialized program for analyzing amperometric data. These features have been extensively tested by several investigators. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact us. 2. Improved Curve Fitting Interface. Two more navigational shortcut keys are added to help the Group analysis. Users can jump to a trace by pressing "Y" in Group Analysis window. The program will prompt for a trace number to jump to when "Y" is pressed. Also added is the shortcut key stroke "k" in group analysis to remove from group. With this key, users can quickly navigate through individual traces by pressing "ASDF" keys and press "k" to remove any unwanted trace. Make sure you set the Display option to "Individual" or "Superimposed Individual" to test these shortcut keys. Now, users can copy and save individual trace data and metafiles for export. In the Curve Fitting Tab, users can set initial guesses for each parameters for decay fitting. Users can also use the last fitting results as initial guesses. Users can delete results from the results spreadsheet. This feature has been asked by many users. One can only delete one row at a time for the time being. 3. Chart for Windows and Dataq dat file conversion routines for ABF Utility. ABF Utility just added conversion routines for Chart for Windows data files (with extension .Adicht) and Dataq dat ASCII files. Anyone who wants to convert Chart for Windows files should contact us and ask for dll file that is required for the function to work. We decided not to include this dll because it is almost 1Mb. 4. Other improvements. Complex peak detection used be unstable in the previous versions causing infinite loop. This problem has been fixed. If you are experiencing this problem, you should upgrade right away. The detection parameter values have been changed from integer variables to long variables to accomodate detection of long lasting or long rising peaks. 5. Other bug fixes. Bug fixed for peak detection of multichannel data giving false peak at the beginning. Bug fixed for large events causing overflow error. Fixed the problem of freezing with large events in rise10-90 calculation. Fixed problem with too big bin size giving error in group analysis. 6. Satelite symposium at SFN annual meeting in New Orleans To better serve the increasing number of users, we will offer a satelite symposium at the upcoming neuroscience meeting in New Orleans. Please join us to discuss the challenging problems and improvements for Mini Analysis Program. We reserved a room for 50-75 people. The seats might be limited. Even though there is no pre-registration required, please let us know if you are coming. We will make adjustment if more people are expected to come. The following is the detailed description of the symposium; Analyzing Spontaneous Activities with Mini Anlaysis Program Saturday, November 4, 2000 3:00 PM-5:00 PM Room: 397 Morial Convention Center We invite everyone who studies spontaneous activities, such as spontaneous synaptic currents or potentials, spontaneous action potentials, spontaneous whole cell currents, spontaneous calcium signals, amperometric spikes, electrocardiograms, and etc. We will discuss the problems of analyzing spontaneous activities and compare various detection algorithms. We will detect different types of peaks using Mini Analysis Program. We will go over the tools available for post-detection analysis including various frequency plots and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. We will go over the file conversion of different types of data files. Bring your own data on a floppy diskette or a CD-ROM disc (PC format only), along with your questions. Speakers: To be announced. For further information: Justin Lee, PhD, Synaptosoft, Inc. Web: www.synaptosoft.com, Email: web@synaptosoft.com. 7. References. Large number of articles are published every week with refereces for Mini Analysis Program. Now it is hard to list all of them. We will organize the reference pages of our website to accomodate thses references. Please keep informing us about your articles. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you haven't try the demo, please visit us at http://www.synaptosoft.com, download the demo, and try! *****Mini Analysis Program is a product of joint effort by all of the users. If you have any suggestions, please let us know, we will incorporate your ideas.****** For more information, visit our website at http://www.synaptosoft.com. If you want to receive the upgrade, please download the demo at http://www.synaptosoft.com/DownloadDemo.html. If you wish to be removed from this newsletter mailing list please mailto:Reply@www.synaptosoft.com. Synaptosoft Inc. 107 Irving Street Leonia, NJ 07605 phone: 201-592-7034 fax: 201-592-7034 http://www.synaptosoft.com http://www.MiniAnalysis.com http://www.PeakAnalysis.com http://www.EasyArticles.com ftp://ftp.synaptosoft.com mailto://Webmaster@synaptosoft.com