A New Automated Method and Sample Data Flow for Analysis of Volatile Nitrosamines in Human Urine

Volatile nitrosamines (VNAs) are a group of compounds classified as probable (group 2A) and possible (group 2B) carcinogens in humans. Along with certain foods and contaminated drinking water, VNAs are detected at high levels in tobacco products and in both mainstream and side-stream smoke. Our laboratory monitors six urinary VNAs—N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), N-nitrosomethylethylamine (NMEA), N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA), N-nitrosopiperidine (NPIP), N-nitrosopyrrolidine (NPYR), and N-nitrosomorpholine (NMOR)—using isotope dilution GC-MS/ MS (QQQ) for large population studies such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). In this paper, we report for the first time a new automated sample preparation method to more efficiently quantitate these VNAs. Automation is done using Hamilton STARTM and Caliper StaccatoTM workstations. This new automated method reduces sample preparation time from 4 hours to 2.5 hours while maintaining precision (inter-run CV < 10%) and accuracy (85% - 111%). More importantly this method increases sample throughput while maintaining a low limit of detection (<10 pg/mL) for all analytes. A streamlined sample data flow was created in parallel to the automated method, in which samples can be tracked from receiving to final LIMs output with minimal human intervention, further minimizing human error in the sample preparation process. This new automated method and the sample data flow are currently applied in bio-monitoring of VNAs in the US non-institutionalized population NHANES 2013-2014 cycle.

Adaptive sampling algorithm for detection of superpoints

The superpoints are the sources （or the destinations） that connect with a great deal of destinations （or sources） during a measurement time interval, so detecting the superpoints in real time is very important to network security and management. Previous algorithms are not able to control the usage of the memory and to deliver the desired accuracy, so it is hard to detect the superpoints on a high speed link in real time. In this paper, we propose an adaptive sampling algorithm to detect the superpoints in real time, which uses a flow sample and hold module to reduce the detection of the non-superpoints and to improve the measurement accuracy of the superpoints. We also design a data stream structure to maintain the flow records, which compensates for the flow Hash collisions statistically. An adaptive process based on different sampling probabilities is used to maintain the recorded IP addresses in the limited memory. This algorithm is compared with the other algorithms by analyzing the real network trace data. Experiment results and mathematic analysis show that this algorithm has the advantages of both the limited memory requirement and high measurement accuracy.