GraphPad Software Newsletter

LabArchives is an innovative web-based system that enables researchers to store, organize and publish their research data. It is also an excellent platform for sharing and collaboration, either with your lab or across the world.

Getting more organized is on many people's "to do" list - especially at this time of year. LabArchives can really help. Of course, you can use LabArchives to store essentially all of your lab data, but you don't have to make that commitment to see its real benefits. Use LabArchives to store data for just one project, or set it up to store all experimental protocols (methods) for your lab in one accessible place. Use it as a place to save ideas you have for projects to work on in the future. Or use it to store all the work, including preliminary data, for your next grant. The possibilities are endless - you decide how to make LabArchives work for you.

To help you get your lab organized for the New Year, we have made arrangements with LabArchives to offer a special complimentary version to all Prism 5 owners. The latest Prism release can send files directly to LabArchives, and you can easily create your free account right from Prism 5.04 or 5.0d. Click the new LabArchives button from the Prism toolbar, or choose LabArchives from Prism's File menu. Just enter your email address - no personal information or credit card required. Accounts created this way, from a full (not the free demo) version of Prism, come with 1 GB of storage space. You can upgrade to the Pro version at any time. Find out more at LabArchives.


DECEMBER 2010 IN THIS ISSUE: Free Prism 5 updates Prism and LabArchives Data analysis insights Combining images with graphs CURRENT VERSIONS CHECK FOR UPDATES Check here QUICKCALCS Free online calculators for radioactivity calculations, detecting outliers, t tests, ANOVA post tests, and more. CONTACT US Support central Email technical support Email customer service How to order Register your software GraphPad Software 2236 Avenida de la Playa La Jolla, CA 92037 USA www.graphpad.com			Free updates for Prism 5:
			Prism 5.04 and 5.0d A free update to Prism 5.04 (Windows) and 5.0d (Mac) is now available for anyone who owns Prism 5. The update takes only a few minutes to download and install. It includes numerous fixes and improvements, including better handling of very large PZFX files, improved plotting of column scatter graphs, and more reliable formatting of individual data points. New also is integration of Prism with the web-based LabArchives product (more below). Everyone who owns a license of Prism can get a free account on LabArchives. You can read more about the Prism update here. Don't use Prism 5? Try our Prism 5 demo for a month without uninstalling prior versions. Files made with the Prism 5 demo can be opened by Prism 4.
			Prism Integration:
			Organize your lab with LabArchives LabArchives is an innovative web-based system that enables researchers to store, organize and publish their research data. It is also an excellent platform for sharing and collaboration, either with your lab or across the world. Getting more organized is on many people's "to do" list - especially at this time of year. LabArchives can really help. Of course, you can use LabArchives to store essentially all of your lab data, but you don't have to make that commitment to see its real benefits. Use LabArchives to store data for just one project, or set it up to store all experimental protocols (methods) for your lab in one accessible place. Use it as a place to save ideas you have for projects to work on in the future. Or use it to store all the work, including preliminary data, for your next grant. The possibilities are endless - you decide how to make LabArchives work for you. To help you get your lab organized for the New Year, we have made arrangements with LabArchives to offer a special complimentary version to all Prism 5 owners. The latest Prism release can send files directly to LabArchives, and you can easily create your free account right from Prism 5.04 or 5.0d. Click the new LabArchives button from the Prism toolbar, or choose LabArchives from Prism's File menu. Just enter your email address - no personal information or credit card required. Accounts created this way, from a full (not the free demo) version of Prism, come with 1 GB of storage space. You can upgrade to the Pro version at any time. Find out more at LabArchives.
			Data analysis insights:
			GraphPad's founder Dr. Harvey Motulsky still personally answers many tech support emails (especially those about data analysis). When the question is general, he often posts the answer on our growing knowledge base. Below are a selection of the most recent additions. Visit any time to see what's new. Calculating a Z-factor to assess the quality of a screening assay. When developing (or assessing) an assay to test the effectiveness of various drugs, you want to quantify how well the assay works. One way to do this is via the signal-to-noise ratio, but this doesn't really capture what you want to know. Zhang and colleagues developed a method to quantify the quality of an assay via the Z factor. It assesses how far apart the mean signal is for positive and negative controls, compared to their standard deviations. Learn more. Nonlinear regression The runs test. The runs test asks whether the curve fit by nonlinear regression (or the line fit by linear regression) deviates systematically from your data. If you have fit the wrong curve entirely, then points will tend to cluster above and below that curve, and the runs test will report a small P value. This test is also called the Wald runs test for randomness. Learn more. Tips to narrow confidence intervals in nonlinear regression. If your confidence intervals for a best-fit parameter in nonlinear regression is wider than you think it should be, try these tips. Statistics Alternative methods of defining multiple comparison tests after repeated measures one way ANOVA. After repeated measures one-way ANOVA, it is common to perform multiple comparison tests. Three are two approaches one can use for such testing, and these can give different results. Learn more. Calculating the grand mean of column data. Prism does not compute the grand mean of all values on a table, either as part of column statistics or one-way ANOVA. But with a few extra steps, you can coax Prism to compute the grand mean. Learn more here. The chi-square test for trend. Prism and InStat have both offered the chi-square for trend since the beginning. But this test is not mentioned in many statistics books. Learn how it works. Survival analysis Multiple comparisons of survival curves. When you compare three or more survival curves at once, Prism reports a single P value testing the null hypothesis that all the samples come from populations with identical survival, and that all differences are due to chance. You may also want to drill down and compare curves two at a time. Learn more. Determining the median followup time in survival analysis. Survival analysis often deals with experimental designs where different subjects are followed for different durations. How can one quantify the median followup time? How does one account for subjects who die? Find out here. The logrank test for trend in survival analysis. If you compare three or more survival curves with Prism, it will show results for the overall logrank test, and also show results for the logrank test for trend. Learn about this test.
			Make these graphs:
			Click on the graphs below to learn how to use a Prism layout to make a combined graph showing both bars and individual points, and how to create an XY vector chart with Prism.
			Have an interesting graph you'd like to share? Please send it to us and we may include it in a future newsletter.
			Prism tip:
			Combining images with graphs -- Adding pictures to your graphs and presentations can give them extra punch. Prism lets you import and add images in a variety of formats. Learn more.
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