EigenNews - The Newsletter of Eigenvector Research Vol. 5, No. 2

September 12, 2003

EigenNews is an approximately quarterly note about the happenings at Eigenvector Research, Inc., along with news of interest to the chemometrics, analytical chemistry, spectroscopy and process modeling/monitoring communities. (Unsubscribe info at bottom.)

IN THIS ISSUE:

1) Upcoming Short Courses

Oct 18-19, Chemometrics W/O Equations, Ft. Lauderdale FL
Oct 21-22, Intermediate Chemometrics, Ft. Lauderdale FL
Apr 7-9, 2004, Process Chemometrics, Washington DC

2) PLS_Toolbox News

Get your "Multi-way the Easy Way" T-shirt
Fully functional PLS_Toolbox 3.0 Demos available
PLS_Toolbox 3.0.3a update

3) EigenUser story: How sticky is your cotton?

4) PLS_Toolbox User Tip: Add custom preprocessing to GUIs

5) Got questions? Try the new PLS_Toolbox FAQ!

6) Standard Data Object Version 3.0.3 Released

7) Meeting and Workshop Calendar

Oct 19-23, FACSS 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA
Oct 21-22, Nordic MATLAB Conference, Copenhagen, DK
Oct 27-29, ACE-CC 2003, Budapest, HUNGARY
Nov 17-20, 2003 EAS, Somerset, NJ, USA
Jan 5-10, Winter Conf. on Plasma Spectrochemisty, FL
Jan 12-15, IFPAC 2004, Arlington, VA, USA
Feb 16-20, WSC-3, Pushkinskiye Gory, RUSSIA
Jul 5- 7, DYCOPS 2004, Boston, MA, USA
Aug 15-17, ICCMEVSRS 2004, Madison, WI, USA
Sep 20-23, CAC-2004, Lisbon, PORTUGAL

8) How did I get on this list?

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1) Upcoming Short Courses

Eigenvector returns to FACSS, this year in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, with two "hands-on" courses for 2003. Chemometrics without Equations (or Hardly Any) will be held on Oct. 18-19, and Intermediate Chemometrics will be October 21-22. We’ve arranged for computers this year, so students will be able to work problems and learn through doing. The courses are also open to those not attending FACSS. For course descriptions, please see:

Chemometrics Without Equations, Oct. 18-19, 2003

Intermediate Chemometrics, Oct. 21-22, 2003

Process Chemometrics, our popular 3 day, hands-on course, will be held April 7-9, 2004, in Washington, DC. This course is targeted towards scientists and engineers who need to use chemometric methods in the process environment, and is especially well suited for those involved in PAT in the pharmaceutical industries. For more information, including course and venue description, please see:

Process Chemometrics, April 7-9, 2004

Need chemometrics training at your site? Eigenvector has a rapidly expanding curriculum available. In addition to the courses listed above, we have courses that focus specifically on process monitoring, inferential sensors for use in process control, multivariate image analysis and multi-way analysis. Write to bmw@eigenvector.com for more information.

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2) PLS_Toolbox News

Get your "Multi-way the Easy Way" T-shirt

As an added incentive to purchase or upgrade now, we’ll include one of our "Multi-way the Easy Way" t-shirts with all new PLS_Toolbox 3.0 orders and paid upgrades received through September, 2003. They’re 100% cotton and a great way to amaze your friends with your chemometric expertise. You can see the t-shirts here.

To take advantage of this offer, fill out our on-line order form. In the "Preferred Customer Code" box, enter MWM, MWL or MWXL to indicate you want a medium, large or extra large t-shirt, respectively. You can also order via phone or fax, just be sure to mention this offer!

Fully Functional PLS_Toolbox 3.0 Demos Available

Still not convinced PLS_Toolbox is the package for you? Try it out! We’ve made a fully functional, (time expiring), demo available on-line. The demo gives you month to use all the power of PLS_Toolbox 3.0. To get it, go to the demo page.

PLS_Toolbox 3.0.3a Update Now Available

We continue to refine and improve PLS_Toolbox with the latest update, 3.0.3a. This minor update adds a few new functions, demos and data sets, and fixes a couple minor bugs. Registered PLS_Toolbox 3.0 users can download it using their assigned username and password on the download page.

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3) EigenUser Story: How Sticky is Your Cotton?

Dr. Blayne Hirsche and Dr. Franklin Barton II, Research Chemists with the USDA in Athens GA, and co-workers have found an interesting new application for PLS: determining the stickiness of cotton. Stickiness results from aphid flies excretion where mono, di and tri-saccharides are deposited on the cotton. The greater the amount of deposition and thus number of sugars, the greater the stickiness, and the greater the chance of clogging the cotton gin.

The USDA team is developing a new "stickiness" sensor based on a digital array scanning interferometer configured for the near infrared. The sensor will be used for control of stickiness at the cotton gin. The stickiness sensor relies on a PLS calibration model developed in PLS_Toolbox 3.0 and implemented on-line. "We believe that this problem in the textile industry can be resolved," reports Hirsche.

For more information about this application, contact Dr. Hirsche at United States Department of Agriculture, Quality Assessment Research Unit, Athens, GA 30605, Phone 706-546-3055 or bhirsche@qaru.ars.usda.gov.

Do you have an interesting application of the PLS_Toolbox? We’d like to consider it for an EigenUser story. Write to bmw@eigenvector.com.

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4) PLS_Toolbox User Tip: Add custom preprocessing to GUIs

PLS_Toolbox 3.0 introduced advanced preprocessing functionality in the modeling GUIs, such as Decompose and Regression, as well as many of the higher-level modeling functions called from the Matlab command line. The preprocessing function, PREPROCESS, comes with many standard techniques installed in the catalog of available methods.

PREPROCESS also allows user-customization of the methods catalog. Users can define their own preprocessing methods and easily distribute them to their colleagues or onto on-line analyzers, for example. These user-defined methods will be available in all the GUIs and modeling functions which use PREPROCESS.

For more information, please see the on-line tutorial that takes you through the steps required to add your own methods to the PLS_Toolbox preprocessing GUI.

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5) Got questions? Try the new PLS_Toolbox FAQ!

We’re pleased to announce our recently developed Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) archive. Frequently may actually be a misnomer here, because we’re including all relevant questions we’ve answered in the FAQ database. So if you want to know how to do something out of the ordinary or need a MATLAB workaround, try it out. It's searchable!

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6) Standard Data Object Version 3.0.3 Released

For several years we've been the caretakers of the Standard Data Object (DataSet Object) and are happy to announce the release of Version 3.0.3. This open-source Matlab-based object acts as a container for data along with the labels, axes scales, and other information that is usually associated with them. The DataSet object assures consistency by performing rationality tests (to make sure all the dimensions match, for example) and provides a simple means to exchange data with all of the necessary accompanying information. In fact, Eigenvector Research has chosen to use this open standard in many PLS_Toolbox functions!

Version 3.0.3 includes fixes of problems in concatenation of multi-way data, plus adds the new methods: TRANSPOSE, PERMUTE, and NDIMS. You can read more about the DataSet object and download it for free.

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7) Meeting and Workshop Calendar

The following conferences and workshops should be of interest to chemometricians, analytical chemists and process engineers. If you have a meeting you'd like to list in the next EigenNews, please drop a line to bmw@eigenvector.com

Eigenvector Research, Inc., 3905 West Eaglerock Drive, Wenatchee, WA 98801
B.M. Wise, bmw@eigenvector.com, Phone: 509.662.9213, Fax: 509.662.9214
N.B. Gallagher, nealg@eigenvector.com, Phone: 509.687.1039, Fax: 509.687.2033