International Congress in Budapest
 
This year ISAC takes place in a sports arena, next to the Puskas Ferenec Stadium, named after Hungary’s greatest player ever. This is also the year of the European football championship that only occurs every four years. (Of course we mean soccer, not American football). Get an experience of this genuine European feeling at the Tree Star booth in Budapest!

What do FlowJo and football have in common? Nothing, you may think, other than both words have the same first letter. But isn’t there a goalkeeper in football? And isn’t that very similar to a gatekeeper? And aren’t we all just gatekeepers? What program does a better job than FlowJo of keeping your gates free of unwanted hits? So come by our booths and find out how you measure up to other gatekeepers.

Not interested in football? You can always come by the FlowJo Booths 56 and 57, and receive a chance to win an iPod touch by filling out a brief survey. Also, feel free to chat with one of our application specialists about how FlowJo can help with your data analysis.

We will also be offering public FlowJo tutorials on the following dates:

Sunday May 18th (Green Room) 12.30 - 13.30: What's the latest in FlowJo (advanced tutorial)
Tuesday May 20th (Yellow Room) 12:30 – 13:30: Ease into FlowJo (beginners tutorial)

Collectors' Edition

Our FlowJo engineers are working hard on the next release of our windows application. Version 7.5 adds performance and usability improvements, and throws in some nifty new features. For example, v7.5 will make better use of multiprocessor computers and support very large data file analysis. We have partnered with Cytek to develop a stylish acquisition interface for FlowJo in the form of the Cypod. (Cytek refurbishes and upgrades FacSCAN and FacsCalibur cytometers.) Other cool features are Heat Maps in the Table Editor, Adjunct histograms in the Layout Editor, and improved functionality in the Plate Editor. Also, we have reworked many of the special analysis platforms: Cell Cycle, Derived Parameter, Proliferation, and Calibration.  All this, will be a free update to our current v7 users.  

Our goal for FlowJo v7.5 is to analyze complex experiments, and process large data sets as no other software can, while saving the user valuable time. Come visit our booth at ISAC, 56, and watch for the upcoming public beta to learn more about FlowJo v7.5 for PC.

Accelerate Flowjo.
 
FlowJo power users often wish to improve analysis speed.  One of the simplest ways to increase responsiveness in Flowjo 8.7.1 for Mac is to set the preference for Recalculation Frequency to when needed. By default, this option is set to immediately, which can cause slow-downs during complex analyses. 

Your computer is busy recalculating when it need not be!
You can access the Recalculation Frequency preference from the FlowJo Menu: Preferences: Workspace tab.

There is no equivalent preference in the current PC version. However, we recently learned that changing memory allocation defaults improve performance for people with less than 1 GB of RAM. Please take a look at FlowJo version 7.2.5 available on our website now.

Other news from The Daily Dongle (FlowJo’s techie blog):

You asked, you got it!

We pronounce FLS like the word floss. No, it cannot be used to clean teeth, but a FLS serial number can be used to run FlowJo. FLS is a FlowJo licensing option very popular with institutions. Many customers find FLS to be a cost-effective way to purchase FlowJo.

FLS is based on a subscription-pricing model. For instance, an institution with 200 computers using Flowjo will pay just $231 per computer per year. Free upgrades. Easy reporting and billing. Easy to add a user (no need to go through purchasing). The more registered computers on FLS, the lower the per computer rate. 

Currently, the FLS rate is based on the number of computers used per year. Soon, we will be offering a quarterly rate structure at the request of customers. Institutions will only be billed for the computers that use Flowjo in the current quarter (3 month period). Institutions can still pay their FLS bill annually. Send us your FLS feedback. (rob@treestar.com).

Cytometry Information Web Portal.

In case you missed the announcement in our last newsletter, MyCyte.org is a new web portal dedicated to cytometry.

What's on MyCyte?

• Pertinent cytometry news, in addition to educational, product and event information, like the ISAC Budapest Travel Blog
  
• A modern forum for discussions.
• User accounts that allow users to generate content, blog and connect with others in the community.

Cytometry is hard work, and they say that all work and no play makes Jack a dull cytometrist... so check out MyCyte's "Say What?" cartoon caption contests. The best caption for each cartoon wins a prize.

"He really should wear gloves when he works with RNA!"	Create a caption for the newest cartoon (above) and win a MyCyte.org T-shirt. View the current lot of reader captions and add your own!

New software for high throughput clinical analysis

Tree Star has been awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health to development Flow analysis software geared toward clinical use. The grant is for software development, we call it FlowDx. FlowDx will use pattern recognition to isolate cell populations, make statistical analysis, and output a report. The project will conform to strict regulations of data privacy, and comply with the FDA  Pre-market Approval for a Medical Device.

We are excited about the possibilities of FlowDx. During development, we will test FlowDx with synthetic data sets of known cell distributions as well as real-world, clinical patient data requiring high throughput analysis.

If you are interested in this project, you can read the successful grant application, or track our progress via the FlowDx Blog.

Welcome Jon, Arwen and Alejandro, three new Tree Stars! Jon comes to Tree Star from Perrysburg, Ohio. He worked several years for a small software company in Information Technology support, enjoys simple living, and is already a great addition to the Tree Star support team.

We are lucky to have Arwen to assist with customer outreach especially with our French and Spanish speaking Flow-ers. She spent six years living in Paris and brings not only excellent language skills to her job, but also a kind attitude, customer service experience and formidable smarts.

Alejandro is a native of Colombia. Most recently he was pursuing his PhD from Université Paris 7. He joins our engineering team with formidable programming skills in JAVA and C.