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Bioequivalence and Bioavailability Forum’s
Policy and Terms of Use
Welcome to BEBAC’s Forum devoted to Bioequivalence and Biovailability.
If you are new to the Forum, please read the following Policy Section first.
- Policy
BEBAC provides a global forum to promote the free exchange of ideas, opinions, and information on Bioavailability (BA) and Bioequivalence (BE).
The forum’s team of admins/moderators reserves the right to delete posts containing obscene, profane, or vulgar language. Troll posts, spam, advertisings, job postings, or posts being mainly commercial in nature are prohibited and will be deleted without further notice.
Sockpuppets (i.e., multiple falsified indentities) are not acceptable, will be resolved based on the IP-address, and will lead to blocking of the accounts.Please post relevant to the chosen category, and make subject headings as specific as possible.
Thank you in advance for your adherence to this policy.
- Disclaimer
The content expressed on the forum is the sole opinion of the person making the post. Neither BEBAC nor the poster make any representations or warranties regarding the accuracy of such content.
Please note that:- Anybody using or relying upon information or opinions set out in the forum, does so at their own risk;
- regulatory requirements may change rather quickly – posted recommendations may be outdated and do not represent any type of “cookbook approach” which should be followed unreflecting;
- BEBAC strongly advise that independent professional judgment be exercised and / or independent professional advice should be sought before using or relying upon such information or opinions; and,
- the views and opinions expressed by posters are their own and may not necessarily represent the views or opinions of companies or organisations by whom they are engaged or employed.
For information on data protection see here.
- (N)Etiquette
- Search!
Google is your Friend; please do your homework first.
If you are interested in regulatory requirements, please consult the guidance collection first.The forum contains lots of threads from people who have already sought and received actual help. Chances are that you may not be the first person to experience the particular issue(s) that brought you to the forum.
Use the Search feature in the top right hand corner to query the database for existing threads that may already answer your question; use keywords, restrict the search to a particular category, etc. If you get too many results, restrict the search to a particular phrase.
Only if you cannot find what you’re looking for, log in, start a new thread and hopefully others will find that thread useful in the future. If it is clear that you have done basic background research, you are far more likely to get an informative response.
Keep in mind:
»The quality of responses received is directly proportional to the quality of the question asked.«
- Be nice!
This is the golden rule and bears re-stating:
»Post unto others as you would have others post unto you.«Most of the people who visit these and other on-line forums abide by this rule as a matter of course. Occasionally, however, we encounter someone who succumbs to the temptation to be, well…, not so nice. On these rare occasions, everyone is affected. Nobody likes to have rude or mean comments directed toward them, and nobody needs to read such comments directed toward anyone else. In addition, as a practical concern, the likelihood of receiving help is always better when you’re nice.
Don’t try to force others to reply immediately. The forum’s members are a global community. Your working hours might be in the middle of the night for others. We post in our free time. Claiming urgency is very likely to be counter-productive: As a matter of principle some of us will simply ignore such posts as rude and selfish attempts to elicit immediate and special attention.
Remember that customs differ. Some people are very direct. Others surround everything they say with hedges and apologies. Be tolerant. Rudeness is never warranted, but sometimes “read the guideline” is the appropriate response indeed. Don’t waste time discussing such matters on the forum. Ad hominem comments are absolutely out of place. Brevity is preferred though verbosity sometimes is necessary.
So please, if you cannot post nicely, then do not post. All of the registered users reserve the right not to respond at all to rude or otherwise not-nice posts, or to respond in kind (while we try to exercise restraint, we’re only human).
According to RFC1855 use of only UPPER CASE may be interpreted as if you are shouting and considered rude; use bold letters instead.
Don’t use abbreviated words as you would in an SMS. A sentence like ‘Plz give ur ideas wrt to…’ is inappropriate; take your time and use complete words instead.
The forum’s administrators / moderator reserve the right to lock or delete posts that they deem to be overly rude or otherwise not nice.
- Be polite!
It is nice to start your post with a salutation. Note that the forum is definitely not a gentlemens‘ club. Starting a post with “Dear Sir!” is considered inappropriate (unless you are sure about the gender of the User you are addressing).
Please include a signature as well.
You may save a signature in your personal profile; it can be automatically attached to your posts.An example of an impolite post is given below:
- Be specific!
Select the category which you consider most suitable to your question. Give a brief but concise description in the subject line.
Please don’t post the same text in different categories; post only in the most suitable one – you may add an additional keyword in the subject line.
Some problems are related to a national regulation; in such a case please include the targeted jurisdiction.
- Don’t be shy about helping!
Aside from the administrators (Helmut, Ohlbe) and the moderator (Mittyri), there are lots of regular participants in the forum who help fellow users. The help these colleagues provide is invaluable in terms of the time it saves the rest of us.
If you know the answer to a question or the solution to a problem, please feel free to jump right in and post it!
- Post a URI to your reference!
If you post a message referring to a document which is available on the web (i.e., a regulatory guideline), please include a hyperlink. You should not assume that other members are familiar with the document thus forcing them to google it.
- Stay within the thread!
It is not uncommon in a forum that topics within a thread sometimes drift away from the topic of the original post (the so-called ‘thread shift’-phenomenon). Even if your question was not answered exactly the way you expected it, try to stay within the thread (and don’t open a new one just to say ‘thank you!’).
Unnecessary new threads may be moved by the administrators to another (more suitable) thread or linked by the moderator to another thread and closed to further replies.
- Don’t fork!
‘Old’ threads are not necessarily ‘dead’; sometimes replies are posted even years after the original post – which might not help you with your current problem, but others using the ‘search’ feature of the forum. Threads are sorted by the date of the last reply by default, i.e., a recent answer to an ‘old’ post will move the entire thread to the forum’s entry page.
However, ‘necroposting’, i.e. reply to a long inactive thread is discouraged. Start a new thread instead and consider to link to the old thread instead (see below for the method).If you feel that your post did not gain the attention you expected, you may reply to your own post in order to bring the thread back to the top of the forum. A reasonable waiting period is two weeks or if the thread has left the entry page of the forum. Only one ‘reminder’ is suggested; consider the possibility that nobody knows the answer or is not willing to share their experiences. Further ‘reminders’ are discouraged and may lead to
locking the thread by the administrators or moderator.
- No orphans!
It is considered bad style to start a thread with a – sometimes not so trivial – question, and subsequently never login to the forum again.
Please remember that all Users of the forum are posting in their leisure time. It may be frustrating to offer an elaborate answer, which is not even read at all.
It is a skill to ask good questions. If at first you don’t get answers that are useful to you, don’t get discouraged. A response that is concise and technically accurate may be just that, and not an intended putdown. If you feel insulted by some response to a post of yours, don’t make any hasty response in return – you’re as likely as not to regret it. As a further reading we recommend Eric Raymond’s essay »How To Ask Questions The Smart Way« for more suggestions, and for insight into people’s behavior on technical mailing lists (but don’t try asking people at catb.org questions about BE/BA).
Posters should be aware that the BEBA-Forum is public and anything you post will be indexed by search engines and will be accessible via several websites for many years.
Thank You for abiding by the Etiquette of the Forum.
- Search!
- Registration
- Step 1
Please register only if you want to post in the forum –
registration is not required to read posts.
Click 
Register in the top right hand corner of the forum’s main page.
A form opens, where you have to fill in your User name (your real name, an abbreviation, or a nick), a valid e-mail address (in the example below: User name ‘foo’, e-mail ‘[email protected]’), and a password. Although your real name is preferred, a nick is acceptable as well.
Although spaces are acceptable in the e-mail address, ‘foo [email protected]’ possibly will not work. Spaces sometimes are ‘lost in hyperspace’ – corrupting the e-mail address). Multiple e-mail addresses are not supported – although they may work on some systems (and are classified as spam by others).
If your e-mail address contains at least three periods (e.g., ‘a.b.c.[email protected]’) it will be classified as a bot’s and the registration blocked. Get another account.
In your User name you may use diacritical and accented characters or even any one contained in the UTF-8 code-set. But: If the character is not available in fonts installed on another User’s system, the browser will only display ▯. Hence, consider using alphanumeric ASCII-codes <128 only (A–Z, a–z, 0–9, hyphen, underline).
Please don’t chose a User name in all capital letters – we will change it.
For your own convenience try to keep your User name short. If your full name is Jorge Sánchez-Casas García try it with Jorge first (you may give your complete name in your personal profile and/or use it in your signature). Otherwise, you have to type your entire name at login.
OK will send an activation key to you by e-mail (if there is already a User registered with the same name/e-mail, you will get an error page – in such a case please choose another User name/e-mail).
If you get an HTTP-403 error (e.g., in Chrome, Opera, IE/Edge) or an empty page (e.g., in Firefox, SeaMonkey, Safari) do not repeat the registration (see FAQ #14).
- Step 2
Open your e-mail client’s inbox; you received an e-mail with the subject
Forum registration
and sender’s address
Bioequivalence and Bioavailability Forum <[email protected]>.
If you do not find the registration e-mail in your inbox, please check also your junk-/spam-folder.
You must click within 24 hours on the link to activate your account (if your e-mail client does not support hyperlinks, copy the link to the address field of your browser).
Type in your User name and password. If you want to be logged-in automatically every time you visit the forum, use the checkbox.
You are logged-in and redirected to the forum’s main page. Your User name is displayed in the top right hand corner.
Please edit your personal profile (at least the location and time difference to the forum’s server).
- Step 1
- Post a new Message
To start a new thread click 
New entry in the top left hand corner in the forum’s main page.
A form opens:
Category
Choose the category most suitable to your post from the pulldown menu. The default Regulatives / Guidelines in many cases is not appropriate.
Following categories exist (the order changes regularly according to the number of threads / posts):-
Title Description Cat. public? Regulatives / Guidelines Mainly about their implementation and potential ambiguities. Do you homework first. 5 ☒ Design Issues About setting up new studies (except power / sample size, which has its own category). 6 ☒ Bioanalytics Method development and validation. 7 ☒ General Statistics Anything not directly related to BE and / or PK. 17 ☒ Power / Sample Size … 1 ☒ Software Please RTFM first. State the respective software in the subject line. 13 ☒ R for BE/BA R in general and about packages like bear, PowerTOST, Power2Stage, replicateBE, randomizeBE. 19 ☒ Dissolution / BCS / IVIVC … 10 ☒ RSABE / ABEL The FDA’s, EMA’s, and the WHO’s methods for reference-scaling. 23 ☒ Study Performance Generally about ongoing studies. 16 ☒ GxP / QC / QA … 20 ☒ Study Assessment About completed studies. Problems, why did they fail, lessons learned. 26 ☒ PK / PD PK/PD-modeling. Otherwise, post in the category NCA / SHAM. 2 ☒ Two-Stage / GS Designs Adaptive and ‘classical’ Group-Sequential Designs. 22 ☒ NCA / SHAM Noncompartmental analysis, PK metrics, … 25 ☒ Off Topic Post here if no other category fits your topic. 8 ☒ BE/BA News New guidances, practices, gossip. 9 ☒ Outliers … 4 ☒ Conferences / Workshops … 12 ☒ Nonparametrics Comparison of discrete (e.g., tmax) or categorial data (e.g., AEs). 3 ☒ Tips / Tricks … 11 ☒ Surveys … 21 ☒ Non-public Hidden from search engines (not indexed). 24 ☐ Forum Internals BBCode, HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, … 14 ☐ Sandbox If you want to explore functions of the forum. Posts will not be public and may be deleted after one month. 18 ☐
Subject
Give a brief but concise description of your question in the subject line. Try to be as specific as possible (something like ‘HELP!!!’ or ‘BE statistics?’ is not a particulary good idea). The subject line is limited to 100 characters.
Message
Write your message in the textarea below.
Please do not include any HTML-tags (like <br> for line-break, <b></b> for bold etc.), HTML-entities (like for no-break space, ­ for soft-hyphen etc.), series of spaces, or tabulators in the text. All tags will be displayed as plain text (i.e., not rendered into HTML); series of spaces and/or tabs will be stripped and cut down on a single space. Both multiple spaces and tabs might look nice on your system but awful on other user’s.
Consider using non-printable characters if needed. If you want to prevent a line-feed between two characters (e.g., between a number and the unit) on Windows-systems instead of a space use Alt0160. Alternatively wrap both between the BBCode [nb][/nb].
Characters
A subset of UTF-8 encoded characters is ISO-8859-1; these characters work on all systems:
hex …0 …1 …2 …3 …4 …5 …6 …7 …8 …9 …A …B …C …D …E …F 0… non printable characters are stripped from posts 1… non printable characters are stripped from posts 2… ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / 3… 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? 4… @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O 5… P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _ 6… ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 7… p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~ 8… non printable characters are stripped from posts 9… non printable characters are stripped from posts A… ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ® ¯ B… ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ C… À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï D… Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö × Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý Þ ß E… à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï F… ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ÷ ø ù ú û ü ý þ ÿ 2- and 3-byte UTF-8 characters which work on most systems:
Greek Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ ς τ υ φ χ ψ ω maths ∂ ∆ ∏ ∑ √ ∞ ∫ ≈ ≅ ≠ ≡ ≤ ≥ ≪ ≫ ∝ ƒ ∓ sets ∈ ∉ ⊂ ⊆ ⊄ ∩ ∪ logic ∧ ∨ ¬ ⊕ ∀ ∃ ∎ fract. ⅓ ⅔ ⅛ ⅜ ⅝ ⅞ ¼ ½ ¾ ⅒ punct. – – ‘ ’ “ ” † ‡ • … ¡ ¿ « » ‼ ‽ ⟨ ⟩ symbols ☺ ☻ ☼ ♀ ♂ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ ⚕ ℞ ♯ ♪ ♫ ☐ ☑ ☒ ⌾ ⦿ ★ ✔ ✖ geometr. ■ □ ▪ ▫ ◊ ◦ ░ ▒ ▓ █ ▲ ▼ ◄ ► ○ ● ◘ ◙ arrows ← ↑ → ↓ ↔ ↕ ↵ ⇌ ↺ ↻ ⇐ ⇑ ⇒ ⇓ ⇔ ⇕ ⏎ Some diacritical characters might be available in the more recent versions of a font but not in earlier ones. For example the symbol for the median x̃ 78CC83 is available since Windows Vista but will be split into x~ 787E on Windows XP.
BBCodes
You may use following BBCodes to format text of your message.
-
Example will be rendered to bold [b]text[/b] bold text italic [i]text[/i] italic text underlined [u]text[/u] underlined text double underlined [dbl]text[/dbl] double underlined text
(not supported in Edge prior to v79)overlined [o]text[/o] overlined text strikethrough [s]text[/s] strikethrough text subscripted: C[sub]max[/sub] Cmax superscripted: [sup]2[/sup]H 2H monospaced [code]text[/code] monospaced text [big]big[/big] text big text small [small]text[/small] small text red [color:red]text[/color:red] red text green [color:green]text[/color:green] green text blue [color:blue]text[/color:blue] blue text serif font: [serif]text[/serif] serif font: text cursive fornt: [cursive]text[/cursive] cursive fornt: text small caps: [sc]MatLab[/sc] MatLab horizontal ruler [hr] framed [box]text[/box] text button [button]text[/button] text marked [mark]text[/mark] text [nb]nowrap prevents linebreak[/nb] NA You can use any combinations thereof.
It is your responsibility to take care that the BBCodes are properly nested. [color:blue][b][i]text[/i][/b][/color:blue] works as designed (text) but [color:blue][b][i]text[/color:blue][/b][/i] might be ’correctly’ rendered in some browsers (relying on their ability to ‘guess’ what you have meant) but fail completely in others: In the worst case the start is observed and the end ignored. In the example the entire text of the post below the wrongly nested BBCodes will be shown in blue bold italics.A – rather extreme – example:
[serif][i]C[/i]([i]t[/i]) = [i]C[/i][sub]0[/sub]·ℯ[i][sup]-λ[sub]z[/sub]·t[/sup][/i]; [i]AUC[/i][sub]0–∞[/sub] = [big]∫[/big][sub]0[/sub][sup]∞[/sup][i]C[/i]([i]t[/i]) = [i]C[/i][sub]0[/sub]/λ[sub]z[/sub][/serif]
renders to
C(t) = C0·ℯ–λz·t; AUC0–∞ = ∫0∞C(t) = C0/λzIf you are familiar with
you can also use the MathJax library (requires JavaScript). The same example:
\(C(t)=C_0\cdot e^{-\lambda_z\cdot t};AUC_{0-\infty}=\int_{0}^{\infty}C(t)=\tfrac{C_0}{\lambda_z}\)
gives:
\(C(t)=C_0\cdot e^{-\lambda_z\cdot t};AUC_{0-\infty}=\int_{0}^{\infty}C(t)=\tfrac{C_0}{\lambda_z}\)Source-code (e.g., R, SAS, C,…) and its output should always be wrapped between [code]…[/code] for clarity. Without the forum’s default sans-serif font will be used and – since multiple blanks will be collapsed – the intendation lost. Examples:
Without BBcode in the message-area
for (j in 1:10) {
x[j] <- y
foo(y)
}
the code will be rendered into plain text loosing the intendation
for (j in 1:10) {
x <- y
foo(y)
}
Instead use
[code]for (j in 1:10) {
x[j] <- y
foo(y)
}[/code]
which will be rendered into
for (j in 1:10) {
x[j] <- y
foo(y)
}
You must not use any of the other single-character BBCodes (b,i,u,s,o) within a code-block because it will be interpreted as a format-tag. This is esp. important when using i as a counter (f.i. of a loop) because by indexing a vector, say
for (i in 1:10) {
x[i] <- y
foo(y)
}
the code will be rendered into
for (i in 1:10) {
x <- y
foo(y)
}
The index will disappear from the code and the entire following text formatted in italics. - Lists are supported by the following BBCodes:
Type Description Example will be rendered to Unsorted bullet: filled circle
(default)[list]
[*]foo
[*]bar
[/list]● foo
● barbullet: dash [list=d]
[*]foo
[*]bar
[/list]– foo
– barbullet: asterisk [list=s]
[*]foo
[*]bar
[/list]* foo
* barno bullet [list=n]
[*]foo
[*]bar
[/list]foo
barSorted decimal numbers [list=1]
[*]foo
[*]bar
[/list]1. foo
2. barlowercase letters [list=a]
[*]foo
[*]bar
[/list]a. foo
b. baruppercase letters [list=X]
[*]foo
[*]bar
[/list]A. foo
B. barroman numbers [list=I]
[*]foo
[*]bar
[/list]I. foo
II. bar - Since the syntax of lists is a little bit tricky, you must use the Preview before posting!
- Paragraphs
Example Description will be rendered to [indent]text[/indent] Left & right margins Lorem ipsum ea ullum corrumpit consetetur eam. Cu vidisse conceptam interesset mea, ponderum appellantur suscipiantur ius id. [center]text[/center] Centered At mei augue suscipit dissentiet, id nisl fuisset adipisci qui, an consul sanctus deseruisse est. Errem utamur recusabo te has, ius partem labores offendit cu. [block]text[/block] Justified Id commodo accusata pro, ad aliquando prodesset sea. Per aliquid labores consulatu cu, quis modus officiis per at. Erant necessitatibus per in, ad dicat etiam appetere ius, in discere sententiae voluptatibus has.
To add a hyperlink use [link=https://www.example.com/]target[/link] or [url=https://www.example.com/]target[/url]. The link will be displayed as 🔗 target.
With active JavaScript you may use the Link button to open a box where you may paste an URI of a site in the first box and a description (which will be displayed in the post) in the second box.To add a doi use [link=https://dx.doi.org/identifier]identifier[/link]. The link will be displayed as 🔗 doi:identifier.
With active JavaScript you may use the doi button to open a box where you may paste the doi of a document in the first box and a description (which will be displayed in the post) in the second box.Use [img]https://www.example.com/image.jpg[/img] to add images from an external resource to your post. Optionally you can fix the image to the left ([img|left]…[/img]) or right side ([img|right]…[/img]) of the post (i.e. following text will ‘float’ around the image).
With active JavaScript you may use the image button to insert the BBCode into your post (see below).
Use of BBCodes with/without JavaScript
If JavaScript is active, a column of buttons is displayed at the right side of the message area; without JavaScript the syntax of the most common ones for manual entry.
+ JavaScript – JavaScript 
Text parts can be formatted with following BBCodes:
[i]…[/i] italic
[b]…[/b] bold
[sub]…[/sub] subscript
[sup]…[/sup] superscript
[big]…[/big] large
[small]…[/small] small
[code]…[/code] monospaced;
For more BBCodes see the Instructions.
Add hyperlinks:
[link]http://www.domain.tld/[/link] or
[link=http://www.domain.tld/]Link name[/link].
Add images:
[img]http://www.domain.tld/image.jpg[/img] – left/right of the text: [img|left]…[/img] / [img|right]…[/img].With activated JavaScript you may also use the buttons at the right side of the input-area to format your text:
Highlight the text you want to format in the message area and click the respective button to the right.
You will get:
Uploading images
Uploading images or inserting ones already stored on the server requires JavaScript. If you are not able to use JavaScript, contact the forum’s maintainer where can send the image by e-mail and after uploading we will provide you with a link you can use in your post.
Acceptable image formats are JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Consider cropping images to the relevant section. For technical illustrations (plots, screenshots, etc.) a lossless format (PNG, GIF) is preferred. The size is limited to 640 px (longest side) and 100 KiB; larger images are automatically downscaled by the software – which may result in poor quality, especially of JPEGs. Note that transparency in GIFs and PNGs will be lost in downscaling. If your image is too large in terms of filesize, consider to reduce the number of colors from truecolor (24 bit) to 256 colors (8 bit); we recommend IrfanView or the RIOT Optimizer.
Click upload – a new browser windows opens:
Click the first button and navigate on your system to the file you want to upload. After selecting the file click OK – Upload – a new browser windows opens:
Click one of the buttons to insert the uploaded image into your message:
normal text flow (image separated from text),
text floating on the right side of the image, and
text floating on the left side of the image.
Inserting images already stored on the server
See above; in the new window click [ Browse uploaded images ] – a new window opens. Thirty thumbnails per page are displayed; to navigate to the next page click [ » ]:
Clicking a thumbnail opens the preview window:
Use one of the buttons as described above in selecting the location of the image in your message.Signature
If you want to add the signature from your personal profile, activate the checkbox. Whether the box is already checked or not depends on the settings in your profile.
E-mail notification
If you want to be notified by e-mail if there has been a reply to this message use the checkbox. Whether the box is already checked or not depends on the settings in your profile.
Preview
Please check the spelling of your message before posting it. Make an attempt at proper grammar and spelling when you post. The meaning of your post is much more likely to come across as you intended and you will not look foolish (or if you do it will be for the content of your post, not the presentation).
The BEBA forum isn’t SMS or any other real time chat application like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal. In those type of services a person often needs to quickly get their response across otherwise it gets lost in the sea of other responses. It also helps a conversation flow to quickly get a response out. This forum isn’t real time. You have the luxury of time to formulate a response and the ability to directly quote the person you are responding to in order to clarify the reason your response is relevant. Think twice before posting a ‘compliment’ like »Dude ur work is xcellent n it helped me a lot«. If you prefer extremely compressed messages,TwitterX is the better site for you. We are a community. Supposedly a community of intelligent people. This forum shows up on search engines for certain scientific queries. That means that people outside of our community will come here seeking knowledge from time to time. Do we want the impression they get of us to be juvenile punks with no basic communication skills? I don’t want that.
Emotion is difficult to convey in the written word. It is even more difficult when you have to wade through a sentence containing »u 2 r bet’n…« Your post is much more likely to be misconstrued if you don’t take the time to spell out what you mean and formulate a coherent thought.
Finally, it makes you look ignorant if you don’t use proper grammar and spelling. It’s as simple as that.
Compose your message in the traditional manner using:- Punctuation, paragraphs, upper and lower case letters, proper wording and grammar.
- People must be able to look at your subject heading and know what the post is about. Having descriptive titles makes sure that anyone who wants to come back to your question later will be able to do so.
- Avoid blanking (either as multiple blanks as a attempt of formatting text, or between the last word of a sentence and a punctuation mark – like in French). The former is collapsed to a single blank, whilst the latter may lead to strange looking text if the punctuation mark gets separated and displayed in the next line.
Aghtuolh it’s esay for hanums to ustarndend mepillessd wrods, the forum’s search feature is a silicon-based life-form (not a fuzzy system) and will be unable to retrieve the information you are looking for from the database.
When you are satisfied with the results, click OK – Submit and your message will be posted to the forum.
Subscribe/unsubscribe a thread
If you want to be notified by e-mail about new posts in a particular thread, click 
Subscribe thread in the top-level post. Please make sure that your e-mail address is current, otherwise the server will receive a lot of bounces.
If you want to unsubscribe, click
Cancel subscription. For the global seetings in your profile see below.
-
- Reply to a Post
Open the post and click Post reply in the lower left hand corner (in Thread View) / upper right hand corner (in Mix View).
A new form opens:
If you want to quote another post in the forum (‘cross-linking’), please do not link by copy/paste the URL from your browser’s address field. The linked post would open in your preferred View (Mix or Thread) which might differ from what other users have set in their personal preferences. That might be confusing or even considered impolite. Instead, use the following BBCode:
- Navigate to the post you want to link; click to open.
- Identify the ID of the post. The post’s ID is given in the left column (Mix View) and the info line (Thread View); see examples below:
- The number (4402) after the hash is the ID of the post.
- Now you may quote the other post as [msg=4402]your link text[/msg].
After using the Preview button (and optionally correcting your post), OK – Submit your reply.
If chosen by the original poster he/she will be notified by e-mail about your reply.
- Personal Profile
To edit your profile click on your name
(
foo in the example). A new page opens showing your current profile.
Edit profile opens a new form.
With active JavaScript the time difference is estimated from your system’s clock.
Example: You are located in India (local time 15:47) and the time of the server is 11:47 CEST (last Sunday of March to last Sunday of October) – the time difference is +03:30 hours; if the server’s time zone would be CET, the time difference would be +04:30 hours. Unfortunately JavaScript is not fail-safe. If in doubt, calculate in manually: 15:47–11:47=+03:30. Use the three dropdown fields to set the appropriate difference.
Please tick the e-mail notification box only if you cannot use the RSS Feed (see below). Using the notification may result in a lot of e-mail traffic, not only to you personally, but the forum’s e-mail server may be classified as a bulk-mailer / spammer and blacklisted – which could affect all users.
Edit settings opens a new form.
Changing control_refresh from the default no to yes automatically refreshes the main page of the forum every twenty minutes – a convenient method to note new posts, which will show up on top of the page.
Footer of the main page before (default) and after (refresh set):
Edit subscriptions opens a new form (example for User Helmut).
Helmut clicked
Subscribe thread in the top-level post #19166 (first row) and opted for ‘E-mail notification if there has been a reply to this message’ in post #7022 (second row). To cancel a subscription select no. You can change the notification level of the second subscription from Posting to Thread in order to be not only notified about replies to your own post but about all new replies within the entire thread. Note that for the first subscription it is not possible to decrease the level (the button is greyed out).
- RSS Feeds
The forum offers a set of RSS 2.0 feeds.
Use the button
in the lower right hand corner to access the Forum’s general RSS feed covering all categories (https://forum.bebac.at/rss.php).
Windows users may click the right mouse button to copy the link and insert it in their preferred aggregator / feed reader. News readers are integrated in most browsers (e.g., Firefox 2+, Opera 7.5+, Safari 2+, IE 7+/Edge). Chrome requires an RSS extension.
If you want to subscribe to the feed of a particular category, use following URLs:
- Frequently asked Questions
- May I post messages without registration?
No. Although you may read public messages without registration, you have to register in order to post new messages (and to reply old ones as well).
Note that you must allow cookies (see FAQ #12) in order to register and login. If you are wearing a tin foil hat while reading this sentence (meditating about ‘same-origin policy’, right?), sorry, no way.
- I registered already but cannot login!
Registration is a two step process due to security reasons: Most likely you did not activate your account within 24 hours after submitting your credentials. For details see Registration (especially Step 2).
Sometimes e-mail servers (or even DNS-routers) may be offline preventing a timely delivery of the activation e-mail (though the forum’s software tries to deliver e-mails for one week) or you simply did not look up your e-mails (don’t forget your junk-mail folder…). If you received the e-mail more than 24 hours after the first step in the registration process and click on the activation link, you will get this response:
In such a case you will have to register again (starting over with Step 1).
See also FAQs #15 and #16. - Is it possible to edit my message after it is already posted?
Editing is limited to 24 hours after the original submission. Open your post and click
(mix view: left bar of the post, thread view: below the post). We recommend to use the preview function to keep editing of already posted messages at a minimum.
Altering a post after it has been replied to robs the reply of its original context. It can also be confusing. Before you edit, consider taking the following steps:
Use strike-through or a placeholder to show the post has been altered.
- Strike-through is marked with BBCodes [s]like this[/s] and ends up like this.
- A placeholder is a phrase such as “[Thoughtless comment removed by the author]”. This will ensure that your fellow repliers’ irritated responses still make sense.
In turn, they may then wish to edit their reply with something like, “[Irritated response to deleted comment removed]”.
- Is it possible to change the category and/or subject of my message?
Yes; open your post and click
. Now you can change both the category and the subject line.
- May I contact other users by e-mail?
E-mail addresses of users are not published in the forum. Only if a user has agreed to be contacted by other users, it is possible to send a personal message by means of a contact form.
Click ‘User’ in the main page: A list of registered users opens. If a user has agreed to receive personal messages from other members of the forum, a letter
is displayed next to his/her name. Clicking opens a contact form, or within an opened post click on the User’s name in the top left hand corner; the profile opens, where the icon shows the agreement for receiving messages.
- What should I do if I have forgotten my password?
Click 
Log in in the top right hand corner of the main page; the login form opens.
Now click Forgot your password?
A new form opens.
Provide your user name and the e-mail address you used in registration; a new password will be sent to you.
- Where can I get such a forum?
This forum requires PHP ≥5.x and a MySQL ≥5.x database installation on the server to generate HTML5. The scripts were mainly written by Alex and Auge. The version used here is a modified 1.8β, licensed under GNU GPL–2.
For the latest official version 1.7.11 see here (requires PHP ≥5.2 and MySQL ≥5.5) and for the current 2.x here (requires PHP ≥5.4). - What is the difference between Mix and Thread Views?
Mix View (main page and opened thread):
The opened ‘Mix View’ displays all posts within a thread in a single page (paragraph’s left indentation denotes the structure of the tread); this is the default.
Thread View (main page and opened post):
The opened ‘Thread View’ displays a single post per page and below a tree-like structure to select individual posts.
You may choose between these types according to your personal preferences, either by using the links in the header (of both the forum’s overview or within a post) or set your preferred view as a standard in your personal profile.
- I don’t see buttons to insert links/smilies or to upload images.
Automatic insert of BBCodes requires JavaScript. If you are not allowed to use JavaScript due to your company’s security policy, please insert BBCodes manually. A list of BBCodes is given here and (most common ones) to the right of the textarea.
Most common three-character smilies will be automatically translated into icons, e.g., ;-) will be substituted by
, whereas two-character ones like ;) will be given as such.
Alternatively you can paste Emojis (e.g., from this site; examples: 😉 😎 😡). However, see the warning above.For technical reasons uploading images requires JavaScript.
- Which time difference should I enter in my profile?
With active JavaScript the time difference is estimated from your system clock (see the example above).
We are working on a solution calculating the time difference to the server’s time by giving your location. In the meantime without JavaScript use the Time Zone Converter. For an example of its use see our test page. - How can I upload files?
Apart from images (see the procedure above) uploading binary files (e.g., PDF, XLS(x), PPT(x), DOC(x)) is not supported for security reasons. If you want to share files with other members, either activate the e-mail function in your profile (so that others may contact you directly) or upload the file to a webhoster. Then you can link to the file in your post (see above).
- What are cookies for?
The forum uses so-called cookies in several places. Cookies are used to enhance the forum’s accessibility, and make it more effective and safer. Cookies are stored on your system and kept in your browser’s cache. Cookies do no harm your computer and do not contain any viruses. The methods of storing cookies differ between browsers. Examples on Windows XP:
IE saves cookies as text-files at
C:\Documents and Settings\{Username}\Cookies\{Username}@forum.bebac[X]
Firefox saves cookies in an SQLite database at
C:\Documents and Settings\{Username}\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{8 random characters}.default\cookies.sqlite- If you opted for automatic login, a cookie is placed on your system. The cookie expires after thirty days; if you didn’t log in for thirty days, for security reasons you have to log in with your credentials (User name and password) again. This is the same mechanism Wikipedia uses for registered editors. Do not use this option on a public system!
- If you are not registered or did not log in, the last mode of the Forum (Mix- or Thread-View) is saved and will be used in the next session.
- A ‘session-cookie’ contains an encrypted (MD5) key delivered by the server. Every transmission from your browser to the server contains this key in order to validate it (thus preventing a man-in-the-middle attack). The session-cookie is automatically deleted after your visit.
- Is spell-checking provided?
Following browsers observe spell- and grammar-checking: Chrome 9+, IE / Edge 10.0+, Firefox 2.0+, Safari 5.1+, Opera 10.5+. Doubtful words (i.e., not contained in the English dictionary) will be underlined by a wavy line.
- I got a “403 Forbidden” response or an empty page in registration. What shall I do?
This response is triggered by our anti-spam software (amongst others StopForumSpam and BOTSCOUT.COM). Spam has been previously sent from your e-mail account (not necessarily by yourself; consider the possibility of e-mail spoofing) or IP-address.
- If you have a static IP-address we can add you to our whitelist. Use this tool to identify your IP and contact us.
- If you have a dynamic address (e.g., narrow-band connections, smartphones) you have to register from a static address (likely your company, university) and another e-mail address.
Once registered, you can log in from a dynamic IP-address as well.
Sorry for the inconvenience, but the forum is the target of about twenty registration attempts a day from known spammers. - I did not receive the activation e-mail. How to proceed?
Sometimes the activation e-mail is classified as spam by your e-mail client or your provider. Please check not only the spam/junk-mail folder in your e-mail client but also the one on your server (you have to log in by webmail).
Rarely the e-mail service provider rejects the e-mail (i.e., it bounces back to us). yahoo.com is one of the examples, whereas country’s addresses (like yahoo.com.in) generally seem to work. Although we are notified about the rejection, we have no means to contact you. We suggest to register again with an e-mail address from another provider (e.g., gmail.com).
- Why are my credentials not accepted any more?
If you were not active in the forum for a couple of years (no logins) your account is deleted in order to streamline the database. Please register again.
- Why am I blocked?
If you try to make a new entry or reply to a post and reveive the message:
Blocked!
The user XXX is currently blocked and cannot make any posts!you repeatedly violated the Forum’s Policy and were blocked from posting by one of the Forum’s admins/moderators after ignoring pertinent warnings. For a list of attitudes which lead to blocking see this post (please login first).
- A temporary block will be lifted after three weeks.
- An infinite block was imposed very rarely on notorious spammers only; we hope that you will not join this party.
- Why shrinks my enlarged message-area after clicking Preview ?
Congratulations for using a CSS 3.0 compliant browser!
Resizing is performed at the client’s side (i.e., in your browser). HTML requires attributes for width and heigth. Since the server cannot ‘know’ what happened at the client’s side, the message-area is delivered again with its defaults (30 lines of 95 monospaced characters). - Why do my posts show a wrong date/time?
In Austria the local time changes twice a year (on the last Sunday of March from CET to CEST and on the last Sunday of October back to CET). If you did not set any time difference, posts will be shown with the server’s local time. Please set the correct time difference in your profile (see above and FAQ #10).
- What do the stars below a user name mean?
There is no rating system like in social media and it’s unlikely that we will implement one. When you hover over the stars you will see the number of posts of the user. The stars give a hint how active a user is:
☆ <25
★ <100
★★ <500
★★★ ≥500
Few stars imply nothing. It is a possible that a user registered just recently and made only one – though groundbreaking – post… Another example is user jdetlor with 14 extremely helpful posts.
On the other hand, if you receive a reply from one of the five top posters (responsible for ≈46% of posts) consider it, even if you don’t like it. At least you can be sure that it is not plain nonsense.
Retired users are shown as:
● - I want to delete my account. How to proceed?
There are two options.
- ‘Retirement’ (as the former moderator Jaime did):
Contact the forum’s maintainer and we will block the account, which prevents new users to register with your name. In this case the stars below your user name (see above) will still be shown and your profile accessible to other users. Should you change your mind later, we can reactivate your account. - ‘Deletion’:
Contact the forum’s maintainer and we will delete the account. Note that this process cannot be reversed (your profile and user_id will be deleted from the database). In posts below your name ● will be shown.
Although technically it is possible to delete all (or some) of your posts, we strongly discourage it. Any deletion of posts will delete replies as well (the ‘child elements’ in the forum’s structure). This will also force posts referring indirectly to yours out of context, which is extremely impolite. If you want to go that way, please provide strong evidence why you consider it necessary.
- ‘Retirement’ (as the former moderator Jaime did):
- Why is the link Post reply missing in a post?
Note the information
Thread locked in all posts of the thread. It means that the thread is closed for further replies; start a new thread and – possibly – link to the locked one (see above for the procedure).
- How can I add an avatar to my posts?
Currently, you cannot add an avatar to your profile yourself.
Contact the forum’s maintainer, give your user name, and attach a square image (at least 48 × 48 px) to the e-mail. Note that animated GIFs and PNGs are not acceptable. - My question is not addressed – can I contact the administrator for clarification?
Click 📧 Admin contact in the lower left hand corner of any page.
A contact form opens, where you may send your request to the administrator of the forum.
- May I post messages without registration?
- Final Remark
Please understand, that I (the Forum’s maintainer Helmut Schütz) generally will not engage in personal e-mail conversations; this was one of my main motivations for establishing the BE/BA Forum.
Please register to the Forum and ask your question there; I – or another member of the Forum – will answer, time allowing.
If you send personal e-mails to BEBAC (either by your e-mail client or via the contact form), we assume that you want to initate a professional relationship based on our consultancy services. Our rates and fees are available upon request.
The Bioequivalence / Bioavailability Forum is hosted by
Ing. Helmut Schütz
Established 2004-07-30 | last update 2019-11-27 | document 2006-04-24 | modified 2024-06-16 