1. How do I become involved in the ECARUCA project?
2. Are there any costs involved in receiving an account?
3. How is patient privacy guaranteed?
4. What if my laboratory is unable to define the breakpoints precisely?
5. I cannot seem to run a search on clinical features (blank screen).
6. I cannot submit clinical data for a case (blank screen).
7. I'm using a modem, and the clinical feature search screen appears blank.
8. I cannot run the clinical feature search or case submission programs and get an error indicating that a firewall is blocking access to these programs.
9. After I click a link, I am returned to the login page and informed that the session has expired.
10. In the page "Search by chromosome aberration", there is no response after I click/select the search button.
11. In the page "Search by clinical feature(s)", there is no response after I click/select the search button in the applet.

1. How do I become involved in the ECARUCA project?

Professionals in genetics can request an account & password to make it possible to query the database online and submit cases. ECARUCA will check the name & institute of everyone who applies for an account. Every (cyto) geneticist can independently submit cases to ECARUCA. The clinical data can either be included directly in this submission, or be submitted later on by the paediatrician.

2. Are there any costs involved in receiving an account?

No, the account is free of charge. What we do ask is that account holders not only take information out of the database, but submit cases as well. If the number of submitted cases is comparitively lower than the number of queries from the database, ECARUCA reserves herself the right to stop the account membership.

3. How is patient privacy guaranteed?

Patientdata is only accessible for accountholders and not for every random internet user. Furthermore, ECARUCA collects data of patients anonymously; only date of birth and country are processed.

4. What if my laboratory is unable to define the breakpoints precisely?

In case of lack of finances and/or technical equipment, it is possible to send patient material for detailed examinations to Prof. A. Schinzel in Zurich. For further details, see page Cytogenetic Verification at this website.

5. I cannot seem to run a search on clinical features (blank screen).

6. I cannot submit clinical data for a case (blank screen).

Please contact your system administrator to carry out the instructions below.

Both of these screens are "Java applet" programs. This type of program requires that you have the correct version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed (not only downloaded) on your local computer.

You can get the JRE (free) from the following url:

http://www.java.com/getjava/

To run the applet programs, you require the Sun Java JRE, at least version 1.4.0_01. We have tested this version of the JRE with both IE6 and Firefox/Netscape 7 under various versions of Windows (98, 2000, XP).

We hope to run further tests on Unix/Linux and Mac OS soon and we will report any issues with these platforms.

7. I'm using a modem, and the clinical feature search screen appears blank.

Due to the nature of Java applets, the program is required to fully download before you can see the interface for searching. Depending on your Internet connection, this may take several seconds. We have tested the download times on relatively slow modems (40-56K), and the applet can take up to 30 seconds to load. The download time is much quicker on ISDN or corporate/academic networks.

8. I cannot run the clinical feature search or case submission programs and get an error indicating that a firewall is blocking access to these programs.

It is possible that your local hospital network is protected by a firewall, which will not allow any applets to be loaded and installed on your local network.

The applet is not being blocked by the firewall at Nijmegen. You will need to talk to your local network administrator about this.

9. After I click a link, I am returned to the login page and informed that the session has expired.

This could happen if you have not interacted with the web site for a while. Also, it may be possible that your default web browser does not allow cookies. You need to configure your web browser to receive cookies from our website.

If you are using Internet Explorer, you need to:

1. Go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Privacy tab -> Web Sites section -> Edit...
2. Type "www.azn.nl" in the field of "address of Web site"
3. Click "allow", then "OK" and "OK" to exit

To configure cookies for Netscape:

Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Cookies

And configure as appropriate.

10. In the page "Search by chromosome aberration", there is no response after I click/select the search button.

11. In the page "Search by clinical feature(s)", there is no response after I click/select the search button in the applet.

Both of these web pages will display the search results in a popup window. Please make sure that your web browser is not configured to block popup windows. This is most likely to happen with Netscape, in which case you should adjust your browser setting in the following way:

Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Popup Window -> Allow popups