DEFINITION:<br /></p><p>The completed act of processing a material.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>EXAMPLE(S):<br /></p><p>freezing, thawing, spinning, embedding, dividing, aliquot, adding additives or growth factors<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>OTHER NAME(S):<br /></p><p>product manipulation<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>NOTE(S):<br /></p><p>Material process may be performed on any kind of material, such as a specimen, nanomaterial, or biologic. The result of the process may a similar or different kind of material, for instance a specimen may be the result of a specimen processing step (e.g., aliquot or division of a specimen), or alternatively a blood product has anticoagulants added to it to preserve the product. Other processing steps, such as adding growth factor to induce cell growth, may be performed on the blood product.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Note that PerformedMaterialProcessStep inherits two associations that perhaps should be mutually exclusive - 1) the association between a PerformedProcedure and a Product that it uses, and 2) the association between an Activity and an ExperimentalActivityItem that it uses.  <br /></p><p>Question for SMEs:  Should this be made a constraint on this class, or even on a higher level superclass?<br /></p>