A method and apparatus for Flow Injection Analysis into Atmospheric Pressure Ion sources including Electrospray and Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionization sources whereby the sampling and spray needles are one and the same. The guiding structure includes a hopper that dispenses discs one at a time, a guiding device that guides and aligns the dispensed discs, and a holding device for the discs that is located at the lower section of the guiding passageway. The post-detection SNRs of the detected data streams are estimated, and each SNR that exceeds a setpoint is identified. The database of participant information includes participant profiles for a plurality of participants in the activity. The virtual network total hub value is the sum of a hub value for each base node and a hub value for the new node. When an I picture of an MPEG2 bit stream is to be converted into a P-VOP of an MPEG4 bit stream based on an estimated value of the complexity for each VOP, a scene change detection section detects whether or not the I picture includes a scene change.