Illinois State Cancer Registry : quality control procedures and findings /

"December, 1988."

Water quality assessment of Governor Bond (Greenville New) Lake Bond County, Illinois : 1977-1982.

"IEPA/WPC/84-011." -- Cover.

Statistical methods in quality control /

Mode of access: Internet.

Quality control in AFDC and Medicaid : a report to Congress.

"March 1988."

Air pollution report, Federal facilities: Milwaukee Intrastate Air Quality Control Region.

Mode of access: Internet.

The beta distribution in reliability and quality control /

Bibliography: leaves 41-43.

Control of ordered structure and morphology of large-pore periodic mesoporous organosilicas by inorganic salt

Highly ordered rodlike periodic mesoporous organosilicas (PMO) were successfully synthesized using 1.2-bis(trimethoxysilyl)ethane as an precursor and triblock copolymer P123 as a template at low acid concentration and in the presence of inorganic salts (KCl). The role of acid and salt as well as the effects of synthesis temperature and reactant mole ratio in the control of morphology and the formation of ordered mesostructure was systematically examined. It was found that the addition of inorganic salt can dramatically expand the range of the synthesis parameters to produce highly ordered PMO structure and improve the quality of PMO materials. The morphology of PMOs was significantly dependent on the induction time for precipitation. The uniform PMO rods can only be synthesized in a narrow range of acid and salt concentrations. The results also show that the optimized salt concentration (I M) and low acidity (0.167 M) were beneficial to the formation of not only highly ordered mesostructure but also rodlike morphology. Increasing acidity resulted in fast hydrolysis reaction and short rod or plate-like particles. Highly ordered rod can also be prepared at low temperature (35 degrees C) with high salt amount (1.5 M) or high temperature (45 degrees C) with low salt amount (0.5 M). Optimum reactant molar composition at 40 degrees C is 0.035P123:8KCl:1.34HCI:444H(2)O:1.0bis(trimethoxysilyl)ethane. Lower or higher SiO2/PI23 ratio led to the formation of uniform meso-macropores or pore-blocking effect. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

External audit in the National Health Service in England and Wales:a study of an oversight body's control of auditor remuneration

In the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales an oversight body, the Audit Commission (AC), defines the scope of the external auditors’ work, appoints the auditors and has oversight of their fees and audit quality. This heavily regulated audit regime mitigates some of the deficiencies observed in high profile corporate failures. Independence, it has been argued, is influenced by the total auditor remuneration paid by the client. In this study we examine total auditor remuneration in a regulated market which seeks to ensure audit independence and audit quality. In particular we undertake rigorous analysis of auditor remuneration by the type of auditor: We place emphasis on the differentiation between private sector firms and the AC’s in-house auditors (District Audit). Individual private audit firms charge premiums (up to 16%) for particular audit work in identified locations, but no premiums were found when we examined total auditor remuneration. The regime appears to permit efficient operation of the audit market while safeguarding both audit independence and standards.

Measuring the assessment and counselling provided with the supply of non-prescription asthma reliever medication: a simulated patient study

BACKGROUND: Over one quarter of asthma reliever medications are provided without prescription by community pharmacies in Australia. Evidence that community pharmacies provide these medications with sufficient patient assessment and medication counseling to ensure compliance with the government's Quality Use of Medicines principles is currently lacking. OBJECTIVE: To assess current practice when asthma reliever medication is provided in the community pharmacy setting and to identify factors that correlate with assessment of asthma control. METHODS: Researchers posing as patients visited a sample of Perth metropolitan community pharmacies in May 2007. During the visit, the simulated patient enacted a standardized scenario of someone with moderately controlled asthma who wished to purchase a salbutamol (albuterol) inhaler without prescription. Results of the encounter were recorded immediately after the visit. Regression analysis was performed, with medication use frequency (a marker of asthma control) as the dependent variable. RESULTS: One hundred sixty community pharmacies in the Perth metropolitan area were visited in May 2007. Pharmacists and/or pharmacy assistants provided some form of assessment in 84% of the visits. Counseling was provided to the simulated patients in 24% of the visits. Only 4 pharmacy staff members asked whether the simulated patient knew how to use the inhaler. Significant correlation was found between assessment and/or counseling of reliever use frequency and 3 independent variables: visit length (p < 0.001), number of assessment questions asked (p < 0.001), and the simulated patient who conducted the visit (p < 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Both patient assessment and medication counseling were suboptimal compared with recommended practice when nonprescription asthma reliever medication was supplied in the community pharmacy setting. Pharmacy and pharmacist demographic variables do not appear to affect assessment of asthma control. This research indicates the need for substantial improvements in practice in order to provide reliever medication in line with Quality Use of Medication principles of ensuring safe and effective use of medication.

Adaptive rate control of dedicated short range communications based vehicle networks for road safety applications

Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) is a promising technique for vehicle ad-hoc network (VANET) and collaborative road safety applications. As road safety applications require strict quality of services (QoS) from the VANET, it is crucial for DSRC to provide timely and reliable communications to make safety applications successful. In this paper we propose two adaptive message rate control algorithms for low priority safety messages, in order to provide highly available channel for high priority emergency messages while improve channel utilization. In the algorithms each vehicle monitors channel loads and independently controls message rate by a modified additive increase and multiplicative decrease (AIMD) method. Simulation results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed rate control algorithms in adapting to dynamic traffic load.

Adaptive congestion control of DSRC vehicle networks for collaborative road safety applications

Congestion control is critical for the provisioning of quality of services (QoS) over dedicated short range communications (DSRC) vehicle networks for road safety applications. In this paper we propose a congestion control method for DSRC vehicle networks at road intersection, with the aims of providing high availability and low latency channels for high priority emergency safety applications while maximizing channel utilization for low priority routine safety applications. In this method a offline simulation based approach is used to find out the best possible configurations of message rate and MAC layer backoff exponent (BE) for a given number of vehicles equipped with DSRC radios. The identified best configurations are then used online by an roadside access point (AP) for system operation. Simulation results demonstrated that this adaptive method significantly outperforms the fixed control method under varying number of vehicles. The impact of estimation error on the number of vehicles in the network on system level performance is also investigated.

Design and evaluation of a framework for cooperative and adaptive QoS control of DSRC network for road safety applications

Dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) are a promising vehicle communication technique for collaborative road safety applications (CSA). However, road safety applications require highly reliable and timely wireless communications, which present big challenges to DSRC based vehicle networks on effective and robust quality of services (QoS) provisioning due to the random channel access method applied in the DSRC technique. In this paper we examine the QoS control problem for CSA in the DSRC based vehicle networks and presented an overview of the research work towards the QoS control problem. After an analysis of the system application requirements and the DSRC vehicle network features, we propose a framework for cooperative and adaptive QoS control, which is believed to be a key for the success of DSRC on supporting effective collaborative road safety applications. A core design in the proposed QoS control framework is that network feedback and cross-layer design are employed to collaboratively achieve targeted QoS. A design example of cooperative and adaptive rate control scheme is implemented and evaluated, with objective of illustrating the key ideas in the framework. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed rate control schemes in providing highly available and reliable channel for emergency safety messages. © 2013 Wenyang Guan et al.

Control of the properties of micro-structured waveguides in LiNbO3 fabricated by direct femtosecond laser inscription

This paper reports on buried waveguides fabricated in lithium niobate (LN) by the method of direct femtosecond (fs) laser inscription. 5% MgO doped LiNbO3 was chosen as the host material because of its high quality and damage threshold, as well as relatively low cost. Direct fs inscription by astigmatically shaped beam in crystals usually produces multiple 'smooth' tracks (with reduced refractive index), which encircle the light guiding 'core', thus creating a depressed cladding WG. A high-repetition rate fs laser system was used for inscription at a depth of approximately 500 μm. Using numerical modelling, it was demonstrated that the properties of fs-written WGs can be controlled by the WG geometry. Buried, depressed-cladding WGs in LN host with circular cross-section were also demonstrated. Combining control over the WG dispersion with quasi-phase matching will allow various ultralow-pump-power, highly-efficient, nonlinear light-guiding devices - all in an integrated optics format.

Cognitive Approach in Castings’ Quality Control

Every year production volume of castings grows, especially grows production volume of non-ferrous metals, thanks to aluminium. As a result, requirements to castings quality also increase. Foundry men from all over the world put all their efforts to manage the problem of casting defects. In this article the authors present an approach based on the use of cognitive models that help to visualize inner cause-and-effect relations leading to casting defects in the foundry process. The cognitive models mentioned comprise a diverse network of factors and their relations, which together thoroughly describe all the details of the foundry process and their influence on the appearance of castings’ defects and other aspects.. Moreover, the article contains an example of a simple die casting model and results of simulation. Implementation of the proposed method will help foundry men reveal the mechanism and the main reasons of casting defects formation.

Control of the in-cavity dynamics in mode-locked fibre lasers

At the level of fundamental research, fibre lasers provide convenient and reproducible experimental settings for the study of a variety of nonlinear dynamical processes, while at the applied research level, pulses with different and optimised features – e.g., in terms of pulse duration, temporal and/or spectral intensity profile, energy, repetition rate and emission bandwidth – are sought with the general constraint of developing efficient cavity architectures. In this talk, we review our recent progress on the realisation of different regimes of pulse generation in passively mode-locked fibre lasers through control of the in-cavity propagation dynamics. We report on the possibility to achieve both parabolic self-similar and triangular pulse shaping in a mode-locked fibre laser via adjustment of the net normal dispersion and integrated gain of the cavity [1]. We also show that careful control of the gain/loss parameters of a net-normal dispersion laser cavity provides the means of achieving switching among Gaussian pulse, dissipative soliton and similariton pulse solutions in the cavity [2,3]. Furthermore, we report on our recent theoretical and experimental studies of pulse shaping by inclusion of an amplitude and phase spectral filter into the cavity of a laser. We numerically demonstrate that a mode-locked fibre laser can operate in dif- ferent pulse-generation regimes, including parabolic, flattop and triangular waveform generations, depending on the amplitude profile of the in-cavity spectral filter [4]. An application of technique using a flat-top spectral filter is demonstrated to achieve the direct generation of sinc-shaped optical Nyquist pulses of high quality and of a widely tuneable bandwidth from the laser [5]. We also report on a recently-developed versa- tile erbium-doped fibre laser, in which conventional soliton, dispersion-managed soli- ton (stretched-pulse) and dissipative soliton mode-locking regimes can be selectively and reliably targeted by programming different group-velocity dispersion profiles and bandwidths on an in-cavity programmable filter [6]. References: 1. S. Boscolo and S. K. Turitsyn, Phys. Rev. A 85, 043811 (2012). 2. J. Peng et al., Phys. Rev. A 86, 033808 (2012). 3. J. Peng, Opt. Express 24, 3046-3054 (2016). 4. S. Boscolo, C. Finot, H. Karakuzu, and P. Petropoulos, Opt. Lett. 39, 438-441 (2014). 5. S. Boscolo, C. Finot, and S. K. Turitsyn, IEEE Photon. J. 7, 7802008 (2015). 6. J. Peng and S. Boscolo, Sci. Rep. 6, 25995 (2016).