Assessing full-time work

At present, this suggested nucleus of methods and equipment seems to be the optimum mix for a small steroid division within a routine department of clinical chemistry. A further step into GLC or doubleisotope methods should be taken only if an addition to the group of at least one professional and two technicians is contemplated. This holds independently of capital cost. A reasonable range of GLC methods needs the full-time service of at least this number of staff. Even then, this step should be taken with caution and after a careful assessment of the real return. Thus if we consider the, by and large, excellent electron-cap-ture-GLC method of van der Molen and Groen (V2), the two extra technicians could achieve 40 determinations of plasma testosterone and progesterone per week. (No time allowed for technical backup work.) The same two technicians using Johansson s rapid modification (J4)... 

Since my major purpose was to lecture, I had little time to gather information for a comprehensive survey. Thus, the above accounts on research activities are by no means complete or representative. The great numbers of research institutes, large and small, and the lack of published work would have made a comprehensive survey impossible even had I been able to devote full time to that purpose. Thus, it is difficult for me to assess their stage of achievements in adhesive research. 

The highest quality reference materials are certified for the concentration values of the constituent(s) of interest, reflecting high confidence in the value s accuracy and the thorough investigation of all known or suspected sources of bias. Used appropriately (e.g., Roper et al., 2001 Zschunke, 2000), these certified values provide an effective means to ensure comparability (both among laboratories and over time). It is not always practical, however, to undertake the work required to produce a certified value in many such cases, a value can be carefully determined, but insufficient information exists to assess the associated uncertainty. This information value is nevertheless of substantial interest to other users of the reference material. It can, for example, allow laboratories to compare results even though full traceability is impractical. 

In some diseases a simple ordinal scale or a VAS scale cannot describe the full spectrum of the disease. There are many examples of this including depression and erectile dysfunction. Measurement in such circumstances involves the use of multiple ordinal rating scales, often termed items. A patient is scored on each item and the summation of the scores on the individual items represents an overall assessment of the severity of the patient s disease status at the time of measurement. Considerable amoimts of work have to be done to ensure the vahdity of these complex scales, including investigations of their reprodu-cibihty and sensitivity to measuring treatment effects. It may also be important in international trials to assess to what extent there is cross-cultural imiformity in the use and imderstand-ing of the scales. Complex statistical techniques such as principal components analysis and factor analysis are used as part of this process and one of the issues that need to be addressed is whether the individual items should be given equal weighting. 

At this time, many of the parameters listed above have not been measured for nonlinear organic materials. Measurement will be necessary for an assessment of the full potential of such materials. To date, only a nonlinear directional coupler has been implemented in a nonlinear polymer, (poly-4BCMU). For this device at 1060 nm, the nonlinear response was dominated by two-photon absorption, and some limited switching attributable to absorption changes was observed (27). More recent work at 1030 nm appeared to show switching attributable to refractive nonlinearities (28). Clearly there is much progress to be made. 

In order to conceive the contributions of the various species to every band, the spectra are deconvoluted. After deconvolution of the recorded spectrum into a sum of Gaussian curves, the different contributing signals can be integrated separately. For quantitative assessment some contact time and cross-polarization criteria have to be met. Optimal conditions are obtained from a variable contact time experiment. Full details have been worked out by Pfleiderer23 and Caravajal et al.21,22 In general, quantitative correlations should only be made for species within one spectrum and not... 

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