Objective Structured Assessment

Demonstrated surgical competence greatly decreases errors, increases patient safety, and leads to more favorable patient outcomes. Currently, surgical technical skill assessment measures primarily consist of general global rating scales, procedure- and task-specific checkhsts (first derived from the aviation industry), and the validated and frequently utilized Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills (OSATS), developed... 

Using the MSLT as an objective laboratory assessment of the clinical symptom of sleepiness, as well as abnormal sleep structure, has greatly facilitated the diagnosis, differentiation, and treatment of various disorders of excessive daytime somnolence (EDS). A brief review of its applications is described below. 

Tokunaga J, Takamura N, Ogata K et al (2014) An advanced objective structured clinical examination using patient simulators to evaluate pharmacy students skills in physical assessment. Am... 

FEMA P-58 considers the three basic assessment types discussed in section Performance Objectives and Assessment Methodology. For each of these assessment types, a similar workflow is followed. Structural performance is assessed with NRHA (or other methods) and is quantified both in terms of coUapse fragility (probability distribution of the ground motion level required to cause collapse) and probability... 

Assessing the effectiveness and reliability of Acoustic Emission (AE) in continuous, on-line monitoring of the structural integrity of critical thermal power plant components, such as steam headers and steamline sections, is the main objective of the work reported in this paper. This is part of the work carried within the BRITE - EURAM 6056 "SIMON" Project from 10.1993 to 9.1997 with the support of the EU Commission. The "SIMON" Project Consortium included CISE [I, coordinator], MITSUI BABCOCK ENERGY [UK] HERIOT WATT University [UK], PROET / EDP[P]andENEL[I],... 

The structure/property relationships in materials subjected to shock-wave deformation is physically very difficult to conduct and complex to interpret due to the dynamic nature of the shock process and the very short time of the test. Due to these imposed constraints, most real-time shock-process measurements are limited to studying the interactions of the transmitted waves arrival at the free surface. To augment these in situ wave-profile measurements, shock-recovery techniques were developed in the late 1950s to assess experimentally the residual effects of shock-wave compression on materials. The object of soft-recovery experiments is to examine the terminal structure/property relationships of a material that has been subjected to a known uniaxial shock history, then returned to an ambient pressure... 

The strongest verification for a 3D-protein model comes from the experimental 3D-structure. This is the objective of the Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction, CASP ( http //predic tioncenter.org), where the structural models are made in advance of the experimental structure of a particular protein. 

Because the objective of this work was to assess the benefits of encapsulation, it was decided to opt for one structural class of biocide. The biocides selected for this purpose were based on the isothiazolinone structure. 2 Examples include 2-octyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (OIT), 4,5-dichloro-2-octyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (DCOIT), 5-chloro-2-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (CIT) and 2-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (MIT) (Figure 1). 

The development of a new environmental quality objective with the aim to preserve the biologic community, both in its functional and structural features, leads to the need for more refined and sensitive approaches for assessing environmental risk. The main issues and milestones established in the WFD are indicated... 

When it comes to the covariance structure, however, problems become acute. Total inversion requires that a joint probability distribution is known for observations and parameters. This is usually not a problem for observations. The covariance structure among the parameters of the model becomes more obscure how do we estimate the a priori correlation coefficient between age and initial Sr ratio in our isochron example without infringing seriously the objectivity of error assessment When the a priori covariance structure between the observations and the model parameters is estimated, the chances that we actually resort to unsupported and unjustified speculation become immense. Total inversion must be well-understood in order for it not to end up as a formal exercise of consistency between a priori and a posteriori estimates. 

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