EQUIVALENCE TESTING IN AGRICULTURE EXPERIMENTS

Equivalence testing is a relatively new area of research in statistics. It\u27s development has been motivated in large part by the need for statistical methods for determining if generic drugs are bioequivalent to their name brand counterparts. The application of equivalence testing methods to data resulting from experiments and surveys unrelated to drug development, and in particular agriculture-related experiments, is infrequent and possibly non-existent. These methods provide useful alternatives to the analysis methods currently being used. In this paper, an overview of the philosophy of equivalence testing and a review of equivalence testing methods are presented. Additionally, experimental situations for which equivalence testing would be appropriate are discussed. Examples that illustrate the application of the philosphy of equivalence testing to experimental designs commonly used in agriculture research are also presented

Psychische Belastung und Beanspruchung am Arbeitsplatz : inklusive DIN EN ISO 10075-1 bis -3

Dieser Titel beleuchtet aus Sicht von Praktikern und Wissenschaftlern das Thema psychische Belastung am Arbeitsplatz. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Norm DIN EN ISO 10075, deren drei Teile als Anhang abgedruckt sind. Aus dem Inhalt: •Psychische Belastung und Beanspruchung - neue Erkenntnisse und Ansätze •Entwicklung und aktuelle Bedeutung der Normenreihe DIN EN ISO 10075 •Modelle der psychischen Belastung und Beanspruchung •Psychische Belastung und Beanspruchung - Erweiterungsmöglichkeiten des Normkonzeptes ISO 10075 •Merkmale und Folgen von Emotionsarbeit •Psychische Belastung und Beanspruchung - eine betriebliche Herausforderung? •Burnout und Arbeitsengagement Aufgrund der gravierenden Veränderungen am Arbeitsplatz in den vergangenen Jahren ist in der Bevölkerung ein starker Anstieg der psychischen Belastung und Beanspruchung festzustellen. Gleichzeitig nimmt insbesondere im Dienstleistungsbereich der Anteil von Tätigkeiten mit hohen emotionalen Anforderungen stetig zu. Inzwischen liegen erste Befunde zu langfristigen Beanspruchungsfolgen und deren möglichen Verursachungsmuster vor. Es konnte ein direkter Zusammenhang zwischen der Arbeitsgestaltung und dem von Krankenkassen seit Jahren berichteten Anstieg der auf psychische Erkrankungen zurückzuführenden Arbeitsunfähigkeitstage festgestellt werden. Mit der Normenreihe DIN EN ISO 10075 "Ergonomische Grund lagen bezüglich psychischer Arbeitsbelastung" wurde ein Standard etabliert, der die Unsicherheiten im Umgang mit der Problematik durch die Vereinheitlichung des Sprachgebrauchs erheblich abzubauen half. Um sicherzustellen, dass die drei Teile der DIN EN ISO 10075 auch zukünftig eine Hilfe für die Betriebe darstellen, sollte der Wandel in der Arbeitswelt ebenso wie neuere Erkenntnisse der Arbeitswissenschaft berücksichtigt werden. Unternehmer, Fachkräfte für Arbeitssicherheit, Arbeitsmediziner, Arbeitspsychologen, Personalmanager können sich in diesem Band bestens über Grundlagen, Perspektiven und aktuelle Normungsaktivitäten informieren

Research Issues in the Renovation of Legacy Systems

. The goals of this tutorial are to: (i) give the reader a quick introduction to the field of software renovation as a whole; (ii) show that many techniques from compiler technology and formal methods can be applied; (iii) demonstrate that research should be driven by real-life, industrial, case studies; and (iv) indicate that many challenging problems are still unsolved. During the presentation of this turorial, demonstrations will be given of several of the case studies discussed here. 1 Introduction Software renovation is using tomorrow's technology to bring yesterday's software to the level of today. In this paper, we provide an overview of this research area. We start (in this section) by exploring the need for software renovation. Moreover, we provide definitions of the basic terminology, and pointers to the most important literature. We then proceed to discuss two aspects of software renovation in more detail. In Section 2 we study how we can increase our understanding of..

Mortality after surgery in Europe: a 7 day cohort study

Background: Clinical outcomes after major surgery are poorly described at the national level. Evidence of heterogeneity between hospitals and health-care systems suggests potential to improve care for patients but this potential remains unconfirmed. The European Surgical Outcomes Study was an international study designed to assess outcomes after non-cardiac surgery in Europe.Methods: We did this 7 day cohort study between April 4 and April 11, 2011. We collected data describing consecutive patients aged 16 years and older undergoing inpatient non-cardiac surgery in 498 hospitals across 28 European nations. Patients were followed up for a maximum of 60 days. The primary endpoint was in-hospital mortality. Secondary outcome measures were duration of hospital stay and admission to critical care. We used χ² and Fisher’s exact tests to compare categorical variables and the t test or the Mann-Whitney U test to compare continuous variables. Significance was set at p<0·05. We constructed multilevel logistic regression models to adjust for the differences in mortality rates between countries.Findings: We included 46 539 patients, of whom 1855 (4%) died before hospital discharge. 3599 (8%) patients were admitted to critical care after surgery with a median length of stay of 1·2 days (IQR 0·9–3·6). 1358 (73%) patients who died were not admitted to critical care at any stage after surgery. Crude mortality rates varied widely between countries (from 1·2% [95% CI 0·0–3·0] for Iceland to 21·5% [16·9–26·2] for Latvia). After adjustment for confounding variables, important differences remained between countries when compared with the UK, the country with the largest dataset (OR range from 0·44 [95% CI 0·19 1·05; p=0·06] for Finland to 6·92 [2·37–20·27; p=0·0004] for Poland).Interpretation: The mortality rate for patients undergoing inpatient non-cardiac surgery was higher than anticipated. Variations in mortality between countries suggest the need for national and international strategies to improve care for this group of patients.Funding: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, European Society of Anaesthesiology