A Neural Network Approach to Synthetic Control Chart for the Process Mean

In this project, a multivariate synthetic control chart for monitoring the process mean vector of skewed populations using weighted standard deviations has been proposed. The proposed chart incorporates the weighted standard deviation (WSD) method of Chang and Bai (2004) into the standard multivariate synthetic chart of Ghute and Shirke (2008)

A study on the run length properties of the side sensitive group runs double sampling (SSGRDS) control chart

The side sensitive group runs double sampling (SSGRDS) chart incorporates the control charting concepts of the side sensitive group runs (SSGR) and double sampling (DS) charts. The SSGRDS chart which combines the efficiency of its basic charts is an effective approach to increase the speed of mean shift detection. The performance of the SSGRDS chart, based on the average number of observations to signal (ANOS), median number of observations to signal (MNOS) and percentiles of the number of observations to signal (PNOS) is investigated in this paper. Based on the results obtained, it is found that the SSGRDS chart becomes more sensitive in detecting mean shifts with an increase in the size of the process mean shift. With the use of MNOS and PNOS to measure the performance of the SSGRDS chart, the entire run length distribution is considered and this leads to a more complete understanding of the performance of the chart. The findings in this paper will provide a clearer picture on the run length properties of the SSGRDS chart which will facilitate practitioners in using the chart

A Comparison on the MRL Performances of Optimal MEWMA and Optimal MCUSUM Control Charts

The MEWMA (called the multivariate exponentially weighted moving average) chart and the MCUSUM (called the multivariate cumulative sum) chart are used in process monitoring when a quick detection of small or moderate shifts in the mean vector is desired. The primary objective of this study is to compare the performances of the optimal MEWMA and optimal MCUSUM charts based on their median run length (MRL) profiles. The number of quality characteristics considered is p = 2. Two cases are studied, i.e., Case 1 (a shift in only one variable) and Case 2 (a shift in two variables). A Monte Carlo simulation is conducted using Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) to study and compare the MRL performances for various magnitudes of mean shifts when the process is normally distributed. Overall, the results show that the MRL performances of the MEWMA and MCUSUM charts are comparable

Variable sampling interval run sum X‾ chart with estimated process parameters

The X‾ type control chart is often evaluated by assuming the process parameters are known. However, the exact values of process parameters are hardly known and thus Phase-I dataset is needed to estimate them. In this paper, the performance of the variable sampling interval run sum X‾ chart with estimated process parameters is evaluated by using the performance measure of the average of the average time to signal (AATS) and the optimal design of the proposed chart in minimizing the out-of-control AATS is developed. The performance measure of the standard deviation of the average time to signal (SDATS) is then used to identify the number of Phase-I samples (w) needed to have an in-control AATS performance close to its known process parameter case. Results show that large w is needed to minimize the performance gap between known and unknown process parameters cases of the VSI RS X‾ chart

Psychosocial impact of undergoing prostate cancer screening for men with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations.

OBJECTIVES: To report the baseline results of a longitudinal psychosocial study that forms part of the IMPACT study, a multi-national investigation of targeted prostate cancer (PCa) screening among men with a known pathogenic germline mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. PARTICPANTS AND METHODS: Men enrolled in the IMPACT study were invited to complete a questionnaire at collaborating sites prior to each annual screening visit. The questionnaire included sociodemographic characteristics and the following measures: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Impact of Event Scale (IES), 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36), Memorial Anxiety Scale for Prostate Cancer, Cancer Worry Scale-Revised, risk perception and knowledge. The results of the baseline questionnaire are presented. RESULTS: A total of 432 men completed questionnaires: 98 and 160 had mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, respectively, and 174 were controls (familial mutation negative). Participants' perception of PCa risk was influenced by genetic status. Knowledge levels were high and unrelated to genetic status. Mean scores for the HADS and SF-36 were within reported general population norms and mean IES scores were within normal range. IES mean intrusion and avoidance scores were significantly higher in BRCA1/BRCA2 carriers than in controls and were higher in men with increased PCa risk perception. At the multivariate level, risk perception contributed more significantly to variance in IES scores than genetic status. CONCLUSION: This is the first study to report the psychosocial profile of men with BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations undergoing PCa screening. No clinically concerning levels of general or cancer-specific distress or poor quality of life were detected in the cohort as a whole. A small subset of participants reported higher levels of distress, suggesting the need for healthcare professionals offering PCa screening to identify these risk factors and offer additional information and support to men seeking PCa screening

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Optimal designs of exponentially weighted moving average (ewma) control chart with runs rules.

Statistical Quality Control (SQC) techniques are used for continuous quality improvement in manufacturing. The control chart is an important tool in SQC. The Shewhart chart was the first chart proposed in the literature of SQC and it is still being used in process monitoring in today's manufacturing and service industries. Control charts are used to detect the presence of assignable causes so that prompt remedial actions can be taken to remove such problematiccauses in order for the process to return to an in-control situation