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Control Literature (control + literature)
Selected AbstractsPublication bias: a concern just for drug prevention or for the entire drug control literature?DRUG AND ALCOHOL REVIEW, Issue 4 2008Jonathan P. Caulkins No abstract is available for this article. [source] Functional benefits of predator species diversity depend on prey identityECOLOGICAL ENTOMOLOGY, Issue 5 2005A. Wilby Abstract., 1.,Determining the functional significance of species diversity in natural enemy assemblages is a key step towards prediction of the likely impact of biodiversity loss on natural pest control processes. While the biological control literature contains examples in which increased natural enemy diversity hinders pest control, other studies have highlighted mechanisms where pest suppression is promoted by increased enemy diversity. 2.,This study aimed to test whether increased predator species diversity results in higher rates of predation on two key, but contrasting, insect pest species commonly found in the rice ecosystems of south-east Asia. 3.,Glasshouse experiments were undertaken in which four life stages of a planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens) and a moth (Marasmia patnalis) were caged with single or three-species combinations of generalist predators. 4.,Generally, predation rates of the three-species assemblages exceeded expectation when attacking M. patnalis, but not when attacking N. lugens. In addition, a positive effect of increased predator species richness on overall predation rate was found with M. patnalis but not with N. lugens. 5.,The results are consistent with theoretical predictions that morphological and behavioural differentiation among prey life stages promotes functional complementarity among predator species. This indicates that emergent species diversity effects in natural enemy assemblages are context dependent; they depend not only on the characteristics of the predators species, but on the identity of the species on which they prey. [source] Evaluation of water quality using acceptance sampling by variablesENVIRONMETRICS, Issue 4 2003Eric P. Smith Abstract Under section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act, states must identify water segments where loads of pollutants are violating numeric water quality standards. Consequences of misidentification are quite important. A decision that water quality is impaired initiates the total maximum daily load or TMDL planning requirement. Falsely concluding that a water segment is impaired results in unnecessary TMDL planning and pollution control implementation costs. On the other hand, falsely concluding that a segment is not impaired may pose a risk to human health or to the services of the aquatic environment. Because of the consequences, a method is desired that minimizes or controls the error rates. The most commonly applied approach is to use the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s raw score approach in which a stream segment is listed as impaired when greater than 10 per cent of the measurements of water quality conditions exceed a numeric criteria. An alternative to the EPA approach is the binomial test that the proportion exceeding the standard is 0.10 or less. This approach uses the number of samples exceeding the criteria as a test statistic along with the binomial distribution for evaluation and estimation of error rates. Both approaches treat measurements as binary; the values either exceed or do not exceed the standard. An alternative approach is to use the actual numerical values to evaluate standard. This method is referred to as variables acceptance sampling in quality control literature. The methods are compared on the basis of error rates. If certain assumptions are met then the variables acceptance method is superior in the sense that the variables acceptance method requires smaller sample sizes to achieve the same error rates as the raw score method or the binomial method. Issues associated with potential problems with environmental measurements and adjustments for their effects are discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The Administrative Presidency and Bureaucratic Control: Implementing a Research AgendaPRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2009ANDREW RUDALEVIGE As Richard Nathan pointed out in The Administrative Presidency 25 years ago, much contemporary policy making occurs through the execution of the laws and the management process. Thus, the conditions under which administrative power can be effectively exercised are important components of future research. In short, we must revisit an old question: Who controls the bureaucracy? This article sets out a research agenda for doing so by examining a set of related strategies that presidents have utilized in their efforts to assert control over the bureaucracy,namely, centralization, politicization, and reorganization,in the course of linking two strands of literature with significant overlap but little conversation between them: the largely quantitative bureaucratic control literature, and the largely qualitative "politicized presidency" literature focused on presidential structures. Each strand, I suggest, can inform and enrich the other; both would benefit from better measures of inputs, outputs, and, crucially, the processes that connect the two and influence the success of policy implementation. [source] A one-sided MEWMA chart for health surveillanceQUALITY AND RELIABILITY ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL, Issue 5 2008Michael D. Joner Jr Abstract It is often important to rapidly detect an increase in the incidence rate of a given disease or other medical condition. It has been shown that when disease counts are sequentially available from a single region, a univariate control chart designed to detect rate increases, such as a one-sided cumulative sum chart, is very effective. When disease counts are available from several regions at corresponding times, the most efficient monitoring method is not readily apparent. Multivariate monitoring methods have been suggested for dealing with this detection problem. Some of these approaches have shortcomings that have been recently demonstrated in the quality control literature. We discuss these limitations and suggest an alternative multivariate exponentially weighted moving average chart. We compare the average run-length performance of this chart with that of competing methods. We also evaluate the statistical performance of these charts when the actual increase in the disease count rate is different from the one that the chart was optimized to detect quickly. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Maximizing project cash availabilityNAVAL RESEARCH LOGISTICS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 4 2006Joseph G. Szmerekovsky Abstract Consider a project during the life cycle of which there are cash payouts and in-flows. To better meet his financial commitments, the project owner would like to meet all deadlines without running out of cash. We show that the cash availability objective is similar to the total weighted flowtime used to measure work-in-progress performance in the scheduling and inventory control literatures. In this article we provide several specialized solution methods for the problem of minimizing total weighted flowtime in an arbitrary acyclic project network, subject to activity release times and due dates, where the activity weights may be positive or negative and represent cash in- and out-flows. We describe the structure of an optimal solution and provide several efficient algorithms and their complexity based on mincost and maxflow formulations. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006 [source] Composite adaptive and input observer-based approaches to the cylinder flow estimation in spark ignition automotive enginesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADAPTIVE CONTROL AND SIGNAL PROCESSING, Issue 2 2004A. Stotsky Abstract The performance of air charge estimation algorithms in spark ignition automotive engines can be enhanced using advanced estimation techniques available in the controls literature. This paper illustrates two approaches of this kind that can improve the cylinder flow estimation for gasoline engines without external exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). The first approach is based on an input observer, while the second approach relies on an adaptive estimator. Assuming that the cylinder flow is nominally estimated via a speed-density calculation, and that the uncertainty is additive to the volumetric efficiency, the straightforward application of an input observer provides an easy to implement algorithm that corrects the nominal air flow estimate. The experimental results that we report in the paper point to a sufficiently good transient behaviour of the estimator. The signal quality may deteriorate, however, for extremely fast transients. This motivates the development of an adaptive estimator that relies mostly on the feedforward speed-density calculation during transients, while during engine operation close to steady-state conditions, it relies mostly on the adaptation. In our derivation of the adaptive estimator, the uncertainty is modelled as an unknown parameter multiplying the intake manifold temperature. We use the tracking error between the measured and modelled intake manifold pressure together with an appropriately defined prediction error estimate to develop an adaptation algorithm with improved identifiability and convergence rate. A robustness enhancement, via a ,-modification with the ,-factor depending on the prediction error estimate, ensures that in transients the parameter estimate converges to a pre-determined a priori value. In close to steady-state conditions, the ,-modification is rendered inactive and the evolution of the parameter estimate is determined by both tracking error and prediction error estimate. Further enhancements are made by incorporating a functional dependence of the a priori value on the engine operating conditions such as the intake manifold pressure. The coefficients of this function can be learned during engine operation from the values to which the parameter estimate converges in close to steady-state conditions. This feedforward learning functionality improves transient estimation accuracy and reduces the convergence time of the parameter estimate. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | |||||||||||||