A criterion-referenced Web-based test was designed and administered to 256 individuals at 48 randomly sampled National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) member hospitals to determine the reliability of the NDNQI pressure ulcer indicator. Overall κ values for pressure ulcer identification, staging, and sourcing indicate moderate to near perfect reliability. Findings suggest that nur...

The focus of this paper is the development of a Monte Carlo based method for estimating the reliability of structural systems. The use of Monte Carlo methods for system reliability analysis has several attractive features, the most important being that the failure criterion is usually relatively easy to check almost irrespective of the complexity of the system. The flip side of such methods is ...

To improve fault detection reliability, sensor location should be designed according to an optimization criterion with constraints imposed by issues of detectability and identifiability. Reliability requires the minimization of undetectability and false alarm probability due to random factors on sensor readings, which is not only related with sensor readings but also affected by fault propagati...

This paper provides an overview of ULSI interconnect scaling trends and their implications for thermal, reliability and performance issues simultaneously. It shows how interconnect scaling requirements for deep sub-micron (DSM) technologies cause increasing thermal effects. The paper then examines the impact of thermal effects on both interconnect design and electromigration (EM) reliability. S...

T paper presents a biobjective genetic algorithm (GA) to design reliable two-node connected telecommunication networks. Because the exact calculation of the reliability of a network is NP-hard, network designers have been reluctant to use network reliability as a design criterion; however, it is clearly an important aspect. Herein, three methods of reliability assessment are developed: an exact...

We propose a software reliability growth model with testing-effort based on a continuous-state space stochastic process, such as a lognormal process, and conduct its goodness-of-fit evaluation. We also discuss a parameter estimation method of our model. Then, we derive several software reliability assessment measures by the probability distribution of its solution process, and compare our model...

Stopping rules for ascending audiological test procedures were evaluated by Monte Carlo simulation. The stopping rules differed in the minimum number of responses required at a level, whether these responses occurred on half or a majority of the ascending series, and whether all or only the most recent ascending series were considered. For all procedures, shallow psychometric function slopes yi...

Working dog organisations, such as Guide Dogs, need to regularly assess the behaviour of the dogs they train. In this study we developed a questionnaire-style behaviour assessment completed by training supervisors of juvenile guide dogs aged 5, 8 and 12 months old (n = 1,401), and evaluated aspects of its reliability and validity. Specifically, internal reliability, temporal consistency, constr...

BACKGROUND Previous questionnaires targeting older adults' sedentary time have underestimated total sedentary time, possibly by not including all relevant specific sedentary behaviors. The current study aimed to investigate the criterion validity and test-retest reliability of a new questionnaire assessing a comprehensive set of sedentary behaviors. Additionally, we examined whether the criteri...

This paper proposes a method for choosing the best coordinated expansion planning of generation and transmission systems considering an annual outage cost and a probabilistic power system reliability criterion (RLOLEGTS). The objective method minimizes a total cost which are not only an investment budget for constructing new generators and transmission lines but also an annual outage cost. Main...