Ballot stuffing is the process of illegitimately creating a good reputation and requires a number of colluding fraudsters. With the use of an anonymising network, a single user could pose as many separate users and possibly implement the ballot stuffing scheme without the complexities of managing multiple fraudsters. In this paper we propose a framework that deals with thwarting ballot stuffing...

Performance in proficiency testing (PT) schemes is an objective measure of a laboratory’s best performance. We examined the performance of participants in two parasitology PT schemes in South Africa from 2004 through 2010. The average rates of acceptable scores over the period were 58% and 66% for the stool and blood parasite schemes, respectively. In our setting, participation in PT alone is i...

bonding brackets to the enamel surface has gained much popularity today. new adhesive systems have been introduced and marketed and a considerable increase in research regarding bond strength has been published. a considerable amount of these studies deal with shear bond strength of adhesives designed for orthodontic purpose. previous studies have used variety of test designs. this diversity in...

Laboratory results obtained in different laboratories over lengthy periods of time usually are difficult to compare. In coOperative long-term studies where such results must be pooled, thorough standardization of methods is vital. We describe a program in which comparable plasma cholesterol and glucose analyses have been obtained, by simple methods, in the Netherlands and the Soviet Union inclo...

Establishing the relative value of results within a field of study contributes to advancement of that field. In order to compare across large numbers of results together, the methods and metrics used must be scaled up from existing studies where the number of subjects or cases is small. This scaling provides specific challenges, for example, metrics used in small studies are often shaped by fac...

Replication of the core syndrome factor structure of the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents (ASCA; P.A. McDermott, N.C. Marston, & D.H. Stott, 1993) is reported for a sample of 183 Native American Indian (Ojibwe) children and adolescents from North Central Minnesota. The six ASCA core syndromes produced an identical two-factor solution as the standardization data through principal a...

The paper presents current evidence on the properties of human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells, including origin, proliferative potential, plasticity, stability of karyotype and phenotype, transcriptome, secretome, and immunomodulatory activity. A review of preclinical studies and clinical trials using this cell type is performed. Prospects for the use of mesenchymal stem cells, d...

In the context of the development of prototypic assessment instruments in the areas of cognition, personality, and adaptive functioning, the issues of standardization, norming procedures, and the important psychometrics of test reliability and validity are evaluated critically. Criteria, guidelines, and simple rules of thumb are provided to assist the clinician faced with the challenge of choos...

In this paper we present the development of a methodology for creating multilingual thesauri of period names based on CIDOC CRM, archeological theory and results from Computer Science and Knowledge Representation. Periods are defined by identity criteria (coming from the archaeological evidence) rather than by time and place. A formal model in the form of XML DTD has been developed as a proposa...

1031 ISSN 1743-5889 10.2217/NNM.13.95 © 2013 Future Medicine Ltd Nanomedicine (2013) 8(7), 1031–1033 “What is needed in the field is a set of nanoparticle physicochemical characterization and biological evaluation criteria that allow not only the author, but also the reader, to fully understand the mechanism of activity, interpret experimental data and bring standardization that is required for...