OBJECTIVE Accurate laboratory testing is a critical component of dengue surveillance and control. The objective of this programme was to assess dengue diagnostic proficiency among national-level public health laboratories in the World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific Region. METHODS Nineteen national-level public health laboratories performed routine dengue diagnostic assays on a pro...

Standaridizing test results for rheumatoid factor by comparing results obtained for an unknown with results obtained for a serum reference preparation decreased variance between laboratories, as measured in the Center for Disease Control proficiency testing program, by 77%. The amount of improvement was also estimated by the type of test and by the manufacturer's product. Standardization result...

In 2015, UNAIDS launched the 90-90-90 targets aimed at increasing the number of people infected with HIV to become aware of their status, access antiretroviral therapies and ultimately be virally suppressed. To achieve these goals, countries may need to scale up point-of-care (POC) testing in addition to strengthening central laboratory services. While decentralising testing increases patient a...

AIMS The accuracy of ribotyping and antibiotic resistance analysis (ARA) for prediction of sources of faecal bacterial pollution in an urban southern California watershed was determined using blinded proficiency samples. METHODS AND RESULTS Antibiotic resistance patterns and HindIII ribotypes of Escherichia coli (n = 997), and antibiotic resistance patterns of Enterococcus spp. (n = 3657) wer...

The data accumulated from 1969 to 1979 in the Diagnostic Immunology portion of the Center for Disease Control Proficiency Testing Program were evaluated for evidence of change in performance among the participating laboratories. Evidence of improved performance was found for the rubella, rheumatoid factor, tularemia, quantitative immunoglobulin (immunoglobulin G, A, and M), and hepatitis B test...

HIV-1 viral load (VL) levels are used for monitoring disease progression and antiretroviral therapy outcomes in HIV-infected patients. To assess the performance of laboratories conducting HIV-1 VL testing in resource-limited settings, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention implemented a voluntary, free-of-charge, external quality assurance program using dried tube specimens (DTSs)....

the present study seeks to investigate the potentiality of the translation task as a testing method for measuring reading comprehension. to achieve this objective, two types of translation tests, open-ended and multiple-choice tests, and two types of reading comprehension tests, multiple-choice reading comprehension and open-ended cloze tests were developed in this study. the reliability of the...

Laboratories are increasingly requested to perform CYP2C19 genetic testing when managing clopidogrel therapy, especially in patients with acute coronary syndrome undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention. To ensure high quality molecular testing and ascertain that the referring clinician has the correct information for CYP2C19 genotype-directed antiplatelet therapy, a proficiency testing sc...

This paper investigates digital data hiding schemes. The concept of information hiding will be explained at first, and its traits, requirements, and applications will be described subsequently. In order to design a digital data hiding system, one should first become familiar with the concepts and criteria of information hiding. Having knowledge about the host signal, which may be audio, image, ...

Placement tests, along with the growing interest in their validation, have become increasingly important in English as a Second Language programs. To this end, the present paper illustrates procedures in designing a placement test and using it to evaluate students’ language ability by means of statistical analysis. 29 participants from three proficiency levels (beginning, intermediate, and adva...