Public concern over increasing health-care costs plus dramatized testing errors, has resulted in CLIA '88 with its more stringent rules governing laboratory performance. The purpose of the 1990 U.S. Health Care Financing Administration Final Rules for Proficiency Tests is to separate the quality laboratory from the poorly performing one. From the perspective of total quality management, the cus...

Simulation of crop systems has evolved from a neophyte science into a robust and increasingly accepted discipline. Our vision is that crop systems simulation can serve important roles in agriculture and environment. Important roles and uses of crop systems simulation are in five primary areas: (1) basic research synthesis and integration, where simulation is used to synthesize our understanding...

We show genetic improvement of programs (GIP) can scale by evolving increased performance in a widely-used and highly complex 50 000 line system. GISMOE found code that is 70 times faster (on average) and yet is at least as good functionally. Indeed it even gives a small semantic gain.

Aquaculture in developing countries is largely based on unimproved fish strains. There is ample evidence indicating the potential of genetic improvement programs and a range of selection methods may be used. Examples of the application of mass, cohort, within family, and combined between-within family are given. The methods are discussed in terms of their effectiveness and suitability. It is co...