No. 2.April 2009
QUASIMEME
QUEST FOR QUALITY
A Newsletter of the QUASIMEME Laboratory Performance Studies
Wageningen UR
The Netherlands
Round 57
Test Material Distribution
Round 57 dispatch was unfortunately delayed this year due to two reasons. The first is because of our new development exercise test material DE-14, our suppliers needed more time before dispatch and the secondwas because of the Easter Holiday.
Test materials DE-11, DE-12 and DE-13 were cancelled for this round because we did not have enough participants to run the study.
Data Submission
Participants in Round 57 can upload their results up to and in week 33 because of our delivery delay.
Please upload your data to the ‘Data Entry’ on the sharepoint site and not to any other location. If you don’t know how to upload your data correctly or to install QUEST, please contactthe Quasimeme Project Office.
R56 Update
The Round 56 deadline for submitting data will be extended to 11 May due to planned holidays here at Quasimeme.The reports forthis round will be placed on the sharepointsite in July.
WORKSHOPS
14-15 October : A 2-day workshop is planned in Amsterdam on Perfluorinated Compounds in environmental samples in addition to a scientific programme on the analysis of PFCs; and
10-11 December: A PAHs and Alkylated-PAHs workshop is plannedin Aberdeen in cooperation with FRS (Linda Webster) Aberdeen, UK and IVM (Jacob de Boer and Jan-Willem Wegener.
For more details of these workshops please see our February Newsletter. Up to date information on these workshops will be available soon.
Exercise Information
PSP Exercise
The Laboratory preparing the PSP test material DE-14 is uncertain of the stability of the standard solution intended to be used for the PSP analysis. Therefore it has been decided not to go ahead with this sample and a biota sample will be sent out in its place. Once this sample is stable the standard solutions will be sent out in the next round as an additional sample.
BE-1
The BE-1 test sample will be dispatched on 26th May.
Statistics Update
Quasimeme and WEPAL, a long standing proficiency testing scheme also based at WageningenUniversity and Research Centre, are strengthening co-operation. WEPAL just renewed its accreditation for interlaboratory studies. In this process, it had to change its statistical evaluation. Together with Quasimeme a number of statistical methods were tested, among others robust statistics according to the UK Analytical Methods Committee, to ISO 13528 and the German DIN 38402 method. The evaluation included testing the procedures on simulated datasets and on several thousands of datasets obtained in WEPAL and Quasimeme. It was concluded that the Quasimeme NDA procedure gave the best performance. This conclusion has been put forward to the Dutch accreditation body which accepts the outcome and the use of the NDA model.
Quasimeme Brochure
We are working towards producing a one year brochure instead of splitting the year in two as was previously done. The short brochure which will run from July to December is still with the printers and not yet available. In the short brochure we will run two rounds, Round 58 and Round 59 with one exercise. The following brochure will then be available from January 2010 with two rounds per exercise as previously where applicable. Once the new brochure is available an e-mail will be sent out and it will be placed on the sharepoint site.
Sharepointsite News
The Quasimeme sharepoint site has a function that enables you to discuss matters with each other. This can be achieved through Quasinote and if you wish to avail of this function it is very easy to set the alert function up on your sharepoint site. The alert will warn you when a certain topic is being open for discussion that may be of interest to you or whereupon you may be able to help a fellow laboratory with their query. To set this function up on your sharepoint site follow these simple instructions below.
1.log on to your sharepoint site.
2.under discussions on the lefthand side of your screen you will see Quasinote.
3.again on the lefthand side you will see alert me.
4.click on this and a screen appears with various set-up options to choose from.
5.Fill in what is relevant to you and press OK.
You will be notified when new occurrences happen.
Please circulate this newsletter, and display it on your notice board. Multiple copies have been provided to facilitate distribution to other colleagues.
Requests for further information, comments or contributions to:
QUASIMEME Project office
E-mail:
QUASIMEME – Quality Assurance of Information for Marine Environmental Monitoring