The General Accounting Office GAOO), a congressional watchdog, has hinted as much in successive reports: it commented pointedly that, though short-cutting testing norms "may help the MDA meet the president's deadline, it also increases the potential that some elements might not work as intended".
There is little question that the average American high school graduate is poorly skilled, a victim of social promotion, overworked and undertrained teachers, politicized state testing norms, and, I strongly suspect, parents who insist on feel-good classes and easy grades.
To be included in the cognitively normal subgroup, the following inclusion criteria had to be met: 1) No significant cognitive impairment verified by psychometric testing norms, and 2) No significant change in functional abilities verified by a knowledgeable informant.
By now, even the American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct direct attention towards the implications of test norm obsolescence [14], [15].
Similar guidelines of national professional associations have also been established, as for instance the demand of the two biggest German professional associations of psychologists to evaluate every psychometric ability measure at least every eight years with respect to test norm obsolescence [16].
Such a test norm at the European level would certainly be desirable.
However, the effect sizes indicated very large improvements by test norm standards that most likely could not fully be explained by effects of repeated testing alone.
It has been shown using a propanol-based hand rub that the four test bacteria of this test norm cover the whole spectrum of nosocomial bacterial strains and clinical isolates including emerging pathogens [ 7].
In the European test hierarchy for chemical disinfectants and antiseptics, stricter reduction factors of ≥ 5 log units for bacteria and ≥ 4 log units for fungi are recommended in each test norm regardless of the type of test (quantitative suspension test or practical setting).
We present a computer package designed to generate and test norm-conserving pseudo-potentials within Density Functional Theory.
