Professionalism within pharmacy – the thoughts of Professional Leaders

To ascertain the thoughts of selected professional leaders on matters relating to pharmacist professionalism. These views will help build a picture of the professional status of pharmacy. Methods - Semi-structured interviews were conducted between July and November 2013 with representatives from eight UK pharmacy leadership bodies. The bodies were selected for their roles in pharmacy policy development, regulation and professional representation. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis by constant comparison identified a number of emerging themes. Results - The following emerging themes were identified from the interview data: Influence of the Pharmacy Landscape: Participants highlighted the role that pharmacy plays within the National Health Service and wider society and how future developments may affect the professional status currently afforded to pharmacists. Vocalising Pharmacy: Communication within the profession and also with those external to the profession, including other healthcare professionals and the general public, is important to ensure a high professional standing. The Impact of Commercialism: Professionalism and commercialism were generally seen to be antithetical and a rise in commercialism may adversely impact on external perceptions of the professionalism of pharmacy. Responsibility for Professionalism: The professional image of pharmacy is maintained by the individuals operating within it regardless of their scope of practice. It is the responsibility of all those individuals to ensure that they actively demonstrate ‘professional’ behaviours. The Journey to Professionalism: Acquiring a professional ethos is a continual process but there are stages in a pharmacist’s development that are considered particularly important. These include upbringing, undergraduate education and pre-registration training. Conclusions - Pharmacy’s professional status in the UK remains open to challenge and vital to retaining that status is the public perception of pharmacists. Future research examining pharmacy’s claims to professional status should focus on exploring the attitudes of the general public in addition to the views of pharmacists.

Interpretation of the Superpave IDT strength test using a viscoelastic-damage constitutive model

This paper presents a new interpretation for the Superpave IDT strength test based on a viscoelastic-damage framework. The framework is based on continuum damage mechanics and the thermodynamics of irreversible processes with an anisotropic damage representation. The new approach introduces considerations for the viscoelastic effects and the damage accumulation that accompanies the fracture process in the interpretation of the Superpave IDT strength test for the identification of the Dissipated Creep Strain Energy (DCSE) limit from the test result. The viscoelastic model is implemented in a Finite Element Method (FEM) program for the simulation of the Superpave IDT strength test. The DCSE values obtained using the new approach is compared with the values obtained using the conventional approach to evaluate the validity of the assumptions made in the conventional interpretation of the test results. The result shows that the conventional approach over-estimates the DCSE value with increasing estimation error at higher deformation rates.

Information geometric measurements of generalisation

Neural networks can be regarded as statistical models, and can be analysed in a Bayesian framework. Generalisation is measured by the performance on independent test data drawn from the same distribution as the training data. Such performance can be quantified by the posterior average of the information divergence between the true and the model distributions. Averaging over the Bayesian posterior guarantees internal coherence; Using information divergence guarantees invariance with respect to representation. The theory generalises the least mean squares theory for linear Gaussian models to general problems of statistical estimation. The main results are: (1)~the ideal optimal estimate is always given by average over the posterior; (2)~the optimal estimate within a computational model is given by the projection of the ideal estimate to the model. This incidentally shows some currently popular methods dealing with hyperpriors are in general unnecessary and misleading. The extension of information divergence to positive normalisable measures reveals a remarkable relation between the dlt dual affine geometry of statistical manifolds and the geometry of the dual pair of Banach spaces Ld and Ldd. It therefore offers conceptual simplification to information geometry. The general conclusion on the issue of evaluating neural network learning rules and other statistical inference methods is that such evaluations are only meaningful under three assumptions: The prior P(p), describing the environment of all the problems; the divergence Dd, specifying the requirement of the task; and the model Q, specifying available computing resources.

Heiner Müller

Heiner Müller (1929-1995) zählt zu den bedeutendsten deutschen Dramatikern im 20. Jahrhundert, der es stets verstand zu provozieren. Der vorliegende Band behandelt alle Werkgruppen Müllers, also neben den Arbeiten für das Theater auch die Lyrik, die Prosa, die Essayistik sowie erstmals die Interviews. Zeittafel, Literaturverzeichnis und Werkregister machen ihn zu einem unverzichtbaren Überblickswerk für Studierende der Literatur- und Theaterwissenschaften wie für Literaturinteressierte. Heiner Müller (1929-1995) is one of the most important German dramatist of the 20th To provoke century, it is always understood. The present volume deals with all work groups miller, so in addition to the work for the theater, the poetry, prose, essays, and the first time the interviews. Chronology, bibliography and work make him a vital registration data work for students of literature and theater studies as interested in literature.