Managementul resurselor umane și importanța acestuia în domeniul farmaceutic

Vasile Procopisin social pharmacy department, Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and PharmacyAbstract. Human resources play a major role in the development of economy of each country by applying the skills and abilities obtained in the process of training and education. Through the management of human resources, the professionalism and social efficiency of enterprises tend to be increased. The modern management use the human factor in order to achieve organizational objectives, simultaneously ensuring the conditions that guarantee the satisfaction of employees’ needs and, implicitly, their motivation to be loyal to the organization. Because the modern world is affected by rapid changes, the developing strategies are adjusted to requirements of the XXI century. Such a situation it is seen in the pharmaceutical field, where the pharmacists’ roles are evolving from that of compounders and dispensers of medicines to that of experts on medicines within multidisciplinary health care teams. This way, human resources management become a vital management task in the field of healthcare and essential to enable the delivery of efficient and effective medical services and to achieve patient satisfaction.Rezumat. Resursele umane joacă un rol major în dezvoltarea economiei fiecărei țări prin folosirea abilităților obținute în procesul de formare și educație, iar prin managementul resurselor umane, profesionalismul și eficiența socială a întreprinderilor tind să crească. Managementul modern folosește factorul uman pentru a atinge obiectivele organizaționale, asigurând simultan condițiile care garantează satisfacerea nevoilor angajaților și, implicit, motivația lor de a fi loiali organizației. Deoarece lumea modernă este afectată de schimbări rapide, strategiile în curs de dezvoltare sunt ajustate la cerințele secolului XXI. Aceasta se observ și în domeniul farmaceutic, în care rolul farmaciștilor evoluează de la cel al preparatorilor de medicamente la cel al experților în medicamente, fiind parte a echipelor multidisciplinare de îngrijire a sănătății. În acest fel, managementul resurselor umane devine o funcție vitală a managementului în domeniul asistenței medicale și esențială pentru furnizarea serviciilor medicale eficiente pentru a atinge satisfacția pacientului

Optimum Dispersion Parameters of Carbon Nanotubes: Concrete Strength by Response Surface Methodologies

"This paper implements Response Surface Methodologies (RSM) techniques to illustrate the maximum carbon nanotubes (CNTs)-concrete mechanical properties responses to the length, weight fraction and treatment variables. Mixes with different CNTs’ content were prepared and tested for flexure, compression and tension. RSM analysis showed that the highest effect on the strengths was due to the CNTs’ content variable. The analysis showed that a weight fraction of 0.3 wt.% of non-treated CNTs is required to achieve the maximum flexural, compressive and tensile strengths in a batch as per the predicted model. RSM analysis also showed that maximum flexural strength will be obtained by using 0.2 wt. % non-treated long CNTs, 0.25 wt. % non-treated short CNTs and 0.03 wt. % treated long CNTs, respectively.

Late Repression of NF-κB Activity by Invasive but Not Non-Invasive Meningococcal Isolates Is Required to Display Apoptosis of Epithelial Cells

Meningococcal invasive isolates of the ST-11 clonal complex are most frequently associated with disease and rarely found in carriers. Unlike carriage isolates, invasive isolates induce apoptosis in epithelial cells through the TNF-α signaling pathway. While invasive and non-invasive isolates are both able to trigger the TLR4/MyD88 pathway in lipooligosaccharide (LOS)-dependant manner, we show that only non-invasive isolates were able to induce sustained NF-κB activity in infected epithelial cells. ST-11 invasive isolates initially triggered a strong NF-κB activity in infected epithelial cells that was abolished after 9h of infection and was associated with sustained activation of JNK, increased levels of membrane TNFR1, and induction of apoptosis. In contrast, infection with carriage isolates lead to prolonged activation of NF-κB that was associated with a transient activation of JNK increased TACE/ADAM17-mediated shedding of TNFR1 and protection against apoptosis. Our data provide insights to understand the meningococcal duality between invasiveness and asymptomatic carriage

Carbon nanotube effect on the ductility, flexural strength, and permeability of concrete

Recently, remarkable types of carbon nanofilaments called carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have raised the interest of many concrete and cementitious composite researchers due to their significant mechanical, electrical, thermal, kinetic, and chemical properties. These nanofilaments are considered promising applicants to use in producing high-performance cement-based composite materials. In this research, the effect of CNT use on the flexural strength, strain capacity, permeability, and microstructure of concrete was investigated. Concrete batches of 0, 0.03, 0.08, 0.15, and 0.25 wt.% CNTs were prepared using a mixing method that consisted of a 30-minute solution sonication and a 60-minute batch mixing. On the 28th day, the mechanical properties were determined. The results indicated that concrete prepared using high CNT contents of 0.15 and 0.25 wt.% increased the flexural strength by more than 100% in comparison with 0% CNT concrete. Furthermore, the results showed that CNTs would increase the ductility of concrete beams by about 150%. The permeability test results showed the benefits of CNT inclusion in reducing the permeability of concrete. The permeability coefficient (kT) decreased by at least 45% when CNTs were added to concrete. A qualitative microstructural analysis illustrated the uniform dispersion of CNT filaments within the concrete hydration products in all batches.Scopu

Leveraging the Force of Formative Assessment & Feedback for Effective Engineering Education

In recent years, there has been a fundamental shift in engineering education from an emphasis on covering content to a student-centric focus on ensuring the attainment of learning outcomes. To ensure attainment of the educational objectives, engineering education thought leaders have highlighted the importance of the development of effective authentic assessment schemes appropriate for the 21st century, and the alignment of assessment and instructional efforts with the planned learning objectives and outcomes. Our focus in this paper is on the use of formative assessment (also called assessment for learning) for engineering education. With formative assessment, an assessment is made of the current learning level and then pertinent feedback is provided to both the student and to the instructor so that they can take concrete steps to facilitate learning improvement. This is in contrast with the ubiquitous summative feedback (assessment ``of'' learning)---in which the main aim is to grade or rank the student by ascertaining their current learning level without really giving them concrete advice on what to do next to improve learning performance. The use of formative assessment can transform students' performance by empowering them with particularly potent ``self-assessment’’ skills through which students become more aware of their learning and know what is it that they should do next (i.e., they become ``self-directed”.) Formative assessment is equally useful for the teaching staff—by helping them know their impact and tailor the instructional strategy and try to personalize their pedagogy to the individual needs of the students. The main contributions of our paper are that we review the rich literature on formative assessment and effective feedback and synthesize insights that are relevant for engineering education

Outcome-Based Engineering Education: A Global Report of International OBE Accreditation and Assessment Practices

Outcome-based education (OBE) is a paradigm in which instructional and assessment/ evaluation are explicitly designed for ensuring the attainment and mastery of predefined learning outcomes. OBE is now the underlying paradigm followed by global accreditation efforts such as the Washington Accord (ratified in 1989). The shift to OBE is so pronounced that some education experts identify the shift to outcome-based education and accreditation as one of the top 5 major changes of the last 100 years. OBE is starkly different from the previous content-based educational approaches in shifting the aim from covering the content to a student-centric mastery that is driven by exit-outcomes and educational objectives. And while OBE is often criticized for straitjacketing education, and resisted by hesitant faculty members suspecting additional burden, studies show that the OBE movement, on the whole, has helped in improving the educational standards and outcomes by helping ensure proper planning of curriculum and assessment and their alignment with the program objectives and desired outcomes. OBE is also flexible in the sense that it does not dictate the choice of specific education strategies or teaching methods. New OBE schemes have also diversified in response to early misgiving about OBE (related to excessive paperwork, and bean-counting-like auditing) and now admit diverse types of evidence (including qualitative and quantitative, formative and summative, formal and informal assessments). In this paper, we present—as a geographically dispersed set of academics from Pakistan, United Kingdom, United States of America, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia—a global international perspective on OBE accreditation standards, practices, and attitudes. We will trace the historical development leading to the great shift to OBE in recent times and also synthesize insights from our diverse transnational experience in meeting accreditation requirements in different countries

Penicillin Binding Proteins as Danger Signals: Meningococcal Penicillin Binding Protein 2 Activates Dendritic Cells through Toll-Like Receptor 4

Neisseria meningitidis is a human pathogen responsible for life-threatening inflammatory diseases. Meningococcal penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) and particularly PBP2 are involved in bacterial resistance to β-lactams. Here we describe a novel function for PBP2 that activates human and mouse dendritic cells (DC) in a time and dose-dependent manner. PBP2 induces MHC II (LOGEC50 = 4.7 µg/ml±0.1), CD80 (LOGEC50 = 4.88 µg/ml±0.15) and CD86 (LOGEC50 = 5.36 µg/ml±0.1). This effect was abolished when DCs were co-treated with anti-PBP2 antibodies. PBP2-treated DCs displayed enhanced immunogenic properties in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, proteins co-purified with PBP2 showed no effect on DC maturation. We show through different in vivo and in vitro approaches that this effect is not due to endotoxin contamination. At the mechanistic level, PBP2 induces nuclear localization of p65 NF-kB of 70.7±5.1% cells versus 12±2.6% in untreated DCs and needs TLR4 expression to mature DCs. Immunoprecipitation and blocking experiments showed tha

Clonal Waves of Neisseria Colonisation and Disease in the African Meningitis Belt: Eight- Year Longitudinal Study in Northern Ghana

BACKGROUND: The Kassena-Nankana District of northern Ghana lies in the African “meningitis belt” where epidemics of meningococcal meningitis have been reoccurring every eight to 12 years for the last 100 years. The dynamics of meningococcal colonisation and disease are incompletely understood, and hence we embarked on a long-term study to determine how levels of colonisation with different bacterial serogroups change over time, and how the patterns of disease relate to such changes. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Between February 1998 and November 2005, pharyngeal carriage of Neisseria meningitidis in the Kassena-Nankana District was studied by twice-yearly colonisation surveys. Meningococcal disease was monitored throughout the eight-year study period, and patient isolates were compared to the colonisation isolates. The overall meningococcal colonisation rate of the study population was 6.0%. All culture-confirmed patient isolates and the majority of carriage isolates were associated with three sequential waves of colonisation with encapsulated (A ST5, X ST751, and A ST7) meningococci. Compared to industrialised countries, the colonising meningococcal population was less constant in genotype composition over time and was genetically less diverse during the peaks of the colonisation waves, and a smaller proportion of the isolates was nonserogroupable. We observed a broad age range in the healthy carriers, resembling that of meningitis patients during large disease epidemics. CONCLUSIONS: The observed lack of a temporally stable and genetically diverse resident pharyngeal flora of meningococci might contribute to the susceptibility to meningococcal disease epidemics of residents in the African meningitis belt. Because capsular conjugate vaccines are known to impact meningococcal carriage, effects on herd immunity and potential serogroup replacement should be monitored following the introduction of such vaccines

Experimental Meningococcal Sepsis in Congenic Transgenic Mice Expressing Human Transferrin

Severe meningococcal sepsis is still of high morbidity and mortality. Its management may be improved by an experimental model allowing better understanding of its pathophysiology. We developed an animal model of meningococcal sepsis in transgenic BALB/c mice expressing human transferrin. We studied experimental meningococcal sepsis in congenic transgenic BALB/c mice expressing human transferrin by transcriptional profiling using microarray analysis of blood and brain samples. Genes encoding acute phase proteins, chemokines and cytokines constituted the largest strongly regulated groups. Dynamic bioluminescence imaging further showed high blood bacterial loads that were further enhanced after a primary viral infection by influenza A virus. Moreover, IL-1 receptor–associated kinase–3 (IRAK-3) was induced in infected mice. IRAK-3 is a negative regulator of Toll-dependant signaling and its induction may impair innate immunity and hence result in an immunocompromised state allowing bacterial survival and systemic spread during sepsis. This new approach should enable detailed analysis of the pathophysiology of meningococcal sepsis and its relationships with flu infection