Examining Pharmacy Students’ Perceptions Of Clinical Faculty Mentoring Characteristics Influencing Students’ Decision To Pursue A Pharmacy Residency

The field of pharmacy is changing from a drug-distribution-centered model to a patient-centered integrated model whereby pharmacists are actively involved in patient care as part of an interdisciplinary team. To address the estimated pharmacy leadership crisis in the future and to prepare pharmacists to work in the changing healthcare landscape, national pharmacy organizations such as the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) and the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) have stated that postgraduate pharmacy residency should be mandatory by 2020. Past pharmacy research literature has shown that while many factors influence students to pursue a pharmacy residency, there is a lack of understanding about the influence of clinical faculty mentoring on students to pursue a postgraduate residency. This phenomenological study explored pharmacy students’ experiences with clinical faculty mentoring in relation to Professional Year 4 (PY4) students’ decision to pursue a pharmacy residency. The research was conducted utilizing ten students from two Northeastern Schools of Pharmacy. Qualitative data was collected via interviews using semi-structured open-ended questions. Data from the interviews gathered from both sites were merged for data analysis. Results showed the emergence of seven themes with connected elements: (a) type of mentoring relationship, (b) mentoring functions, (c) mentor characteristics, (d) mentee characteristics, (e) time spent with mentor, (f) decision-making, and (g) need for formal mentoring programs. Findings indicated that PY4 students’ decision to pursue a pharmacy residency does relate to clinical faculty mentoring even though the types of influential clinical faculty mentoring experiences varied. Psychosocial mentoring functions were utilized by clinical faculty that provided positive experiences for participants and allowed for transformative growth. Mentor and mentee characteristics were important in supporting the mentoring process. Time spent with mentors could not be quantified and the quality of time spent with mentors was important. The central finding that clinical faculty mentoring does influence students’ decision to pursue a pharmacy residency fills a gap in pharmacy mentoring literature

New Zealand contributions to the global earthquake model’s earthquake consequences database (GEMECD)

The Global Earthquake Model’s (GEM) Earthquake Consequences Database (GEMECD) aims to develop, for the first time, a standardised framework for collecting and collating geocoded consequence data induced by primary and secondary seismic hazards to different types of buildings, critical facilities, infrastructure and population, and relate this data to estimated ground motion intensity via the USGS ShakeMap Atlas. New Zealand is a partner of the GEMECD consortium and to-date has contributed with 7 events to the database, of which 4 are localised in the South Pacific area (Newcastle 1989; Luzon 1990; South of Java 2006 and Samoa Islands 2009) and 3 are NZ-specific events (Edgecumbe 1987; Darfield 2010 and Christchurch 2011). This contribution to GEMECD represented a unique opportunity for collating, comparing and reviewing existing damage datasets and harmonising them into a common, openly accessible and standardised database, from where the seismic performance of New Zealand buildings can be comparatively assessed. This paper firstly provides an overview of the GEMECD database structure, including taxonomies and guidelines to collect and report on earthquake-induced consequence data. Secondly, the paper presents a summary of the studies implemented for the 7 events, with particular focus on the Darfield (2010) and Christchurch (2011) earthquakes. Finally, examples of specific outcomes and potentials for NZ from using and processing GEMECD are presented, including: 1) the rationale for adopting the GEM taxonomy in NZ and any need for introducing NZ-specific attributes; 2) a complete overview of the building typological distribution in the Christchurch CBD prior to the Canterbury earthquakes and 3) some initial correlations between the level and extent of earthquake-induced physical damage to buildings, building safety/accessibility issues and the induced human casualtie

Multifractality and scale invariance in human heartbeat dynamics

Human heart rate is known to display complex fluctuations. Evidence of multifractality in heart rate fluctuations in healthy state has been reported [Ivanov et al., Nature {\bf 399}, 461 (1999)]. This multifractal character could be manifested as a dependence on scale or beat number of the probability density functions (PDFs) of the heart rate increments. On the other hand, scale invariance has been recently reported in a detrended analysis of healthy heart rate increments [Kiyono et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 93}, 178103 (2004)]. In this paper, we resolve this paradox by clarifying that the scale invariance reported is actually exhibited by the PDFs of the sum of detrended healthy heartbeat intervals taken over different number of beats, and demonstrating that the PDFs of detrended healthy heart rate increments are scale dependent. Our work also establishes that this scale invariance is a general feature of human heartbeat dynamics, which is shared by heart rate fluctuations in both healthy and pathological states

Improved Dark Energy Detection through the Polarization-assisted WMAP-NVSS ISW Correlation

Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect can be estimated by cross-correlating Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) sky with tracers of the local matter distribution. At late cosmic time, the dark energy induced decay of gravitation potential generates a cross-correlation signal on large angular scales. The dominant noise are the intrinsic CMB anisotropies from the inflationary epoch. In this Letter we use CMB polarization to reduce this intrinsic noise. We cross-correlate the microwave sky observed by Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) with the radio source catalog compiled by NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) to study the efficiency of the noise suppression . We find that the error bars are reduced about 5-12 %, improving the statistical power.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Interaction driven metal-insulator transition in strained graphene

The question of whether electron-electron interactions can drive a metal to insulator transition in graphene under realistic experimental conditions is addressed. Using three representative methods to calculate the effective long-range Coulomb interaction between $\pi$-electrons in graphene and solving for the ground state using quantum Monte Carlo methods, we argue that without strain, graphene remains metallic and changing the substrate from SiO$_2$ to suspended samples hardly makes any difference. In contrast, applying a rather large -- but experimentally realistic -- uniform and isotropic strain of about $15\%$ seems to be a promising route to making graphene an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator.Comment: Updated version: 6 pages, 3 figure

Rotating Black Holes at Future Colliders. III. Determination of Black Hole Evolution

TeV scale gravity scenario predicts that the black hole production dominates over all other interactions above the scale and that the Large Hadron Collider will be a black hole factory. Such higher dimensional black holes mainly decay into the standard model fields via the Hawking radiation whose spectrum can be computed from the greybody factor. Here we complete the series of our work by showing the greybody factors and the resultant spectra for the brane localized spinor and vector field emissions for arbitrary frequencies. Combining these results with the previous works, we determine the complete radiation spectra and the subsequent time evolution of the black hole. We find that, for a typical event, well more than half a black hole mass is emitted when the hole is still highly rotating, confirming our previous claim that it is important to take into account the angular momentum of black holes.Comment: typoes in eqs(82)-(84) corrected; version to appear in Phys. Rev. D; references and a footnote added; same manuscript with high resolution embedded figures available on http://www.gakushuin.ac.jp/univ/sci/phys/ida/paper