I will begin with the statistics of the accepted students into the University of Southern California Doctor of Pharmacy program for 2009. 460 students were offered interviews from a pool of over 2000 applicants. 240 students are accepted (11 students from out-of-state schools), and the expected class size for 2009 is 190. One must note that USC offers their undergraduates the opportunity of guaranteed admission as long as they complete their requirements in the TAP program (these students take up a large chunk of seats available for other applicants).

Obtaining a Bachelor’s degree is now a requirement for admission at USC. The minimum GPA requirement is a 3.0 (the average GPA of accepted students is a 3.60). Since USC does not require taking the PCAT, other admission criteria is weighed more heavily (GPA, interview performance, extracurricular activities, personal statements, etc.).

For the application process, it is very important for you to note that the University of Southern California sends out interview invitations on a rolling basis, so it is important that you turn in your PharmCAS application and supplemental application as soon as possible. The deadlines for both are early November, but I highly recommend that you turn both in no latter than early August (I turned in my applications by mid-July, just 1.5 months after the application was made available).

At your interview, you will be asked questions by a current pharmacy school student as well as a faculty member. Think of it more of a conversation where you … Read more

If you’re familiar with ZigBee, you’ve no doubt seen a picture of the stack with IEEE 802.15.4 at the bottom, ZigBee in the middle, and applications and profiles sitting on top. This article looks at the top bit of the stack, and at how ZigBee profiles make it easier for you to create your own interoperable applications.

ZigBee is an open standard, which is ideal for applications that require long battery life, low cost, small footprint, and mesh networking to support communication between large numbers of devices in an interoperable and multi-application environment.

One of the ways interoperability is achieved is through application profiles. These profiles are defined by the ZigBee Alliance, and provide a description of the devices supported for a specific application together with the messaging scheme used by those devices for communication–in effect, defining the type, shape and features of the network.

Adherence to these profiles guarantees the interoperability of different vendors for the same application space.

Each application profile addresses the needs of a specific application market. Profiles are currently available or in development for the following types of applications:

• Smart Energy
• Home Automation
• Telecom Applications
• Commercial Building Automation
• Personal Home and Hospital Care

Endpoints and clusters

Devices are defined by profiles and implemented as application objects. Each application object is connected to the rest of the ZigBee stack by an endpoint, which is an addressable component within a device.

For example, a remote control might allocate endpoint 6 for the control of lights in the … Read more

1. Hybrid apps are in

Hybrid applications using technologies such as Ionic and HTML5 are gaining traction for the amount time and cost savings they account for. With Swift 3, and rumours that Android will soon adopt it, going for JavaScript over Linux, we look at a more integrated platform base. Word is out that Swift 3 will be available for Windows Phone too. For enterprise and consumer apps, HTML 5 continues to remain the platform of choice for app development. Frameworks such as Ionic, JQuery Mobile, Mobile Angular UI and Native Script have mature languages that deliver high performing user experience. Even Facebook has hopped the hybrid app development bandwagon with the React Native framework. They are currently experimenting with Linux and Windows platform to render a complete service.

2. IoT integration

IoT technologies such as GPS, Beacon and location-based Wi-Fi will be integral to many applications. We are looking at a mature Home Application on iOS 10 which will enable iPhone and iPad users to operate household appliances with instructions delivered to Siri. The Android Wear and Apple Watch will do more than track health and fitness, and go a step further to perform more complex functions. Android’s biometric scanning for unlocking the device is the most rudimentary utilization of IoT technology and its voice recognition technology is fairly advanced.

3. Rapid mobile app development technologies

With growing demand for app-related services, and also the tight cost schedules, mobile application development companies are using rapid development technologies such … Read more