Pankhuri Agarwal

This article examines mixed ℋ -infinity and passivity synchronization of Markovian jumping neutral-type complex dynamical network models with randomly occurring coupling delays and actuator faults. The randomly occurring coupling delays are considered to design the complex dynamical networks in practice. These delays complied with certain Bernoulli distributed white noise sequences. The relevant data including limits of actuator faults, bounds of the nonlinear terms, and external disturbances are available for designing the controller structure. Novel Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional is constructed to verify the stability of the error model and performance level. Jensen’s inequality and a new integral inequality are applied to derive the outcomes. Sufficient conditions for the synchronization error system are given in terms of linear matrix inequalities, which can be analyzed easily by utilizing general numerical programming. Numerical illustrations are given to exhibit the usefulness of the obtained results.

Pharmaceutical companies employ various techniques to promote their drugs to the physicians. Some of these techniques are purely informational like advertisements in medical journals and detailing by medical representatives, but some other techniques aim to induce the physicians to prescribe particular drugs by offering them financial incentives like gifts, sponsorship of visits to attend educational conferences, funding of research, etc. The latter category of promotional techniques may unduly influence the prescribing behavior of physicians leading to irrational prescription of drugs that are not in the best interests of the patient. Given the potential of these techniques to cause harm to patients, efforts have been made to regulate it in India as well as other countries. In India, the regulations issued by the Medical Council of India regulate the conduct of physicians in their relationship with the pharmaceutical industry; however, they are ambiguous, non-comprehensive, and not enforced properly. The pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, are subject only to self-regulatory codes issued by the pharmaceutical associations and by the government that lack teeth. These regulatory measures have not been sufficient in curbing the undue influence of the promotional techniques on physicians’ prescribing behavior, and thus, there is a need to overhaul the regulatory framework in India by taking guidance from other countries. However, ultimately, it is the reflection by the pharmaceutical companies and especially the physicians on their ethical duties and adherence to them that will result in ethically appropriate prescription of drugs.