Background: Nursing interventions tailored to the smoking triggers in patients with non-communicable chronic diseases are essential. However, these interventions are scant due to the nature of factors associated with smoking cessation and the poor understanding of the effect of nurse-led intervention in Iraq.Purpose: This study aimed to determine the dominant smoking triggers and examine the effects of a tailored nursing intervention on smoking behavior in patients with non-communicable chronic diseases.Methods: Convenience samples of 128 patients with non-communicable chronic diseases, male and female patients, who were 18-70 years old, were recruited in this quasi-experimental, randomized comparative trial in the outpatient clinic in one major teaching hospital in Baghdad City, Iraq. The intervention included simple yet specific instructions that were given both orally and in written form to the study samples to enable them to manage their craving to smoke for 6 weeks. The smoking triggers were assessed using Why Do You Smoke questionnaire. Participants were randomly allocated to receive either the nurse-led intervention or standard care. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent sample t-tests, logistic regression, and two-sided tests.Results: Stress reduction was the dominant smoking trigger among subjects. The percentage of participants who were either able to completely quit smoking or reduce the number of smoked cigarettes per day (n=19, 29.7%; n=28, 43.8%, respectively) was greater in the study group than those in the control group (n=5, 5.8%; n=5, 5.8%, respectively). Study findings demonstrated significant differences in the inability to improve readiness to quit smoking between the intervention group and control group (p=0.000) at the sixth-week follow-up.Conclusion: The tailored nursing intervention was effective for a successful achievement of smoking reduction and cessation among patients with non-communicable chronic diseases, and a potential to equip nurses in clinical settings to support patients to achieve this is recommended.
Soil water retention curves (SWRCs) are crucial for characterizing soil moisture dynamics and are particularly relevant in the context of irrigation management. A study was carried out to obtain the SWRC, inflection point, S index, pore size distribution curve, macro porosity, and air capacity from samples submitted to saturation and re-saturation processes. Five different-texture disturbed soil samples Sandy Loam, Loam, Sandy Clay Loam, Silt Loam, and Clay were collected. After obtaining SWRC, each air-dried soil samples were submitted to particle size distribution and clay dispersed in water analyses to verify the soil lost clay. The experimental design was completely randomized with three replications using two processes of SWRC (saturat
... Show MoreThe performance of a solar assisted desiccant cooling system for a meeting-hall located in the College of Engineering/University of Baghdad was evaluated theoretically. The system was composed of four components; a solar air heater, a desiccant dehumidifier, a heat exchanger and an evaporative cooler. A computer simulation was developed by using MATLAB to assess the effect of various design and operating conditions on the performance of the system and its components. The actual weather data on recommended days were used to assess the load variation and the system performance during those days. The radiant time series method (RTS) was used to evaluate the hourly variation of the cooling load. Four operation modes were employed for perform
... Show MoreIn data transmission a change in single bit in the received data may lead to miss understanding or a disaster. Each bit in the sent information has high priority especially with information such as the address of the receiver. The importance of error detection with each single change is a key issue in data transmission field.
The ordinary single parity detection method can detect odd number of errors efficiently, but fails with even number of errors. Other detection methods such as two-dimensional and checksum showed better results and failed to cope with the increasing number of errors.
Two novel methods were suggested to detect the binary bit change errors when transmitting data in a noisy media.Those methods were: 2D-Checksum me