Medication adherence and predictive factors in patients with cardiovascular disease: A comparison study between Australia and Iraq

© 2018 Australian College of Nursing Ltd Background: Adherence to cardiac medication regimes is essential for effective treatment of cardiovascular disease but is unsatisfactory in Australia and little studied in Iraq. Aim: This study evaluated and compared adherence to cardiac medications and potentially predictive factors based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) in patients with cardiovascular disease admitted to hospital and attending cardiac services in Australia and Iraq. Methods: A cross-sectional multi-centre comparative study involving 246 cardiac patients was conducted in Australia (one hospital in Sydney) and Iraq (three cardiac hospitals in Baghdad) between October 2016 and December 2017. Adherence to medications and related factors were examined using established, validated questionnaires, formally translated and validated into Arabic for Iraqi participants. Binary logistic regression was conducted to determine those factors independently predictive of cardiac medication adherence, in Australia and Iraq. Findings: A significantly higher proportion (64.3%) of Iraqi than Australian (37.5%) cardiac patients reported medium/low levels of adherence to their cardiac medications. After adjusting for confounding factors, the ability to correctly self-administer and refill medications, and beliefs about cardio-protective medication were identified as independent predictors of cardiac medication adherence behaviour in both Australian and Iraqi participants. In Iraq, patients recruited from out-patient cardiac clinics were significantly more likely to report adherent behaviours that patients recruited as in-patients of the cardiac ward. Conclusion: Non-adherence to cardiac medications differed but was sub-optimal in both Australian and Iraqi patient samples, in both countries, adherence was associated with patients’ beliefs about medications, and ability to self-administer and refill medications. Clinical nurses and pharmacists need to investigate these factors at every point in the cardiac trajectory to optimise medication adherence

Observed vertical distribution of tropospheric carbon monoxide during 2012 over Iraq

The atmospheric parameters observations enable to made continental and global scales by remote sensing devices existent in space. One of these instruments is the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) onboard Aqua satellite. We characterize the vertical distribution of troposphere carbon monoxide (CO) measured by AIRS over IRAQ. This study presents one year data. Results shown standard deviation of monthly troposphere CO for five locations: Baghdad, Basrah, Maysan, Al Fakka, and Mosul, from January to December 2012, was 107.15 ±18.75 ppbv for entire period depend on whether circumstance and topography. The seasonal differences undulate between winter and summer seasons, with higher values CO in the winter than in the summer and autumn seasons. In addition, the rising in troposphere CO values can be measured during year over the manufacturing and crowded urbanized zones. AIRS observations reveal enhanced abundances of CO, with values that can exceed 120 ppbv at approximately 4 km altitude over Baghdad and Mosul. The lower CO amounts observed of approximately 88–90 ppbv at 253 mb (altitude 11 km) during October. Comparisons over Baghdad station in 2012 showed close agreement between the ground CO data and the observed CO from AIRS, and regression result showed high correlation coefficient (R = 0.962). The vertical CO observation by AIRS is providing meaningful information for different altitude layers closer to the troposphere, and the satellite measurements are able to measure the increase of the atmosphere CO concentrations over varied regions

Constructing Game Agents from Video of Human Behavior

Developing computer game agents is often a lengthy and expensive undertaking. Detailed domain knowledge and decision-making procedures must be encoded into the agent to achieve realistic behavior. In this paper, we simplify this process by using the ICARUS cognitive architecture to construct game agents. The system acquires structured, high fidelity methods for agents that utilize a vocabulary of concepts familiar to game experts. We demonstrate our approach by first acquiring behaviors for football agents from video footage of college football games, and then applying the agents in a football simulator