Effect of Boost Simulated Session on CPR Competency among Nursing Students: A Pilot Study

Effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation effort can lead to saving lives. This skill is especially important to nursing practice. The aim of this quasi-experimental, control group, pilot study was to measure the effect of boost training session supported by simulation on the retention of CPR knowledge and skills in 40 nursing students. Participants attended a pretest, 3-hour workshop CPR then completed posttest I. The experimental group attended simulation-supported boost training at week six. Findings indicated that the experimental group achieved significant improvement in CPR procedure compared with the control group in posttest II. Boost training sessions using simulation facilitate learning CPR knowledge and skills. This teaching strategy may apply on other competencies requiring both psychomotor and cognitive engagement. Keywords: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, boost session, simulation, nursing students

Nutritional Status of Primary School Children from Low Income Households in Jordan

Background and objectives: Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010 recommended for children nutrition had expanded beyond "getting enough" to include healthy eating to reduce the risk of chronic disease at adolescent and adult age. The aims of this study were to examine the nutritional status and reveal any gender differences among school aged children 6-12 years old from low income household in Jordan. Design and setting, method: A descriptive exploratory approach used in conducting this research, the present study was carried out between January and June 2011. Two basic variables (height and weight) and a single derived variable (body mass index) have been used in the present study. Researchers used BMI_group_calculator_Metric. This calculator computes BMI and BMI percentiles for individual children in a group using height and weight measurements, sex, date of birth, and date of measurement information. Results The age range of the children was 6-12 years old with an average age of 7.1±0.88 years. Children's BMI-for- Age presented that normal BMI for (71%) from total school age children as (66% girls) and (71% boys)while overweight children (24%,17% boys and 33% girls) . Conclusion Malnutrition is a major health problem among Palestine refugee's school age children. Children's BMI-for- Age presented that normal BMI for from total school age children as Underweight, overweight as well as obese children with non-ignorable levels. Keywords: Nutritional status, school aged childre

Psychometric Testing of the Arabic version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (A-PSQI) among Coronary Artery Disease Patients in Jordan

The purpose of this study was to test the Arabic version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) among cardiac patients in Jordan. The data was collected from 130 Arabic cardiac patients during their routine visit to the cardiology clinic using the Arabic versions of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Insomnia Severity Index and the Medical Outcome Study Short Form 36. The mean Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score was 9.14 (SD = 2.34). Internal consistency reliability was 0.74. The correlations between the global Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score and the components ranged from .25 to .49. Also, PSQI showed a moderate correlation with the Insomnia Severity Index scores (r= .36, p <.001), and a small negative correlation with Medical Outcome Study Short Form 36 pain subscale (r= -.19, p= .032).  Psychometric estimates show that the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index is reliable and valid for measuring sleep disturbances among Arabic clinical population. Keywords: Reliability, validity, cardiac, slee

Investigation of reconfigurable-accuracy approximate adder designs for image processing applications

Ph. D. Thesis.In the last decades, integrated circuits with CMOS technology show progressive scaling challenges of both increased power density and power dissipation. Meanwhile, high-performance requirements of current and future application operations show rapid demands of computing resources like power. This design conflict has pushed much effort to search for high performance and energy efficient design approach, such as approximate computing. Approximate computing exploits the error resilience of compute- intensive applications such as image processing applications to implement approximation design techniques with different levels of abstractions and scalability. The basic principle is to relax the strict accuracy requirements in favour of a lower design complexity, thereby achieving more computational performance (i.e., speed) and energy saving. The adder arithmetic unit is considered one of the essential computational blocks in most of the applications. As such, much effort has explored new designs of an efficient approximate adder design. This thesis presents an investigation into design enhancement, novel approximate adder designs and implementation approaches. The first approach introduces a modification to the error detection technique of a popular configurable-accuracy approximate adder design. The proposed lightweight error detection technique reduces the required gates of the error detection circuit, thus, mitigating the design area overhead. Furthermore, at the error correction process of the adder, we have proposed an extensive error detection while activating more than one correction stage concurrently. As a result, this ensures achieving an optimum accuracy of outputs for the worst case of quality requirements. In general, approximate (speculative) adder designs use the seg- mentation technique to divide the adder into multiple short length sub-adders which operate in parallel. Hence, this would limit the long chains of carry propagation and result in a better performance operations. However, the use of overlapped parts of sub-adders regarding a better carry speculation and then more accuracy be- comes a significant challenge of a large design area overhead. The second approach continues mitigating this challenge by present- ing a novel and simpler adder dividing technique to a number of sub-adders. The new method uses what is known as the carry-kill signal for both limiting the carry propagation and applying adder segmentation. Further, between every two adjacent sub-adders, one AND gate and one XOR gate are used for carry speculation and error (i.e., carry propagation) detection respectively. Thus, a significant reduction of the design overhead has been achieved, yet, with acceptable levels of output results accuracy. In the third final approach, simple logic OR gates are used to build the approximate adder while compensating the conventional full adders operation. The resulted approximate adder design presents very low complex- ity, high speed, and low power consumption. Furthermore, instead of augmenting error recovery circuit, short bit-length exact adders are used as correction stages to control the general level of output quality (i.e., without error detection overhead). At the final correc- tion stage, the proposed design would operate the same as an exact adder. To validate the efficiency of these approaches, a number of adders with different bit-widths are designed and synthesized showing considerable reductions in the critical delay, silicon area and more savings in energy consumption, compared to other existing ap- proaches. In addition to acceptable levels or output errors, which are extensively analysed for each proposed design. In this study, the proposed configurable adder designs exhibit energy/quality trade-offs at a different number of correction stages. These trade-offs can be effectively exploited to implement adders in applications, where energy can be gracefully minimised within the envelope of quality requirements. As such, designs implemen- tation in an image processing application known as Gaussian blur filter was introduced, demonstrating the loss in the image quality at each error correction stage. The output images showed promis- ing results to use the proposed designs for more energy-efficient applications, where output quality requirements can be relaxed.Mutah Universit

The reality of the education sector in light of the sustainable development goals

The article aimed to identify the reality of the education sector in Jordan in light of the sustainable development goals from the point of view of private school teachers in Jordan. The descriptive analytical approach was used. The study sample was selected by the cluster method from the study population, it consisted of (836) male and female teachers from all Jordanian private schools. The results of the study indicated that means of the degree of teachers’ practice of their role in ensuring quality education came to a high level, and the role of the school administration in achieving sustainable learning came to a high level too. The study also revealed many obstacles to the implementation of sustainable development in education in Jordan, including reliance on traditional teaching methods based on indoctrination, and the evaluation of the student based on the theoretical scientific material. The study also revealed that there are statistically significant differences at the level of significance (0.05) in the level of the sample\u27s answers about the reality of the education sector in Jordan in the light of the sustainable development goals due to the difference in academic qualification (Bachelor and graduate studies). However, there are no statistically significant differences in the light of the sustainable development goals due to gender or region. Considering the results reached, the study recommended the formation of a Sustainable Development committee within the Jordanian Ministry of Education to follow up on the initiatives and activities related to the goals of sustainable development and to allocate an award for the best school that implements initiatives to achieve the fourth goal of the sustainable development goals of quality education

Management strategies for the reuse of wastewater in Jordan

Presented at the Role of irrigation and drainage in a sustainable future: USCID fourth international conference on irrigation and drainage on October 3-6, 2007 in Sacramento, California.Includes bibliographical references.Water resources in Jordan are extremely limited and water availability per capita is among the lowest in the world. With the expected growth in population, the already limited supply of fresh water for agriculture will be used to meet the growing demands in urban and industrial regions of the country. The sustainability of irrigated agriculture in Jordan is dependent on efficient irrigation systems such as drip irrigation and marginal water sources such as wastewater generated from wastewater treatment facilities in Jordan. The municipal and industrial water requirements in Jordan are expected to increase by 65% over the next 15 years. While agricultural demands are expected to increase by 5% during the same period. Reuse of treated municipal water is expected to increase to meet the growing urban, industrial, and agricultural demands in the future. Irrigated agriculture in Jordan is mostly concentrated in the Jordan Valley with optimum climatic conditions that allow for the production of up to three high-value vegetable crops per year. As irrigated agriculture in Jordan becomes more dependent on wastewater and other marginal water sources, the quality of marginal waters used for irrigation must be suitable for crop production. Therefore, the availability of treated wastewater for reuse to meet crop water requirements is dependent on water quality, crop type, irrigation system, and other factors. A computer model was developed to predict the potential contribution of wastewater to crop water use of major cash crops in the Jordan Valley. The model incorporates wastewater quality, irrigation system, crop type, and soil type in estimating the maximum potential contribution of wastewater to crop evapotranspiration. The model estimates the potential quantities of wastewater that can be used to supplement fresh irrigation water for each of the major crops in the Valley. The model can be used to implement sustainable management strategies for the reuse of treated wastewater in the Jordan Valley

The Impact of Foreign Investment on Capital Formation in Jordan during (2000-2009): A Case Study on Industry, Service, Agriculture and Construction Sectors

This study aims at explaining the impact of foreign investment on capital formation in the private sectors of industry, services, agriculture and construction in Jordan during 2000-2009. To examine the hypotheses of the study, the present study resorted to four simple regression approaches. The study has revealed a positive relationship with statistical significance in between the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and the capital formation for the industrial sector, and between capital formations of the agriculture sector. This means that the foreign direct investment highly contributes to enhancing and reinforcing the economic activity and in supporting the economic development in Jordan. The study has also found that there is a positive relationship with statistical significance between foreign direct investment and capital formation of the construction sector, which means that foreign direct investment highly contributes to supporting the sector of estate and housing sector. This is attributed to the fact that it is a secure investment and it provides much more safety for the foreign investors. The study recommended taking care of the foreign investment, to explore new ways to generate new methods to enhance the capital formation in Jordan, to combat all the difficulties that challenge and hinder the national economy and provide a suitable environment that ensures the continuity of the foreign investment.Key Words: foreign investment, capital formation, industry, services, agriculture, constructions, Economic development

Quality of Life (QOL) among University Students in Jordan: A Descriptive Study

Quality of life (QOL) among university students themselves in Jordan was underestimated.  It was reported that among university students general population, several factors such as the academic overload in addition to the students’ non-school activities may contribute to this situation.  There is a lack of QOL studies among the general university students in Jordan and in the Arabic world. Thus, the aim of this descriptive study was to examine QOL among university students in Jordan. Data were obtained from 119 current university nursing students. The highest Medical Outcome Study Short Form 36 (SF 36) scores were obtained for physical functioning domain (78.1) and the lowest scores were for vitality domain (52.3). The two genders significantly differed in physical functioning (t= -2.44, p= .016). In terms of employment, there were significant differences between employed and not employed students in role physical (t= -2.11, p= .03), social functioning (t= -3.30, p= .001), and bodily pain domains (t= -3.28, p= .001). No significant differences in terms of grade point average (GPA). This study provides preliminary about nursing student’s quality of life in Jordan. Findings will serve as a basis for Arab researchers to conduct future intervention studies. Keywords: students, quality of life, employment, gender

Evaluation of Road Pavement Maintenance by Contract in Jordan

In this research, road pavement maintenance by contract in Jordan was investigated. For this purpose, a subjective procedure (the Present Serviceability Rating (PSR)) was used to evaluate pavement serviceability. Three major highways (Jarash-Amman highway, Naour-Dead Sea highway and Zarqa-Syrian borders highway) that were maintained by contract were selected. The developed data base included information on pavement characteristics, traffic type and volume and routine maintenance cost. The effect of maintenance cost on pavement serviceability was estimated by developing a statistical relationship between maintenance cost and pavement serviceability rating before and after maintenance. The results showed that the pavement serviceability of Jarash-Amman highway and Naour-Dead Sea highway was adversely affected after applying maintenance by contract. The pavement serviceability of Zarqa-Syrian borders highway was slightly improved after applying maintenance by contract, but the improvement was not up to expectations. It is believed that the reasons for such results are a combination of the contractor’s poor experience and qualification and the timing of maintenance where the pavement was left without maintenance until it reached fair or poor condition

Uniform fractional factorial design tables for energy piles with maximum thermal conductance

Energy Piles are the heat exchangers of Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP) that transfer the buildings heat to the lower temperature shallow ground reducing the energy consumption in the cooling of buildings. These piles are designed with main objective of lowest thermal resistance. In this paper, nine factors influencing the thermal resistance of the energy pile are defined and statistically evaluated. These nine factors are; number of tubes, pile diameter, tube diameter, tube thickness, tube location, pile conductivity, tube conductivity, soil conductivity, and water flow rate. The thermal resistance of the energy pile is calculated using the line source analytical model. The significance of these factors is evaluated using fractional factorial uniform design tables. The results show significant decrease in the pile thermal resistivity with the increase of the tube diameter, number of tubes, water flow rate, and tube and pile thermal conductivities. On the other hand, decrease of the tube thickness, and pile diameter slightly decrease the pile thermal resistivity. Furthermore, the tubes located near the piles outer surface show significant decrease in the pile thermal resistivity. Also, the soil thermal conductivity has shown insignificant effects on the pile thermal resistivity. 1 2017 WIT Press.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This publication was made possible by grant No. NPRP 7-725-2-270 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.Scopu