Smoking among Nurses in Turkey: Comparison with Other Countries

The purpose of this study was to obtain baseline information on smoking among nurses. An attempt was made to contact, in person, all 301 nurses working for the university hospital in Sivas, Turkey, and when contacted they were asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire. Each unit of the hospital was visited three times, and 239 (79%) nurses were reached who all completed the questionnaire. Of the 239 respondents, 107 (45%) were current smokers, reflecting a substantially higher prevalence compared to that among the adult female population. The quit ratio was 22.5%. Of 127 ever-smoker nurses who responded to the related item, 90% started smoking during or after nursing education. This pattern of smoking initiation was different from the pattern in developed countries where nurses had already started smoking before beginning that training. Nurses with a high school education had a significantly higher prevalence of ever-smoking. Most respondents frequently or sometimes saw doctors smoking in rooms for nurses and in rooms for doctors in inpatient services. In-depth qualitative studies are needed to determine the reasons for the different smoking-initiation pattern

On algebraic properties of general proper decentralized systems

The new concepts of the decentralized output feedback variable polynomial, the decentralized output feedback cycle index of general proper systems, and the geometric multiplicities of decentralized fixed modes are introduced. Their computational methods and some algebraic properties are presented. It is shown that the decentralized output feedback cycle index of a general proper system is equal to one when the system has no fixed modes or equal to the maximum of the geometric multiplicities of its decentralized fixed modes. It is also shown that almost all decentralized output feedback can be used to make the zeros of the decentralized variable polynomial distinct, and disjoint from any given finite set of points on the complex plane. © 1993

Robust adaptive stabilization of a class of systems under structured nonlinear perturbations with application to interconnected systems

This paper presents a stabilization scheme for a dass of multi-input/multioutput systems with nonlinear additive perturbations using high-gain adaptive controllers The nominal system is assumed to satisfy some mild conditions required by standard adaptive control schemes, and the perturbations certian structural conditions. The controller is a dynamic output feedback containing a gain parameter, which is adjusted with a simple adaptation rule. The result is also applied to decentralized stabilization of a class of interconnected systems, where the interconnections are treated as perturbations to nominally decoupled subsystems