background  & aim: case-crossover  studies are the case-control  version of crossover studies. in these studies, cases and controls are the same subjects. the term crossover is applied for designs that all subjects pass through both treatment (exposure) and placebo (non-exposure) phases. in fact they are  crossover  of  subjects  between  periods  of  exposure  and  non-exposure.  this  design ...

ba ck g r oun d & aim: spiritual care is an integral part of a holistic nursing care. providing spiritual care has a positive impact on patients’ health outcomes. although nurses understand the importance of incorporating  patient’s  spiritual  beliefs  into the care practice,  understanding  their  spirituality before addressing the spirituality of patients is also important. therefore, the ai...

physical design of the emergency department (ed) has an important effect on its role and function. to date, no guidelines have been introduced to set the standards for the construction of eds in iran. in this study we aim to devise an easy-to-use tool based on the available literature and expert opinion for the quick and effective assessment of eds in regards to their physical design. for this ...

This paper presents the relationship between daylighting performance and shading device design in the perimeter area of buildings. In the area of tropic and sub-tropic, designers always face with the contradiction between solar heat gain and daylighting using. Factors such as different type of shading device, material reflectance, fenestration design, opening ratio, and daylight distribution wi...

BACKGROUND Smoking and physical inactivity are major risk factors for heart disease. Linking strategies that promote improvements in fitness and assist quitting smoking has potential to address both these risk factors simultaneously. The objective of this study is to compare the effects of two exercise interventions (high intensity interval training (HIIT) and lifestyle physical activity) on sm...

this paper presents a relatively new management model for the optimal design and operation of irrigation water pumping systems. the model makes use of the newly introduced particle swarm optimization algorithm. a two step optimization model is developed and solved with the particle swarm optimization method. the model first carries out an exhaustive enumeration search for all feasible sets of p...

the colorado beetle, leptinotarsa decemlineata (say), is the major defoliating and exotic insect pest of potato plants and has caused serious problems in the east azerbaijan and ardabil regions of iran since emerging in the absence of natural native enemies. in the development of a suitable control strategy based on integrated pest management, it is important to recognize control methods that d...

let be a set and let be the set of subsets of . the pair in which is a collection of elements of (blocks) is called a design if every element of appears in , times. is called a symmetric design if . in a symmetric design, each element of appears times in blocks of . a mapping between two designs and is an isomorphism if is a one-to-one correspondence and . every isomorphism of a design, , to it...