Air pollution and health indicators in a rapidly developing industrial port in the Sultanate of Oman

Background and Aims: Sohar Industrial Port (Sultanate of Oman), started to operate in 2006, containing many industries that may adversely contribute to the air quality and hence to the health status of the residents in its proximity. The study aim is to assess the health effects of air quality of the population living in the residential area around the industrial port. Methods: Health data for the area were obtained between January 1st 2006 and December 31st 2011 from the Ministry of Health, Oman. Exposure to air pollution was classified into exposure zones according to mixture methods such as, proximity, dispersion models and wind roses. Four exposure zones were developed, from High, Intermediate, Sohar city and Control zones. Age and gender standardized rates were calculated for respiratory, cardiovascular and allergic diseases in each exposure zone. Results: The crude rate ratios of respiratory diseases in the high, the intermediate and Sohar city were (1.91, 95% CI, 1.87, 1.95), (1.18, 95% CI, 1.15, 1.21) and (0.18, 95% CI, 0.18,0.19), respectively. For dermatitis, these rates were (2.16, 95% CI, 1.91,2.45) for the high exposure zone, (1.05, 95% CI, 0.91, 1.23) for the intermediate zone and (0.20, 95% CI, 0.17,0.23) for Sohar city. In addition, the high exposure zone showed an increasing yearly trend of the incidence rate from 2007 to 2009 in both respiratory diseases and dermatitis. Conclusion: Evidence of adverse health effects was found in the high and intermediate exposure zones. More rigorous modeling is underway, which will involve other diseases and confounders

Comparing Omani Student-teachers’ Expressions of Identities in Traditional EFL Classrooms and Digital Contexts

Abstract: This paper aims to investigate how virtual social spaces facilitate the expression of female and male Omani student-teachers’ identities, as compared to classroom contexts. The study follows a qualitative research design that is grounded in an interpretivist/constructivist paradigm. Focus group discussions and Language Learning Histories were used for data collection. Fourteen Omani EFL student-teachers participated in this study. The findings are discussed in relation to Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System (2009), the Self-Determination Theory (2002), and Yashima’s International Posture (2009). The research data support the tripartite motivational model, with the expression of Omani-Islamic identity as a powerful motivation for Omani learners to participate in social media. Significantly, the findings reveal that participants’ online identity relates to their actual identity and, thus, bringing their offline identity to the digital context. In a sense, what they consumed offline fed into their online identity. Their online identity was filtered through the lens of English which facilitated their participation in virtual social spaces. The paper argues that social and cultural platforms afford wealthy exposure to and participatory involvement in multicultural-oriented spaces, promoting extensive research of the digital context. The findings of the research are topical as they resonate with the current thinking in the realm of motivation

Health and industrial development in Oman: epidemiological analysis of the health effects in a population living near a major industrial park in Oman

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonBackground and Aims: The Sohar Industrial Zone (SIZ), Oman, which started to operate in 2006, contains many industries that possibly affect the health of the local population. This study was carried out to evaluate the health effects in a population living near SIZ. Methods: Retrospective health care visits for acute respiratory diseases (ARD), asthma, conjunctivitis and dermatitis were collected between 2006 and 2010 for 2 large provinces with geographic proximity to SIZ. Exposure of the surrounding villages was classified using proximity to SIZ. Three exposure zones were defined according to the distances from the SIZ: ≤5, >5-10, ≥20 km representing high, intermediate and control exposure zones respectively. Age and gender-adjusted monthly counts of visits for the selected diseases were modelled using generalised additive models controlling for time trends. The high and intermediate exposure zones were later merged together due to similarity of effects. Exposure effect modification by age, gender and socioeconomic status (SES) was also tested. Results: Living within 10 km from SIZ showed greater association for ARD (RR: 2.5; 95% CI: 2.3-2.7), asthma (RR: 3.7; 95% CI: 3.1-4.5), conjunctivitis (RR: 3.1; 95% CI: 2.9-3.5) and dermatitis (RR: 2.7; 95% CI: 2.5-3.0) when compared to the control zone, for the population of <20 years. For the population of ≥20 years, these risks were: (RR: 2.0; 95% CI: 1.9-2.2), (RR: 3.6; 95% CI: 3.0-4.4), (RR: 2.8; 95% CI: 2.5-3.2) and (RR: 2.1; 95% CI: 1.9-2.4), respectively. Greater exposure effects were observed amongst ages ≥50 years and lower SES groups in the ≥20 years group. Models showed no differences between the gender groups. Conclusion: This is the first study conducted in Oman examining the adverse health effects on the population living near SIZ. We hope that these findings will contribute to building up an evidence-based environmental and public health policy in Oman

Teacher-Researchers’ Reflective Narratives on Their Experiences at the Language Center Research Committee, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman

The current study reports on findings of using self-narrations by three teacher-researchers, (two of whom are the authors and the narrative inquirers of this study) to reflect on an English as a Foreign Language -based research experience in a newly established Research Committee (RC) in their work place. Narrative frame tool in the form of sentence starters has been utilized to guide the narration and generate data from the three teachers’ previously lived research experiences in the Committee. It is worth noting here that these three teachers had been working and actively engaging in research work before they had their memberships in the RC. Findings of this study are hoped to be significant and useful in learning about and highlighting the expectations of these three teacher-researchers of the research committee work, their learning experiences about research, their challenges and how they defeated them plus their future inspirations. Further, reflecting on these findings can also help the trio with their professional development and growth as well as the ones of their colleagues at the Centre for Preparatory Studies (CPS) that was formerly known as the Language Centre (LC) at the time of their memberships. The study concludes with some pedagogical and practical implications regarding the experience of reflection, narration and learning research

Implementing Real-time Visitor Counter Using Surveillance Video and MobileNet-SSD Object Detection: The Best Practice

إن معرفة عدد الأشخاص في المباني والمنشآت يساهم بشكل كبير في المحافظة على سلامة الزائرين وكذلك توفير معلومات مفيدة لإدارة تلك المؤسسات. تهدف هذه الورقة الى استخدام الذكاء الصناعي والاستفادة من كاميرات المراقبة في معرفة عدد الأشخاص المتواجدين في مبنى ما. قام الباحثون ببناء قاعدة بيانات بسيناريوهات مختلفة لتنفيذ تجارب متنوعة لمعرفة افضل ممارسة ممكنة في استخدام هذا النوع من العدادات. ومن خلال تلك التجارب حقق الباحثون نتائج متميزة في السيناريوهات التي تتكون من شخص واحد او شخصين باتجاهين منفصلين حيث وصلة نسبة الدقة الى 100%. Counters that keep track of the number of people who enter a building are a useful management tool for keeping everyone who uses it safe and happy. This paper aims to employ the MobileNet-SSD machine learning approach to implement a best practice for visitor counter. The researchers have to build a different scenario test dataset along with the MOT20 dataset to achieve the proposed methodology. Implementing different experiments in single-user, one-one; two-two users; many-two, and multiple users in different walking directions to detect and count shows varied results based on the experiment type. The best achieved by single-user and one-to-one model; both are scored 100% of detecting and calculating for in or out

Enhanced CNN with Global Features for Fault Diagnosis of Complex Chemical Processes

Convolutional neural network (CNN) models have been widely used for fault diagnosis of complex systems. However, traditional CNN models rely on small kernel filters to obtain local features from images. Thus, an excessively deep CNN is required to capture global features, which are critical for fault diagnosis of dynamical systems. In this work, we present an improved CNN that embeds global features (GF-CNN). Our method uses a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for dimension reduction to directly extract global features and integrate them into the CNN. The advantage of this method is that both local and global patterns in images can be captured by a simple model architecture instead of establishing deep CNN models. The proposed method is applied to the fault diagnosis of the Tennessee Eastman process. Simulation results show that the GF-CNN can significantly improve the fault diagnosis performance compared to traditional CNN. The proposed method can also be applied to other areas such as computer vision and image processing.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Investigations on the transition between stratified and non-stratified horizontal oil-water flows

The work presented in this thesis aims to investigate experimentally and theoretically the transition from stratified to non-stratified horizontal oil-water flows and to improve the understanding of the dual continuous pattern, where both phases retain their continuity at the top and bottom of the pipe respectively but there is dispersion of one phase into the other. Two experimental facilities were used in this study; a 38 mm ID stainless steel test section in a pilot scale flow facility and a 14 mm ID acrylic test section in a small flow facility running with water and oil (5.5 mPa s viscosity and 828kg/m3 density) as test fluids. A high speed video camera was employed to examine wave characteristics and flow development, capture mechanism of drop formation and determine the onset conditions of drop entrainment and the dual continuous pattern in both facilities. In the 38 mm ID test section, a conductivity probe was also used to investigate wave structures before and at the onset of entrainment. A high frequency impedance probe was used to find the phase distribution of the oil-water flow while the local drop velocity and chord length distributions were measured using a dual impedance probe. In the 14 mm ID test section, the influence of adding polymer in horizontal oil-water flows was also investigated. While the flow pattern map developed by Lovick and Angeli (2004a) was used for the 38 mm ID test section, a new flow pattern map was constructed for the 14 mm ID pipe. Dual continuous flow was found to occur for a smaller range of superficial velocities in the small test section compared to the large one. Visual observations from the two test sections revealed that no drops are formed when interfacial waves are absent. In addition annular flow with oil flowing at the core was observed in both pipes for low oil velocities and relatively high water velocities. The results from the high speed pictures and the conductivity probe showed that the amplitudes of the waves are increased as the superficial velocities of the two phases increase and as a result the required superficial water velocity,Usw,for the onset of entrainment decreases as the superficial oil velocity, Uso, increases. The model suggested by Trallero (1995) for the transition from stratified to non-stratified flow failed to predict the experimental results. Moreover, the high speed video images and the conductivity probe results showed that the amplitudes of the waves found at 2m from the inlet are smaller than those observed at 7 m. When drops and the onset of entrainment were observed at 7m from the inlet, these were not observed at 2m from the inlet, which means that all drops forming downstream the pipe resulted from the waves. In the large pipe, the presence of a bend after the inlet section (T junction) resulted in larger drops than when no bend was present (Y junction). The high speed images also revealed that drops formed as a result of the relative movement between the oil and water phases. The faster phase will undercut the other one until a drop is detached from the wave crest. The entrained fractions during dual continuous flow, or the fraction of one phase dispersed into the continuum of the other were calculated from the phase distribution data obtained with both inlet configurations (T junction and bend and Y -junction). The entrained fraction of water in oil (Ew/o) increased as the input water flow rates increased at constant superficial oil velocity. Similarly, the entrained fraction of oil in water (Eo/w) increased as the oil flow rates increased at a constant water superficial velocity. Moreover, the entrained fractions when the bend was used were higher than those obtained without it. From the chord length measurements in dual continuous flow, chord length and drop concentration were found to decrease with increasing distance from the interface while the number density of large drops decreased as Usw increased at each Uso. Also, oil drops were in general larger than water drops. Drop velocity measurements also revealed that water drops were faster than the velocity of the upper layer while oil drops could be either slower or faster than the velocity of the lower layer. The results showed that average chord length L32 was almost constant for the oil drops while it tended to decrease for the water drops as the respective layer velocity increased. In the 14 mm ID pipe, the addition of a polymer in the oil-water flow had a significant effect on the flow patterns and pressure drop. The transition from stratified to nonstratified patterns was clearly delayed and the pressure drop was found to decrease after adding the polymer. The wavy interface in the stratified, dual continuous and annular flows was damped when polymer was present. The interfacial and water wall shear stress were also found to decrease after the addition of the polymer. Theoretically a model was developed based on Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability to predict whether waves in stratified wavy flow with certain amplitudes and lengths are stable or not. The model compared well with the Viscous KH correlation developed by Trallero (1995) and with some experimental results. The model was extended to predict the onset velocities of entrainment by including an empirical wave amplitude and length. The prediction agreed well with the experimental onset velocities from a number of studies. Based on a balance between drag force and surface tension on the crests of the waves, another equation was developed to predict the critical wave amplitude and length required for drop formation. This equation was used together with the stability equation to define three regions in a wave amplitude against length graph. These are; stable wave region; unstable wave region, where waves are unstable but drops may not form because waves need to grow more before drops can detach; drop entrainment region. The model agreed well with the experimental results. Finally, an entrainment model to predict the fraction of one phase entrained into the other during dual continuous flow, that was based on a balance between rate of drop entrainment and rate of drop deposition. The model was modified with experimental data from the current study and was then validated against data from literature. The comparison was reasonable in many cases

Logistics Hubs in Oman and Political Uncertainty in the Gulf

Oman is taking remarkable steps to develop its logistics sector to be one of the main pillars of the nation's non-oil based economy in the future. The impact of the global economic downturn caused by low oil prices has pushed Gulf States including Oman to look beyond the existing oil based economy. This research utilizes an augmented form of the Gravity Model of Trade developed by Tinbergen in 1962 to better understand the past trend of Omani non-oil exports and re-exports and estimate future growth.Ope

Preferential Vaporization Potential of Crude Oils and its Impact on Flame Flashback Behaviors

As combined cycle gas turbines for power generation operating on light distillate fuels provide a sufficient energy, there is a global trend in using heavy liquids (e.g. HFO, crude oils) for direct-firing in gas turbine. However, using these heavy fuels imposes many challenges due to their wide range of physical/chemical properties, which control near-limit combustion behaviors, such lean blow-out and flashback. In addition, the ignition propensity of these heavy fuels is not reported in crude assays, and utilizing a simple, with small sample, and quick methodology to characterize the ignition propensity is important in determining the fuel quality. In this work, the derived cetane number (DCN) of whole crudes and their distillation cuts are measured. Four crudes were distilled into four fractions as reported in crude assays: light naphtha, heavy naphtha, kerosene, and light gas oil. The DCN of each fraction was measured and compared using an ignition quality tester (IQT), where the DCN values for all the crude cuts increase from 23-35 for lighter fractions to 50-60 for heaver one. This variation of DCN values over their distillation curves was observed before (for distillate fuels, e.g. Petroleum-derived fuels) to be linked to strongly influence near limit combustion behaviors (e.g. LBO) through preferential vaporization, which suggests that preferential vaporization will play a significant role when using whole crudes in gas turbine applications. To further analyze such a behavior, 1H and 13C NMR spectra were acquired to characterize the chemical functional groups controlling the DCN and their distinctive influence. Based on a chemical functional groups approach, A QSPR regression model was developed indicating that the n-paraffinic CH2 group has the most influence in determining the global ignition propensity of crude oils. The analysis also suggests that chemical reactivity (DCN) of crude oils can be roughly estimated based on key-functional groups determined from 1H and 13C NMR analysis. Finally, to investigate the impact of preferential vaporization on flame flashback, a spray burner was developed which has the ability to control the extent of fuel vaporization. Experiment was first conducted at burner temperature of 700 K with various n-alkanes and iso-alkanes, where two distinct flame flashback behaviors were observed, propagation and ignition-driven flashback. Two binary mixture were formulated that have identical chemical reactivity for fully vaporized fuel/air mixture but exhibit a drastic difference of ignition propensity under partially vaporized conditions. To observe the role of preferential vaporization effectively, the experiment was conducted at 450 K using those two mixtures. One of the Crude oils was used to investigate crude oil flashback behaviors in the spray burner