Eco-friendly Concrete Using Waste Plastic Bottles as Aggregate: A Case Study from Oman

Waste plastic bottles (WPB) (polyethylene terephthalate (PET)) type are used widely for water storage and eventually become environmental burden. This study investigated an innovative application of the WPB to partially replace the fine aggregate in concrete nonstructural element. This research evaluated the effect of plastic content on concrete mechanical and physical properties. The WPBs were ground into < 5 mm in size equal to the fine aggregate size. Therefore, different percentages of WPB were used namely 10, 20 and 30%. The results revealed that 20% of the WPB showed the best results to produce light weight concrete. The compressive strength was reduced by 20% only with 20% of WPB which it declined by 42% with higher WPB content. Moreover, concrete with 20% of WPB content achieved ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) of 3 km/s which indicated a satisfactory level of concrete integrity. This indeed clearly indicated that the plastic content should be carefully selected before full applications. This study suggested that each cubic meter of concrete can accommodate around 100 kg of WPB. Indeed, that will reduce the pressure on landfills and the environment by having this innovative application

Bioactive Compounds from Omani Sea Cucumbers

Antimicrobial, anti-diatom and anti-larval activities of both water soluble (water  extracts) and non-water soluble metabolites (methanol: chlorophorm, 1:1 extracts) of the sea cucumbers Holothuria atra and Holothuria edulis  from Bander AL-Khiran region, Oman were tested in this study. There was no significant effect of  the extracts from sea cucumbers on bacterial (3 reference bacteria from seawater and pathogens  Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa,  Streptococcus pneumoniae, Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus epidermidis) and the diatom  Chaetoceros sp. growth. Both water extracts and methanol: chlorophorm extracts caused significant mortality of Artemia salina nauplia. This study suggests that Omani sea cucumbers might be a good  source of toxic anti-larval compounds

Additional file 1: of The prevalence of gastric heterotopia of the proximal esophagus is underestimated, but preneoplasia is rare - correlation with Barrett’s esophagus

Gastric Heterotopia datasets. Contains demographic, endoscopic and histological data, as mentioned at the head of columns. (XLSX 53 kb