EVOLUTION OF THE OMANI HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM AND ECONOMIC CHALLENGES 1970-2014

The Sultanate of Oman underwent a tremendous development in all its vitals sectors since 1970. The lag in Oman infrastructure development was mainly due to its very weak economic system. Prior to this date, there was no fundamental education system in Oman, not even dreaming about higher education. After His Majesty Qaboos bin Said took the lead of the country on 18th of November 1970, he started building the infrastructure of the country. He began by strengthening the country economy mainly utilizing the oil treasure in order to build and enhance the country\u27s major systems like health, education, transportation and other vitals sectors. Throughout the past forty-five years, Oman had made a huge leap in the areas of economy, education, as well as higher education. This paper will discuss the development in those areas, while linking economy development to the education and higher education development throughout the above-mentioned period

TOWARDS IMPROVING THE EDUCATION FUNDING POLICY IN OMAN: LESSONS LEARNED FROM OTHER OIL DEPENDENT NATIONS

The education system in Oman underwent tremendous development during the past four decades, however, the national economy dependency on oil threatens the sustainability of its education funding. This study aims to explore the relationship between education funding and oil price fluctuations in Qatar, U.A.E., and Oman from 1975 to 2015. Moreover, it aims to suggest new economic alternatives to diversify the education funding sources in Oman. This quantitative study, under the framework of Human Capital Theory, utilized descriptive and associational approaches to study the association between oil prices and education expenditures in the three countries. Multiple regression analyses showed that oil prices significantly predicted the government expenditure on education in Oman and Qatar with (β = -0.40, p = 0.013) and (β = 2.47, p = 0.02) respectively, while it was not significant in predicting the government expenditure on education (β = 0.36, p = 0.40) in the U.A.E. This study highlighted how Qatar and U.A.E were successful in moving away from oil dependency. The researcher recommended that the Omani government must encourage the inflow of direct foreign investment into its education field, like establishment of new education hubs, educational cities, and opening new branches for some of the leading educational institutions from around the world. The researcher plans to conduct future qualitative research to enrich knowledge in this area

Comprehensive Comparisons of Two and Three Dimensional Numerical Estimation of Stress Intensity Factors and Crack propagation in Linear Elastic Analysis

This paper presents a comprehensive comparison of two finite element software in two and three dimensions. The first is a two-dimensional crack growth simulation program developed as source code by using Visual Fortran Language whereas the second is ANSYS mechanical program (3D structural analysis for fracture mechanic analysis). The procedure consists of computing stress intensity factors (SIFs), the crack growth path and the stresses and strain distributions via an incremental analysis of the crack extension, considering two and three-dimensional analysis. Comparisons between these two software were performed for different case studies for stress intensity factors as well as crack growth trajectory. This source code includes the mesh generator based on the advancing front method as well as all the pre and post process for the crack growth simulation under linear elastic fracture mechanics theory with a user-friendly interface. The maximum circumferential stress criterion was used for prediction of the crack growth in isotropic materials under mixed-mode loading. Furthermore, the equivalent domain integral method has been used for calculating the stress intensity factors values during crack growth. Verification of the predicted crack path and stress intensity factors values were validated with relevant experimental data and numerical results obtained by other researchers with a good agreement

Towards the detection and analysis of performance regression introducing code changes

In contemporary software development, developers commonly conduct regression testing to ensure that code changes do not affect software quality. Performance regression testing is an emerging research area from the regression testing domain in software engineering. Performance regression testing aims to maintain the system\u27s performance. Conducting performance regression testing is known to be expensive. It is also complex, considering the increase of committed code and developing team members working simultaneously. Many automated regression testing techniques have been proposed in prior research. However, challenges in the practice of locating and resolving performance regression still exist. Directing regression testing to the commit level provides solutions to locate the root cause, yet it hinders the development process. This thesis outlines motivations and solutions to address locating performance regression root causes. First, we challenge a deterministic state-of-art approach by expanding the testing data to find improvement areas. The deterministic approach was found to be limited in searching for the best regression-locating rule. Thus, we presented two stochastic approaches to develop models that can learn from historical commits. The goal of the first stochastic approach is to view the research problem as a search-based optimization problem seeking to reach the highest detection rate. We are applying different multi-objective evolutionary algorithms and conducting a comparison between them. This thesis also investigates whether simplifying the search space by combining objectives would achieve comparative results. The second stochastic approach addresses the severity of class imbalance any system could have since code changes introducing regression are rare but costly. We formulate the identification of problematic commits that introduce performance regression as a binary classification problem that handles class imbalance. Further, the thesis provides an exploratory study on the challenges developers face in resolving performance regression. The study is based on the questions posted on a technical form directed to performance regression. We collected around 2k questions discussing the regression of software execution time, and all were manually analyzed. The study resulted in a categorization of the challenges. We also discussed the difficulty level of performance regression issues within the development community. This study provides insights to help developers during the software design and implementation to avoid regression causes

Fabrication of TiO2-Nanotube-Array-Based Supercapacitors

In this work, a simple and cost-effective electrochemical anodization technique was adopted to rapidly grow TiO₂ nanotube arrays on a Ti current collector and to utilize the synthesized materials as potential electrodes for supercapacitors. To accelerate the growth of the TiO₂ nanotube arrays, lactic acid was used as an electrolyte additive. The as-prepared TiO₂ nanotube arrays with a high aspect ratio were strongly adhered to the Ti substrate. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) results confirmed that the TiO₂ nanotube arrays were crystallized in the anatase phase. TEM images confirmed the nanotublar-like morphology of the TiO₂ nanotubes, which had a tube length and a diameter of ~16 and ~80 nm, respectively. The electrochemical performance of the TiO₂ nanotube array electrodes was evaluated using the cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and galvanostatic charge/discharge (GCD) measurements. Excellent electrochemical response was observed for the electrodes based on the TiO₂ nanotube arrays, as the cells delivered a high specific capacitance of 5.12 mF/cm² at a scan rate of 100 mV/s and a current density of 100 μA/cm². The initial capacity was maintained for more than 250 cycles. Further, a remarkable rate capability response was observed, as the cell retained 88% of the initial areal capacitance when the scan rate was increased from 10 to 500 mV/s. The results suggest the suitability of TiO₂ nanotube arrays as electrode materials for commercial supercapacitor applications

Comparison of Monte Carlo and bootstrap analyses for residual life and confidence interval

Failure starts with creation of a crack, then the propagation of the crack and eventually the fracture of the material. Furthermore, material selection, geometry, processing and residual stresses are critical factors that may contribute to uncertainty and prospective failure mechanisms in engineering. These issues may also arise in computational analysis, a problematic model, for instance, a three-dimensional surface fracture that may necessitate numerous degrees of freedom during analysis. However, considering the multiple incidents of material failure, detailed analysis and efforts to prevent premature material failure for safety and engineering integrity can be carried out. Thus, the objective of this study is to model crack growth in a surface-cracked structure. Aluminium alloy 7075-T6 was the material of interest in this study. The S-version finite element method (SFEM) was used to study fracture propagation. The numerical approach developed in this research was the probabilistic SFEM. Instead of mesh rebuilding, a typical finite element approach, the SFEM uses global-local element overlay method to create a fatigue crack growth model, which was then used for crack research. Empirical computation and previous experimental data were used to evaluate the stress intensity factor (SIF), surface crack growth and fatigue life. The SIF was determined using a virtual crack closure method (VCCM). In addition, the probabilistic approach is also a critical method to generate random parameters, such as Monte Carlo and bootstrap methods. The SIF, fatigue life and surface crack growth were validated and deemed to be within the acceptable range