The influence of high performance work system, organizational culture on employee performance, a study in The Ministry of Education in Oman

The need to enhance the performance of employees in the ministry of education in Oman has made the researcher to conduct this study. Specifically, the study focuses on the influence of high performance work system (HPWS) and organizational culture on the performance of employees in the ministry of education in Oman. A cross sectional study of questionnaire survey research design was conducted in this respect. Questionnaire data was generated from 162 employees and the questionnaire were distributed by hand. The findings from the testing of the hypotheses demonstrated that HPWS have significant positive relationship with employees performance except for the performance management system (PMS) which shows a negative relationship with employees performance. The culture of the organizational was also found to have a positive effect on the performance of employees in the ministry. On this note, the study recommends for the urgent need by the ministry to give serious consideration to the performance management system if they want to achieve better performance. In conclusion the present study presented the theoretical and practical implication in addition to the limitations of the study and suggestions for future study are included in this regar

A Comparison of Trends in Extreme Rainfall Using 20-Year Data in Three Major Cities in Oman

Many regions in the world have recently experienced more frequent and intensive disasters such as flash floods and persistent droughts. The Sultanate of Oman is no exception to this. We analyzed twodecade long daily precipitation records in three major cities, namely, Sohar, Muscat and Salalah, mainly focusing on extremes. A set of climate indices defined in the RClimDex software package was used. Moreover, annual maximum 1-day precipitations in three study areas were analyzed using the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution function.  Results showed significant changes in the precipitation regime in recent years. The annual total precipitation in Sohar and Salalah decreased, while that in Muscat shows statistically week increasing trend. However, all indices analyzed indicate enhanced extreme precipitation toward 2010 in Muscat and Salalah. As a result, the contribution from extreme events to the annual total rainfall steadily increases in both study areas. A clear conclusion could not be made based on selected indices for Sohar due to consistent drier years occurred from 1999 to 2005. Frequency analysis indicates that the annual the maximum 1-day rainfall estimated in Sohar and Muscat for 5 and 10 year return periods are approximately same (70 mm/day and 108 mm/day, respectively) but about two-fold greater than that in Salalah (29 mm/day and 60 mm/day, respectively)

Stem Cell Transplantation in Patients with Sickle Cell Disease

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is currently the only established cure for sickle cell disease (SCD). Replacement of the stem cell that has the defective beta globin allele with the normal gene decreases hemoglobin S and the risk of complications of SCD. The first case reported was a girl with acute myeloid leukemia and SCD who received HSCT and achieved long-term SCD and leukemia-free survival. Given the favorable outcomes of HSCT with thalassemia major using myeloablative preparative regimens, this approach became widely used in the initial studies of HSCT in SCD. The current standard of care is to use a myeloablative stem cell transplantation in patients with severe disease who have human leukocyte antigen–identical sibling. HSCT improves organ function, quality of life, and overall and disease-free survival. However, this is associated with high risk of gonadal dysfunction and graft versus host disease in addition to the mortality associated with the myeloablative HSCT. Reduced-intensity HSCT has also been reported with high rates of engraftment and favorable outcomes. This has been introduced to lower the gonadal dysfunction, mortality, and graft versus host disease associated with myeloablative approaches. Other approaches include HSCT using matched unrelated donors, cord blood units, and human leukocyte antigen haploidentical donors. Unfortunately, graft rejection is a common complication with these approaches. In this chapter, we review the indications of HSCT for SCD and outcomes of different transplant strategies including alternative donor transplant, graft rejection, and infertility after transplantation

A Case Study on Expansive Soils and Rocks of Al-Khod in Northern Oman

A case study of damage due to expansive soils and rocks in Northern Oman has been studied. Geological and geotechnical investigation revealed the presence of very stiff to hard silty clay with mudstone. Swell pressures up to 330 kPa, and swell percent values up to 70 were measured. Smectite (montmorillonite) and illite clay minerals were identified as being the main clay minerals present in the soils and rocks. A detailed investigation into the damage to the different building elements has been undertaken to study the mechanism of structural damage to establish the cause of such damage and to recommend the appropriate measures to be taken for the construction of buildings founded on expansive soils and rocks in Oman

An Investigation of Excessive Seepage from the Al-Fulaij Recharge Dam, Oman

The Al-Fulaij recharge dam is located on the Al Batinah coast in Oman and was constructed in 1992. The dam is about 3.3 km long and 7.7 m high with a storage capacity of 3.7 million cubic meters of water. It is an earthfill dam with silty, sandy gravel fill in the embankment. Excessive seepage of between 5,000–12,500 m3/day was observed during floods in 1993, and several sinkholes were noticed close to the upstream toe. Remedial work consisting of an upstream blanket and a cutoff trench wall was performed in 2000. However, these remedial measures failed and almost the same seepage was noticed again during the impoundment. This paper investigates possible causes of the seepage using a finite element model. The input data for the model were collected from site investigations and field records during the construction and monitoring of the dam. The study reveals that the most probable cause of the excessive seepage is the presence of a permeable soil layer underneath the dam due to the dissolution of the gypsum material

Wadi Flow Simulation Using Tank Model in Muscat, Oman

In Oman, changes in precipitation intensity and frequency have already begun to be detected, although the attributed impacts, such as, flash flooding is poorly understood. For example, the supper cyclonic storm, hurricane Gonu in 2007 led to the worst natural disaster on record in Oman, with total rainfall reached 610 mm near the cost. The cyclone and flash flood caused about $4 billion in damage (2007 USD) and 49 deaths. The objective of this study is to develop a Wadi-flow simulation model to understand precipitation-river discharge relationship in Muscat. A lumped-parameter, non-linear, rainfall-runoff model was used. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO-56) modified Hargreaves equation was used for estimating reference evapotranspiration (ET0). Precipitation and temperature data during 1996-2003 were obtained from the Muscat-airport meteorological station. Observed river discharges during 26-30, March 1997 were used to calibrate the model and observations during 1997-2003 were used to verify our simulations. Simulated water discharges agreed with the corresponding observations, with the Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient equals to 0.88. This developed model will later be used with a set of General Circulation Model scenarios (GCM) to understand the Wadi-flow variations under changing climate conditions

An Assessment of Temperature and Precipitation Change Projections in Muscat, Oman from Recent Global Climate Model Simulations

Oman is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, the most significant of which are increased temperature, less and more erratic precipitation, see level rise (SLR) and desertification. The objective of this research is to investigate the potential variation of precipitation and temperature in Muscat, the capital city of Sultanate of Oman in future. We used the MIROC general circulation model (GCM) output (maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation) from the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 scenarios of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for assessing changes in climate in the period of 2080-2099 compared to the baseline period of 1986-2005. The spatial mismatch between GCM grid scale and local scale was resolved by applying the LARS stochastic Weather Generator (WG) model. The results obtained for 4 scenarios indicate a significant warming in future, which ranges from 0.93ᴼC (minimum temperature by 1.1ᴼC and maximum temperature by 0.86ᴼC) for the lowest scenario, RCP 2.6, to 3.1ᴼC (minimum temperature by 3.2ᴼC and maximum temperature by 3.0ᴼC) for the highest one, RCP 8.5, relative to baseline level. The differences in the precipitation projections between the scenarios are much greater compared to consistent warming depicted in temperatures. The results reveal  -36.4% and -36.0% decreases in precipitation for the RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5 scenarios, respectively, while, RCP 6.0 and RCP 8.5 scenarios predict increase in precipitation in a range from 9.6% to 12.5%, respectively during 2080-2099 compared to 1986-2005 period. These results need to be further improved by adopting more GCMs, which will provide potential changes in a consistent