As in the rest of the world, obesity in Oman has increased and according to World Health Organization (WHO) data, prevalence of obesity in 2008 and 2016 were 20.9% and 27% respectively. This study explores primary care physicians’ current strategies and management of obesity, attitude and perceptions towards obesity, educational needs, and their views on long-term follow up. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted where practicing family medicine physicians from different governorates were invited to participate in an online questionnaire-based survey. Participant were invited via email and responses were kept anonymous. Responses were collected over three weeks in April 2019 and only responses that met inclusion criteria were analyzed with SPSS v22. Results: 77 complete responses met inclusion criteria and female were the majority (67.5%). Half of participants had less than 10 years of experience. Weight and BMI were recorded routinely by two-thirds of participants whereas waist- hip ratio was recorded by only 12%. Weight reduction medications were prescribed by 5.2% and 24% would refer an obese patient to Bariatric center. Main barrier to obesity management and referral was inadequate obesity specialist centers followed by short consultation times. The pathophysiology mechanism of obesity and related hormones was only known by 40.8%. Almost all participants agreed that formal obesity management training should be integrated as part of residency training. Conclusion: Despite the significant number of comorbidities related to obesity and its complications, weight, BMI and other anthropometric measures were not routinely performed. Nationally, the rate of referral to bariatric centers for evaluation is low. Boundaries and challenges do exist and need to be addressed. Obesity and weight management need to be integrated as part of Family Physicians Training Program.

Desalination of oil-contaminated saline water using membrane distillation requires hydrophobic membranes with underwater superoleophobic surfaces. For designing such membranes, the chemistry and morphology of the interfacial domains in contact with the contaminated water need to be adjusted such that a stable water layer, adhering to the surface, prevents oil droplets from wetting the membrane. In this article, we present an approach that relies on the controlled functionalization of the surface of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes; we adjust the surface topography of the membranes and introduce chemical heterogeneity to them. We show that the morphology of the PVDF surface can be altered by adjusting the composition of the nonsolvent bath used for the phase inversion process. Also, we render the surface of the membranes hydrophilic by using an alkaline chemical bath solution. The membrane morphology and effectiveness of our chemical treatment were confirmed by atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and zeta potential measurements. A stable underwater contact angle, higher than 150°, was observed for both canola oil (ρ ≈ 0.913 g cm −3 , γ ≈ 31.5 mN m −1 ) and hexane (ρ ≈ 0.655 g cm −3 , γ ≈ 18 mN m −1 ). We evaluated the performance of both pristine and functionalized membranes in a laboratory-scale direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) setup and desalinated a saline solution contaminated with 500 ppm canola oil. Our results show that oil does not wet the functionalized membrane during the desalination process. The average permeate flux and salt rejection values for the functionalized membranes were 45 ± 5 Lm -2 h -1 (T feed = 70 °C, T distillate = 20 °C) and 99.99%, respectively.

Background and objectives: Safe storage of medications can prevent the accidental poisoning of children. How medications are stored in homes in the Saudi community is not known. The objective of this study was to assess the safety measures for drug storage that are employed by parents to avoid unintentional drug poisoning of children below the age of 6 years. Materials and methods: This was a cross-sectional survey study based on a validated questionnaire created using the Survey Monkey online tool. Results: Ninety-three percent of the respondents did not store medications in secure and safe places such as locked boxes or locked drawers; however, more than half of the respondents (54.3%) stored medications at a level that was above the eye level of an adult. The majority of drugs (60.2%) were kept in the fridge; 45.9% were kept in kitchens, 45.1% in bedrooms, 8% in living rooms and 2% in bathrooms. Thirty percent of the respondents stored medications in two places, and 10% stored medication in three or more places. Eighty-nine percent disposed of unwanted medicines by throwing them in the trash, only 11% returned them to the pharmacy, and 11% flush them down the toilet. Conclusions: These results raise concerns about how drugs are stored and disposed of in the community. Additional community education and awareness programs regarding the safe storage of drugs in the home and the identification of useful and accessible methods of drug disposal are needed.

Despite remarkable progress in developing wetting-resistant membranes for the desalination of challenging water resources through membrane distillation, practical approaches that allow for the fabrication of wetting-resistant hollow fiber membranes (HFMs) are not yet available. Here we demonstrate the feasibility of using a semicontinuous bottom-up technique to create omniphobic HFMs. The omniphobic HFM showed stable performance in the desalination of lowsurface-tension saline solutions during a prolonged (>42 h) direct-contact membrane distillation test. Additionally, compared with polyvinylidene fluoride hollow fibers, we note a ∼71% reduction in salt scaling for the omniphobic HFMs.

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Abstract:This paper presents the design, development, and validation of an ontology based SCADA intrusion detection system. The proposed system analyses SCADA network communications and can derive additional information based on the background knowledge and ontology models to enhance the intrusion detection data. The developed intrusion model captures network communications, cyber attacks and the context within the SCADA domain. Moreover, a set of semantic rules were constructed to detect various attacks and extract logical relationships among these attacks. The presented framework was extensively evaluated and a comparison to the state of the art is provided.

This study reviewed the complications associated with hypospadias repair surgery done at Khoula hospital, Oman during the period of January, 2010 to October, 2015. During this period, 178 cases were operated. Snodgrass and Bracka's techniques were the most used techniques. Complications were noted in 16 out of 82 patients operated using Snodgrass technique and 2 out 10 patients operated via Bracka's technique. This study helped in shifting the practice towards the technique associated with the lowest complications. As a result we adopted for our practice MAGPI for glandular hypospadias, Snodgrass for any type of hypospadias without chordee and Bracka's two stages repair for hypospadias with chordee.

One of the known complications of cleft palate surgery is development of fistula. This study highlights our experience with cleft palate surgery in relation to fistula occurrence at our center. This is one of the first studies of this kind in Oman. We retrospectively reviewed 362 records of cleft palate patients. The most common technique used for cleft palate repair at our center was VeauWardill-Kilner technique. In our series we have noticed palatal fistulae in 32% of cases. This high rate is partially due to inclusion of very anterior fistulas in patients with complete cleft lips and palates, which actually represent part of the alveolar cleft rather than breakdown of the palatal repair. This will be closed during time of alveolar bone grafting at a later stage. We recommend a future prospective controlled study to study the factors that lower the incidence of fistula in our population.