A land of picturesque landscapes

_ By Ali Ahmed al Riyami  _

Oman has everything but snow; lively souqs, famed traditional handicrafts, more than 500 forts and castles, medieval oasis townships, impressive dune landscapes & endless beaches

“Oman a melodic name for one of the most beautiful countries of Arabia, a synonym for endless deserts, high mountains and wide stretching beaches. A country between tradition and modernity and with people for whom the word hospitality is not an idle promise.” This is how author Egmont Strigl, describes Oman in the opening chapter of his extensive article, titled Felix Arabia, in the German monthly journal for medical doctors, Ärztliches Journal Reise + Medizin.

In another article focusing on tourism in Oman, by Roland Karl, for the weekly German tourism magazine Touristik Aktuell and journals: Offenburger Tageblatt, Ruhr Nachrichten, Munstersche Zeitung and Westfalischer Anzeiger, depicted the allure and enchantment of the Sultanate’s diverse selection of attractions. Karl’s article traces the development of Oman from a rural backwater oasis to a modern nation. As the author notes, today’s Oman has a new infrastructure with road networks, education system, healthcare, ports, industrial estates, business centres and tourism infrastructure firmly in place.

He mentions about the fairytale-like quality of the fabulous Al Bustan Palace Hotel, noting it to be one of the country’s and the region’s best. He said, Oman has everything but snow; referring to the diverse array of splendid attractions that include lively souqs, famed traditional handicrafts, more than 500 forts and castles, medieval oasis townships, impressive dune landscapes and endless beaches. For those with a penchant for traversing off the beaten track, then, as the author points out, there are many rugged mountain trails and Wadis (dry canyon riverbeds) that allow those with an adventurous spirit and a four-wheel drive to explore these remote picturesque settings, often dotted with sleepy hamlets, water-pools and palm-tree plantations, which offer great photo opportunities.

The author makes mention of Oman’s glorious seafaring, mercantile past and the famous coastal city of Sur, in the Sharqiyah (Eastern) region, which is famous for its shipbuilding and maritime history and overlooks the Arabian Sea. The rimal Al Sharqiyah (Eastern Sands — formerly known as the Wahiba Sands) is located in this region and which the author says, “are as beautiful as the cliché of the desert.” He comments on the Sultanate’s southern-most Dhofar region, whose waters lead out to the Indian Ocean and where the seasonal gentle monsoon winds (known as khareef) turn the area into a tropical paradise.

As this takes place during the summer months, it makes Dhofar, with its major city of Salalah, a popular place for domestic, regional and international visitors — all of whom come to enjoy the temperate climate (which is in complete contrast to the rest of the country and the region) that covers the mountainside and surrounding meadows in a lush canopy of green. These are perfect conditions for the grazing livestock that thrive here and gives visitors a variety of tropical fruits, such as mangoes, coconuts, papayas and bananas, from which to choose from.

Besides this, he notes that Dhofar is the legendary, fabled ‘Land of Frankincense’ where the ancient world’s supply of the precious resin that is still harvested from the Boswella trees (being one of the few places in the world where these trees grow and are harvested and where the quality and aroma of the resultant resin is considered to be the best), was sourced from and why Oman was known as Felix (happy, or lucky) Arabia — because of the high value of the commodity.

With regard to the capital city, Muscat, Karl notes how old and new come together in harmony — “Districts with modern bank buildings and business centres and next to it is the historical Muscat with forts Mirani and Jalali and His Majesty the Sultan’s palace. Muscat is a pearl of urban town planning and one of the most beautiful cities of the Arab World.” For Strigl, he sees the liberal cosmopolitan outlook of Omani society as stemming from its seafaring past. He notes that “there is no extremism here, no social conflicts or political protest movements and that it is a safe country with almost no crime.” And “it is as beautiful as no other country is… Oman is the Jewel of Arabia.”

He reflects, life in this Arabian Gulf country “is much more quiet and pleasant; it runs in sensible harmony of modernity and old traditions and intelligent progress, which does not necessitate the loss of identity and humanity.” He also notes, Oman owes this mainly thanks to its leader, His Majesty Sultan Qaboos, adding that, “Omani hospitality is one of the nicest experiences and makes the country the real ‘Felix Arabia’.” The author is fascinated by Oman’s varied landscape with many “peaceful and quiet places where one can just sit and watch the wildlife and enjoy the view.”

Probing the aftermath of the Great Dying

_ By Manuela Gutberlet  _

The 1st International Unesco-Geosciences workshop, scheduled to be held at GUtech later this month, will focus on the recovery of marine organisms and their ecosystems following the biggest mass extinctions in geological history

Professor Dr Michaela Bernecker
(GUtech) and Dr Talal al Balushi (TRC)

First appearance of plants and animals in the
lower Triassic, around 250 million years ago

A hospital for the birds

_ By WG Dunlop in Abu Dhabi  _

A nurse treats a falcon at the hospital

each year at the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital (ADFH). "This hospital is the largest falcon hospital in the whole world," says its director, German veterinarian Margit Muller. "It was the first public falcon hospital," she adds. "The original idea behind the hospital was to provide the best possible medical care for the falcons of the Abu Dhabi emirate," she says. But "now we treat falcons of all the UAE, plus the adjacent Gulf countries." Hunting with falcons is a longstanding tradition in the Arab Gulf states.

Traditionally, the Gulf's nomadic bedouin tribes used to use wild falcons, but today, hunting falcons are captive-bred, and most cost between $800 and $4,000. Falconry "is part of my life and my family's life in the past," says Mubarak, a falconer and resident of Abu Dhabi who brought all eight of his falcons to the ADFH for check-ups. Falconry "means too much to me", he says, adding that his falcons are "like one of my sons". "My father was my first teacher, who taught me how to hunt with falcons and how to treat it like a good friend," he says. "Here, falconry is not a sport. It is a part of the culture, a part of the tradition," Muller says. "Falcons are regarded... like part of the family."

A curly-haired, middle-aged woman in gold-rimmed glasses and white lab coat, she shares her customers' passion for her patients. "Falcons are absolutely fascinating," she says with a broad smile. She describes them as "huge, beautiful, majestic" birds, gesturing with both hands as she speaks. "Each one has an individual character," she says. "Each one has an individual personality." But treating them, Muller says, can be difficult. "Falcons are usually only showing symptoms of diseases when they are extremely sick," she says. "Sometimes you have a falcon that is really sick, but it's almost impossible for the owner to detect."

For this reason, the hospital conducts routine check-ups on falcons, which usually include blood work, an X-ray, a faecal sample and checking the falcon's internal organs for problems. Falconers bring in their birds for check-ups, which usually take a few hours, two to four times a year. Sick or injured falcons can also be hospitalised at the ADFH, which, Muller says, is an official Abu Dhabi government institution. "We can, at the moment, keep more than 150 falcons here for treatment," says Mohammed Nafeez, a research associate at the ADFH, adding that between 60 and 70 are currently in the hospital.

And birds can be boarded at the ADFH when their owners are on holiday. The hospital also has two large aviaries to hold falcons while they are moulting, or changing their feathers. One aviary currently holds 12 falcons, which periodically wing across the enclosure. When not in the mood for flying, the birds can sit in one of the air-conditioned rooms at each end. Muller emphasises that the ADFH is more than just a hospital for falcons. "We are not only treating falcons, we are doing research work on falcons," she says.

As there is no specific course of study on falcon medicine, "we have set up a special training programme for falcon medicine here in the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital," she says. "We have a lot of veterinarians and students coming to us from all over the world to study here." In 2006, seven years after the ADFH's foundation, it began treating other species of birds as well. Now, the hospital treats "everything that has wings," Muller says, "from canaries until ostriches." — AFP

Study shows sharks go their own way

Whenever there is a deadly shark attack in Australia - on average, about once a year — the cry goes up that a rogue fish is on the loose and must be hunted and killed before it strikes again. Local authorities usually pander to the hysteria, sending out a posse to capture and kill an animal that some say will have developed a lust for human blood and will be lurking and hoping for another victim.

All nonsense, of course. The notion of a rogue shark is as silly as a rogue snake or a rogue mosquito. Only a tiny proportion of attacks are fatal. This is because the shark has mistaken a swimmer for its usual prey and lets go after the first bite. Last year was a bad year in Sydney: three swimmers gored over a two-week period.

Again, the baying was for vengeance. Miranda Divine, a columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald, put a popular case when she said that "if it comes to a choice between a shark life and a human life, there just should be no contest." Trying to pin an attack on a

particular shark is impossible — as researchers in Sydney announced earlier this year. Sharks are on the go all the time. They don't hang around. The researchers fixed acoustic tags to five sharks caught in Sydney Harbour and monitored their movements through 45 listening posts in enclosed waters and up and down the coast.

They picked bull sharks, a variety common in the harbour and the perpetrator in at least one of last year's attacks. One 2.4-metre-long specimen left the harbour a week after it was tagged, heading north. Two weeks later — and after staying just a day at the place which seemed the destination of its 220-kilometre swim — it was back in the harbour. "It was a long swim to stay just a day or less," said Amy Smoothey, head of the Shark Tracking Research Programme. "But we don't know why it did it. There's lots we don't know about our bull sharks." The programme will run for 10 years, said New South Wales Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan.

The object is to help swimmers stay out of the way of sharks. "It's really important to get a better understanding of what sort of movements and habits these sharks have," he said. "That gives us a better idea of not only how they move around the harbour, but also what to tell people, what advice to give people on their own swimming." The current advice is to stay out of the water at dusk and dawn, when sharks generally feed, and to avoid murky water, where poor visibility means sharks are even likelier to mistake humans for their usual prey. — DPA

Sumatran tiger may become extinct in 2015

law enforcement is believed as the main cause of the difficulty of combating tiger poaching activities. During the period 1998-2009, as many as 46 tigers were found dead as a result of man-tiger conflicts and illegal hunting, meaning that an average of seven tigers had been murdered every-year in Riau province. Only three cases of tiger poaching ended up in court in that period.

"But jail sentences handed down by the judges did not trigger a deterrent effect because the perpetrators are only punished up to one year in prison," Osmantri said. "Law enforcement against poaching and killing tigers in Riau is the most weakest than other regions in Sumatra." Environmentalists said the destruction of the species' natural habitat by illegal logging triggered the rise of conflicts between tigers and humans living in nearby forests. There are between 300 and 400 Sumatra tigers left in the wild. The Sumatran tiger is believed to be the last remaining sub-species of tiger indigenous to Indonesia. The Bali and Java tigers are believed to be extinct. — DPA

Signs of ancient civilisation in Amazon basin under study

Stop snoring; here’s how

For people who want to stop snoring, it often helps if they sleep on their side or with their upper body in a slightly raised position, the German Otolaryngologists Association noted. Losing weight can also help and snorers should refrain from a nightcap before going to bed, it said. If these measures prove ineffective, the snorer may be suffering from sleep apnoea, a disorder marked by dangerous pauses in breathing.

Should this be the case, a doctor can prescribe nighttime use of a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, which comes with a special mask. Sometimes a minor operation is advisable to stiffen soft palatal tissue. The German ear, nose and throat doctors said the procedures significantly increased the quality of patients' sleep — they wake up rested again and are no longer so tired during the day.

Extra weight may ward off an early death:
People in their 70s and chubby live longer than those who are average weight or skinny, an Australian researcher said. Barring diabetes, osteoarthritis or other diseases made worse by extra kilograms, the University of Western Australia's Leon Flicker said, "there's not much reason to tell people in their 70s and beyond to lose weight if they're not obese."

In Flicker's findings, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, those carrying a bit of extra weight were 13 per cent less likely to die in the following 10 years than those in the normal weight range or below. But before those elderly people keener on eating than walking get complacent, the study also warned that avoiding exercise doubled the risk of death for women and increased it by a quarter for men.

The proper way to brush:
Proper dental care means brushing your teeth for a least three minutes both in the morning and in the evening, noted Initiative proDente, an educational body involving five large German dental associations. It said that all teeth should be cleaned thoroughly from the gumline to the crown with a toothbrush and toothpaste. The brush should be held at an approximately 45-degree angle against the teeth. The chewing surfaces should be cleaned first, then the outer surfaces, and finally the inner ones. The hard-to-reach spaces between the teeth are best cleaned with dental floss. — DPA