New housing model allows expandable and retractable homes
Resilient, expandable and environmentally-friendly homes are being developed by researchers at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). Focusing on meeting the changing needs of Emirati family homes, Dr Khaled Galal Ahmed, Associate Professor at the Architectural Engineering Department in the university’s College of Engineering, set out to find a solution.
In his recent publication entitled: From ‘Rigid’ to ‘Resilient’: A Proposed Self-Build Relocatable SIP Construction Mechanism for Sustainable Social Housing Models in UAE, he proposes an innovative method for expanding and/or contracting single family houses using a simplified relocatable Structurally Insulated Panels (SIP) construction mechanism. “We have a problem here in the UAE and all over the world that we deal with the house as a final product in a rigid manner,” said Dr Khaled Galal, who is also the coordinator of the Architectural Engineering Master’s Program.
“This product is unfortunately not responsive to the changing needs of community members so, for instance, if someone starts in a house with a specific ‘rigid’ design and after a while, he would like to undertake some changes or expansions to respond to some changes in his family’s circumstances like adding more bedrooms or enlarging a majlis, this would not only be extremely difficult, but actually is non predictable.” “This has led, in practice, to social housing being built as a final rigid product without a resilience mechanism allowing residents to act according to their individual changing needs. What is offered for residents are some limited unified expansion scenarios, if any, that do not take their specific and unpredictable changing needs into consideration”. The research tackles this mechanism, taking an existing “rigid” house model and converting it into a resilient model. “We converted it into a modular one and used relocatable partitions, not only internally but also externally,” he explained.
UAEU is conducting research on Al Seniah Island, and recommends increasing the Crimean trees
Faculty members at the College of Science at the UAEU has conducted scientific research on Al Seniah Island in the Emirate of Umm Al Quwain and has addressed many points, including the food consumption patterns of the Socotra Cormorant in the Eastern Province of the Arabian Gulf, Maintains its continued presence on Al Seniah Island.
The research has recommended that the environment in the Al Seniah Island should be observed and conserved with the care of the bird breeding period, especially the Socotra Cormorant, and to increase planting trees, which encourages the birds to build their nests, which contribute to maintaining the increase of offspring as well as their numbers on the island.
Marine Environment
Humaid Rashid Al Shamsi said that such research is significant in conserving the marine environment and all types of birds - especially - in Al Seniah Island, which is 10 kilometres long and 4 kilometres wide. The island is located one kilometre from the city of Umm Al Quwain and separated between them and the city of Khor Umm Al Quwain, the island is also a nature conservative where the antelopes, gulls, flamingos, eagles, heron and they grew the Crimea, Ghaf trees and superficial plants.
Emirati researcher is volunteering in refugee camps
United Arab Emirates University and other educational institutions are gratified of their unique research and academic abilities that have been able to record excellence presence in global forums and shorten the time to jump to higher ranks for the UAE's citizens, including Dr. Jinan Bastaki, Assistant Professor of International Law at the United Arab Emirates University.
As part of her dissertation, Dr. Jinan interviewed groups of the displaced who were not entitled as refugees, although they suffered forced displacement as refugees and could not return home.
Her volunteering work is helpful in the preparation of her dissertation on "Refugees and their right to return back", participating in several international conferences on refugees and refugee law, and has been invited to participate in seminars on refugee rights in a number of countries around the world.
In this context of her interest in refugee affairs and rights, Dr. Jinan has worked as a volunteer with international and local organizations in the refugee camps in both Jordan and Greece.
Dr. Jinan is currently looking at ways to develop international refugee law to address many of the current challenges posed by the massive invasion of refugees into neighboring countries in 2018.
She is part of the National Committee for International Humanitarian Law, and recently won the IIHL and ICRC's 2018 "San Remo New Voices in International Humanitarian Law" competition for her paper on nationality-based detention of asylum seekers.
The Use of the Aquaponics System in Fish and Plant Production
Four students at the United Arab Emirates University’s Master’s program have launched a scientific graduation thesis on the production of species of fish and plants using the aquaponics system, for research and training purposes in an advanced experiment to implement the aquaculture system, confirming in their speech to (Albayan) that scientific research is monitoring and sequencing The problems and challenges facing the agricultural sector in the UAE, searching for effective solutions, and «Aquaponics» as a mixed system for the production of fish and plant crops within the green houses protected by the use of modern techniques.
"My thesis purposes to study the intensity of the ideal farming of tomato in the aquaponics system, and the experiment was carried out under the plastic greenhouses at the College of Food and Agriculture," said student engineer Mohammed Ahmed al-Dhanhani.
Student- Engineer Adel Ibrahim Al Baloushi has explained that the summary of his thesis concerns the need to provide new food resources, noting that the aquaponics systems are witnessing as a significant development as a new source of the food industry, where such systems provide the possibility of producing multiple fish and vegetables in one space, so the purpose of This research is to identify the most suitable fish density per cubic meter, to get the highest production rate of tomatoes using the Nile tilapia fish.
Whilst student- engineer Ahmed Salem Al Kaabi, focused on assessing the different densities of the lettuce crop at different levels of fish nutrition for tilapia in the aquaponics’ system.
While student - engineer Ahmed Satti Abdulrahman emphasized the impact of the densities of Nile tilapia fish and the regularity of nutrition on fish productivity.