Youth put skills ahead of money

About 50 students and recent graduates took part in the forum held a day before the Emiratisation Summit. In a live voting session, 30 per cent of participants said the opportunity for growth and promotion was the most important factor when considering a job offer; 20 per cent said learning new skills was the top factor; while 18 per cent said work environment and culture was the main factor. Only 10 per cent said they would consider salary first. A mere 2 per cent said working hours were the most important criterion. Asked whether working for the private sector would throw up challenges, 81 per cent said yes and 13 per cent said no. Responding to the same question about the government, 40 per cent said yes and 31 per cent said no. According to INJAZ UAE employers tell them they can't hire Emiratis because they can't give them the salaries and working hours they demand.

Another survey was conducted in the capital as part of an Emirati youth forum, and revealed that 30 per cent of the university students and fresh graduates polled place utmost importance on growth and promotion opportunities when selecting a job. Nearly 70 per cent of participants at the forum said that getting a job is their most immediate priority after graduation, over further education or entrepreneurship opportunities. When choosing between public and private sector positions, the deciding factors for Emirati youth tend to be growth and promotion opportunities, work environment and skill development.

Tawdheef, the annual Recruitment Show. Which begins in the capital on Tuesday, will see more than 2,500 job vacancies up for grabs. The vacancies are available at more than a hundred public and private sector organizations in a variety of industries, including finance, oil and gas, media, and health.

Houbara

 

The International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC) announced it has exceeded yearly expectations of Asian Houbara release into the wild. A total of 13,000 Asian Houbara birds produced in the UAE and a total of 5,373 chicks hatched at the new Sheikh Khalifa Houbara Breeding Centre at Saih Al Salem, and 7,732 at the National Avian Research Centre. It is a big leap from the 2,726 chicks bred last year, thanks to the transfer of 5,000 houbara, including 3,000 breeding birds, from the IFHC centre in Morocco. The Moroccan centre bred 17,262 North African houbara this year, up from 14,734 last year. In Kazakhstan, those numbers rose to 303 chicks from 77. Conservationists warn that falconry is under threat from poachers and non-traditional practices.  According to experts, among some of the many reasons which have caused a decline in the houbara population in the UAE, is the demolition of its natural habitat to use the land for city development.; also many falconers have drifted away from traditional methods of hunting, by over-trapping houbara birds, which are not the falcon’s natural prey in the first place. So the falcon becomes accustomed to hunting houbara and begins to prey on them. The houbara, which weighs between 1.2 and 2.2 kilograms, is not natural prey for most falcons, who prefer small birds or large rodents. Falcons must be trained to hunt houbara. The best conservation plan would be to "kill" the black market for houbara, the issue IFHC face is that they cannot determine the size of the black market, which is why these surveys are important.

How do Gulf corals beat the heat

 

In geological terms, the emirate's modern coastline is extremely young - just 4,000 years old. In that time, somehow its corals have managed to beat the heat. So has that been a slow process, creating a stable local stock of heat-resistant corals, or dose each generation in turn find its own way of coping. The coral live in symbiosis with zooxanthellae, a type of algae that lives inside the coral's tissue. The algae photosynthesise, producing sugars that provide up to 90 per cent of the coral's energy, and in return, the coral provides shelter, nutrients - mostly nitrogen and phosphorus - and carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. Such a cosy arrangement is not without pitfalls. So co-dependent are the two species, that if one dies the other is unable to feed itself to stay alive, leading to coral bleaching. And 2010 was hot, too, with water temperatures in the Gulf exceeding 37°C. Corals were lost on many reefs in the southern basin of the Gulf, the waters between Qatar and Dubai.

 Corals reproduce in one of two ways: through fragmentation or larval production. Fragmentation, is when a piece of coral breaks off, rolls across the sand, lands somewhere else and starts growing. The slow rates of recovery suggest that the problem is not larval production, but more the harsh environments the larvae find when they land. And with the water already so hot, the corals are at the thresholds of their tolerance, so even slight increases in stress can push them over the edge.

New pearl Museum opens in RAK

 

RAK, historically known before as Julfar, was the capital of pearl trading is evident from old documents by European travelers and sailors.  The pearling industry collapsed in the Gulf in the early 1930s with the Japanese invention of cultured pearls. So it means a lot to open a museum for pearls here to revive the history of the pearl trading in RAK. The museum belongs to RAK Pearls Holding Company and they are farming cultured pearls since 2005 in RAK.

 The museum is one of a kind in the region; visitors feel like they are transported into a different world, because of the interior design of thousands of shimmering empty oyster shells along the walls. On the first floor is a historical journey, including a detailed showcase of tools and gear worn by pearl divers. Divers use alg’reat because their skin couldn't survive without this moisturizer.

The museum's second floor is lined with displays of the world's famous pearls, and instruction on how to distinguish natural and cultured pearls. There are small, 10mm, white-and-beige Akoya pearls, and larger, black-lipped pearls and also there are Buddha oyster shells. At last the Miracle of Arabia pearl is displayed there, sitting on a red velvet throne inside the museum.