ABSTRACT Increased frequency, severity and duration of drought events in arid and semi-arid regions (ASALs) of Kenyan increase scarcity in water and pastures that support livestock assets. This destabilizes the livelihood base dependent on livestock assets. Use of seasonal climate forecasts (SCFs) can provide early warning of the drought events and inform actions to reduce vulnerability of pastoral households to drought effects. This study assessed trends and severity of drought events, their...
ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to characterize stroke lesions and normal brain tissue in computed tomography (CT) images of Nigerian patients using statistical texture descriptors, and to identify the class of texture descriptor that is most suitable for computer-aided diagnosis of stroke. Non-contrast CT images of 164 stroke patients were obtained in contiguous slices from the base of the skull to the vertex from two private radiodiagnostic centres. Initially, two experienced radiologis...
ABSTRACT Banana is an important crop in East Africa. In the tropics, banana and plantains are a major source of carbohydrate for about 400 million people of whom 200 million are from East Africa. In Kenya, the banana serves both as a subsistence crop as well as a cash crop. The production of banana in Kenya is however constrained by viral diseases especially the Banana Streak Disease (BSD) which is caused by the Banana Streak Virus (BSV). Breeding between A and B-genomes containing banana ha...
ABSTRACT Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is largely consumed among various communities in Kenya. However, its productivity is gradually declining due to infections such as common bacterial blight and halo blight. Zanthoxylum gilletii and Markhamia lutea have been used traditionally in the management of various human bacterial pathogens. In addition, plants are inhabited by fungal endophytes that produce bioactive secondary metabolites. This study therefore, was to determine the bioactivit...
Abstract Observational works on 4.83 GHz Formaldehyde (H2CO) absorptions and 4.87 GHz H110α radio recombination lines towards 6.7 GHz Methanol (CH3OH) maser sources are presented. Methanol masers provide ideal sites to probe the earliest stages of massive star formation, while 4.8 GHz Formaldehyde absorptions are accurate probes of physical conditions in dense and low temperature molecular clouds towards massive star forming regions. Feature similarities between the formaldehyde absorptions...
ABSTRACT Ixodid ticks respond to a limited spectrum of stimuli in their search for hospitable environments, hosts and mates hence change in their behavior. This responsiveness is mediated by pheromones which are signaled by biochemical changes that occur during different stages of feeding. Genes induced during blood feeding result in the expression of new proteins secreted into tick foveal gland. Some of these proteins may be involved in the biosynthesis of these pheromones. Assembly behavior...
ABSTRACT This research project was done to investigate the influence of different methods of coffee processing on quality of the final product. The processing methods studied were wet pulping, hand pulping and eco-pulping. These processing methods vary on their modes of pulping and mucilage removal. The work was carried out using two cultivars of Kenya arabica coffee (Coffea arabica) grown in Nyeri County near Mt. Kenya. The quality parameters determined in the study included; physic-chemica...
ABSTRACT Palladium-catalysed Suziki-Miyaura cross-coupling (SMC) reactions of 6-chloro-5H benzo[a]phenothiazin-5-one, 11-amino-6-chloro-9-thio-5H-naphtho[2,1-b]pyrimido[5,4-e][1,4] oxazin-5-one and 6-chloro-5H-naphtho[2,1-b]pyrido[2,3-e][1,4]oxazin-5-one with phenylboronic acid and 3-nitophenylboronic acid were thoroughly investigated. The above intermediates were prepared by the reactions of 2-aminothiophenol, 4,5-diamino-6-hydroxylpyrimidine-2-thiol and 2- aminpyridin-3-ol respectively wi...
ABSTRACT The idea of pool testing originated from Dorfman during the World War II as an economical method of testing blood samples of army inductees in order to detect the presence of infection. Dorfman proposed that rather than testing each blood sample individually, portions of each of the samples can be pooled and the pooled sample tested first. If the pooled sample is free of infection, all inductees in the pooled sample are passed with no further tests otherwise the remaining portions of...
ABSTRACT Disparate enterprises can pool together their core competencies to form a temporary organization in order to exploit a market opportunity. This inter-organizational collaboration of enterprises is commonly referred to as a virtual enterprise (VE). The success of any VE is dependent on the partner members’ performance and influence of the partner attributes on its performance. These members and their attributes need to be carefully evaluated. The competitive advantage of any VE is ...
ABSTRACT Computers use electric current to process information. Heat is generated in computer components whenever current flows through it, the heat generation causes unavoidable heat build up and a subsequent temperature rise at and around the components. High operating temperature is dangerous to the safety and reliability of components since the failure rate of computer components increases almost exponentially with the increase in operating temperatures. Similarly, the heat generation lea...
ABSTRACT Commercial banks face severe concerns over mobile banking security issues due to substantial monetary losses on customers’ accounts. Most customers of commercial banks in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been losing vast amounts of money from their accounts to fraudsters and hackers, who are taking advantage of weak security controls. This has necessitated the present study to be conducted by proposing a mobile banking security framework based on Octave-small approach for com...
ABSTRACT The need for energy has risen greatly all over the world in recent years. One major source of energy is fossil fuel and most countries get access to this fuel through imports. Besides the rise in cost of fossil fuel, it has serious impacts on the environment which include air pollution and increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Furthermore, this source of energy is nonrenewable and is quickly being depleted. Recently, attention has turned to environmentally benign and sustaina...
ABSTRACT Participatory Action Research approach was used in this study involving organic spice farmers from Tawa Ward within Morogoro region, researchers from Sokoine University of Agriculture and Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania organization. Harvesting and postharvest handling practices by clove and black pepper organic farmers in Tawa Ward were assessed. Five villages were visited, 107 organic farmers were interviewed, 34 among them inspected and provided samples for analysis. Fungal qua...
ABSTRACT The protozoan hemoflagellate Trypanosoma brucei is the causative agent of African trypanosomosis in humans and nagana in domestic animals. The human disease is a health concern in many African countries. The infection of mammalian-host by African trypanosomes is characterised by an up-regulation of prostaglandin (PG) production in the plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which modulates the host responses and causes symptoms of the infection. It has been shown that the protozoan ...