ABSTRACT The cosmic limitation of high humid environment in tropic regions spurs a lot of interest to the development of low cost desiccants. Calcium chloride has been indicated as the oldest adsorbent desiccant among chemicals and gas dehydration industries. However, calcium chloride dissolution behaviour makes it difficult to be utilized well as desiccant. The first attempt to suppress deliquescence behavior for dehumidification purpose was in 1976 where silt loam was used as the host mater...
ABSTRACT The rapidly increasing global population, climate change and dwindling resources have made it very difficult to meet global food demand. To address the issue of food insecurity, sustainable intensification of agriculture (SIA) has been proposed. However, the consequences of poorly managed agricultural intensification can negatively affect the ecosystem. Biochar and compost application has been widely recommended as a highly promising soil fertility replenishment option to promote sus...
ABSTRACT Heavy metal contamination within river systems is a major environmental problem around the world. An environmental model was developed to simulate the temporal variation of concentration of lead discharged into a riverine system. The model was developed by solving the transport equation which governs the concentration of lead. The equation has advection, dispersion, sink and source terms. The equation was discretised and converted into a language compatible with a computer. A compute...
ABSTRACT Polypropylene is one of the most important commodity polymers and is used in many areas. Its applications are often limited due to its low impact strength, Young‟s modulus properties and non-biodegradability nature. Blending polypropylene with different polymers is an economic and effective way to improve these drawbacks. Polypropylene/wood flour blends have undesirable properties; they have weak structural rigidity, very low thermal stability and high diffusivity. Cellulose is lin...
Abstract Resistance to drugs especially antibiotics has become a major challenge facing the medical fraternity today. Most antibiotics that were once effective against pathogenic micro-organisms have now been rendered ineffective owing to resistance developed by these pathogens. This scenario has been complicated by the emergence of HIV/AIDS, which renders the victims immuno-compromised, and open to opportunistic infections. At the same time, most of the African population lives below the pov...
In Tanzania, and in East Africa in general, bioassessment methods for monitoring and assessing riverine ecosystems are not yet in place. This thesis describes the development of a macroinvertebrate-based bioassessment method for assessing the degree of anthropogenic disturbance in Tanzanian rivers. The hypotheses that, ‘macroinvertebrate assemblages reflect disturbance in river systems’; ‘rivers with similar abiotic features have similar macroinvertebrate assemblages’; and ‘spatio-t...
ABSTRACT Some aspects of the ecology of Barbus amphigramma Boulinger 1908 which included distribution and abundance, effects of physico-chemical parameters on the species, growth parameters, food and feeding habits and reproduction in Lake Naivasha and River Malewa were investigated using standard methods and procedures. The study covered nine months from February to October 2003. There was an overall influence of seasonal long rains in Lake Naivasha and River Malewa on dissolved oxygen, chlo...
ABSTRACT In developing countries with disproportionately high burden of HIV-1 (HIV) infections, access to early infant diagnosis (EID) and viral load (VL) HIV nucleic acid testing is limited by the prohibitive infrastructural costs of centralized testing laboratories. To increase access to HIVEID and VL monitoring, development of robust and low cost point of care (POC) technologies is a priority of current HIV diagnostic research. In Kenya, a number of POC technologies are being evaluated for...
ABSTRACT Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), one of the main stay of Lake Victoria fisheries, was introduced in the 1950s and 1960s to boost capture fisheries. However, its production has declined dramatically over the years due to over exploitation and its consumption preference by the ever increasing Kenyan population. The decline of capture fisheries has made aquaculture production be considered as the future solution to the declining of capture fisheries and the availability of fish glo...
ABSTRACT Malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are a great achievement to the implementation of parasite based diagnosis before treatment. They use a nitrocellulose strip coated with antibodies that target the Plasmodium antigens; histidine rich protein II (HRP2), lactose dehydrogenase (LDH), and aldolase. A major drawback of the method is that the majority of RDTs do not have positive control materials to test different batches of RDTs at the point of care. Dried Plasmodium-infected samples ...
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ABSTRACT Sugarcane is the third most important commodity crop in Kenya after tea and coffee. The productivity of the crop has been declining despite existence of recommended agronomic and cultural practices and opening new sugarcane lands. Though high yielding and early maturing varieties have been introduced in Kenya Sugar Industry to overcome low yields, the problem persists. Farmers apply nitrogen either in single dose or split. It is not known if the rates and mode of application are appr...
ABSTRACT Striga hermonthica weed is the most widespread and noxious species that parasitises many economically important cereal crops including maize ( Zea mays L.) in sub-Saharan Africa. Striga is also called witchweed in the family Orobanchaceae. Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. Strigae is a fungus of the genus Fusarium that causes fusarium wilt disease on S. hermonthica. Most control methods against Striga; chemicals, cultural and resistant maize are expensive, ineffective and toxic to environmen...
ABSTRACT Common bean is an important legume and a cheap source of proteins. Phaeoisariopsis griseola causing Angular Leaf Spot disease (ALS) is a major constraint for common bean production in Kenya contributing to yield losses estimated at 80%. ALS disease has been difficult to control using cultural practices and resistant varieties which necessitates the need to search for an alternative management option. Synthetic fungicides too have numerous side effects, so the plant-based products are...
ABSTRACT Sugarcane productivity in Kenya has declined despite increased acreage and new cultivars possibly due to use of old-cultivar agronomic inputs. The N-K2O optimal rates for new cultivars are unknown. Kenya Sugar Industry intends to pay farmers based on sucrose instead of tonnage however, factors that influence productivity e.g. N-K2O rates and harvesting age have not been evaluated. Foliar analysis is a diagnostic tool, but has not been embraced. The objective was to compare variations...