ABSTRACT Access to clean and safe water for everyday use is needed for a healthy society. Water treatment and recovery of precious metals is a serious challenge particularly for developing countries since the current technologies are not attractive because they are often expensive and not environmentally friendly. Precious metals such as gold, palladium, and platinum are valuable and hence crucial for any economy. Coagulants used in the treatment and recovery of precious metals have setbacks...
ABSTRACT Plants have long been used to treat ailments such as headaches, stomach-ache, diarrhoea, tumours, wounds and sexually transmitted diseases, just to mention a few. Ziziphus mucronata, Heliotropium ciliatum and Gnidia polycephala are traditionally used to treat tumours and wound-related illnesses. Tumours and persistent wounds can be a sign of cancer. Microbial wound infections can also bring fatal consequences if unattended. This study evaluates the antioxidant, anticancer and antimi...
Abstract This study will investigate the strongness property for nearness and nearness partial frames. We initially revisit the concepts of strong and totally strong nearness frame and study their closures under completion. We also explore the properties of totally strong and uniformly completely regular nearness frames, and study the relationship between them. We show that the category of totally strong nearness frames is coreflective in the category of uniformly completely regular nearness...
ABSTRACT Starch is of substantial industrial significance for food and non-food uses. Plant roots and tubers such as potato and cassava are rich in starch and they are among the sources of starch for food consumption and industrial use. With climatic changes it is important to find crops that can be used as food and will still be able to survive the arid conditions. Marama is a plant that grows in the arid Namibian conditions, that bears a storage root that it is underutilized and has a pote...
Abstract The occurrence and distribution of mercury (Hg) and other co-occurring heavy metals in the mining towns of Berg Aukas and Tsumeb in northern Namibia were studied Different forms of Hg and other heavy metals were characterized in soils, water and plants collected in these areas. Total metal concentration was determined using ICP–OES and total Hg was determined using the DMA 80 mercury analyser. Fractionation of Hg and other heavy metals were determined by performing a four step seq...
ABSTRACT Natural products present in medicinal plants are an important source of therapeutic agents and many research groups are currently screening different biological activities of plants. This study aimed to investigate the antibacterial, antioxidant properties and phytochemical analysis of Acacia arenaria (Fabaceae), Aloe esculenta (Alliaceae) and Pechuel-Loeschea leubnitziae (Asteraceae) that are used in traditional settings. The antimicrobial activity of the methanol-dichloromethane (...
ABSTRACT Namibian ethno-medicinal plants have not yet been evaluated for their efficacy in inhibiting the activities of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) reverse transcriptase (RT) and their toxicological effects to mammalian cells have not yet been reported. Hence the aims of this study were: (1) to evaluate selected Namibian plants for their biological activities against RT; (2) to evaluate their toxicity to mammalian cells, and (3) to isolate and characterize the active compounds from se...
ABSTRACT Assistive Technology for Children with Learning Disabilities (ATCLD) was developed in response to the language and arithmetic challenges faced by learners with dyslexia of Eros Girls School (EGS). This development followed from requirement elicitation and is intended for grades 5 - 7. Having discussed the above, Assistive Technology (AT) is any item, piece of equipment or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customised, that is used to increase, ...
Abstract The High-Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is an array of five imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes located in the Khomas Highland in Namibia, dedicated to very-high-energy (VHE, 100 GeV – 100 TeV) gamma-ray astronomy. It consists of four identical 12 m diameter telescopes (H.E.S.S.-I) which started operating in 2003 and a large 28 m diameter telescope (H.E.S.S.-II) which was brought online in 2012 [1]. The H.E.S.S.-I camera upgrade project was aimed to increase the stabil...
ABSTRACT Inappropriate slaughtering and retail operations can compromise food safety specifically in densely populated areas like informal markets. The bacteriological quality and prevalence of Salmonella spp. and Escherichia coli O157:H7 on beef samples from the three different outlets (supermarket, butchery and open market) were assessed to determine their safety for human consumption. A total of 138 of beef samples were collected at random from three different outlets. The bacteriological...
ABSTRACT The objective of this research was to discover new drug leads from Namibian marine algae. Plocamium extracts were screened and their phytochemical contents were quantified. Both the antioxidant activity and the antimicrobial activity of the crude extracts were determined, as well as the dose-response relationship for Plocamium extracts in BALB/c mice. This was done by using acute and sub-acute toxicity parameters. In addition, the structural elucidation of the major metabolite found...
ABSTRACT Asterisk is a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) software used to connect telephony applications such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). In the Department of Computer Science at the University of Namibia (DCS-UNAM), Asterisk is currently set up to provide basic VoIP services to staff and students. However, this system currently has limited accessibility because it can only be accessed with VoIP clients such as hard and soft phones. Alternatively, Browser-based VoIP clients (BBVCs) c...
ABSTRACT In Namibia, non-communicable diseases are on the increase. Statistics on noncommunicable diseases (cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension etc.) as a cause of morbidity and mortality indicate that it is a public health concern although population based estimates in the area are lacking. The Ministry of Health and Social Services stated that between 2004 and 2008, hospital based mortality due to cancer (all types) increased from 3.2% to 54.7%, cardiovascular diseases ...
ABSTRACT Namibia has a rich biodiversity of plant species of which a great variety is used for food, cosmetics and medicinal applications. Seed oil production from indigenous sources has economic importance for Namibia and is an asset for improving the livelihoods of local communities. Knowledge of the quality and composition of these oils can be used towards value-added product development strategies and improved marketing of indigenous resources. A comprehensive profile of indigenous seed ...
ABSTRACT In recent years, there has been an increase in fatal road accidents in Namibia claiming many lives each year. Traffic accidents are often related to the use of alcohol, illegal drugs or psychoactive medicines. A rapid low volume dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) method in combination with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) detection was developed for the simultaneous determination of illicit psychoactive drugs in blood (those used most commonly in Namibia: c...