Abstract: In the current technology driven era, the use of devices that connect to the internet has increased significantly. Consequently, there has been a significant increase in internet traffic. Some of the challenges that arise from the increased traffic include, but are not limited to, multiple clients on a single server (which can result in denial of service (DoS)), difficulty in network scalability, and poor service availability. One of the solutions proposed in literature, to mitigat...
Abstract: Zingiber officinale, commonly known as ginger, has been used as a medicinal plant for decades for medical and culinary purposes. This study aimed to determine the antimicrobial potential of ginger root extracts using the Kirby-Bayer agar diffusion method to compare the zones of inhibition of the extracts to those of synthetic antibiotics against five clinical bacterial pathogens (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, taphylococcus aureus, Enterobacter aerogenes and Klebsiella p...
Abstract: In this paper, a new generalized family of distributions called the exponentiated odd Weibull-Topp-Leone-G (EOW-TL-G) family of distributions is presented. A linear representation of the proposed model is also presented. A simulation study to examine the consistency of the maximum likelihood estimates is conducted. Usefulness of the new proposed model was assessed by means of applications to two real data examples.
Abstract: A new algorithm for approximating solutions of the split equality variational inequality problems (SEVIP) for pseudomonotone mappings in the setting of Banach spaces is introduced. Strong convergence of the sequence generated by the proposed algorithm to a solution of the SEVIP is then derived without assuming the Lipschitz continuity of the underlying mappings and without prior knowledge of operator norms of the bounded linear operators involved. In addition, we provide several ap...
Abstract: In this paper, we introduce an iterative process, which converges strongly to the solution of a general split fixed point problem governed by demicontractive mappings and prove strong convergence theorems in Banach spaces.
Abstract: The 2014–2016 West African outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was the largest and most deadly to date. Contact tracing, following up those who may have been infected through contact with an infected individual to prevent secondary spread, plays a vital role in controlling such outbreaks. Our aim in this work was to mechanistically represent the contact tracing process to illustrate potential areas of improvement in managing contact tracing efforts. We also explored the role co...
Abstract: The trade-off between distance and secret key generation rate remains one of the major challenges in the practical implementation of quantum key distribution (QKD). As a solution, a twin field QKD protocol was proposed by Lucamarini et al (2018) to address this challenge. In this protocol, the achievable secret key rate scales with the square root of channel transmittance and can surpass the secret key capacity for repeaterless QKD. However, the protocol exploits phase to encode in...
Abstract: A new hexadentate 2-picolyl-polypyridyl-based ligand (4, 4’-(butane-1, 4-diylbis(oxy))bis(N, N-bis(pyridin-2-ylmethyl)aniline)) (2BUT) (1) and its corresponding Ru(II/III) complexes were synthesized and characterized, followed by assessment of their possible bioactive properties towards drug-resistant and non-drug-resistant bacteria. Spectroscopic characterization of the ligand was done using proton NMR, FTIR, and ESI-MS, which showed that the ligand was successfully synthesized....
Abstract: Recently, Chang et al. (2015) constructed an algorithm that converges weakly to the solution of the split equality fixed point problem for quasi-pseudo-contractive mappings under some suitable conditions. They also showed that strong convergence is obtained in the case when the quasi-pseudo-contractive mappings are semi-compact. In this article, we construct an algorithm for quasi-pseudo-contractive mappings that always converge strongly to some solution of the split equality fixed...
Abstract: The quest for the design and synthesis of carbon dots with anti-counterfeit properties that are derived via green, environmentally friendly and economical procedures is a continuous process. Carbon dots (C-dots) derived from biowaste are cheap to synthesize, possess good photo-stabilityand high synthetic yield, making them applicable in the anti-counterfeiting of currency. Herein, we report a novel eco-friendly, cheaper, and faster method for the synthesis of carbon dots with stron...
Abstract: Agricultural residue-based fibrous (ARF) materials have been identified to be a commercially viable solution for energy-efficient building insulation application. ARFs have various advantages over synthetic fibers including environmentally friendly, light weight, low cost, and competent mechanical properties. Meanwhile, in many African countries including Botswana, the expertise to manufacture building insulators by using ARFs is scarce and consequently building insulation material...
Abstract: Data mining (also called knowledge discovery in databases) represents the process of extracting interesting and previously unknown knowledge (patterns) from data. By applying artificial intelligence together with analytical methods data can be extracted. An association rule expresses the dependence of a set of attribute-value pairs, called items, upon another set of items (item set). . The association rule mining algorithms can be classified into two main groups: the level-wise alg...
Abstract: In this letter, a general auto-correlation based frequency offset estimation (FOE) algorithm is analyzed. An approximate closed-form expression for the Mean Square Error (MSE) of the FOE is obtained, and it is proved that, given training symbols of fixed length N, choosing the number of summations in the auto-correlation to be 〈N/3〉 and the correlation distance to be 〈2N/3〉 is optimal in that it minimizes the MSE. Simulation results are provided to validate the analysis and...
Abstract: There is continuous intensive research on image compression techniques in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the literature. Some of the image compression techniques in WSNs that exist in the literature include discrete cosine transform (DCT), discrete waveform transforms (DWT), set partitioning in a hierarchical tree (SPIHT), and embedded zero tree wavelet (EZW) coding. Research on image compression in WSNs is necessitated by the need to improve the energy efficiency of sensor nod...
Abstract: During the past 25 ka, southern Ethiopia has undergone tremendous climatic changes, from dry and relatively cold during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 25–18 ka) to the African Humid Period (AHP, 15–5 ka), and back to present-day dry conditions. As a contribution to better understand the effects of climate change on vegetation and lakes, we here present a new Predictive Vegetation Model that is linked with a Lake Balance Model and available vegetation-proxy records from southern...