COVID-19 outbreak has rapidly disseminated across the globe, with severe consequences on humanity. Personal protective polymeric materials (PPPM) or personal protective equipments (PPE) are effective barrier protection against bodily fluid penetration and is compulsory for medical personnel to wear during medication of highly contagious COVID-19 patients in varying hospital wards across the globe to ensure protection against contraction. Nanotechnology (NT) advancements in textiles have avail...
2-D nanomaterials (NM) including graphene as well as transitional metallic dichalcogenides exhibit great prospects to enlarge the scope of materials utilized by the military. Specifically, they demonstrate importance in electrical energy storage uses. Due to sheet-like architectures and elevated electronic dissipation, 2-D NM can utilize efficient techniques of energy storage for defense applications. Emerging from medium (vehicles) towards miniature electronic sizes, gadgets such as batterie...
Abstract/Overview Tea, produced from the evergreen plant, Camellia Sinensis, is the most widely consumed beverage in the world after water. Although tea processing has now diversified into various speciality end products such as instant, white, oolong, iced, flavoured, and various blends, the most abundantly produced tea product in the world is fermented black tea. Black tea production is essentially a “dry” process, as no water is used at any of the production process steps. However ...
Abstract The element of risk taking in entrepreneurial orientation reflects calculated and manageable risks. Risk taking is a dominant attribute of entrepreneurship as the higher the risk-taking orientation, the higher a firm’s profitability and growth. This purpose of this paper was to establish the influence of entrepreneurial risk taking and firm performance of agro processing small and medium enterprises in Kenya. The study findings revealed that risk taking has a positive impact on fi...
Abstract The evaluation of research and indeed any aspect of science and engineering is a complex process. Engineering research encompasses a wide range of creative, theoretical and practical activities involving many communities within a country and beyond. Such diversity, both in the communities of interest that science and engineering serves, and in the character of the research itself, poses a number of challenges to the assessment of excellence. All those responsible for the funding of ...
Abstract In semi-arid regions, climate change has affected crop growing season length and sowing time, potentially causing low yield of the rainfed staple crop pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum L.) and food insecurity among smallholder farmers. In this study, we used 1994–2023 rainfall data from Namibia’s semi-arid North-Central Region (NCR), receiving November–April summer rainfall, to analyze rainfall patterns and trends and their implications on the growing season to propose climate ...
Abstract Groundwater contamination by chlorinated hydrocarbons (CHC) is a common phenomenon that poses health risks to both humans and animals. These halogenated hydrocarbons infiltrate into the soil matrices and form pools at the bottoms of the aquifers thus contaminating the groundwater sources. Thermally enhanced soil vapour extraction (TSVE) using steam–air injection has gained popularity as an alternative technique to remediate the saturated and vadose source zones contaminated with C...
Abstract River Nzoia originates from three water towers namely Nandi hills, Cherengany Hills and Mount Elgon. With increased anthropogenic activities in Nzoia river catchments, land cover has continuously been altered. This scenario has resulted into increased quantity of physical parameters in runoff among them, sediment load and turbidity, during rainy season. This study modelled effects of increased land use changes on runoff and sediment loads. Digital Elevation Model, spatial soil data,...
Abstract Studies have shown that perovskites have a high potential of outdoing silicon based solar cells in terms of solar energy conversion, but their rate of degradation is also high. This study reports on improvement on the stability of CH3NH3PbI3 by passivating it with polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA). Structural and electronic properties of CH3NH3PbI3 stabilized by polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) were investigated by varying concentrations of PMMA in the polymer solutions. Stability tests we...
Abstract This paper presents a finite element simulation of equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) since it is one of the most common and successful severe plastic deformation techniques. This study reports the influence of the most significant factors influencing the ECAP technique. Through finite element simulation, the effect of the die geometry, workpiece geometry, and the pressing speed on the effective strain distributions, damage, and pressing loads, were investigated. The influence of...
Abstract Rainwater harvesting (RWH) is emerging as a promising alternative source of water in sub-Saharan Africa. It can be an alternative source of good-quality water to substitute other freshwater sources, to enable crop production beyond the growing season through supplemental irrigation as well as to improve the environment by minimizing the effect of drought and floods. The Rachuonyo North Sub-County of Kenya experiences low rainfall coupled with high population with limited access to r...
Abstract Respiratory rate is an indicator of a broilers’ stress and health status, thus, it is essential to detect respiratory rate contactless and stress-freely. This study proposed an estimation method of broiler respiratory rate by deep learning and machine vision. Experiments were performed at New Hope (Shandong Province, P. R. China) and Wen’s group (Guangdong Province, P. R. China), and a total of 300 min of video data were collected. By separating video frames, a data set of 3,000...
Abstract Energy accessibility, reliability and availability are key components of improved quality of life and human development in all spheres. As the United Nations’ SDG 7 calls for access to electricity for all by 2030, Africa still has a wide gap to fill as the statistics show that 85% of the population that will not have access to electricity is in Africa. As the world tries to wean itself off non-renewable energy and transition to green through use of renewable energy sources, hydrop...
Abstract Geopolymer concrete has been the ideal replacement for Ordinary Portland cement concrete in producing green concrete. The binder in geopolymer concrete is a cementitious paste made from amorphous Aluminosilicate and activated by an Alkaline solution. The geopolymerization process is initiated at elevated temperatures. Thus, the curing requires elevated temperatures. This curing method limits the application of geopolymer concrete in the construction industry. In a geopolymer mix, th...
Abstract rtificial neural network (ANN) modelling has been applied successfully in hydrology to predict future flows based on previous rainfall-runoff values. For a long time, flooding has been experienced in the surrounding areas of the Rift Valley lakes including Lake Baringo, fed by the River Perkerra, due to the rising water levels because of the above-normal rainfall season, resulting in massive socioeconomic losses. The study aims at predicting the occurrence of floods in River Perkerr...