ABSTRACT Rhipicephalus appendiculatus (Brown Ear tick) is an efficient vector of Theileria parva the aetiological agent of East Coast fever (ECF) in cattle. Currently, ECF threatens about 28 million cattle in eastern, central and southern Africa. Control of this tick has largely depended on synthetic acaricides. The use of these chemicals for tick control has however, been compromised by increased cases of tick resistance, high cost of the acaricides and concerns over environmental pollution ...
ABSTRACT Plasmodium is protozoa from the Apicomplexa phylum which causes malaria. In the tropics and sub-tropics, approximately 3.3 billion people are at risk. Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT), the current prime treatment, has been reported to have a possible emergence of resistance. This is a major obstacle that contributes to high mortality. Drug repurposing offers an appealing alternative to de novo drug development. Although astemizole and methylene blue have been reported to have an...
ABSTRACT In my study, I investigate the influence of thermophoresis and a constant inclined magnetic field on a fluid flowing over a porous wedge. The inclination is an acute angle to the horizontal axis. The effects of variable prandtl and thermal conductivity, Hartman number, wedge angle parameter, Schmidt’s number, thermophoretic concentration and a constant suction or injection on the fluid flow parameters are studied numerically by the collocation method since the Prandtl number is a f...
ABSTRACT Increasing population in Kenya has resulted into scarcity of land for farming. As a result, many people are opting to do farming even in the small land spaces available along the highways. However, heavy metal pollution along the highways is an issue of concern despite the fact that leaded fuel is no longer in use in Kenya because this exposes man and animals to heavy metals. The increase in transportation services is becoming a major source of heavy metals pollution particularly alo...
ABSTRACT The consequence of intense permanent cultivation of land has been severe loss of soil nutrients through removal of harvested produce, removal of crop residue, leaching and gaseous losses. Experiments were designed to investigate the effect of soil amendment with cow manure, chicken manure and fertilizer on nodulation and nitrogen fixation in climbing beans (MAC 64) and soybeans (Gazelle). Isolation and characterization of isolates together with greenhouse experiments were carried out...
ABSTRACT Because of the prevalence of antibiotic resistant pathogenic bacteria, infectious diseases are becoming more difficult and expensive to treat. In Kenya, high levels of flouroquinone resistance of a bacterium, Neisseria gonorrhea have been widely reported. Antimicrobial resistance may be coded on plasmids, mutational events or on transposons. A growing body of evidence indicates that metal tolerance and antibiotic resistance are often found together in many clinical isolates and that ...
ABSTRACT The presence of heavy metals in water due to anthropogenic and natural sources is widespread with serious effects on surface and ground water sources. There is the risk of accumulation of these metals in the body after ingestion of such waters for a long duration of time even when the concentration is low. This is because metals interfere with the functioning of body enzymes and/or bio-accumulate in hard and soft tissues in the body. There is a growing need for more clean water with ...
ABSTRACT A study on possibility of concentrating iron in laterite (murram) has been carried out. This was done using froth floatation where oleic acid was used as collector and cresylic acid as frother. Magnetic separation was also used. The study has shown that the level of iron in the original sample could be increased from 33% to 55%. Mineral content was determined using X-Ray diffraction which identified iron mineral present as goethite. Chemical analysis was also carried out on raw and c...
ABSTRACT Post-harvest pesticides applied to consumable foodstuffs usually pose a serious but silent threat to human and livestock health. Some pesticides accumulate slowly in various strata of the ecosystem causing irreparable damage to the environment and wildlife. In Kenya huge quantities of these pesticides are used to preserve maize grains during storage. The amount of pesticide residues consumed through maize grains and its products depend on ambient storage conditions of grains, the nat...
ABSTRACT Bacteria, as common microorganisms found in air, food, water and soil remain a major problem in developing countries where disease outbreaks frequently occur in congested areas. Antibiotics are used to treat common bacterial diseases such as respiratory, ear, gastrointestinal and skin infections but bacteria develop resistance to most of the drugs. The drugs also have serious side effects and the cost of medication is high. Plants are traditionally used for treatment of bacterial inf...
ABSTRACT Bioconvection induced by gyrotactic microorganisms in a Newtonian nanofluid past a permeable vertical plate is studied. Addition of motile microorganisms to a suspension of nanoparticles in a basefluid enhances mass transfer and mixing in most microsystems in addition to the enhancement of the convectional properties of the nanofluid. This concept has solved many heating problems in various areas including civil engineering, chemical engineering and mechanical engineering. The presen...
ABSTRACT Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases characterized by high blood sugar levels that result from defects in insulin secretion, or action, or both. The disorder completely throws the metabolism of dietary carbohydrates, lipids and proteins into disarray. This condition in its fully developed form is characterized by high blood sugar level (hyperglycemia), glycosuria, increased protein breakdown, ketosis and acidosis. Diabetes is a chronic medical condition which can be con...
Abstract The study takes into account temperature dependent viscosity and thermal conductivity as well as induced magnetic field in describing the fluid flow .The partial differential equations governing the unsteady flow are transformed to a system of non-linear ordinary differential equations by similarity transformation. The transformed differential equations are solved by collocation method. The numerical results for the flow variables: velocity, temperature and concentration profiles are...
ABSTRACT The effects of some cultural practices and some plant extracts on wilt disease of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) in Owerri, were studied. The experiments were conducted in 2010, 2011 and 2015 at the Teaching and Research Farm and in the Crop Science and Technology Laboratory of the School of Agriculture and Agricultural Technology, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. The investigation consisted of three (3) different experiments and each repeated two...
ABSTRACT Urinary tract infections (UTI) are bacterial infections encountered in the hospital and community and is preventable. It is among bacterial infection encountered with increasing antibiotic resistance to uropathogens, although there is availability of antibiotics. Despite the wide spread of antibiotics, it remains the common bacterial infections. Antibiotic susceptibility testing therefore provides information that allows clinicians to select the most appropriate antimicrobial drugs. ...