Abstract Economic activities in Lake Victoria Basin such as agriculture, sh- ing, mining and transportation depend's heavily on the climatic conditions of the Lake and its Basin. Global climatic change caused by Greenhouse Gas emission (GHG) has resulted in a disruptive and erratic weather pattern for these economic activities. This unpre- dictable weather variations is responsible for loss of life and destruc- tion of property. The primary cause of this negative impact is lack of a reliable ...
ABSTRACT Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is a major global health problem. Evidence exists on links between nutrition and HIV and AIDS. The Food by Prescription (FBP) in the various Patient Support Centres in Kenya aims at improving nutritional status and drug adherence among people living with HIV and AIDS in poor resource settings. The programme anticipates that within a period of 3-6 months, nutritional status should improve. However, inability to attain the required improveme...
ABSTRACT Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) is recommended first-line treatment for malaria in a number of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Recent reports of decline in efficacy of ACT and emergence of ACT resistant Plasmodium falciparum isolates has raised global health concern. The underlying mechanisms for the development of resistance to ACT is however, not fully understood. Naturally acquired immunity to P. falciparum is associated with clinical protection against malaria an...
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...
ABS TRACT A Web Browser is a computer application used to access information on the World Wide Web. The browser‟s parsing capability has advanced over years since its inception. The advancements have consequently increased demand for memory as manifested by computer crawl. Contemporary browsers are anchored on reference architecture that lacks memory control mechanism that can limit maximum memory a browser can use thus posing a challenge in multiprogramming environments with less memory th...
ABSTRACT Management of parasitic disease continues to be a burden and a major public health problem the world over today. Malaria is most lethal of the parasitic vector-borne diseases due to drug and vector resistance to the available chemotherapeutics and vector management strategies, respectively. Bacterial and fungal infections are opportunistic to persons with compromised immunity yet the available drugs are associated with occasional treatment failures while antibiotic resistance is grow...
ABSTRACT Gastrointestinal infections, such as soil-transmitted helminths (STHs) and Salmonella typhi infection, are a major cause of morbidity and mortality globally. In rural areas of Kenya, 9.1 million people are at risk of STHs infection with Western Kenya having the highest burden of both STH and S. typhi infection. Siaya County is more prone to S. typhi and STHs infection with Ukwala hospital records estimating the burden of infection at 30%. Given that STHs cause intestinal ulcers that ...
Abstract In this thesis, I investigate the application of various statistical methods towards analysing GPS tracking data collected using GPS collars placed on large mammals in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Animal movement tracking is a rapidly advancing area of ecological research and large amount of data is being collected, with short sampling intervals between successive locations. A statistical challenge is to determine appropriate methods that capture most properties of the data is...
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 Lake Victoria is the largest freshwater and fishery lake in Africa. Kisumu City on the Winam Gulf has industrial activities that dispose of their effluents into the lake which may contaminate aquatic species thus threatening human health. It is not known fully if these anthropogenic activities adversely change the water quality and contribute heavy metal pollutants to the lake water and/or cause high accumulation of the metals in sediments and fish from the gulf. The study employed a...
ABSTRACT Acute Myelocytic Leukemia (AML) is a cancer of the bone marrow characterized by arrested maturation along with uncontrolled proliferation of hematopoietic progenitor cells. Mostly, it affects persons of age 65years and above. In AML, there is absence or low amounts of Estrogen Receptors in the bone marrow. Various studies have associated Estradiol to the variation of ER. However, the exact role Estradiol is still not known in association with the onset and progression of AML. The mai...
ABSTRACT Iron deficiency, mainly from iron deficient diets, impedes cognitive, psychomotor and physical development, especially of school age children. Flour fortification with iron, an effective intervention for increasing iron intake, is influenced by the amount of fortified food consumed. Intra-household food distribution (IHFD) patterns may influence how much food a child gets, hence amount of iron from fortified flour. However, information on such influence on iron intake of school age c...
ABSTRACT Finger millet (Eleusinecoracana (L.) Gaertn) is one of the most important crops among the small millets. In Kenya yields are generally low, because of blast caused by the fungus Pyricularia grisea. Low finger-millet production accelerates incidences of malnutrition. Management has been challenging with cultural approach showing minimal success. Comparatively the use of actinomycetes species as a bio-control agent in management of rice blast caused by a similar pathogen, has shown so...
ABSTRACT Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is an important branch in the field of array signal processing. It can be applied in such fields as wireless communication, sonar, radar, biomedicine, and radio detection. This fact together with the development of the geometries used in the past years is the principal motivation of this research project. Although various studies have focused on the uniform hexagonal array for direction finding, there is scanty use of the uniform hexagonal array ...
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...