Archives-December 

The informal (Juakali) sector in Kenya lack occupational health and safety services and workers unknowingly exposed to health hazards. Worldwide, occupational noise is a significant cause of adult onset-hearing loss and 16% of disabling hearing loss in adults. . The aim of the study was to identify the health effects of noise to the Juakali artisans in King'orani area by identifying key sources of noise, assessing hearing threshold levels, examining auditory health effects of noise and the prevalence of noise induced hearing loss. This was through administration of a structured questionnaire, noise level measurements, and pure tone eudiometry to stratified, randomly selected subjects. Data was coded cleaned and analyzed using SPSS version 21.0. Out of 124 participants involved in the study, prevalence of NIHL was 59.7% with 31.5% having mild, 18.5% moderate, and 5.7% had severe, and 4% had profound impairments. The level of impairment increased with the duration and level of exposure to noise above 90 dB. Those involved in operation of pneumatic tools were the most affected compared to those involved in other activities as food vendors and hawkers. Exposure level and duration was greatly associated with auditory effects such as Tinnitus, headache, poor concentration, and sleep disorders. In conclusion NIHL, headaches, tinnitus, poor concentration and sleep disturbances are related to prolonged exposure to high level of noise above 90dB with a positive correlation coefficient of 0.248 at p<0.05. Therefore, review of OSHA 2007 to effectively regulate the informal sector, awareness campaign on effects of noise exposure, establishment of Hearing monitoring canters, special subsidies and provision of PPEs will be able to arrest the otherwise forgotten irreversible disability causing Hazard the Juakali artisans are exposed to.

The corrosion inhibition of mild steel in 1.0 M HCl solution was investigated using Hexamethylene tetramine (hexamine) as a corrosion inhibitor by using different techniques i.e. weight loss method, potentiodynamic polarization and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopic (EIS) at 35.0o C. Further, the surface study of corroded specimen was carried out by inverted trinocular metallurgical research microscopy. It was observed that the percentage corrosion inhibition efficiency increases with increase in the concentration of inhibitor. The maximum percentage corrosion inhibition efficiency was 93.0 % at a concentration of 800 ppm. Impedance study shows the increases in Rct value with increase in the concentration of inhibitor. Potentiodynamic polarization studies showed that Hexamine behave as mixed type of corrosion inhibitor. Results obtained from corrosion experiments shows that Hexamine is a very good corrosion inhibitor for mild steel in 1.0 M HCl.

A lot of researches on student learning styles found that each student exhibits unique characteristics, learns differently and possess a particular learning style (Zhang, 2000). However, it is not clear if students need to possess certain learning styles to be high achievers. Therefore this study aims to explore the learning style/s of a high achieving student. An interview was conducted on a student who has achieved excellent grades in the study with at least two semesters in the President’s List. The results showed that the student has not adopted any specific learning styles in her study; rather combination of styles has been utilized.

Ground water is an important resource of water. However, over exploitation has affected the groundwater quality and quantity. Assessing the ground water potential zone is very important for the protection of water and management of groundwater system. Recent trends are showing the systematic planning to stop the over exploitation of groundwater and shrinking natural resources. Geo-spatial technology is very useful to study about the groundwater in detail. In the present study delineate the possible groundwater potential zones in the Salem district using geo-spatial technology. The thematic layers considered in this present study, which are geomorphology, drainage density, lineament density. These thematic layers are integrated for identify the groundwater potential zone. Therefore, five different groundwater potential zones were identified, which are very good, good, moderate, poor and very poor. Finally, it concluded that the Geo-spatial technology is very efficient and useful for the identification of groundwater potential zones.

Intrusion detection system shave been around for quite some time, to protect systems from inside and outside threats. Researchers and scientists are concerned on how to enhance the intrusion detection performance, to be able to deal with real-time attacks and detect them fast from quick response. One way to improve performance is to use minimal number of features to define a model in a way that it can be used to accurately discriminate normal from anomalous behaviour. Many feature selection techniques are out there to reduce feature sets or extract new features out of them. In this paper, we propose an anomaly detectors generation approach using Meta heuristic algorithm in conjunction with several features selection techniques, including principle components analysis, sequential floating, and correlation-based feature selection. Meta heuristic algorithm was applied with deterministic crowding niching technique, to generate a set of detectors from a single run. In this test, based on various algorithms, we conclude that NWINE data is low in accuracy and only in the clustering algorithm, which rises precisely.

For thirty years the cultivation of cotton has become very widespread in Benin. This has led to a sprawl of agricultural land and a significant increase in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and by extension, the pollution of the water resource in many parts of the country. In the north, high levels of nitrogen components are measured in the waters of the basin of Sota. Indeed the average value of 181mg / L measured for nitrate levels exceeding that permitted by the standards of quality of drinking water in the Republic of Benin. This study contributes to the knowledge of the impacts of agricultural activities on water resource in the basin of Sota in Benin.

In this paper inf – j composition (where j refers to a t- conorm) and sup- uj composition are defined. Relation between inf- j and sup- ujcompositions are established. Theorems are proved that express the basic properties of inf- j and sup- ujcomposition

Plants are utilized as therapeutic agents since time immemorial in both organized (Ayurveda, Unani) and unorganized (folk, tribal, native) form. The ethanolic fruit extract of Cucumis trigonus Roxb of family Cucurbitaceae was used to treat the urolithiasis induced by ethylene glycol. On this course, the extract also repairs the changes that happened in the biochemical parameters urea, uric acid and creatinine in serum and urine of the urolithiatic rats. The ethanol extract (150 mg / kg b.w.) reduced the levels of elevated biochemical parameters in serum and urine significantly (p<0.05) when compared with the toxic groups. The results shown by the ethanol extract (150 mg / kg b.w.) was compared to standard thiazide drug treated group showing no significant difference (p<0.05) and thus exhibited potent antiurolithiatic activity.

Array patterns depends on type of elements, spacing between the elements and length of the array etc., conventionally elements are spaced at ?/2 in an array. However, in this paper we are made to generate the normalized radiation patterns for different spacing and different types of elements. It has been possible to control the radiation pattern by controlling the spacing between the elements. The arrays considered contain non-identical elements with non-uniform spacing. The results are useful for design of arrays to produce low side lobes for EMI suppression.

In adaptive sliding mode observer is designed for momentum biased satellites attitude tracking control with unmeasurable yaw attitude information [1]. A higher-order sliding-mode observer is proposed in nonlinear longitudinal dynamic equations. The observable states can be estimated exactly and the unobservable ones will be identified asymptotically [2]. Firstly, the system is decomposed into two low dimensional subsystems by a restricted system equivalent decomposed method. Secondly, the sliding mode controller is designed based on the restricted equivalent subsystems. The quadratic performance index optimal control technique is introduced to design the optimal sliding mode [3]. The stability of the nonlinear sliding mode is analysed. Simulation results are employed to test the effect of the proposed design algorithm [4]. A decentralized adaptive fuzzy approximation design to achieve attitude tracking control for formation flying in the presence of external disturbances and actuator faults [5].