Archives-August 2018

Caliceal diverticula stones are rare. Their management is conditioned by the appearance of clinical signs. The treatment gold standard was initially open surgery. With the advent of SWL, PCNL and flexible uretero-renoscopy, treatment has become less and less invasive. Among these techniques, the choice depends on the localization and the size of the diverticula and stones. We report here the case of a patient with a superior caliceal diverticula stones treated by flexibleuretero-renoscopy and laser.

Education is a basic right and essential part of human rights as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For the right to education to be realized, the process of learning should reflect the needs and aspirations of society. Technology is one such avenue through which education objectives may be achieved. Whereas evidence shows an increase in investment in ICTs in education in Kenya, perceptions of teachers on use of ICTs as a teaching and learning tool in secondary school agriculture has not been studied much, more so in Bungoma County. The purpose of this study was to establish the teachers’ perceptions on use of ICTs in the teaching and learning of secondary agriculture in Bungoma County. A descriptive research design was employed. The target population of the study consisted of 498 agriculture teachers of secondary schools in Bungoma County. Purposive sampling was used to select 120 respondents. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Validity of the instrument was ensured by input from the supervisors from the Department of Agricultural Education and Extension at Egerton University. Reliability was established by pretesting it with 30 agriculture teachers from the neighbouring Kakamega County. Data was collected and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 20. The results were presented in frequencies, means and percentages. The study established that the perception of agriculture teachers towards the use of ICTs in teaching and learning was positive as a higher frequency of teachers agreed that use of ICTs in teaching and learning was useful. The study also established that few teachers used ICTs in teaching of agriculture as compared to other subjects as a higher percentage of agriculture teachers agreed that preparation of a lesson that involved use of ICT in teaching and learning was more demanding than the conventional approach. The study recommends that teachers of agriculture should have opportunity to train in use of ICT for teaching and learning, and also develop initiatives at personal level to improve their ICTs skills.

Using galerkin’s method of finite element for predicting oxygen deficit in rivers is of great importance to water resources engineers. This is because of the trending discharge of untreated effluents in our water bodies which incidentally depreciates the dissolved oxygen needed by both man and aquatic organisms. As a numerical technique, it provides approximate solutions to physical problems with differential equations like the Streeter Phelps equation. In predicting the oxygen deficit along Nworie River in Imo State of Nigeria, a reconnaissance survey of the study area was conducted after which data were collected for physicochemical analysis of water samples; were determined using Galerkins weighted residual method. The study area was along Nworie river at three different locations namely: Amakohia head bridge; Assumpta-Holy Ghost college road; and Umezurike Hospital road. The result of the flow area after analysis gave 2.00, 5.28 and 5.32 m2 respectively. The velocities of flow of the three locations as well gave 0.467, 0.417 and 0.411 m/s respectively. The average discharge of the river gave 1.362 cubic metre per second. Furthermore, the concentration of dissolved oxygen from the laboratory experimental results were used to compute the oxygen deficit at the discharge point using dissolved – oxygen model (Streeter Phelps equation) by applying Galerkin’s weighted residual method approach. The oxygen deficit results at the five discretized nodes at location 1 (Amakohia head bridge) were: 5.728 mg/l at first node, 5.543 mg/l at the 2nd node, 5.356 mg/l at the 3rd node, 5.164 at the 4th node and 4.969 mg/l at the end node. Pearson’s correlation coefficient and the measure of good fit using least square method denoted as ‘r’ value of 0.982 was computed during analysis. This showed that estimated dissolved oxygen using Galerkin’s weighted residual (GWR) method result is strong, positively correlated to the measured values of dissolved oxygen. The results in this research are invaluable for water resources and irrigation Engineers in predicting the effect of water pollution on the downstream users.

Retrocaval ureter is a rare disease found most often in young adult males, the usual clinical manifestation is right lumbar pain due to obstruction of the upper urinary tract. The diagnosis is based on CT and the treatment is mainly laparoscopic as our observation shows.

The Third Medium Term Plan is an implementation programme for the Vision 2030 running from 2018 to 2022. It outlines the sectors which the winning party in the August 2018 General Election will focus on for the next 5 years in addition to its manifesto. The projects that were not completed in the Second Medium Term Plan will be carried forward in the Third Medium Term Plan. The primary focus on the Third Medium Term Plan will be to expand the sectors of export, manufacturing and mining. It purposes to achieve a 10% economic growth by the end of the Third Medium Term Plan. The implementation of the Third Medium Term Plan comes at a time when Kenya has committed to implement the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and African Union Agenda 2063. The implementation of the MTP 3 faces multiple challenges such as a climate change sensitive economy that is necessitating the government of Kenya to adopt supplementary budget to counter food shortage and deal with national emergencies. The implementation of the Medium-Term Plan is also facing a rising foreign debt to GDP ratio as the government is forced to borrow externally to finance the MTP 3. The implementation of the MTP 3 faces multiple legal challenges such as lack of coherence in laws dealing with manufacturing, disputes in the acquisition and transfer of land, legal lacuna in the prosecution of corruption cases that pave way for rampant corruption in Kenya. The lack of a comprehensive legislation on Agriculture and a policy on reducing post-harvest loses is one of the main challenges facing the Third Medium Term Plan. The paper will explore the legal challenges facing he implementation of the MTP 3 and offer recommendations on how to streamline the implementation of the MTP 3.

Osteoporosis is one of the unpredictable disease, in which the micro architecture of bones becomes weak due to the low bone mineral density. Today this disease is very common amongst old people aged more than 50 years. This common public health problem has no symptoms and only technique available to diagnose is dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan. Generally bone mineral density (BMD) can be measured using DEXA, which is compared against the standard BMD values for diagnoses. The availability of DEXA machine in a country like India is a serious issue, because of its high cost and the high percentage of population living in rural areas with limited health care facilities. Here, our aim is to detect this disease on the basis of patient’s medical history without the necessity of DEXA scans report; so that it becomes feasible for the Indian population. For this proposed work will try to implement various Soft computing techniques which are available now- a- days.

European tourist markets have continuously played a significant role in generating revenue for the Thai economy. However, the penetration of this tourism market segment is not so easy because Thailand has faced both direct and indirect rivals and neighboring and overseas rivals. Tourism market segmentation is considered an effective and important marketing tool to promote marketing strategies to meet the more specific needs of tourists. The objectives of this study were to segment European tourists visiting Phuket Province, and to compare these segments according to demographic variables and the level of destination satisfaction and loyalty. The hierarchical cluster analysis was utilized to segment tourists based on activities and clusters/segments and was compared in terms of demographic characteristics using Ch-Square statistic and destination satisfaction and loyalty using one-way ANOVA. The findings revealed that five segments of tourists were identified: ‘recreational tourist?, „fuzzy tourist?, „sports tourist?, „cultural tourist? and „leisure tourist?. According to the Chi-Square statistic, no significant differences in terms of demographic variables were found across the five segments. In addition, the result of ANOVA revealed that no statistical differences were found among segments across all items of destination satisfaction except for worthwhile experiences.For destination loyalty, significant differences in the intention and willingness to pay to revisit Phuket were found among these segments.

Table of contents for the month of August 2018