Abstract: Heart rate variability refers to the variations in time interval between successive heart beats. An understanding of its dynamics can have clinical importance since it can help distinguish persons with healthy heart beats from those without. Our aim in this thesis was to characterise the dynamics of the human heart rate variabilty from three different groups: normal, heart failure and atrial fibrillation subjects. In particular, we wanted to establish if the dynamics of heart rat...
Abstract: Lead pollution of soil arising from use of leaded ammunition in shooting ranges has received considerable attention from researchers, scientists, policy makers and legislatures. This is due to the adverse health effects associated with exposure to Pb. Eight military shooting ranges found in Botswana were used in this research project. All the eight shooting range soils were polluted with Pb with total Pb concentrations in the range 13-38 386 mg/kg. TAB shooting range soils acc...
Abstract: Plasmids are extra-chromosomal mobile DNA elements found in bacteria, and often serve as vectors for accumulation and transfer of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) within bacterial populations in different environments. Plasmid mediated transfer of ARGs has accounted for the spread of antibiotic resistance within clinically relevant pathogenic bacteria; this has escalated into a global health problem. Plasmids can be classified into several groups based on their genetic incompatib...
Abstract: The NW trending Archean Tati Greenstone Belt is located in the southwestern part of the Zimbabwe Craton, in northeastern Botswana and consists of mafic to felsic volcanic rocks and metasediments. All rocks in the TGB have undergone greenschist facies metamorphism at 2630 ± 70 – 2570 ± 70 Ma and intrusion of granitoids that comprises of granodiorite, tonalites, quartz diorite and monzonite occurred at 2.65- 2.73 Ga. The TGB is host to numerous Au deposits including from NW to...
Abstract: Automatic Sign Language Recognition (ASLR) helps with converting hand gestures to spoken language, therefore, enabling communication between those able to hear and those unable to hear. There is abundant research work on ASLR of British Sign Language and American Sign Language. However, Botswana Sign Language has received less attention at least in terms of computational representation leading to automatic sign language recognition which can be attributed to lack of a Botswana ...
Abstract: The explosive growth of biological sequences over the last decade has consequently led to a lot of research on effective techniques for storing and analysing this big data. Generating Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) sequences has become more reliable, faster, easier and cheaper due to latest sequencing technology leading to big data sequences. This poses a challenge to efficient analysis to such massive sequences. Advanced indexing algorithmic techniques are required to facilitate effi...
Abstract: This research presents a new approach in modeling and implementing a framework for linear image change detection using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) based implementations. Detecting changes between digital images of the same location or region of interest have attracted huge interest in research due to its wide range of applications such as medical diagnosis, astronomy and forensics. In recent years, the steady increase in the use of hardware implementation in image pr...
Abstract: Zinc Oxide (ZnO) is a promising semiconductor material suitable for the application in electronic and optoelectronic systems. ZnO tailored into nanorods has a potential to be used in photovoltaic cells due to its large surface area to volume ratio that allows for maximum light harvesting and improved electron transportation efficiency. ZnO nanorods that are less compact, thin and long with fewer defects can be used for organic/inorganic solar cells application. In this study ch...
Abstract: Social media has emerged as an effective source to investigate people’s opinions in the context of a variety of topics and situations, including crime. Crime solving can be a difficult task hence requiring human intelligence together with experience. Crime data is usually big and full of noise; hence manual analysis of this data is tedious and sometimes impossible to do. Data mining techniques such as Sentiment Analysis can help in analysing such big data. In Sentiment Analysis, ...
Abstract: This thesis addresses the problem of biometrics security and accuracy through the fusion of fingerprint and face images. The Biometrics community in recent years came up with different approaches to improve the accuracy and security of systems. Multimodal authentication has attracted a lot of attention because of its advantage over single biometrics matchers. Even though efforts were made to improve these systems, they are, however, still vulnerable to security threats such as spoo...
Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms are not common due to lack of readily available coordinated protocols and applications for synchronizing UAV swarms in outdoor environments. To solve the problem, this study design, implement, and evaluate a leaderfollower Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm Synchronization Protocol (UAVSSP). Unlike other studies that deal with UAV swarm synchronization, this study introduces the concept of pair correlation and back propagation communication scheme am...
Abstract: This thesis presents a novel sample preparation strategy that employed a custom-synthesized glucose – fructose (G-F) specific molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) powder as an adsorbent for the simultaneous, selective extraction, isolation, pre-concentration of total glucose and fructose from the complex and `dirty` sample matrix of ‘100%’ fruit juices in order to improve their accurate analysis. The ‘100%’ fruit juice samples were purchased from retail shops in Palapye, B...
Abstract: The Moiyabana Coalfield, located ~80 km west of Mahalapye village in the South Eastern Kalahari sub-basin, is one of the potential areas for coal mining in Botswana. This project discusses the petrographic and geochemical results of a detailed investigation carried out on a borehole core of the Moiyabana area, eastern Botswana. Geologically, the Moiyabana coal seams occur in sedimentary rocks of Permian Age and are hosted in the Karoo Supergroup sequence. All coal seams are found w...
Abstract: The use of electronic voting systems (EVS’s) is seen as an alternative to traditional manual voting because it aims at increasing efficiency, lowering cost of running election, reducing counting mistakes and improving the accuracy of the results. This has led to electronic voting systems being adopted in most countries to replace traditional paper-based voting systems. Currently, Botswana uses a traditional paper-based voting system. This method of voting comes with several chall...
Abstract: Malaria is considered the main cause of morbidity and mortality in most countries of the sub- Saharan Africa. Though elimination of the disease is a priority in some African countries such as Botswana, there are bottlenecks that make it difficult to achieve such target. Factors associated with the environment and mosquito-vector capacity for disease transmission have contributions towards challenges affecting disease elimination. These are dynamics which have not been explored in t...