Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria is considered to be contaminated with toxic chemicals emanating from anthropogenic activities, especially near large industrial towns such as Kisumu. This has recently caused concerns about its water quality and impact on aquatic organisms and human beings. This study was justified by the need to generate baseline concentrations of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (...

This paper describes the methodology that we used to design and implement balancing and walking gaits for TAO-PIE-PIE, a small 30cm tall humanoid robot. TAO-PIE-PIE is a fully autonomous robot with all power, sensing, and processing done on-board. It is also a minimalistic design with only six degrees of freedom. Nevertheless, its performance is comparable to that of other more complex designs....

Excessive axial tension is very likely involved in the aetiology of tendon lesions, and the most appropriate indicator of tendon stress state is the true stress, the ratio of instantaneous load to instantaneous cross-sectional area (CSA). Difficulties to measure tendon CSA during tension often led to approximate true stress by assuming that CSA is constant during loading (i.e. by the engineerin...

We report the earliest detection of an extremely bright optical afterglow of the gamma-ray burst (GRB) 030329 using a 30cm-telescope at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo, JAPAN). Our observation started 67 minutes after the burst, and continued for succeeding two nights until the afterglow faded below the sensitivity limit of the telescope (approximately 18 mag). Combining our data with thos...

The E-164 experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center is the third in a series investigating Plasma Wakefield Acceleration where the wake is driven by electron bunches. A collaboration between SLAC, UCLA and USC, E-164 has up to 2x10 electrons at 28.5GeV in 100 micron long bunches. These bunches enter a 30cm long Lithium plasma with density of 6x10 electrons/cm, where the transfer of e...

The properties of a variable area sampling technique, by which the observer varies the searchradius to obtain approximately a prescribed number of woody plants in each tier measured, were determined by (i) comparison of fixed area and variable area sampling of a computer-mapped shrub population; (ii) comparison of results from fixed area and variable area sampling of woody plants exceeding abou...

Globally, grassland soils, if managed properly, are important for the sake of carbon sequestration. The quality and quantity of soil organic carbon is probably influenced by vegetation traits such as composition and plant species. We determined the influence of vegetation composition and co-dominant species on soil organic carbon in two Prangus uloptera stands. The stands situated at close prox...

The net absorption of fluid and electrolytes by the mammalian small intestine may be changed to a state of net secretion by the administration of agents that elevate the cyclic AMP content of the mucosal epithelium, e.g. cholera toxin, theophylline, dibutyrylcyclic AMP [for reviews see Banwell &Sherr(1973),Sladen(1973), Field(1974) and Kimberg (1974)l. In contrast with the wealth of data on the...

Aims: This study compares effective doses associated with 2D lateral, oblique, and AP radiographs with 3D MDCT and Cone Beam CT images of the foot and ankle. Methods: An anthropomorphic phantom of the foot and ankle was constructed from an adult human skeleton and soft tissue equivalent material. Optical stimulated dosimeters were placed at 21 locations within and on tissues and anatomy of inte...