http://repository.must.ac.ke/handle/123456789/15 2026-04-09T13:12:26Z 2026-04-09T13:12:26Z Musungu, Mercy Shidemburi Maina, John http://repository.must.ac.ke/handle/123456789/997 2025-10-16T12:43:06Z 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z

Accessibility and Utilization of Information Resources in the Post COVID-19 era: A Case of Selected University Libraries in Kenya Musungu, Mercy Shidemburi; Maina, John University libraries play a pivotal role in fostering teaching, research, and innovation by offering essential information resources. However, patrons often encounter challenges in using these resources. The research aimed to examine the factors influencing the utilization of information resources in university libraries at Kenyatta University Meru University of Science and Technology and post-COVID-19. The objectives were to: determine the skills needed by librarians in supporting utilization of information, analyze innovative methodologies used to facilitate access to library resources/services, examine the challenges faced by librarians and patrons and determine the importance of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in improving information resources usability and consumption. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design with quantitative research methods. The study was conducted at Kenyatta University and Meru University of Science and Technology libraries. Simple random and purposeful sampling techniques were used to distribute questionnaires to patrons and librarians, respectively. Data was collected from 20 librarians and 309 patrons, out of whom, 26 librarians and 357 patrons were sampled. The questionnaires underwent expert reviewto ensure their validity and reliability. The study found that 81% of librarians prefer online search resources, while 41% prefer physical textbooks. 16.5% of patrons preferred e-books and e-journals, with inadequate computers (32%) and unreliable networks (25.7%) as challenges affecting access and utilization of resources. The librarians identified lack of cooperation, inadequate digital library skills, understaffing, and poor network as major obstacles to facilitating access and utilization of library resources. The study recommends that university management should enhance librarian capacity building, training, and reengineer ICT infrastructure to enhance access and utilization of resources in the post-COVID-19 era. The study's findings will aid librarians in redesigning library functions to enhance the efficacy of library services in meeting user information needs.

2023-01-01T00:00:00Z Gitobu, Kenneth Muriungi http://repository.must.ac.ke/handle/123456789/884 2023-06-05T12:28:42Z 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z

Exploring the Input of Pharmaceutical Waste Management Disposal in Sanitation Service Chain: A Case Study of Nkubu Town, Meru, Kenya Gitobu, Kenneth Muriungi Pharmaceutical Waste Management (PWM) has emerged as a serious issue, with both health concerns and environmental damage. The study assessed the availability of infrastructures that supports sound pharmaceutical waste management, identified the commonly dispensed drugs among the community pharmacies and those found in households, determined the proportion of community pharmacy managers and households with knowledge of pharmaceutical waste management and also determined the common methods of pharmaceutical waste management in Nkubu town among community pharmacies and households in the sanitation service chain. The study was conducted in Nkubu Town, Imenti South, sub-county. A cross-sectional study design was utilized to achieve the specific objectives. Data was collected by the use of questionnaires. The sample size was 19 community pharmacy managers and 380 household heads located within the borders of Nkubu Town, Meru County. Descriptive data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for social sciences (SPSS) version 22 and findings were presented using figures and tables. Antibiotics were the most commonly disposed of drugs along the sanitation service chain. Antimicrobials interfere with the water treatment process depend on microbes for biodegradation. It was also evident that the majority of households and community pharmacies are either connected to piped water or a sewerage system. Improperly disposed pharmaceuticals end up in garbage collection centers and water purification systems which are not sufficiently equipped to manage this form of waste. On the proportion of community pharmacy managers and household heads with knowledge of pharmaceutical waste disposal, there was a lack of training on the same. The study recommends the need to establish public awareness and educational programs regarding the management and handling of unwanted pharmaceuticals among households that would highlight their effects both on human beings and across the sanitation chain if poorly disposed of. Sensitization of the public on the dangers of poor disposal of pharmaceuticals and provision of collection points for proper disposal is recommended especially at the local dispensing chemists. The study established study that pharmaceutical waste is evident in across the sanitation service chain. The pharmacy and poisons board, the regulatory authority for pharmacies should discourage the establishment of community pharmacies before verifying the pharmaceutical waste disposal sanitation infrastructure available to them. This requirement should be a prerequisite for pharmacy outlet licensing. Future studies can explore further the presence and concentration of active pharmaceutical ingredients/ agents in municipal waste, sewage, and drinking water to build on the findings of this study.

2023-01-01T00:00:00Z Kithinji, Joseph http://repository.must.ac.ke/handle/123456789/883 2023-06-05T12:33:07Z 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z

Integrated QOS Management Technique for Internet Protocol storage area Networks Kithinji, Joseph The increasing number of Information technology Users around the world has led to a tremendous increase in the amount of data that requires storage. In response to this challenge, new storage area network architectures based on Ethernet (IP) have evolved. With the coexistence of storage traffic with other types of traffic in the same IP network, it is important to offer storage traffic QOS guarantees to prevent performance degradation for storage users. Regrettably, the storage device itself does not provide any capability of guaranteeing storage QOS. QOS is a vital issue in the environment of mixed works like IP SANS. The main aim of the study was to analyze the QOS techniques used in IP networks, and design, develop and validate an Integrated QOS management technique for IP SANs. The study first analyzed the various techniques for achieving QOS in IP Networks. By decomposing the QOS problem into an integration of four techniques of performance isolation, bandwidth management, and burst handling the study designed and developed IQMIS, an integrated quality of-service management technique for IP SANS. The study adopted an experimental research design. Simulations were used as the source of data whereas Park Dale tool was used for simulating reads and writes to the targets. The study generated quantitative results which were analyzed using descriptive statistics and results presented in tables and charts. Empirical results show that IQMIS enables users to fairly share the aggregate system throughput even in an environment of contention of resources with a small implementation cost of 6%. In the implementation of bandwidth management and burst handling, IQMIS was found to be work-conserving and quickly adopts to network changes with a convergence time of 10 seconds. Further, the results show that IQMIS can provide strong performance isolation, superior latency, throughput, and jitter compared to best effort. Ultimately IQMIS can be used to provide end-to-end QOS management in IPSANS and at the same time provide building blocks for providing QOS in IPSANS.to tremendous increase in the amount of data that requires storage.

2023-01-01T00:00:00Z Osuto, Daniel Arani Ouma, Heywood Absaloms Ndungu, EN http://repository.must.ac.ke/handle/123456789/835 2022-12-01T05:33:21Z 2022-04-04T00:00:00Z

Automatic Road Traffic Density Estimation using Image Processing Algorithms Osuto, Daniel Arani; Ouma, Heywood Absaloms; Ndungu, EN In the modern world, urban centres are growing at a very high rate. Growing with them is road traffic congestion. Traffic jams, especially at peak hours, have become routine. As a result, traffic management is one of the most pressing issues in today’s towns. Several alternatives are being sought to deal with the problem. These include: expansion of road networks, regulating the number of vehicles on the roads, and deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs). Other than the ITSs, the other alternatives (however effective) have many practical challenges in their implementation. ITSs are based on a wide range of technologies such as loop sensors and video surveillance systems. Vision based ITSs have proved advantageous over the traditional methods based on loop sensors. In these modern systems, video surveillance cameras are installed along the roads and road intersections where they are used to collect traffic data. The data is then analysed to obtain traffic parameters such as the road traffic density. In this paper, a simple and elegant approach for estimating the road traffic density during daytime using image processing and computer vision algorithms is presented. The video data collected is first broken down into frames which are then pre-processed in a series of steps. Finally, the vehicles are detected and extracted from the images and counted. Then the traffic density is obtained as the number of vehicles per unit area of the road section. The proposed approach was implemented in MATLAB R2015a and average vehicle detection accuracies of 96.0% and 82.1% were achieved for fast moving and slow moving traffic scenes respectively.

2022-04-04T00:00:00Z