Faculty of Science

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A content analysis of the Ghana national health insurance scheme
(Uganda Martyrs University Press, 2009-04) Lem, Robert Bella Kuganab
Several African countries are contemplating the introduction of national health insurance and a few have already started implementing. It is a popular understanding among these countries that by moving away from fee-for-service to a system like national health insurance, the poor and marginalised who are most often the sickest will be protected. The issue of National Health Insurance (NHI) as an alternative health financing system was a popular option in Ghana. However, the desire for NHI and its popularity was not determined by a critical look at the technicalities involved in setting up such a system. Attention was not paid to the fact that the implementation of national health insurance is constrained by a country's economic, social and political context and the inherent technical limitations of health insurance. To determine feasibility in the context of existing constraints, detailed work ought to have been done on the administrative capacity available to technically design the scheme, manage the process and thereafter manage the schemes. Earnings especially of the informal sector, the collection of contributions and the existing health care infrastructure and the commitment and incentives for health providers to make such a complex system work needed equal attention. Careful assessment is critical in producing a policy that is not only desirable but also feasible. It is apparent that the reasoning behind the Ghana Scheme was more towards a general look at risk pooling and providing access by reducing the individual financial burden than a close look at cost containment, efficiency and sustainability.
Finitely coloured ordinals
(Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK, 2010) Mwesigye, F.; Truss, J. K
Abstract. Two structures A and B are n-equivalent if player II has a winning strategy in the n-move Ehrenfeucht-fraïssé game on A and B. Ordinals and m-coloured ordinals are studied up to n-equivalence for various values of m and n.
An Access Control Framework for Protecting Mobile Health Records: The Case Study of Developing Countries
(2012) Ssembatya, Richard
Mobile health records are a good way of providing users with on-demand access to health care data. Standard approaches of securing health records include role-based access control (RBAC) because this is a flexible approach to assign permissions to a wide variety of users. However, traditional RBAC models are not designed to enforce fine-grained access control. For instance, in mobile health record systems, it is difficult to configure a policy that permits a patient to selectively share his/her personal records with healthcare workers. Therefore, defining policies that express application-level security requirements with respect to mobile records is challenging. In this paper, we present an RBAC inspired framework that provides fine-grained encryption for mobile health records where patient records have different access control policies. Our proposed framework ensures that the data can be made available securely offline. This approach can leverage systems where information needs to be shared securely under constraints of energy and/or Internet coverage.
The STOF model and a development-oriented mobile innovation
(International Conference on Mobile Business, 2012) Nyakaisiki, Sheba
Service innovations in modern economies are driven by the need to gain competitive advantage, technology advancements, market demand and organizational innovation. Uniquely, the need for social development presents opportunities for service innovations in developing nations, particularly in the delivery of social services. The thriving mobile industry in the continent provides new possibilities for development practitioners to design services that might fill gaps in social service delivery for poor communities. The challenge facing development-oriented innovations is sustainability. Sustainability is attained through continuous value generation for users and service owner(s). Proposals to developers of these innovations have therefore focused on business model application and evaluations to ascertain their ability to generate value. The complexity however of service innovation in the modern mobile industry requires a unique perspective of service design and evaluation. This paper introduces the STOF model, a business model framework for mobile service innovations in modern economies to an existing development-oriented service innovation in Uganda. The framework uses the model’s four domains (Service, Technology, Organization and Finance) and their relational Critical Success Factors (CSF), to define and evaluate the innovation. These CSF were defined from web publications on the innovation. The evaluation discovered that some of the CSF, due to poor design and strategic decisions, where poorly defined and formulated, which in turn caused an imbalance in the overall business model and therefore value generation. Keywords: STOF model, Service Innovation, Sustainability
An Energy-Efficient Dynamic Source Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
(Makerere University, 2012) Bulenga, Tonny Eddie; Naigende, Duncan
The Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (DSR) is one of the most reliable and effective protocols in the Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). It is also one of the few MANET protocols whose routing scheme can easily be optimized. But the routing overhead generated by its routing algorithm still leaves substantial amounts of energy being wasted. Route Request (RREQ) and Route Maintenance packets generate overhead control packets that occupy bandwidth, consume energy and may overwhelm a network if not controlled. This paper proposed EEDSR, an extension of DSR that reduces routing overhead by limiting the number of route discovery and maintenance packets in the MANET. The scheme involves bigger packet headers for the source route discovery packets since they contain information about the energy levels of the nodes in the route cache. In EEDSR, since the RREQ packets are flooded once for each communication period, routing overhead is minimized. General Terms: Routing Overhead, Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Energy-Efficiency Additional Key Words and Phrases: Energy-Efficient Dynamic Source Routing (EEDSR), Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), Power-aware, On-demand routing.
The Role of Reverse Logistics in E-Waste Management: An Assessment of the East African Community
(2013) Mugejjera, Emmanuel
This article focuses on return management process in supply chain context. A review of the defi nition, role and drivers of reverse logistics management are discussed in depth in line with the consideration of returns process management being considered as a strategic process in supply chain management. It takes the form of desktop research in which in-depth literature review is done with emphasis on return process management with four theories being discussed and a review of the impact assessment of e-waste management in the East African context being done from the assessment that has been conducted. The role of return process management is apparently well grounded as a key process in the supply chain management processes. However, there is an apparent need to contextualise reverse logistics in the large returns management process for the purpose of being comprehensive and exhaustive. The research also draws the conclusion that there is a dire need for legislation in e-waste management; and supply chain experts are also called upon to design a proper returns management process in order to curb the e-waste. On the practical implications of the fi ndings, the insights and learning of the return process management can be considered as a competitive advantage strategy in the various product returns being considered. The learning demonstrates that return process management, as a supply chain management process, can contribute immensely if the consideration of closed loop supply chain process management is put in place whereby design and measures to undertake product returns is appreciated from the initial stages of product processing as a deliberate value add even after being consumed. Key words: Reverse Logistics, e-Waste Management.
On the Challenge of Adopting Standard EHR Systems in Developing Countries
(2013) Ssembatya, Richard; Kayem, Anne; Gary, Marsden
Electronic health record (EHR) systems are a popular mechanism for accessing health records in the developed world and have contributed towards improved and cost-effective health care management. However, the development of appropriate and scalable EHR systems in developing countries has been difficult to achieve because of certain limitations inherent in the technological infrastructure. In this paper, we present a comparative study of 19 EHR systems in terms of the security and usability of these systems within the context of the developing world. Our aim was to investigate whether online health services designed for developed countries can be adopted for EHR systems in developing countries. The investigation was based on a number of dimensions such as development environment, system platform, type and access control standards found in the National Institute for Standard and Technology (NIST) and Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT). Our research indicates that all the systems evaluated require online access control decisions. Solely relying on an online access control system is limiting, particularly in developing countries where access to the server can be disrupted by a number of disastrous events.
Diversity in Security Environments: The Why and the Wherefore
(Uganda Martyrs University, 2014) Ssembatya, Richard; Kayem, Anne V. D. M.; Burke, Mark-John
Information security is generally discussed in terms of preventing adversarial access to applications and to the data these applications handle. The authors note, however, that increasingly, creating information security solutions that are based on the difficulty of discovering the solution is no longer a truly viable approach. Some of the reasons for this include the increasing availability of faster processing power, high-performance computing systems, and big data availability. On the opposite end, issues such as frequent power outages in resource-constrained environments make applying standard security schemes challenging. In this chapter, the authors discuss examples that highlight the challenges of applying conventional security solutions to constrained resource environments. They postulate that effective security solutions for these environments require rather unconventional approaches to security-solution design. Such solutions would need to take into consideration environmental and behavioral factors in addition to drawing inspiration in certain cases from natural or biological processes.
Issues of Adoption: Can Health Services Designed for Developed Countries be Adopted in Developing Countries?
(2014) Ssembatya, Richard
Electronic health record (EHR) systems are a popular mechanism for accessing health records in the developed world and have contributed towards improved and cost-effective health care management. However, the development of appropriate and scalable EHR systems in developing countries has been difficult to achieve because of certain limitations inherent in the technological infrastructure. For instance, bandwidth limitations and power outages make it difficult to guarantee dependability in terms of accessibility to the data. This paper presents a comparative study of 19 EHR systems in terms of the security and usability of these systems within the context of the developing world. The evaluation is based on a number of dimensions such as development environment, system platform, type and access control standards found in the National Institute for Standard and Technology (NIST) and Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT). Our research indicates that all the systems evaluated require online access control decisions. Access to data on a central server is controlled by a mechanism that verifies/authenticates users or parties wanting to view/modify/edit patient records. However, solely relying on an online access control system is limiting, particularly in developing countries where access to the server can be disrupted by a number of disastrous events. Additionally, literature also reveals that all the evaluated tools were developed with the user contexts in the developed World and therefore do not represent the needs of the patients and medical practitioners in the developing countries. Keywords: Security, Measurement, Performance, Usability.
Privacy and Digital Technologies: E-Dossier
(Università degli Studi di Trento, 2014-06) Musanje Kasozi, Joseph Brian
Privacy has been a key issue that needs to be addressed in the digital era. With development of digital technologies now information is shared so easily and fast. The rise of online giants like Google who collect personal information has also affected the privacy even more. This paper shows how privacy was conceived before the digital technology and how its conceived today in the digital era where every online user has a clone of him or her stored on a server. This clone will be referred to as an Electronic dossier throughout this paper. Privacy laws were put in place to see that privacy can be maintained even when using digital technologies but this hasn’t been enough and therefore the paper suggests some more alternatives than can be done by user in order to keep their privacy right.
DG 6
(2015) Awichi, Richard; Castela, Corine; Valero, Paola; Lott, Johnny W
The aim of the DG was to engage participants in fruitful dialogue about the nature and roles of international co-operation in mathematics education. Mathematics education, both research and practice, is international. This means that it is carried out in most places in the world and that, despite particular national or local characteristics, practitioners experience similar predicaments and share similar bodies of knowledge not only about mathematics but also about teaching and learning phenomena related to mathematics. Being international, relations among people in different national contexts have always been at the basis for the development of new trends in the field. The history of ICMI as an international organisation promoting coordinated effort towards the betterment of mathematical instruction is a clear example of how the development of the field is international from its outset (Menghini, Furinghetti, Giacardi, & Arzarello, 2008). The nature and role of internationalisation in relation to the advancement of mathematics education has changed with time. From being an exchange between mainly European and North American mathematicians interested in exploring ideas for instruction at the beginning of the 20th century, in the last decade we have an extensive network of mathematicians and mathematics educators placed in a variety of research and teaching institutions, all around the world. In ICME-10, DG 5 had already taken up this issue under the heading “International cooperation in mathematics education”. The group concluded the following important points (Atweh & Boero, 2008).  In a globalised world with increasing inequality, international cooperation can be strategic to get access to scarce resources. However, the difference in resources in a partnership can lead to a dominant role of those who have access to the resources and thereby creating an unequal partnership.  There are clear barriers to cooperation, namely financial resources, language barriers, cultural norms, conflicting agendas and issues of voicing the results of cooperation.  The search for a genuine, mutually beneficial, equitable cooperation could diminish the impact of the barriers.  Whether internationalisation leads to homogenisation depends on whether cooperative participants succeed in building strong links “from the bottom” so that diversification of perspectives and forms of contribution in cooperation can emerge. DG 6 ICME-11 built on the discussions and lessons from the previous group. The following questions guided our discussions.  What are the goals of international co-operation?  Cooperation can take many forms, be organised in many ways, and be implemented accordingly. What are the advantages and disadvantages of different forms, organisations, and implementations? What topics best fit into which version of cooperation?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of using regional versus global cooperation?  What are concrete examples of international co-operation and what has been learned that can be disseminated to all?  What are the barriers to international cooperation and how they can be dealt with?  Would international cooperation lead to homogenisation? Would that be to the detriment of mathematics education or in its favour for acceptance of the discipline at large? As a response for a broad paper call, we received nine written contributions, which were made available prior to the conference. The sessions during the conference were organised to build on the written contributions but also to integrate the experience of the twenty participants, from countries such as Australia, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Thailand, United Kingdom, Unites States of America and Vietnam. In what follows, a thematic discussion of the main issues that emerged during the sessions as a response to the motivating questions is presented. We will support the points raised using the written contributions submitted to the group.
Security Analysis of Remote Tower Control
(University of Trento, 2015) Musanje Kasozi, Joseph Brian; Male, Henry Kenneth
The main target of the analysis is the Remote Tower control center. This will provide Air traffic control services for more than one airport by a single operator in a remote location therefore eliminating an individual control tower located on the individual airport premises. The Remote tower is expected to offer a full range of air traffic services such that the airspace users are not negatively impacted compared to the traditional local control tower. Furthermore, the analysis focuses on the Identity & access management, web application & database, networking and infrastructure. In order to analyse the threats and risks of the remote tower control center, the following assumptions were considered. ● All the already existing features ,services and systems etc are secured ● All the new features, services and systems need to be secured ● There is also some channel of communication between the Remote tower and the airport ● The new features are compatible with the current airport system In identity and access management, some of the main identified assets included, domain naming service, directory service, information server and out of the window system. these assets can be affected by the unauthorised access to data by employees and denial of service attack launched by an attacker or malicious employee. The proposed controls to these threats include installation of intrusion detection systems and segregation of duties For web application and database security, system identification information, encryption and decryption service and the network configurations were considered to be the main assets. These assets face crosssite scripting and SQL injections as some of the main threats. These threats could be mitigated or eliminated by integration of the database server into the security gateway and eliminating flaws Routers and switches, remote tower control communication and operating systems were the main assets identified in the networking and infrastructure. All these assets are faced by a risk, loss and destruction of infrastructure which can be brought about by malicious employees or hackers manipulating management parameters, however these threats can be controlled by installation of firewalls, setting up security policies and installation of electronic access control systems.
Prevalence and drug susceptibility of isolates of urinary tract infections among febrile under-fives in Nsambya Hospital, Uganda
(Open Science Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2015) Katongole, Simon Peter; Ocokoru, Christine; Onzima, Robert Anguyo DDM; Govule, Philip
Background: Urinary tract infections remain a silent cause of morbidity and complications among under-fives due to its nonspecific presentation and incapacity of most health facilities in developing countries to diagnose it. Earlier studies present different prevalence of urinary tract infections among children. This study aimed to document prevalence and drug susceptibility patterns of isolates of bacterial urinary tract infections among under-fives in Nsambya hospital, Uganda. Methodology: We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional survey among 302 under-fives who presented in paediatric ambulatory care department of Nsambya hospital with fever (axillary temperature of >37.5°C or by history); and with no history of antibiotic therapy within three days preceding hospital visit. Midstream urine samples collected using bag and bottle collection (depending on age of child) were subjected to culture. We further subjected culture-positive urine samples to systematic bacteriologic and biochemical tests in order to identify the organisms in the colonies before performing drug susceptibility tests. Results: We found urinary tract infection prevalent in 26.8% of the under-fives. Bacterial isolates responsible for the infections were Proteus (39.5%), Escherichia coli (32.1%), Staphylococcus aureus (14.8%), Klebsiella spp. (6.2%), Staphylococcus haemolyticus (2.5%), Staphylococcus intermedius (2.5%), Citrobacter (1.2%) and Morganella (1.2%) in that order. The pathogens exhibited high-level of resistance to commonly used antibiotics like Cotrimoxazole, Amoxicillin, Nalidixic Acid, Nitrofurantoin, Gentamicin, Erythromycin, Chloramphenicol, Ampicillin, Ciproflaxin, Tetracycline and Azithromicin while the isolates showed no resistance to pharmaco-enhanced Amoxicillin and oral Cefatoxime. Conclusion: Prevalence of UTI among febrile under-fives in Nsambya hospital is higher than reports from majority of earlier studies. Similarly, the commonest bacterial isolates associated with UTI among under-fives in Nsambya hospital deviates from most studies in developing countries that majorly report Escherichia coli as the leading cause of UTI in this age category. The observed resistance patterns associated with common antibiotics in our study are in line with the current changing patterns of microbial-antibiotic resistance threatening not only the developing world but the entire glob.
Factors affecting Mathematics achievement of first-year secondary school students in Central Uganda
(Education Association of South Africa (EASA), 2015-08) Kiwanuka, Henry; Namusisi, Speranza
This study explores the sources of variability in Mathematics achievement of Ugandan students at the student, classroom and school level. The Mathematics score and questionnaire responses of 4,819 first-year secondary school students (Grade Seven, about 14-15 years old) from 78 classrooms of 49 schools were analysed. A three-level linear model was used. The results indicate that out of the total variance in Mathematics achievement 68.8%, 14.2% and 17.0% are situated at student, classroom and school level, respectively. Of all the considered explanatory variables at the three levels, i.e. socio-economic status, gender, prior Mathematics achievement, parental support, peer influence, class mean of prior Mathematics achievement and of students' perception of good classroom assessment, school mean of class climate (class mean of attitude toward mathematics) and of parental support were significant predictors of Mathematics achievement. The relevant factors could explain 7.6%, 73.1% and 84.3%, respectively, of student-, classroom- and school-level differences. Implications of our study are considered.
Factors affecting Mathematics achievement of first-year secondary school students in Central Uganda
(University of Pretoria, Faculty of Education, 2015-08) Kiwanuka, Henry Nsubuga; Van Damme, Jan; Van Den Noortgate, Wim; Anumendem, Dickson Nkafu; Namusisi, Speranza
This study explores the sources of variability in Mathematics achievement of Ugandan students at the student, classroom and school level. The Mathematics score and questionnaire responses of 4,819 first-year secondary school students (Grade Seven, about 14-15 years old) from 78 classrooms of 49 schools were analysed. A three-level linear model was used. The results indicate that out of the total variance in Mathematics achievement 68.8%, 14.2% and 17.0% are situated at student, classroom and school level, respectively. Of all the considered explanatory variables at the three levels, i.e. socio-economic status, gender, prior Mathematics achievement, parental support, peer influence, class mean of prior Mathematics achievement and of students’ perception of good classroom assessment, school mean of class climate (class mean of attitude toward mathematics) and of parental support were significant predictors of Mathematics achievement. The relevant factors could explain 7.6%, 73.1% and 84.3%, respectively, of student-, classroom- and school-level differences. Implications of our study are onsidered.
Towards Harnessing Phone Messages and Telephone Conversations for Prediction of Food Crisis
(IGI Publishing Hershey, 2015-10) Lukyamuzi, Andrew; Ngubiri, John; Okori, Washington
Food insecurity is a global challenge affecting millions of people especially those from least developed regions. Famine predictions are being carried out to estimate when shortage of food is most likely to happen. The traditional data sets such as house hold information, price trends, crop production trends and biophysical data used for predicting food insecurity are both labour intensive and expensive to acquire. Current trends are towards harnessing big data to study various phenomena such sentiment analysis and stock markets. Big data is said to be easier to obtain than traditional datasets. This study shows that phone messages archives and telephone conversations as big datasets are potential for predicting food crisis. This is timely with the current situation of massive penetration of mobile technology and the necessary data can be gathered to foster studies such as this. Computation techniques such as Naïve Bayes, Artificial Networks and Support Vector Machines are prospective candidates in this strategy. If the strategy is to work in a nation like Uganda, areas of concern have been highlighted. Future work points at exploring this approach experimentally.
Using mobile phone data to study dynamics of rural-urban mobility
(IEEE, 2016) Sanya, Rahman; Lukyamuzi, Martin
Understanding the dynamics of human mobility is important for addressing challenges caused by phenomena that rely on mobility, such as infectious disease transmission. Although various data sources exist for modeling human mobility, most current sources face challenges of resolution, cost, scalability, and privacy. We used population-based mobile phone communication data to study the dynamics of rural-urban mobility. We have proposed a measure of popularity, which we used to identify the most and the least popular urban areas for rural-urban movement. The concept of hierarchical population mobility is also suggested that can be used to derive a high-level visualization of spatial population movement patterns. The results from our experiments are quite promising.
How do student and classroom characteristics affect attitude toward mathematics? A multivariate multilevel analysis
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2016) Kiwanuka, Nsubuga Henry; Damme, Van Jan; Noortgate, Van Den Wim; Anumendem, kafu Dickson N; Vanlaar, Gudrun; Reynolds, Chandra; Namusisi, Speranza
This study investigated the effects of student and classroom characteristics on math self-confidence, perceived usefulness, and enjoyment of mathematics as multiple outcomes. A sample of 7th-grade students from 78 classes of 49 schools was studied. The data were collected using, among other instruments, an attitude questionnaire. The results of the multivariate multilevel analysis showed that the variance of the 3 indicators was situated mostly at the student level, and that the indicators correlated strongly at the class level. Higher prior mathematics achievement and positive parental beliefs and attitudes were significant predictors of higher scores across the 3 indicators. Each of the baseline indicators was significantly associated with its corresponding final indicator. At the classroom level, classroom assessment was significantly associated with less endorsement of all 3 indicators, higher levels of classroom modeling with greater endorsement of perceived usefulness of mathematics, and classroom questioning with greater enjoyment of mathematics.
On Spatial Dependence in Multivariate Singular Spectrum Analysis
(2016) Awichi, Richard
In this paper, I present a method for utilizing the usually intrinsic spatial information in spatial data sets to improve the quality of temporal predictions within the framework of singular spectrum analysis (SSA) techniques. The SSA-based techniques constitute a model free approach to time series analysis and ordinarily, SSA can be applied to any time series with a notable structure. Indeed, it has a wide area of application including social sciences, medical sciences, finance, environmental sciences, mathematics, dynamical systems and economics. SSA has two broad aims: i) To make a decomposition of the original series into a sum of a small number of independent and interpretable components such as a slowly varying trend, oscillatory components and a structure-less noise. ii) To reconstruct the decomposed series for further analysis in the absence of the noise component. Multivariate singular spectrum analysis (MSSA) is an extension of SSA to multivariate statistics and takes advantage of the delay procedure to obtain a similar formulation as SSA though with larger matrices for multivariate data. In situations where spatial data is an important focus of investigation, it is not uncommon to have attributes whose values change with space and time and an accurate prediction is thus important. The usual question asked is whether the intrinsic location parameters in spatial data can improve data analysis of such data sets. The proposed method is based on the inverse distance technique and is exemplified on climate data from Upper Austria for the period Jan 1994 to Dec 2009. Results show that the proposed technique of incorporating spatial dependence into MSSA analysis leads to improved quality of statistical inference.
Improving Financial Service Delivery to Communities through Micro-finance Institutions in Uganda; the case of Pride Micro-finance Limited (PML)
(African Journals Online, 2017) Wamema, Joseph; Othieno, Joseph

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