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69 Gb/s DMT direct modulation of a Heterogeneously Integrated InP-on-Si DFB Laser
(In Optical Fiber Communication Conference, 2017) Rahim, Abdul; Abbasi, Amin; Sequeira André, Nuno; Katumba, Andrew; Louchet, Hadrien; Van Gasse, Kasper; Baets, Roel; Morthier, Geert; Roelkens, Gunther
Emerging applications such as high definition video streaming and cloud computing are the main drivers for the user-driven increase in the Internet traffic for the past few years. This has led to an increase in the processing capacity of the data centers demanding high-speed intra-datacenter communication links [1]. To address the expected growth of such short reach high speed links, the use of Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) [2] and advanced modulation formats such as Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), multiband Carrierless Amplitude Phase Modulation (multi-CAP), Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM), and Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) modulation [3,4] have been reported. Among these approaches, DMT has gained a lot of attention recently due to its ability to deliver 100G transmission using as low as ~20GHz optical devices [5]. Important considerations for such short reach communication links are low cost, small form factor and low power consumption. Silicon photonics is an emerging technology expected to deliver these attributes. Recently, data rates of 400 Gb/s by multiplexing 4 channels [5] and 0.88 Tb/s by multiplexing 10 channels [6] have been reported using silicon photonics. The power consumption of the optical frontend and footprint can be further reduced by implementing Directly Modulated Lasers (DMLs) on a heterogeneously integrated InP-on-Si platform [7]. Further more such lasers have been shown recently to have state-of-the-art modulation bandwidth performance [8]. In this paper we demonstrate single channel 69 Gb/s DMT modulation using a directly modulated heterogeneously integrated InP-on-Si DFB laser.
Acceptance and Use of Electronic Library Services in Ugandan Universities
(ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference, 2008) Tibenderana, Prisca K. G.; Ogao, Patrick J.
University libraries in Developing Countries (DCs), hampered by developmental problems, find it hard to provide electronic services. Donor communities have come in to bridge this technology gap by providing funds to university libraries for information technology infrastructure, enabling these university libraries to provide electronic library services to patrons. However, for these services to be utilized effectively, library endusers must accept and use them. To investigate this process in Uganda, this study modifies “The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology” (UTAUT) by replacing “effort expectancy” and “voluntariness” with “relevancy”, “awareness” and “benefits” factors. In so doing, we developed the Service Oriented UTAUT (SOUTAUT) model whose dependent constructs predict 133% of the variances in user acceptance and use of e-library services. The study revealed that relevancy moderated by awareness plays a major factor in acceptance and use of e-library services in DCs.
An Accurate Indoor User Position Estimator For Multiple Anchor UWB Localization
(IEEE, 2020) Poulose, Alwin; Emeršic, Žiga; Eyobu, Odongo Steven; Seog Han, Dong
UWB-based positioning systems have been proven to provide a significant high level of accuracy hence offering a huge potential for a variety of indoor applications. However, the major challenges related to UWB localization are multipath effects, excess delay, clock drift, signal interferences and system computational time to estimate the user position. To compensate for these challenges, the UWB system uses multiple anchors in the experiment area and this gives accurate position results with minimum localization errors. However, the use of multiple anchors in the UWB system means processing large amounts of data in the system controller for localization, which leads to high computational time to estimate the current user position. To reduce the complexity of the UWB systems, we propose a position estimator for multiple anchor indoor localization, which uses the extended Kalman filter (EKF). The proposed UWB-EKF estimator was mathematically analysed and the simulation results were compared with classical localization algorithms considering the mean localization errors. In the simulation, three classical localization algorithms: linearized least square estimation (LLSE), weighted centroid estimation (WCE) and maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) were used for performance comparison. Thorough extensive simulation done in this study achieves results which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed UWB-EKF estimator for multiple anchor UWB indoor localization.
Adding Value Every Sprint: A Case Study on Large-Scale Continuous Requirements Engineering
(WS on Continuous Requirements Engineering, 2017) Kasauli, Rashidah; Knauss, Eric; Nilsson, Agneta; Klug, Sara
Agile development practices, such as continuous integration and continuous delivery, promise value through shorter time to market and increased exibility. While these practices have been widely adopted in small-scale, they have shown to be challenging to adopt in large-scale, system development. This is often due to a distance between customer and developer in large scale systems, and the need to break down value from the whole system into manageable parts. The notion of value is fundamental for agile methods, especially for practices such as continuous delivery to the customer. However, how value should be handled in development practices is not clearly understood. In this paper, we investigate how the notion of adding value in every sprint has been perceived in a large-scale system development. Based on an exploratory qualitative case study, the outcome shows that it is perceived bene cial by practitioners although it comes at a price and challenges exist.
ADSMS: Anomaly Detection Scheme for Mitigating Sink Hole Attack in Wireless Sensor Network
(IEEE, 2017) Yasin, N. Mohammaed; Balaji, N.; Sambasivam, G.; Basha, M. S. Saleem; Sujatha, P.
In past years, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) widespread use in many applications, including for some mission-critical applications, and has become one of the major concerns such as security MANETs. MANETs due to some unique characteristics, prevention methods are not alone enough to protect them need; Therefore, the detection is possible for an attacker to breach system security, such as the need to add another before. In general, traditional wireless networks, intrusion detection techniques are not well suited for MANETs. In this case, to protect it from attacks MANETs is important to develop more efficient methods of intrusion detection. With improvements in technology and cutting hardware costs, we MANETs expanding into industrial applications are also witnessing a current trend. To cope with such a trend and we believe strongly that it was important for its potential security issues. In this paper, we propose new intrusion detection and specially designed MANETs Improved Acceptance acknowledgment (EAACK) to activate the digital signature system. Compared to contemporary approaches, while not greatly affect network shows EAACK certain conditions demonstrates the high detection rates of malicious behaviour
Adversary models account for imperfect crime data: Forecasting and planning against real-world poachers
(International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2018) Gholami, Shahrzad; Mc Carthy, Sara; Dilkina, Bistra; Plumptre, Andrew; Tambe, Milind; Driciru, Margaret; Wanyama, Fred; Rwetsiba, Aggrey; Nsubaga, Mustapha; Mabonga, Joshua; Okello, Tom; Enyel, Eric
Poachers are engaged in extinction level wholesale slaughter, so it is critical to harness historical data for predicting poachers’ behavior. However, in these domains, data collected about adversarial actions are remarkably imperfect, where reported negative instances of crime may be mislabeled or uncertain. Unfortunately, past attempts to develop predictive and prescriptive models to address this problem suffer from shortcomings from a modeling perspective as well as in the implementability of their techniques. Most notably these models i) neglect the uncertainty in crime data, leading to inaccurate and biased predictions of adversary behavior, ii) use coarse-grained crime analysis and iii) do not provide a convincing evaluation as they only look at a single protected area. Additionally, they iv) proposed time-consuming techniques which cannot be directly integrated into low resource outposts. In this innovative application paper, we (I) introduce iWare-E a novel imperfect-observation aWare Ensemble (iWare-E) technique, which is designed to handle the uncertainty in crime information efficiently. This approach leads to superior accuracy and efficiency for adversary behavior prediction compared to the previous stateof- the-art. We also demonstrate the country-wide efficiency of the models and are the first to (II) evaluate our adversary behavioral model across different protected areas in Uganda, i.e., Murchison Fall and Queen Elizabeth National Park, (totaling about 7500 km2) as well as (III) on fine-grained temporal resolutions. Lastly, (IV) we provide a scalable planning algorithm to design fine-grained patrol routes for the rangers, which achieves up to 150% improvement in number of predicted attacks detected.
An Algorithm for Geo-Spatial Objects Adjustment
(Advances in Geomatics Research (, 2015) Wadembere, Ismail; Ogao, Patrick
GIS practitioners always integrate geo-spatial data from different sources using map-overlay operations in order to make decisions and solve queries that deal with multiple layers. But they are always faced with openings and overlaps among objects that form features in thematically same datasets resulting into slivers (unwanted small objects) and danglings (unwanted intersections, polylines, and end points). Most GIS users end up running clean and build algorithms that just remove unwanted objects but not achieving perfect merging originally intended with main reason being lack of geometrical object based algorithm that can be used to update and adjust spatial objects to eliminate discrepancies caused by geometry differences between features of thematically similar data. We present an algorithm for manipulating geometries of geospatial objects that make up datasets basing on spatial points as the simplest geometrical primitive. Our approach makes it possible to represent high level spatial geometrical shapes using points and allows for more comprehensive handling of all shapes still maintaining the simplicity of working with the point primitive. Representation of spatial geometry shapes comprising of spatial points, polylines, and polygons using spatial point primitive geometry is achieved by scanning all the spatial dataset, observing the different geometry shapes and topology that exist, then representation all shapes using points and primary attribute in form of text. The algorithm carries out shape transformation of objects so that all openings and overlaps between objects making up dataset are eliminated so that geo-processing, modeling, and analysis utilize the properly integrated datasets. The algorithm can be applied in spatial data management like geometrical alignment and sharing environments like spatial data infrastructure.
An analysis of competitiveness of lowland and upland rice production systems in Eastern Uganda
(African Business and Development in a Changing Global Political Economy, 2012) Letaa, Emmanuel; Hyuha, Theodora S.; Ekere, William
The paper analyses competiveness of upland and lowland rice production systems in Eastern Uganda. The results show that both systems are generally competitive with lowland rice being slightly more competitive than upland rice. Econometric results show that the most critical factors affecting competitiveness include: education, extension contact and farm size. The results therefore suggest that efforts to promote education (informal and formal), increasing frequency of extension contact and farm size will improve competiveness of both rice systems. Encouraging farmers to adopt available productivity enhancing technologies will increase productivity without encouraging them to encroaching on already degraded wetlands.
Analyzing the Eclipse API Usage: Putting the Developer in the Loop
(IEEE, 2013) Businge, John; Serebrenik, Alexander; van den Brand, Mark
Eclipse guidelines distinguish between two types of interfaces provided to third-party developers, i.e., APIs and non-APIs. APIs are stable and supported, while non-APIs are unstable, unsupported and discouraged as they are subject to arbitrary change or removal without notice. In our previous work, we found that despite the discouragement of Eclipse, the use of non-APIs in Eclipse third-party plug-ins (ETPs) is not uncommon. Furthermore, we found that these non-APIs are the main cause of ETP incompatibilities in forthcoming releases of the Eclipse. In the current work we conducted a survey aiming at understanding why do the ETP developers use non-APIs. We have observed that developers with a level of education of up to master degree have a tendency not to read product manuals/ guidelines. Furthermore, while for less experienced developers instability of the non-APIs overshadows their benefits, more experienced developers prefer to enjoy the benefits of non-APIs despite the instability problem. Finally, we have observed that there are no significant differences between Open Source and commercial Eclipse products in terms of awareness of Eclipse guidelines and interfaces, Eclipse product size and updating of Eclipse product in the new SDK releases.
Animal husbandary practices of smallholder organic farmers in Uganda: Challenges and future prospects
(Building Organic Bridges, 2014) Nalubwama, Sylvia; Kiggundu, Muhammad; Vaarst, Mette
Organic agriculture development in Uganda has been mainly in crop production. Currently certified organic livestock production is non-existent. However, some of the existing animal husbandry practices of smallholder organic farmers are similar to those recommended in organic animal husbandry. A survey to understand these practices and challenges was conducted among ninety certified organic pineapple farmers in two districts using a semi-structured questionnaire. Results indicated that organic farmers kept a diversity of livestock species. Most organic farm (81%) had cattle. Other species owned were goats, pigs and chicken. Farmers mainly kept indigenous livestock breeds and majority (90%) used natural mating as a form of animal breeding. Farmers in Luwero district kept a significantly higher (P< 0.001) number of cattle (mean 2.3) than in Kayunga district (mean 1.6). Sixty four percent of farmers had no housing for their livestock. Natural pastures and crop residues formed bulk of feed for ruminants and pigs. Tethering was the commonest form of management system in ruminants (90%). Pigs (60%) and chicken (95%) were under free range system. There was a significant relationship (P= 0.047) between breed of cattle and grazing system. Major challenges of livestock production were inadequate feeds, pests and diseases. Selection of tolerant breeds and use of herbal concoctions were the adopted coping strategies. Majority of farmers (100%) resorted to use of synthetic chemical drugs in case of failure of these strategies. The future development of organic animal husbandry among smallholder organic farmers lies in developing sustainable research based technologies/ solutions to tackle existing and future challenges, investing in infrastructural development as well as improving farmer’s knowledge.
ANN-based Stride Detection Us ing Smartphones for Pedestrian Dead Reckoning
(IEEE, 2018) Kim, Youngwoo; Eyobu, Odongo Steven; Seog Han, Dong
Position awareness is a very important issue for internet of thing (IoT) applications using smartphones. Pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) is one of the methods used to estimate a user’s indoor position. The accuracy of a stride detection is very important to guarantee the estimation accuracy of the user location. This paper proposes an algorithm to detect the stride using acceleration spectrogram feature by utilizing the accelerometer in a smartphone. An artificial neural network (ANN) technology is applied to detect the stride. The proposed algorithm has an accuracy of 97.7% for stride detection.
Application of Response Surface Methodology for Optimizing Tensile Strength of Rice Husk Fiber-Reinforced Polylactic Acid Composites
(MDPI, 2021) Yiga, Vianney Andrew; Lubwama, Michael; Olupot, Peter Wilberforce
Filler/fiber loading and surface modification significantly influence tensile properties of natural fiber-reinforced plastic composites. It is therefore pertinent that they are suitably selected in order to yield the optimum tensile properties. Fiber-reinforced PLA composites were prepared us-ing compression molding with Box-Behnken Design experimental design approach. Factors, namely clay filler loading (1−5 wt.%), rice husk fiber loading (10−30 wt.%), alkali concentration (0−4 wt.%), rice husk variety (K85, K98) and alkali type (NaOH, Mg(OH)2) were varied. ANOVA determined significance of the factors affecting composites’ tensile strength. ANOVA results revealed the re-duced cubic model as best fit for tensile strength response. The desirability function revealed that variable values leading to optimum tensile strength (33.67 MPa) were 4.97 wt.%, 11.16 wt.% and 3.99 wt.% for filler loading, fiber loading and alkali concentration, respectively.
Approaches Towards Effective Knowledge Management for Small and Medium Enterprises in Developing Countries - Uganda
(IIMC International Information Management Corporation, 2009) Habinka, Annabella; Sol, Henk; Baryamureeba, Venansius
In developing countries, many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) collapse due to complex factors. Knowledge shortage and fragmented information are their key challenges as a result of obsolete technology and exposure. However, the Government of Uganda plans to establish nationwide knowledge service centres in its Vision 2035 [9]. Viable solutions are at stake for developing countries. However, to enable them leap frog into the future, ICT is the remedy for knowledge sharing. SME survival is determined by the amount of knowledge they have and how they manage it in decision making. This paper promotes the studio based approach as a practical solution to SMEs asymmetric knowledge sharing. The studio will provide decision enhanced services to SME stakeholders and supplement techno-centric, social-cultural-centric and access-centric approaches. This paper aims at providing a theoretical backup for studio usage as a feasible solution for SMEs in developing countries.
Are Organisational Characteristics Antecedents of Employee Commitment? Evidence using Academic Staff in Private Universities in Uganda by Wilson
(International Conference on Private Higher Education in Africa, 2016) Mugizi, Fred E. K. Bakkabulindi; Bisaso, Ronald
The study sought to find out whether organizational structure, leadership, relationships and support were antecedents of the employee commitment (EC) of the academic staff. The correlational study involved 173 respondents from three private universities in Uganda. Data were collected using a questionnaire whose validity and reliability were tested using Factor Analysis and Cronbach Alpha. Means were used for descriptive analysis, while multiple regression helped to test the hypotheses. Results showed that organizational leadership and support were significant positive antecedents of EC, while organizational structure and employee relationships were not. This led to the conclusion that the two positive antecedents were most likely essential requirements for the EC of the academic staff in private universities to their jobs, while organizational structure and employee relationships may not be. Hence the recommendation those stakeholders such as the directorates of human resource in the respective universities, promote good organizational leadership and support in order to enhance the EC of the academic staff.
Automated image-based diagnosis of cowpea diseases
(AGILE, 2018) Nsumba, Solomon; Mwebaze, Ernest; Bagarukayo, Emily; Maiga, Gilbert
Cowpea is the third most important legume food crop in Uganda with the eastern and northern regions accounting for most of the production in the country. However, it is vulnerable to virus and fungal diseases, which threaten to destabilize food security in sub-Saharan Africa. Unique methods of cowpea disease detection are needed to support improved control which will prevent this crisis. In this paper, we discuss automated disease detection model for cowpea based on deep neural network computational techniques that can be used by non-experts and smallholder farmers to do the field-based diagnosis of cowpea diseases. Image recognition offers both a cost-effective and scalable technology for disease detection. New transfer learning methods offer an avenue for this technology to be easily deployed on mobile devices. Using a dataset of cowpea disease images taken in the field in Uganda, we applied transfer learning to train a deep convolutional neural network to identify three cowpea diseases and to identify healthy plants as well. The best-trained model accuracies were 98% for healthy, 95% for powdery mildew, 98% for cercospora, and 96% for the mosaic virus. The best model achieved an overall accuracy of 93% for data not used in the training process. Our results show that the transfer learning approach for image recognition of field images offers a fast, affordable, and easily deployable strategy for digital plant disease detection.
A Bird’s Eye View of a Sustainable Learning Game Design
(Springer, Cham., 2021) Boogere, James; Oyo, Benedict; Eilu, Emmanuel; Birevu Muyinda, Paul
We empirically explore learning games with an aim of empowering learners’ lifelong learning skills to enable them deal with complex situations sustainably. Learning is better by doing and the relation between learning and fun in games is essentially much deeper. It is also important for the players to clearly know the game system, which involves goals, entities and rules, in order to improve the vital individual social skills required to succeed. This chapter presents learning designs as a major determinant of motivation towards meaningful learning and challenge learners through continual provision of new aspects to learn, discover and develop oneself. Prior consequences designate that holistic learning game practices are more intense in a home compared to a school context. Moreover, the overall influence of context on perceived learning is significantly smaller than that of other experimental factors such as identification and enjoyment.
Blockchain-Oriented Software Variant Forks: A Preliminary Study
(IEEE, 2022) Rocha, Henrique; Businge, John
In collaborative social development platforms such as GitHub, forking a repository is a common activity. A variant fork wants to split the development from the original repository and grow towards a different direction. In this preliminary exploratory research, we analyze the possible reasons for creating a variant fork in blockchain-oriented software. By collecting repositories in GitHub, we created a dataset with repositories and their variants, from which we manually analyzed 86 variants. Based on the variants we studied, the main reason to create a variant in blockchain-oriented software is to support a different blockchain platform (65%).
Building community based adaptation and resilience to climate change in Uganda
(World Vision, 2014) Gwali, Samson
Climate change and its impacts are already being felt in Uganda in the form of erratic rains, drought, famine, floods and landslides. These hazards do not only affect the crop life cycle but also the entire value chain from pre-production to post-harvest storage, marketing and transport. This ultimately leads to serious socioeconomic consequences in food security, health, and economic development. The reality of climate change is no longer in doubt and therefore, it is important to prepare and adapt to its impacts through appropriate adaptation and resilience strategies. However, resource – poor communities, households and individuals with least resources have the least capacity to adapt to the impacts. Since the linkages between climate change and land degradation are very high, there is a real need to devise community adaptation and resilience strategies that include sustainable land management. These adaptation and resilience strategies include a range of re-greening interventions, such as farmer managed natural regeneration and its variants such as “Ngitili” and community exclosures as well as conservation agricultural practices like “bocage” and “Zai” in West Africa. This paper presents a set of adaptation and resilience interventions implemented by the National Forestry Resources Research Institute (NaFORRI) in various parts of Uganda. These range from agroforestry, avoided deforestation to alternative livelihoods. It is, however, recommended that, in designing and implementing these community adaptation and resilience interventions, great care and consideration should be taken of the gender relations, wealth, power relations, culture and traditions existing in the local communities.
Can We Find Stable Alternatives For Unstable Eclipse Interfaces?
(IEEE, 2016) Kawuma, Simon; Businge, John
The Eclipse framework is a popular and widely adopted framework that has been evolving for over a decade. Like many other evolving software systems, the Eclipse framework provides both stable and supported interfaces (APIs) and unstable, discouraged, and unsupported interfaces (non- APIs). However, despite being discouraged by Eclipse, the usage of bad interfaces is not uncommon. Our previous research has confirmed t hat a s E clipse s tates, i ndeed A PIs a re stable while non-APIs are unstable. Applications using non-APIs face compatibility challenges in new Eclipse releases. Furthermore, our previous studies further revealed that the reason why application developers use the unstable interfaces is because they cannot find s table i nterfaces w ith t he f unctionality t hat they require. Moreover, in a study we conducted, Eclipse application developers stated that they manually find t he functionality from Eclipse. Eclipse being a very large complex software system with a large number of committers, we hypothesize that as developers manually search for the functionality they they require, it is possible that they miss stable interfaces offering the same functionality. To this end, using code clone detection techniques, we analyzed 18 major releases of Eclipse for possible clones. Our findings a re t hree fold: i ) we discover that indeed there exist clones in Eclipse, ii) we also discovered that some of the identified c lones o riginate f rom different Eclipse projects, iii) our findings r eveal t hat t here i s no significant number of APIs (less than 1%) offering the same or similar functionality as the non-APIs in all Eclipse releases we studied. This reveals that there are very few syntactic clones between API and non-API, thus developers were forced to either use non-API or find a n API t hat e xists, t hat i s similar in functionality, but not in syntax.
Capital Inflows and Macroeconomic Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa
(Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) Kasekende, Louis; Kitabire, Damoni; Martin, Matthew
During the last three years, there has been an expanding literature on private capital inflows to developing countries. In 1992 and 1993, attention focused on the rise in such inflows, their causes and nature. Gradually, it moved to their potential macroeconomic impact and the policy implications. In 1994 and 1995, following events in Mexico, it has concentrated on the sustainability of the inflows, and the policy implications of potential reversal. Virtually all of the studies have focused on Latin America, though some authors have also examined East Asian experiences. Analysis of Eastern Europe is extremely rare (Calvo, Sahay and Vegh, 1995; Griffith-Jones, 1995), and that of Mrica is virtually non-existent (with the notable exception of the excellent study by Asea and Reinhart, 1995). Even the most comprehensive recent analysis and survey of the literature (Fernandez-Arias and Montiel, 1995) has concluded that there is only impressionistic evidence of private capital inflows to sub-Saharan Mrica, where 'capital inflows have not materialized'. Mrica has continued to be analysed from the point of view that most of its capital inflows causing 'Dutch Disease' effects are aid inflows (see, for example, Younger, 1992). The key areas examined in the literature have been the scale and composition of private capital inflows, their causes and sustainability, their effects on macroeconomic stability, and their responsiveness to policy measures.

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