Integrated Mobile and web-based Application for Enhancing delivery of HIV/AIDS Healthcare Information in Tanzania

This study aims to develop an integrated e-health platform for enhancing delivery of HIV/AIDS healthcare information in Tanzania, which consists of a mobile application and a web-based system. The study is based on the system's functional and non-functional requirements for an e-health system for delivery of HIV/AIDS healthcare information. The Rapid Application Development (RAD) model was adopted during the system development. The system requirements were modelled into Data Flow Diagram (DFD) in order to obtain the clear flow of the HIV/AIDS healthcare information between the clients and HIV/AIDS healthcare practitioners. With the use of different software development tools and environment such as Android studio and Symfony framework; both android application and web-based system were developed. Finally, the developed system was tested for individual module functioning as well as the functioning of the fully integrated system. The user acceptance survey gave the mean score of above 4 on the scale of 5 for each tested aspect of the system. These scores show that the developed system was positively accepted by the users and commended the Ministry of Health and to deploy the system for enhanced delivery of HIV/AIDS healthcare information

Using rapid research to develop a national strategy to assist families affected by AIDS in Tanzania

Although information on African family adaptation to the AIDS epidemic is critical to planning and managing government, donor and NGO programs of assistance, current knowledge is limited to a small number of research studies. An AIDS prevention project in Tanzania undertook a rapid national assessment to identify the major problems for families in Tanzania in adapting to the epidemic. The methodology used for the work was distinct from prior studies: the research covered a wide cross-section of Tanzanian population groups to gauge the extent of ethnic, urban–rural and regional variation; it was rapid and qualitative, to gather data on broad trends in a short time; and it was designed in co-operation with policymakers so they could understand the approach being used and were receptive to the findings. The study identified common problems in AIDS care, counselling and survivor assistance. Many of the problems for families with AIDS have their origin in poverty and changes in African family structures over the past 20 years, which African demographers are just beginning to describe. Stresses arising from these changes are now being aggravated by AIDS, but families with sufficient resources, whether female or male-headed, are coping better than those without

Design of an Integrated Android Mobile Application and Web-Based System (IAMAWBS) as a Solution to Concerns of Passengers Using Bus Rapid Transit System for Public Transportation in Dar Es Salaam

This research article published by Modern Education and Computer Science Press, 2019The rapid population growth in Dar Es Salaam has prompted the demand of effective transport system in the city. This tremendous rise of population led to serious road traffic congestions, which brings a number of challenges into the city and other growing urban areas. City authorities attempted various solutions to control the traffic congestions such as construction of new roads, expansion of existing roads, installation of traffic lights and other transportation infrastructures such as reestablishment of commuter train to operate within the city but they couldn’t effectively relieve the problem. Eventually, the Government of Tanzania (GoT) supported the city’s effort by establishing the organ called Dar Es Salaam Rapid Transit (DART) to supervise the implementation and operation of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system. The BRT system provided direct benefits to passengers such as minimal travel time, improved reliability as compared to other public transport commonly known as daladala, and reduced accident as BRT buses travel in their dedicated lanes. Despite these benefits there still persist transportation challenges with the BRT, where passengers still suffer from waiting on very long queue during ticket booking, shortage of smart cards, they are unable to check balance direct from their mobile phones, as well as they fail to top-up onto their card’s balance using their smart phones. This paper presents a software technology approach that would help passengers to check balance, send request specifying station to board a bus and check the bus arrival time at any station

Multi-User Position based on Trajectories-Aware Handover Strategy for Base Station Selection with Multi-Agent Learning

This paper presents the optimal Base Station(BS) selection method for proactive decision handover(HO) in Millimeter-wave(mm-wave) wireless communication. Mm-wave spectrum suffers significantly from the high path-loss and blockage caused by either controlled or uncontrolled sources. While the primary purpose of utilizing mm-wave is to achieve a high data rate, the presence of obstacle degrade the overall system performance since the connection link between User(UE) and serving BS being intermittent. The repercussion of the sporadic link is an increased number of HO. To increase throughput, proactive HO and minimize unnecessary HO are considered as the solution, and this paper presents a solution based on Reinforcement Learning(RL) framework. The framework learns from multi UE trajectories, and smart-agent learns simultaneously using Multi-Agent RL(MARL) and mapping each trajectory's feature and respect Q-value in smart agent constructed from Artificial Neural Network(ANN). The numerical results show that the intelligent, learned agent minimizes the number of HO and also outperform heuristic HO strategy in terms of throughput

Deep Reinforcement Learning based Handover Management for Millimeter Wave Communication

This research article published by the International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2021The Millimeter Wave (mm-wave) band has a broad-spectrum capable of transmitting multi-gigabit per-second date-rate. However, the band suffers seriously from obstruction and high path loss, resulting in line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) transmissions. All these lead to significant fluctu-ation in the signal received at the user end. Signal fluctuations present an unprecedented challenge in implementing the fifth gen-eration (5G) use-cases of the mm-wave spectrum. It also increases the user’s chances of changing the serving Base Station (BS) in the process, commonly known as Handover (HO). HO events become frequent for an ultra-dense dense network scenario, and HO management becomes increasingly challenging as the number of BS increases. HOs reduce network throughput, and hence the significance of mm-wave to 5G wireless system is diminished without adequate HO control. In this study, we propose a model for HO control based on the offline reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm that autonomously and smartly optimizes HO decisions taking into account prolonged user connectivity and throughput. We conclude by presenting the proposed model’s performance and comparing it with the state-of-art model, rate based HO scheme. The results reveal that the proposed model decreases excess HO by 70%, thus achieving a higher throughput relative to the rates based HO scheme

Towards enhancing Tour Guide professionalism in Tanzania through a Tour Guide Portal

This research article published by the African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure, Volume 8 (4) - (2019)Tourism is an important sector for the development of the economy of the country. It contributes directly and indirectly to Gross Domestic Product, employment generation and source of foreign currency. Tour guiding is one of the special ingredients for thegrowth of tourism in any nation. The professionalism of tour guides directly affects the tourist satisfaction and hence the growth of the sector. Several efforts have been done so far to enhance the professionalism of tour guides in Tanzania, however, there is no baseline information about this group which can be used as a basis for an enhancement of professionalism. Moreover, there are pieces of evidence of unprofessionalism conducts among tour guides. By using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this study elaborates the current practices of tour guides in Tanzania and how the development of tour guide portal will enhance the professionalism of tour guides. The findings have shown that there are many tour guides with different knowledge, skills, attitudes, and experiences. However, it is difficult to identify which guide is most suitable for a particular tourist destination or activity. Furthermore, most guides can communicate using at least one foreign language, however, the language proficiency levels need to be established. Although licensing and certification have been used in different places to enhance the professionalism of tour guides, user-generated contents from customers can complement these methodologies.This study concluded that a tourguide portal is an important tool for enhancing professionalism among tour guides through creating baseline information of tour guides in Tanzania, recognizing, registering, facilitating the license application as well as enabling feedback systems throughuser-generated contents from both, service providers and consumers of tourism

Towards an EU measure of child deprivation

This paper proposes a new measure of child material and social deprivation (MSD) in the European Union (EU) which includes age appropriate child-specific information available from the thematic deprivation modules included in the 2009 and 2014 waves of the “EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions” (EU‑SILC). It summarises the main results of the in-depth analysis of these two datasets, identifies an optimal set of robust children MSD items and recommends a child‑specific MSD indicator for use by EU countries and the European Commission in their regular social monitoring. In doing this, the paper replicates and expands on the methodological framework outlined in Guio, Gordon and Marlier (2012), particularly by including additional advanced reliability tests

Design of an Interactive Mobile Application for Maternal, Neonatal and Infant Care Support for Tanzania

This research article published by Scientific Research Publishing, 2018Reducing maternal and infant deaths’ rates in the developing countries, particularly in sub-Sahara Africa, remain a big challenge. Despite efforts by governments, the reductions have been unsatisfactory. To accelerate the reduction in maternal and infant deaths, m-health has been proposed as a viable, economical and effective intervention, able to reach the low income and disadvantaged groups. Mobile phone-based applications are among the m-health interventions that have been found to have positive outcomes for different healthcare challenges, such as improving clinical attendance and skilled delivery, and reducing perinatal mortality. However, the adoption of smartphone-based applications for health in Tanzania has been slow. Some of the likely contributing factors might be low technology exposure by the majority of the population and English language skills’ limitations. In this work, we developed a mobile application for providing interactive support to users, thus complementing other solutions available such as SMS and other smartphone apps. The main advantage of this app is the presence of interactive features that enable patient-provider communication. We adopted the Rapid application development (RAD) model for developing the application. We used UML modeling language tools for designing the application. The mobile application’s technical architecture uses various technologies and system development tools such as PHP programming language for the web application, MySQL database manag