Michael Kimwele

Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology | JKUAT · Institute of Computer Science and Information Technology (ICSIT)

Purpose: The aim of the study is to examine how an ontology-based web crawler with a near-duplicate detection system improves the performance of a web crawler. Methodology: The experiment was carried out using secondary data from a sample web site which was used since crawling is an endless process. Using these two approaches, the ontology web craw...

Large fingerprint databases can make the automated search process tedious and time‐consuming. Fingerprint pattern classification is a significant step in the identification system's complexity in terms of time and speed. Although several fingerprint algorithms have been developed for classification tasks, further improvements in performance and eff...

Speech coding is a method to reduce the amount of data needs to represent speech signals by exploiting the statistical properties of the speech signal. Recently, in the speech coding process, a neural network prediction model has gained attention as the reconstruction process of a nonlinear and nonstationary speech signal. This study proposes a nov...

Speech coding is important for effective storage and transmission of audio signals. However, current Interactive Multimedia Association Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation (IMA-ADPCM) speech coding techniques that use a fixed predictor have an impact on the encoding of dynamic and non-stationary speech signals. The limitation of the fixed p...

Speech coding is a technique that compresses speech signals into a smaller digital form, making it easier to transmit or store, while still maintaining the quality and intelligibility of the speech. The review aimed to identify and analyses the most effective waveform-based nonlinear speech coding prediction techniques, including the use of neural...

Epilepsy is a disorder that interferes with regular brain activity and can occasionally cause seizures, odd sensations, and momentary unconsciousness. Epilepsy is frequently diagnosed using electroencephalograph (EEG) records, although conventional analysis is subjective and prone to error. The dynamic and non‐stationary nature of EEG structure res...

Transfer learning involves using previously learnt knowledge of a model task in addressing another task. However, this process works well when the tasks are closely related. It is, therefore, important to select data points that are closely relevant to the previous task and fine-tune the suitable pre-trained model’s layers for effective transfer. T...

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, or DCNNs, have undergone numerous modifications to enhance their capabilities in image processing, including image restoration, but there is still room for improvement. They have been improved in a number of ways, including reducing information loss, increasing feature utilization , and reducing computational com...

Accurate diagnosis is the key to providing prompt and explicit treatment and disease management. The recognized biological method for the molecular diagnosis of infectious pathogens is polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Recently, deep learning approaches are playing a vital role in accurately identifying disease-related genes for diagnosis, prognosis...

Epilepsy is a condition that disrupts normal brain function and sometimes leads to seizures, unusual sensations, and temporary loss of awareness. Electroencephalograph (EEG) records are commonly used for diagnosing epilepsy, but traditional analysis is subjective and prone to misclassification. Previous studies applied Deep Learning (DL) techniques...

A Fuzzy logic based mean filter (FLBMF) is presented for impulse noise reduction of mammogram images degraded with additive impulse noise. FLBMF removes both low and high density impulsive noise from mammogram images. FLBMF performs this in three major phases. In phase one, the detection of noisy pixels is performed and determined. In phase two, an...

Selecting fine-tuning layers in a pre-trained model is vital to adapting the target data in transfer learning. The selection process is mainly manual and or based on the last k layers of the network. So far, these methods have not yielded the best adaptation for various datasets. Therefore, it is a trial and error selection of the suitable layers f...

Biometric systems have been used extensively in the identification and verification of persons. Fingerprint biometrics stands out as the most effective due to their characteristics of Permanence, uniqueness, ergonomics, throughput, low cost, and lifelong usability. By reducing the number of comparisons, biometric recognition systems can effectively...

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are deep learning methods that are utilized in image processing such as image classification and recognition. It has achieved excellent results in various sectors; however, it still lacks rotation invariant and spatial information. To establish whether two images are rotational versions of one other, one can rot...

Adapting the target dataset for a pre‐trained model is still challenging. These adaptation problems result from a lack of adequate transfer of traits from the source dataset; this often leads to poor model performance resulting in trial and error in selecting the best‐performing pre‐trained model. This paper introduces the conflation of source doma...

The selection of layers in the transfer learning fine‐tuning process ensures a pre‐trained model's accuracy and adaptation in a new target domain. However, the selection process is still manual and without clearly defined criteria. If the wrong layers in a neural network are selected and used, it could lead to poor accuracy and model generalization...

Social media has been embraced by different people as a convenient and official medium of communication. People write or share messages and attach images and videos on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. It therefore generates a lot of data that is rich in sentiments. Sentiment analysis has been used to determine the opinions of cli...

Measurement of maintainability early in the software development life cycle, especially during the design phase, may aid designers in incorporating necessary improvements and adjustments to enhance the maintainability of the completed product. In order to demonstrate the importance and necessity of software maintainability during the design phase,...

Adapting the target dataset for a pre-trained model is still challenging. These adaptation problems result from a lack of adequate transfer of traits from the source dataset; this often leads to poor model performance resulting in trial and error in selecting the best performing pre-trained model. This paper introduces the conflation of source doma...

Partial face occlusions such as scarfs, masks and sunglasses compromise face recognition accuracy. Therefore, this paper presents a face recognition approach robust to partial occlusions. The approach is based on the assumption that the human visual system ignores occlusion and solely focuses on the non-occluded sections for recognition. Four secti...

The selection of layers in the transfer learning fine-tuning process ensures a pre-trained model’s accuracy and adaptation in a new target domain. However, the selection process is still manual and without clearly defined criteria. If the wrong layers in a neural network are selected and used, it could lead to poor accuracy and model generalisation...

Our study provides a flexible method to learn new classes of fingerprints. Our classifier model combines both the clustering technique and use of deep learning to cluster and hence label the fingerprint images into appropriate classes. The K means clustering strategy explores the label uncertainty and high-density regions from unlabeled data...

Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) is the cornerstone of today’s image retrieval systems. The most distinctive retrieval approach used, involves the submission of an image-based query whereby the system is used in the extraction of visual characteristics like the shape, color, and texture from the images. Examination of the characteristics is don...

Social media has been embraced by different people as a convenient and official medium of communication. People write messages and attach images and videos on Twitter, Facebook and other social media which they share. Social media therefore generates a lot of data that is rich in sentiments from these updates. Sentiment analysis has been used to de...

With the current developments in wireless networks, the use of Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the medical field has attracted a lot of attention. WSNs are being used to collect and transmit patient physiological information in ubiquitous healthcare systems. One of the major challenges in healthcare systems is security and privacy of patients’ v...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-021-08366-7

The success of any software product line development project is closely tied to its domain variability management. Whereas a lot of effort has been put into functional variability management by the SPL community, non-functional variability is considered implicit. The result has been dissatisfaction among clients due to resultant poor quality system...

There are many calls from software engineering scholars to incorporate non-functional requirements as first-class citizens in the software development process. In Software Product Line Engineering emphasis is on explicit definition of functional requirements using feature models while non-functional requirements are considered implicit. In this pap...

Feature Selection and classification have previously been widely applied in various fields like business, medical and media fields. High dimensionality in datasets is one of the main challenges that has been experienced in classifying data, data mining and sentiment analysis. Irrelevant and redundant attributes have also had a negative impact on co...

Wireless body area networks have become popular due to recent technological developments in sensor technology. A sensor can be used to collect data from different environments of interest, process and communicate the data to other nodes in a network. By its very nature, a sensor node is limited in resource usage. Due to these limitations, numerous...

Signcryption is a very useful cryptographic primitive that aims to achieve authentication and confidentiality in an efficient manner. We cryptanalyze the signcryption scheme of Wei and Ma (2019) which is claimed to be secure. Further, we propose a corresponding modification to show how their signcryption scheme can be made more secure in our propos...

Signcryption is a very useful cryptographic primitive that aims to achieve authentication and confidentiality and in an efficient manner. We cryptanalyze the signcryption scheme of Luo and Ma (2019) which is claimed to be secure. Further, we propose a corresponding modification to show how their signcryption scheme can be made more secure in our pr...

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have found use in many areas ranging from military to healthcare among other areas of interest. Multiuser broadcast authentication is an important security feature in WSNs that can enable users to securely broadcast their data in a WSN. By its very nature, a WSN is resource constrained in nature making security imple...

With the current advancement in technology, the use of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) has become popular in the healthcare management. They provide a mechanism to collect and transmit physiological data to healthcare providers in remote locations. With the need to secure healthcare data becoming a global concern, mechanisms must be put in plac...

Published micro-data may contain sensitive information about individuals which should not be revealed. Anonymization approaches have been considered a possible solution to the challenge of preserving privacy while publishing data. Publisheddatasets contain sensitive information. Different sensitive attributes may have different levels of sensitivit...

Fingerprint Identification is one of the most popular biometric methods used to verify and identify a person; formally it is defined as "The pattern of ridges and furrows on an individual finger". Ridges are the lines in thumb and furrow is shallow trench of skin on an individual's finger. Furrow is also referred to as valley. The combination of ri...

Information technology has enabled the collection and sharing of large amounts of data. This data is highly dimensional and contains sensitive information which needs to be protected. When the dimensionality of data increases, a feature selection mechanism can be used to determine a subset of the attributes that have high relevance. The information...

Nowadays, mobile device use among young children is on the rise. A kid using a smartphone or a tablet is a common sight today. This has been triggered by the worldwide advancement of mobile culture & technology. As a result, the number of mobile applications targeting the young children has tremendously increased. Studies, however, reveal that most...

The paper introduces handover system by use of two radio connections onboard the train operating on different channels as well as use of the train’s location and directional information to aid in reducing ping pong during handover. The paper formulates the Global Systems for Mobiles railway (GSM-R)algorithmto help make decisions on when to handover...

E-learning has been practiced extensively across the globe, and thanks to Internet penetration and advancement it is progressively being adopted among students in the learning environment. E-learning systems are currently available from high schools to higher institutions of learning globally. However, the systems still lack in covering certain are...

Cloud Computing (CC) is one of the most important and hottest deal of attention, both in academia researches and among users, due to its ability for satisfying the computing needs by reducing commercial expenditure bandwidth with computing compounds while increasing scalability and flexibility for computing services, accessing it through an Interne...

Developments in mobile learning have seen the adoption of high-power, location-aware mobile gadgets in distance education. Unauthorized user’s location data collected by these devices could hamper sustainable adoption of m-learning systems. There is the need, therefore, to develop a secure location-based privacy-preserving model to evaluate learner...

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) among other techniques implements Web Services (WS). SOAP offers a lightweight and simple mechanism for exchange of structured and typed information among computing devices in a decentralized, distributed computing environment. However, SOAP transmits data in Extensible Markup Language (XML) format. XML document...

Software weaknesses in design, architecture, code and deployment have led to software vulnerability exploited by the perpetrators. Although counter measure tools have been developed such as patch management systems, firewalls and antivirus, but the perpetrators have advance sophisticated tools such malware with crypto-lock and crypto-wall technolog...

Kernel mode rootkits, KMRs have indeed gained considerable success as far as blackhat society is concerned raising much alarm to systems and system defenders. The danger posed by these rootkits has to some extent led to call for universal attention on the means to handle and deal with them. Rootkits have by far become more complicated and stealthy...

There are several software security standards in place but they are not comprehensive, as such, one needs an array of tools so as to achieve a single security functionality. The survey guides us through the classical implementation to the modern as well as proposed future endeavors so as to achieve an integrated and robust platform for developing a...

Location-based privacy in mobile learning is essential to retain users' trust, key to influencing usage intention. Any risk on privacy can negatively affect users' perceptions of a system's reliability and trustworthiness. While extant studies have proposed frameworks for mobile technologies adoption into learning, few have integrated privacy aspec...

Knowledge Sharing is a complex and key activity for State Corporations. This study argues Knowledge Sharing as a catalyst to employee’s productivity and sustainable economic growth towards a knowledge-based economy. This study accentuated the role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Knowledge Sharing by assessing its influence on Knowl...

In this study, we reviewed biometric template protection schemes in subsisting literature and established that there is no reliable, efficacious and foolproof technique that assures diversity, revocability, security and optimal performance as is required of an ideal biometric template security scheme. This status of affairs motivated us to contriva...

In this paper, we base our research on biometric systems security. We begin by introducing biometrics after which we will describe how a biometric system works before we later define what a biometric template is. Thereafter, we will explore attacks on biometric systems and lay more emphasis on biometric template attacks and explore attacks targetin...

The need for fool proof authentication procedures away from traditional authentication mechanisms like passwords, security PINS has led to the advent of biometric authentication in information systems. Biometric data extracted from physiological fe atures of a person including but not limited to fingerprints, palm prints, face or retina for purpose...

Reliability of an interactive mobile computing device or the lack of it is often reflected in user satisfaction. The rapid proliferation and ubiquity of smart devices in the consumer market has forced the Software Engineering (SE) community to quickly adapt development approaches conscious of the novel capabilities of mobile applications. However,...

Information Technology (IT) security is an issue which cannot be wished away by organizations and particularly Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). SMEs should embrace IT security in order to realize the benefits of IT without compromising the IT security status. Much like any other business asset, information is an asset that needs to be strategic...

Recently computer mediated communication became a popular way of interaction. Unfortunately nonverbal elements are normally absent in these online communications. This paper describes the results of a study carried out to determine the use of textual symbols/patterns to provide nonverbal cues and to express emotions in online text based environment...

To address challenges faced by SMEs especially in Kenya, this paper aims to establish an Information Technology (IT) framework that can allow Kenyan Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) implement cost effective security measures. Particularly this paper discusses IT security requirements and appropriate metrics. There is evidence from the survey to...

The purpose of this paper is to study the adoption of information technology security policies in Kenyan Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Particularly this study looks at whether the roles and responsibilities of Information Technology (IT) security in SMEs are well defined, whether SMEs have a documented information security and are if employe...