Determining the Efficiency of the Government of Ghana’s Network of Grain Storage Facilities

Governments in developing countries design networks of grain storage facilities to help farmers store excess agricultural produce to prepare for climate induced crop failures. The efficiency of such networks has serious economic and food security implications on respective countries. Periodic review of the efficiency of such networks is necessary to identify lapses and opportunities for optimization. Past studies on efficiency of networksof facilities, which usually assume scenarios peculiar to the developed world used data that are usually unavailable or unreliable in developing countries. This work therefore developed an integrated approach that relies solely on readily available and reliable governmental and open source data to compute the short and long-term efficiencies of networks of grain storage facilities. This approach was used to analyze the efficiency of the government of Ghana’s network of forty-eight grain storage facilities. A transportation model was used to compute the total transportation cost within the existing network. A P-median model was then used to develop and compute the transportation cost of a theoretically optimal network. Outputs from a forecasting model were used with the transportation andP-median models to study the short and long-term efficiencies of the existing and optimal networks. The average short and long term efficiencies of the existing network were 66% and 26% respectively. The study also investigated the efficiencies of a rank network which is created by siting GSF’s in only high grain production districts. The short and long-term efficiencies of this network were 87% and 72% respectively. The study showed that Ghana’s GSFs were sub-optimally sited hence farmers would have to travel excessively longer distances than necessary to use it. This offers some explanation for its low patronage. Furthermore, the study shows that a rank network was not as efficient as the optimal network. This study therefore demonstrates the use of this integrated approach coupledwith readily available data to analyze networks of grain storage facilities in developing countries

Drying Characteristics of Dried Banana (Musa sapientum)

Drying characteristics of banana slices were determined for 4, 6 and 8mm thickness in a conventional oven dryer at temperatures between 50-70 °C. Six empirical models were used for fitting the experimental drying curve. The influence of banana thickness and temperature on the moisture diffusivity and drying rate were investigated. Temperature strongly affected moisture diffusivity and drying rate. Drying rate increased with decreased thickness while moisture diffusivity dropped at higher banana slice thickness. The Lewis model fitted well the experimental data

Knowledge dynamics in the tourism-social entrepreneurship nexus

Tourism is often employed as a vehicle for facilitating social-economic development, however its usefulness has been somewhat limited in relation to addressing social issues, and in particular, those issues relating to poverty. This is partly due to the lack of cross-sectoral interactions and knowledge exchange between private, public and third sectors that are needed to create effective and appropriate initiatives to leverage tourism for social benefits. Such traditional sectoral boundaries can be broken down through social entrepreneurship approaches which concomitantly, facilitate the creation and synergizing of social innovation that addresses persistent social issues. Yet to date, the utility of cross-sectoral knowledge dynamics still remains largely under-researched in both the social entrepreneurship and tourism literature. This chapter introduces readers to the concept of knowledge dynamics and discusses knowledge dynamics in the tourism and social entrepreneurship nexus via a case study of community-based tourism in Mai Hich, Vietnam. We argue that by gaining an enhanced understanding of cross-sectoral knowledge dynamics, we can strengthen the overall praxis of tourism and social entrepreneurship, and in particular, assist policymakers in fostering conditions that generate increased innovation.Griffith Business School, Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel ManagementNo Full Tex

Development of neural network model for predicting Kiwifruit internal quality

No Abstract.Journal of the Ghana Institution of Engineers Vol. 2 (2) 2004: pp. 1-

Effect of different threshing cylinders on soybean quality

This study was carried out to determine the effects of spike-tooth and rasp-bar threshing cylinders on soybean quality. “Anidaso” variety at 10% moisture content (m.c.) wet basis was used as test sample. Four cylinder speeds (316, 376, 500 and 620 rpm) were selected with a replication. The results from this experiment showed that the lowest seed-coat damage of 5.36% was obtained with the spike- tooth cylinder at 316 rpm as against 7.17% at the same speed for the rasp-bar cylinder. Rasp-bar cylinder gave the lowest split loss of 0.68% as against 1.64% for spike-tooth at 376 and 316 rpm respectively. For undamaged whole bean, the respective highest values were 90.63 and 90.99% for rasp-bar and spike-tooth, respectively, at 316 rpm. The germination loss was lowest at rasp-bar threshing cylinder speed of 316 rpm. Better results were achieved at the lowest cylinder speed in both cases. In general, spike-tooth cylinder gave better results compared to the rasp-bar cylinder in soybean threshing at 10% m.c. Journal of Science and Technology Vol.24(2) 2004: 121-12