Sources of International Economic Spillovers to Ghana's Economic Growth

In a world where policy co-ordination among countries is paramount, the growth of one depends on the behaviour of another in terms of policy instruments being pursued. One important question this study sought to answer was whether international economic spillovers emanating from all trading partners mattered for Ghana’s growth. The study therefore investigated the spillover effects emanating from three of the eight key trading partners of Ghana, namely, U.S.A., China and Nigeria. The study was conducted over the variables; technology diffusion; inflation rates and GDP growth of trading partners; labour; and capital, using annual data from 1980 to 2009. The methodology used involved estimating a growth equation for Ghana, capturing the effects and specific sources of spillovers from trading partners. An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and a vector autoregressive (VAR) model were used in arriving at various spillover effects from trading partners. The results showed that capital, inflation rates of U.S.A, and China’s GDP contributed significantly to Ghana’s GDP growth both in the long-run and the short-run. High spillover effects were observed to emanate from countries with high GDP growth. Another interesting result emphasized the fact that annual GDP growths are independent of each other. Finally, it was observed that spillover effects generally subsided after about fifteen years of persistent shocks.ARDL, Economic Growth, Ghana, International Economic Spillovers, VAR

Cybercrime and Risks for Cyber Physical Systems

Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) is the integration of computation and physical systems that make a complete system such as the network, software, embedded systems, and physical components. Major industries such as industrial plants, transport, national grid, and communication systems depend heavily on CPS for financial and economic growth. However, these components may have inherent threats and vulnerabilities on them that may run the risk of being attacked, manipulated or exploited by cyber attackers and commit cybercrimes. Cybercriminals in their quest to bring down these systems may cause disruption of services either for fame, data theft, revenge, political motive, economic war, cyber terrorism, and cyberwar. Therefore, identifying the risks has become imperative in mitigating the cybercrimes. This paper seeks to identify cybercrimes and risks that are associated with a smart grid business application system to determine the motives and intents of the cybercriminal. The paper identified four goals to mitigate the risks: as business value, organizational requirements, threat agent and impact vectors. We used the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the importance of the goals that contribute to identifying cybercrime and risks in CPS. For the results, a case study is used to identify the threat and vulnerable spots and the prioritized goals are then used to assess the risks using a semi-quantitative approach to determine the net threat level. The results indicate that using the AHP approach to identify cybercrime and risk on CPS provides specific risk mitigation goals

Evolutionary Designed Building Skins with Embedded Biomimetic Adaptation Lessons

The ambition of this study is to create a computational design engine that develops testable simulated models that can adapt to various situations or environments by abstracting some adoption lessons from biology and their relationship to the evolutionary growth of natural systems. With an emphasis on the optimisation of thermal and visual comfort across specific floor areas, the abstracted principles of biology are used to develop building skin tissues. These designs, evaluations, and implementation principles are conceptualised and computationally simulated. The idea of nature as a repository of interconnected dynamic processes that are open to investigation and simulation has changed from a formal metaphor to credible applications that can be implemented to improve the built environment. Environmental catastrophes during the past 20 years have accelerated efforts to gain a deeper understanding of natural systems and processes. A greater congruence between architecture and nature is believed to be possible with the help of applying the principles of natural systems and processes to the construction of buildings. Examining and reflecting on the interrelations of forms, processes, and behaviours can yield useful strategies to develop architectural morphologies that require significant environmental performance enhancements. This paper aims to propose an evolutionary design process with embedded biomimetic principles to generate building skins with morphological characteristics that can be applied in the context of excessive solar radiation e.g. the Persian Gulf region, to maximise thermal comfort by blocking unwanted the solar radiatio

Development of a Control Strategy for Monitoring the Delaminating Damage in Drilling Of Carbon Composite Laminates

Composite materials have attractive features, such as high strength to weight ratio and high stiffness to weight ratio. However, they are easily damaged during machining operations. A typical damage is delamination, which can occur when fiber reinforced composite laminates are drilled. Control of delamination is critical for the utilization of composite materials. This research seeks to develop a technique to control inter-ply delaminations during the drilling of laminated composites. A statistical factorial design technique is used to develop a model that relates the feed rate, cutting speed, and tool size to the acoustic parameters. A control algorithm is built from the model. The algorithm is used to modify the instantaneous feed rate in order to maintain the acoustic energy below a threshold value. This control strategy is effective in limiting the area of delamination. However, using high cutting speeds avoid the delamination of materials, but leads to high production costs due to excessive tool wear.Keywords: Composite Laminates, Drilling, Damage, Acoustic Emission

Sources of International Economic Spillovers to Ghana's Economic Growth

In a world where policy co-ordination among countries is paramount, the growth of one depends on the behaviour of another in terms of policy instruments being pursued. One important question this study sought to answer was whether international economic spillovers emanating from all trading partners mattered for Ghana’s growth. The study therefore investigated the spillover effects emanating from three of the eight key trading partners of Ghana, namely, U.S.A., China and Nigeria. The study was conducted over the variables; technology diffusion; inflation rates and GDP growth of trading partners; labour; and capital, using annual data from 1980 to 2009. The methodology used involved estimating a growth equation for Ghana, capturing the effects and specific sources of spillovers from trading partners. An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and a vector autoregressive (VAR) model were used in arriving at various spillover effects from trading partners. The results showed that capital, inflation rates of U.S.A, and China’s GDP contributed significantly to Ghana’s GDP growth both in the long-run and the short-run. High spillover effects were observed to emanate from countries with high GDP growth. Another interesting result emphasized the fact that annual GDP growths are independent of each other. Finally, it was observed that spillover effects generally subsided after about fifteen years of persistent shocks

Sources of International Economic Spillovers to Ghana's Economic Growth

In a world where policy co-ordination among countries is paramount, the growth of one depends on the behaviour of another in terms of policy instruments being pursued. One important question this study sought to answer was whether international economic spillovers emanating from all trading partners mattered for Ghana’s growth. The study therefore investigated the spillover effects emanating from three of the eight key trading partners of Ghana, namely, U.S.A., China and Nigeria. The study was conducted over the variables; technology diffusion; inflation rates and GDP growth of trading partners; labour; and capital, using annual data from 1980 to 2009. The methodology used involved estimating a growth equation for Ghana, capturing the effects and specific sources of spillovers from trading partners. An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and a vector autoregressive (VAR) model were used in arriving at various spillover effects from trading partners. The results showed that capital, inflation rates of U.S.A, and China’s GDP contributed significantly to Ghana’s GDP growth both in the long-run and the short-run. High spillover effects were observed to emanate from countries with high GDP growth. Another interesting result emphasized the fact that annual GDP growths are independent of each other. Finally, it was observed that spillover effects generally subsided after about fifteen years of persistent shocks

Nematodes and Weeds Control Effects of Pueraria phaseoloides and Flemingia macrophylla Fallows on Establishment, Survival and Yield of Plantain

The yield of plantain (Musa spp., AAB Simmonds) declines sharply after 1–2 years of cropping in West and Central Africa, due mainly to weeds and nematodes. A trial was carried out from January 2002 to October 2005 under two land-use systems (LUS) comprising 4–5 year-old bush fallow, dominated by Chromolaena odorata (L.) R. M. King & H. Rob, and a 20 year-old secondary forest, in three villages in southern Cameroon, to assess the effectiveness of Pueraria phaseoloides and Flemingia macrophylla as planted fallows for weed suppression and reduction in nematode damage of the plantain root system, and determine the yield response of different plantain sucker types to the weed suppression and reduced nematode damage. In each LUS, the treatments were a factorial combination of three levels of fallow system and four levels of plantain sucker type arranged in a randomised complete block design. Total above-ground biomass production of P. phaseoloides was 7.45 Mg ha-1, 4.2 times higher than F. macrophylla (1.78 Mg ha-1; P Boiling water-treated “Essong” > Untreated “Essong”. P. phaseoloides produced significantly (P < 0.05) the highest plantain yield. There were no differences between the natural regrowth and F. macrophylla for all the plantain yield parameters. Sanitizing suckers (boiling and nursery-derived) increased actual yield and quantity of edible bunches by 35% and 26%, respectively, compared to the untreated. It was concluded that P. phaseoloides had the greatest positive effect on the growth and yield of plantain

Compensatory and susceptive responses of cowpea genotypes to infestation by aphis Craccivora koch.

The aim of the study was to estimate yield loss to10 selected genotypes of cowpea as a result of Aphis craccivora infestation during the vegetative phase of the crop. There were two trials with four replications. The first trial serving as the control was sprayed at the seedling, flowering andpodding stages against insect pests with lambda cyhalothrin (PAWA®). The other trial was sprayed only at flowering and podding stages. The cowpea seedlings of the second trial were infested with five four-day-old aphids per seedling two weeks after planting. The aphids were allowed to form colonies and fed on the seedlings until symptoms of damage were observed. When the susceptible seedlings became stunted with distorted leaves and yellowing of leaves at two weeks after infestation (28 days after planting), aphids were controlled. The results showed that aphids’ infestation delayed flowering and maturity of genotypes of cowpea. With the exception of early flowering genotypes all the medium to late flowering genotypes produced higher dry grain yield in infested plots than the control plots. The trend was not different from the production of dry biomass. The results of the present study implies that control of aphids infestation inearly maturing cowpea genotypes should not be delayed up to two weeks after infestation or 28 days after planting. Aphid’s infestation period for studies in susceptive response in medium to late maturing genotypes should go beyond 28 days after planting probably up to 35 days afterplanting

Boundedness of the Bergman projection on some weighted mixed norm Lebesgue spaces of the upper-half space

In this paper, we prove the boundedness of the Bergman projection on weighted mixed norm spaces of the upper-half space for some weights that are constructed using the logarithm function and growth functions. Our necessary and sufficient condition is the same as in the unweighted case, that is it involves only the parameters and not the weight. We then provide some applications in terms of dual and derivative characterization, and an atomic decomposition of the corresponding Bergman spaces

Changing Agricultural Practices and Indigenous Food Crops in the Upper Afram Basin of Ghana

The Forest Savanna Transition zone within which the Upper Afram basin lies, account for a wide variety of food crops and plant species. This study examined the effects of changing ag­ricultural practices on cultivation and availability of indigenous food crops within the basin. Qualitative data obtained from 240 farmers through individual interviews and Focus group dis­cussions were analyzed thematically. The study revealed that even though the farmers employed the traditional mixed cropping system, the widespread use of agro-chemicals in the study area was limiting the practice of intercropping. This accounts for the current dominance of mono cropping system in the study area. These changes have affected the cultivation of a wide variety of indigenous foods within the basin. The uncontrolled use of agro-chemicals constituted one of the major agronomic constraints affecting the cultivation of these crops. Adequate technical support services to effectively control agrochemical abuse among the local farmers will, there­fore, be required. Increased sensitization on the need for local farmers to refocus and maintain some of the traditional agricultural practices that ensured the cultivation of a wide variety of indigenous food crop varieties (NUCS) in their farms is also suggested