Business lessons for DRC's leadership crisis

Kwame Marfo looks beyond DRC's current leadership crisis to imagine a new future for the Central African country

Has the Ghana economic bubble finally burst?

LSE alumnus Kwame Marfo analyses the reason behind Ghana’s recent economic woes

Daniel’s Use of ŠBḤ and Its Worship Implication

Different concepts and motifs have been studied from the book of Daniel by expositors and interpreters without much consideration to the Aramaic terms that have worship nuances, undertones, and connotations. Through a contextual study, this paper contends that the Aramaic שׁבח highlights worship and its implication as integral to the book of Daniel. The study argues that שׁבח is an Aramaic worship expression and its contextual use emphasizes the sovereignty of God. The term’s usage in Daniel highlights the milieu of worship and uplifting either a deity or gods and the God of heaven. However, when idol worship is amplified, the effect is the pronouncement of judgment on the people carrying out such worship

Nicotine enhances the expression of a conditioned place preference in adult male rats

As the number of cigarette-related deaths has risen over the years, researchers have tried to study and understand cigarettes, their components, and why they are so addictive despite widespread knowledge of their potentially fatal health consequences. Research in recent decades has unveiled that the strength of cigarette addiction could be due in part to the primary reinforcing effects of nicotine. Although these findings may give researchers and medical professionals some answers about this addiction, it does not provide the whole picture. Research conducted more recently has shown that the reinforcement-enhancing effect, a property of nicotine that increases an organism’s behavior in response to an environmental stimulus, could also play a large role in tobacco addiction. Though many studies have observed this phenomenon in an operant paradigm, the effect has yet to be observed using a different model. The present study hypothesized that this effect could be produced using a conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm. Animals were conditioned to prefer one of two chambers using either a sucrose or cocaine reward. The day after a post-conditioning preference test, the effect of a one-time, acute injection of nicotine on these expressed CPPs was then observed. Results showed a significant effect of nicotine on the expression of both sucrose and cocaine CPPs with animals spending more time in the reward-associated chamber relative to the first post-conditioning preference test and a third preference test preceded by a saline injection. Furthermore, there was no significant difference between the results of the saline and injection-free post-conditioning preference tests. These results show that the reinforcement-enhancing effect can be observed in a classical conditioning paradigm. They also show that in this non-operant paradigm, the reinforcement-enhancing effect can be produced by one acute injection of nicotine in animals with no previous exposure to the drug. These findings can provide more insight into the reinforcing effects caused by a first experience with nicotine

Envisioning an African Child Development Field

Institutionalization of an African child development field is a necessary aspect of strategies for strengthening the continent’s contributions to a global knowledge base. A disciplinary structure advances inquiry as it facilitates professionalization and provides space to formulate the canons and conventions that will guide knowledge production and the preparation and socialization of future researchers. Using the term disciplinary development to denote the process of bringing such a field about, this article outlines a pathway to disciplinary development, emphasizing important lessons that must be learned from (a) internal challenges to knowledge production in African universities, (b) Euro-American psychology’s disciplinary development history, and (c) the movement to institutionalize psychology in non-Western countries. The issues addressed have relevance to other non-Western societies

Playing Fair: Youtube, Nintendo, and the Lost Balance of Online Fair Use

Over the past decade, YouTube saw an upsurge in the popularity of “Let’s Play” videos. While positive for YouTube, this uptick was not without controversy. Let’s Play videos use unlicensed copyrighted materials, frustrating copyright holders. YouTube attempted to curb such usages by demonetizing and removing thousands of Let’s Play videos. Let’s Play creators struck back, arguing that the fair use doctrine protects their works. An increasing number of powerful companies, like Nintendo, began exploiting the ambiguity of the fair use doctrine against the genre; forcing potentially legal works to request permission and payment for Let’s Play videos, without a determination of fair use. As courts proved incapable of solving this issue, the copyright nature of Let’s Play videos remains in question. This Note analyzes how a court could resolve a case concerning Let’s Play videos. This Note proposes that a fair use analysis regarding Let’s Play videos shows no conclusive determination. In turn, this ambiguity leaves Let’s Play videos at the mercy of copyright holders. With the introduction of the “Nintendo Creators Program,” Nintendo is overlooking the fair use defense and enforcing non-negotiable contractual obligations, an act which disregards judicial precedent and undermines the spirit of fair use. Changes to YouTube’s policies are necessary to protect Let’s Play users and content creators like them

Efficacy and adoption of strategies for avian flu control in developing countries

In this paper, we present the results of a two-stage expert elicitation (Delphi) study conducted to provide input to contingent valuation (CV) studies. These CV studies are designed to estimate the benefits of various public and private strategies for the control of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) across the study countries of Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, and Nigeria. The results of these CV studies are expected to feed into the cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyzes, which will be conducted to identify the effective HPAI control strategies in each study country. The information gathered through the Delphi study included (1) definitions of the small-scale producers (noncommercial/semicommercial and commercial) across the study countries, (2) estimations of the efficacy of various private and public control strategies in HPAI control, and (3) estimates of the proportion of poultry producers who are expected to adopt these control strategies under different scenarios. In this Delphi study, we collected data from 23 experts and analyzed the data by using statistical analysis methods. The results reveal that small-scale flocks are significantly larger in Indonesia, compared to the four African countries. The efficacy levels of both private and public HPAI control strategies investigated are significantly higher for commercial producers than for their noncommercial/semicommercial counterparts. Across private strategies and study countries, regular monitoring is thought to have the highest efficacy for those in the noncommercial/semicommercial sector, whereas regular disinfection and containment in hard material (as a combined strategy) was found to be the most effective strategy in minimizing risk in the commercial sector. Across public strategies and study countries, experts see surveillance by veterinary services as the most effective public sector HPAI control strategy in both the noncommercial/semicommercial and commercial sectors. Finally, according to the experts, small-scale poultry producers’ likelihood of adoption is low overall, although adoption rates are higher for commercial producers than for noncommercial/semicommercial producers.Adoption, commercial sector, Delphi study, disease risk introduction and spread, efficacy, expert elicitation, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, HPAI, noncommercial sector, private disease risk minimization strategies, public disease risk minimization strategies, semicommercial sector, small-scale poultry producers,

The Evolution and Impact of Documentary Films

Long considered either high art or the bane of every student’s existence when a substitute teacher came to class, documentary film has developed into a popular and visible form of entertainment. As a result, they are starting to have a bigger effect on society, as they begin to address issues with the goal of informing the public and pushing for social change. This project will first address historical documentaries, the reasons that they were made, and what techniques were established that have carried through to documentary film today. My paper will then examine today’s documentary films, what techniques they use to obtain viewer trust and to be considered credible, and be assessed for their impact on the public using the following model, from University of South Carolina political science professor David Whiteman: I argue that an adequate model (a) must conceptualize films as part of a larger process that incorporates both production and distribution; (b) must consider the full range of potential impacts on producers, participants, activist organizations, and decision makers; and (c) must consider the role of films in the efforts of social movements to create and sustain alternative spheres of public discourse. 1 Another issue central to this investigation is the evolution of documentary films from reporting fact or recording history, to opinion pieces designed to further personal political agendas. By the same token, the concept of viewership for these films will also be looked at- who goes to see these films? Do they cater to the viewers who already agree with their agendas? Can a documentary have an impact if consumers don’t see it? To answer this question, I will investigate documentaries that have had impact through laws or regulations that have resulted from their views. This project will also address two more unconventional forms of documentary. One is documentary television, in the form of the recent “reality television craze.” The translation of techniques used in film will be looked at through several popular reality series, and their credibility will also be discussed. The second more unconventional form is the established genre of mock documentary, or “mockumentary” film. Here, the techniques used to create the illusion of documentary film will be identified, the defining characteristics that separate this genre from its real life- based counterpart, and specific examples of popular and controversial mockumentary films will ask the question, “Can mockumentary film hurt the credibility of the documentary film genre?” All of these questions will be answered using a knowledge foundation from close to forty documentary films that I’ve watched, then developing case studies on the most significant in each category (historical, recent, television and mockumentary). 1. Whiteman, David (2004). Out of the theaters and into the streets: A coalition model of the political impact of documentary film and video. Political Communication, Vol 21. Retrieved 11 November 200

On tone and segmental processes in Akan phrasal words: A prosodic account

Based on where and how phonological rules apply, studies in Lexical Phonology (Mohanan 1986; Kiparsky 1985; Pulleyblank 1986; etc.) distinguish between two levels in the phonology; namely, lexical and post-lexical. At the post-lexical level, the various phonological rules normally require particular domains, without which they fail to apply. The question that follows is where and how we define these domains. Considering Akan Noun-Noun and Noun-Adjective phrasal word (compound) constructions in prosodic phonology (Selkirk 1986, Nespor and Vogel 1986 and Hayes 1989; etc.), this paper touches on some aspects of the prosody-syntax interface on the idea that the domain of a post-lexical rule is drawn from the prosodic component, an intermediate phase of interface analysis. The rules that come to bear are tonal (i.e. H-Deletion, H-Insertion and Boundary assimilation) and segmental (i.e. Prefix deletion and Diphthong simplification) ones that apply on the dictates of particular prosodic domain attainment. Thus, this paper argues that the syntactic structure influences these phonological rules, but indirectly through the prosodic structure (Inkelas 1989). Finally, the paper claims that with the prosodic domains occurrences are better defined and accounted for

Optimizing structure: The case of the ‘CrV’ syllable of Akan

This paper sets out to look into the ‘CCV’ syllable structure of Akan, specifically ‘CrV’, as to whether or not the seeming consonant cluster is phonological in the language. Following Dolphyne (1988), we attempt to discuss the issue with the claim that the ‘CrV’ structure of Akan is only a phonetic/surface realization through economy of expression (e.g. Bresnan 2001) motivation. In terms of Optimality Theoretic analysis (e.g. Prince and Smolensky 1993), an output-based approach to grammar, where the heart of the phonology consists of a hierarchy of ranked and violable universal constraints therefore, it is argued that where ‘CrV’ seems to have been realized, it is only so because of an application of an economy-motivated process of vowel elision that results in a syllable reduction and its subsequent fusion into a preceding one. The ensuing ‘CrV’ should thus be analyzed into ‘CV.CV’. Three factors; occurrence of /r/, attainment of vowel harmony and the specification of the feature high, are discussed as accounting for the realization of ‘CCV’. Keywords: Akan, economy (of speech), syllable structure, vowel harmony, vowel heigh