‘Should I Ignore the Promotion System and Stay or I Should Quit’: An Examination of the Experiences of Teachers with the Promotion Process in the Ghana Education Service

Promotion is a key determinant of employee advancement on the organizational ladder. However, in the Ghana Education Service, there are several reports of irregularities in the process which make the promotion less of a merit-based mechanism. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine teachers’ perception of fairness in the promotion process and how that affects their willingness to stay in the Service and teach effectively. Using a descriptive survey involving both close-ended and open-ended questions, the opinions and experiences of 342 randomly sampled teachers in the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality were examined using correlations and binary logistic regressions as well as thematic analysis. The results show that fairness in the promotion process was a significant contributor to teacher retention and effective teaching. However, the process is tainted with favoritism and partiality. Governments should, therefore, not be interested in incentivization only as a retention strategy but also come out with strategies aimed at ensuring transparency in the promotion process to make it a performance-based mechanism that sieves and preserves best talents.

quanteda: An R package for the quantitative analysis of textual data

quanteda is an R package providing a comprehensive workflow and toolkit for natural language processing tasks such as corpus management, tokenization, analysis, and visualization. It has extensive functions for applying dictionary analysis, exploring texts using keywords-in-context, computing document and feature similarities, and discovering multi-word expressions through collocation scoring. Based entirely on sparse operations,it provides highly efficient methods for compiling document-feature matrices and for manipulating these or using them in further quantitative analysis. Using C++ and multi-threading extensively, quanteda is also considerably faster and more efficient than other R and Python packages in processing large textual data. The package is designed for R users needing to apply natural language processing to texts,from documents to final analysis. Its capabilities match or exceed those provided in many end-user software applications, many of which are expensive and not open source. The package is therefore of great benefit to researchers, students, and other analysts with fewer financial resources. While using quanteda requires R programming knowledge, its API is designed to enable powerful, efficient analysis with a minimum of steps. By emphasizing consistent design, furthermore, quanteda lowers the barriers to learning and using NLP and quantitative text analysis even for proficient R programmers

Drying Temperature Effect on Kernel Damage and Viability of Maize Dried in a Solar Biomass Hybrid Dryer

Though several maize varieties have been developed and introduced over the years in Ghana, farmers still face challenges of access to quality seed maize. Among the major constraint is lack of proper drying systems to guarantee quality of seed produced. As in most parts of Africa, drying of maize in the open, on bare ground along shoulders of roads is still a common practice in Ghana. In this study, a 5-tonne capacity hybrid solar biomass dryer was developed for drying maize for seed and food/feed in Ghana. Effect of air temperature in the dryer on the physiological quality and germination of maize kernels was investigated. Maize grains were dried in the open sun simulating farmers practice and using the dryer at 4 varying levels (L1, L2, L3 and L4) with corresponding heights (0.6 m, 1.2 m, 1.8 m and 2.4 m, respectively) from the ground. Harvested maize at 22.8% moisture content was dried at the varying levels until reaching the final desired moisture content of 12.8% ± 0.2% (wb). Results showed that, air temperatures in the dryer increased in accordance with height with lowest mean temperature of 44.4°C ± 4.6°C recorded at L1 and mean maximum of 52.8°C ± 5.4°C at L4. Drying temperatures recorded at L1 - L3 and ambient had no significant effect (p \u3c 0.05) on kernel damage and viability. Drying conditions at L1-L3 were considered optimum (\u3c50°C) for kernel drying compared to the topmost tray, L4. Kernel stress crack index (multiple and checked) was therefore reduced on average by 14% while kernel germination increased by 33%. This satisfies the dryer’s potential to be used for commercial drying of maize grains for seed production for smallholder farmers in Ghana

IFNAR1-Signalling Obstructs ICOS-mediated Humoral Immunity during Non-lethal Blood-Stage Plasmodium Infection

Funding: This work was funded by a Career Development Fellowship (1028634) and a project grant (GRNT1028641) awarded to AHa by the Australian National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC). IS was supported by The University of Queensland Centennial and IPRS Scholarships. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Variation in optineurin (OPTN) allele frequencies between and within populations

PURPOSE: To evaluate the extent to which mutations in the optineurin (OPTN) glaucoma gene play a role in glaucoma in different populations. METHODS: Case-controlled study of OPTN sequence variants in individuals with or without glaucoma in populations of different ancestral origins and evaluate previous OPTN reports. We analyzed 314 subjects with African, Asian, Caucasian and Hispanic ancestries included 229 cases of primary open-angle glaucoma, 51 cases of juvenile-onset open-angle glaucoma, 33 cases of normal tension glaucoma, and 371 controls. Polymerase chain reaction-amplified OPTN coding exons were resequenced and case frequencies were compared to frequencies in controls matched for ancestry. RESULTS: The E50K sequence variant was identified in one individual from Chile with normal tension glaucoma, and the 691_692insAG variant was found in one Ashkenazi Jewish individual from Russia. The R545Q variant was found in two Asian individuals with primary open-angle glaucoma; one of Filipino ancestry and one of Korean ancestry. In addition to presenting OPTN allele frequencies for Caucasian and Asian populations that have been the subject of previous reports, we also present information for populations of Hispanic and black African ancestries. CONCLUSIONS: Our study contributes additional evidence to support the previously reported association of the OPTN E50K mutation with glaucoma. After finding an additional 691_692insAG OPTN variant, we can still only conclude that this variant is rare. Combined analysis of our data with data from more than a dozen other studies indicates no association of R545Q with glaucoma in most populations. Those same studies disagree in their conclusions regarding the role of M98K in glaucoma. Our analysis of the combined data provides statistically significant evidence of association of M98K with normal tension glaucoma in Asian populations, but not in Caucasian populations; however, the validity of this conclusion is questionable because of large differences in allele frequencies between and within populations. It is currently not possible to tell how much of the underlying cause of the allele frequency difference is attributable to demographic, technical, or ascertainment differences among the studies

Therapeutic efficacy of dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine combination for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in Ghana

In 2020, Dihydroartemisinin-Piperaquine (DHAP) was adopted as a second-line antimalarial for treatment of uncomplicated malaria in Ghana following a review of the country’s antimalarial medicines policy. Available data obtained in 2007 had shown PCR-uncorrected therapeutic efficacy of 93.3% using a 28-day follow-up schedule. In 2020, the standard 42-day follow-up schedule for DHAP was used to estimate efficacy levels among febrile children aged 6 months to 9 years in three malaria sentinel sites representing the three main ecological zones of the country- savannah, forest, and coastal. PCR genotyping distinguished between recrudescence and re-infection using merozoite surface protein 2 (MSP2)-specific primers for FC27 and 3D7 strains. Per protocol analyses showed day 28 efficacy of 100% in all three sentinel sites with day 42 PCR-corrected efficacy ranging between 90.3% (95% CI: 80.1 – 96.4%) in the savannah zone and 100% in the forest and coastal zones, yielding a national average of 97.0% (95% CI: 93.4 – 98.8). No day 3 parasitemia was observed in all three sites. Prevalence of measured fever (axillary temperature ≥ 37.5°C) declined from 50.0 - 98.8% on day 0 to 7.1-11.5% on day 1 whilst parasitemia declined from 100% on day 0 to 1.2 - 2.3% on day 1. Mean haemoglobin levels on days 28 and 42 were significantly higher than pre-treatment levels in all three sites. We conclude that DHAP is highly efficacious in the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in Ghana. This data will serve as baseline for subsequent DHAP efficacy studies in the country