Remote sensing of energy and water fluxes over Volta Savannah catchments in West Africa

The deterioration of the West African savannah in the last three decades is believed to be closely linked with about 0.5 C rise in temperature leading to evaporation losses and declining levels of the Volta Lake in Ghana. Although hydrological models can be used to predict climate change impacts on the regional hydrology, spatially-observed ground data needed for this purpose are largely unavailable. This thesis seeks to address this problem by developing improved methods for estimating energy and water fluxes (e.g. latent heat [ET]) from remotely sensed data and to demonstrate how these may be used to parameterize hydrological models. The first part of the thesis examines the potential of the Penman-Monteith method to estimate local-scale ET using groundbased hydrometeorological observations, vegetation coefficients and environmental data. The model results were compared with pan observations, scintillometer (eddy correlation) measurements and the Thomthwaite empirical method. The Penman- Monteith model produced better evaporation estimates (~3.90 mm day(^-1) for the Tamale district) than its counterpart methods. The Thomthwaite, for example, overestimated predictions by 5.0-11.0 mm day(^-1). Up-scaling on a monthly time scale and parameterization of the Grindley soil moisture balance model with the Thomthwaite and Penman-Monteith data, however, produced similar estimates of actual evaporation and soil moisture, which correlated strongly (R(^2) = 0.95) with water balance estimates. To improve ET estimation at the regional-scale, the second part of the thesis develops spatial models through energy balance modelling and data up-scaling methods, driven by radiometric measurements from recent satellite sensors such as the Landsat ETM+, MODIS and ENVISAT-AATSR. The results were validated using estimates from the Penman-Monteith method, field observations, detailed satellite measurements and published data. It was realised that the MODIS sensor is a more useful source of energy and water balance parameters than AA TSR. For example, stronger correlations were found between MODIS estimates of ET and other energy balance variables such as NDVI, surface temperature and net radiation (R(^2) = 0.67-0.73) compared with AATSR estimates (R(^2) = 0.31-0.40). There was also a good spatial correlation between MODIS and Landsat ETM+ results (R(^2) = 0.71), but poor correlations were found between AATSR and Landsat data (R(^2) = 0.0-0.13), which may be explained by differences in instrument calibration. The results further showed that ET may be underestimated with deviations of ~2.0 mm day 1 when MODIS/AATSR measurements are validated against point observations because of spatial mismatch. The final part of the thesis demonstrates the application of the ET model for predicting runoff (Q) using a simplified version of the regional water balance equation. This is followed byanalysis of flow sensitivity to declining scenarios of biomass volume. The results showed the absence of Q for >90% of the study area during the dry season due largely to crude model approximation and lack of rainfall data, which makes model testing during the wet season important. Runoff prediction may be improved if spatial estimates of rainfall, ET and geographical data (e.g. land-use/cover maps, soil & geology maps and DEM) could be routinely derived from satellite imagery

Design of a unified data with business rules storage model for OLTP and OLAP systems

This paper reviews the literature concerning the practice of using Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) systems to recall information stored by Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) systems. Such a review provides a basis for discussion on the need for the information that are recalled through OLAP systems to maintain the contexts of transactions with the data captured by the respective OLTP system. The paper observes an industry trend involving the use of OLTP systems to process information into data, which are then stored in databases without the business rules that were used to process information and data stored in OLTP databases without associated business rules. This includes the necessitation of a practice, whereby, sets of business rules are used to extract, cleanse, transform and load data from disparate OLTP systems into OLAP databases to support the requirements for complex reporting and analytics. These sets of business rules are usually not the same as business rules used to capture data in particular OLTP systems. The paper argues that, differences between the business rules used to interpret these same data sets, risk gaps in semantics between information captured by OLTP systems and information recalled through OLAP systems. Literature concerning the modeling of business transaction information as facts with context as part of the modelling of information systems were reviewed to identify design trends that are contributing to the design quality of OLTP and OLAP systems. The paper then argues that; the quality of OLTP and OLAP systems design has a critical dependency on the capture of facts with associated context, encoding facts with contexts into data with business rules, storage and sourcing of data with business rules, decoding data with business rules into the facts with the context and recall of facts with associated contexts. The paper proposes UBIRQ, a design model to aid the co-design of data with business rules storage for OLTP and OLAP purposes. The proposed design model provides the opportunity for the implementation and use of multi-purpose databases, and business rules stores for OLTP and OLAP systems. Such implementations would enable the use of OLTP systems to record and store data with executions of business rules, which will allow for the use of OLTP and OLAP systems to query data with business rules used to capture the data. Thereby ensuring information recalled via OLAP systems preserves the contexts of transactions as per the data captured by the respective OLTP system

The design of a semantics-oriented organisational performance measurement system

Current methods and techniques used in designing organisational performance measurement systems do not consider the multiple aspects of business processes or the semantics of data generated during the lifecycle of a product. In this paper, we propose an organisational performance measurement systems design model that is based on the semantics of an organisation, business process and products lifecycle. Organisational performance measurement is examined from academic and practice disciplines. The multi-discipline approach is used as a research tool to explore the weaknesses of current models that are used to design organisational performance measurement systems. This helped in identifying the gaps in research and practice concerning the issues and challenges in designing information systems for measuring the performance of an organisation. The knowledge sources investigated include on-going and completed research project reports; scientific and management literature; and practitioners’ magazines

Effect of Some Commonly Used Herbicides on Soil Microbial Population

Herbicide application has become an integral part of vibrant agricultural productivity in the whole world since its benefit has been overwhelming over the years. However, its toxic impact on the non-target soil microorganisms which play roles in degrading organic matter, nitrogen and nutrient recycling and decomposition needs to be considered.  In the present study, the effect of four (4) most commonly used herbicides in Ghana; Atrazine, 2, 4-D amine, Glyphosate and Paraquat on soil microorganisms was assessed over a period of fifteen continuous days (exposure period). The herbicide treatments were the normal recommended field rate, (6.67 mg active ingredient per gram of soil for Atrazine, 6.17 mg for 2, 4-D amine, 5.56 mg for Glyphosate, and 2.46 mg for Paraquat), half and double of the recommended field rate. Bacterial and Fungal populations were then determined at a five-day interval up to the 15th day after treatment. The data gathered from bacterial enumeration was logarithmically transformed before graphs of mean bacterial were plotted against the exposure period for each selected herbicide. Bacterial population and percentage organic matter did not show any significant differences relative to the exposure period in this study (p < 0.05). However, the deleterious impact of the herbicides was seen as Paraquat treatment resulted in reduction in the bacterial population for five, ten and fifteen Days after treatment (DAT) in the treatment with half the recommended field rate. Glyphosate followed with 69.3%, 12.7%, and 18.0%; 2,4-D amine had 44.8%, 33.5%, and 21.6%; and lastly Atrazine had 41.8%, 44.5% and 13.6% bacterial population 5DAT, 10DAT and 15DAT respectively. The inhibition effect on the fungal population was very specific as some fungi (such as Aspergillus niger, Trichoderma viride, Collectotrichum gloeosporioides, Aspergillus flavus, Mucor, Penicillium, Curvularia lunata) which were present in the baseline determination (control) did not appear in the treatment. Percentage organic matter for the treatment did not vary much with the baseline determination (control) but the impact was observed in the various levels of treatments for all the herbicides. A similar study should be conducted on a normal field condition where herbicide treatments would be carried out on a normal field condition since most of the previous studies had the herbicide treatment carried out under laboratory condition. It will also be very appropriate if further research work is carried out to identify the specific components of these herbicides which favour the growth and development of certain beneficial microorganisms such as fungi and bacterial. Keywords: herbicides, microbial population, biomass, baseline, organic matter, treatments

The global imperialism project: lessons from television, movies and radio

Old and latest trends in discussions in the sphere of the role of mass communication in media and cultural imperialism have centred on cultural hegemony and cultural colonialism among other such lines of ideological debate. Some debates have also pointed to globalization as the only way to spread development across the world. Others see globalization as portending some dangers for the cultures of developing countries as they will end up being annihilated. Based on the premise that mass communication and mass media have led to cultural imperialism in the world, the essay uses the cases of music, television programming, television news and films to discuss how United States of America, especially, has dominated the cultures of other countries through the latter’s consumption of American cultural products. Pivoted on the cultural imperialism theoretical framework, the discussion moved a step further by looking at the concept of cultural/media imperialism as Americanization of both the media and the cultural landscapes of the world and no more a generalization of Western countries dominating the cultures of developing countries – this is because some of the Western countries themselves have become victims of this phenomenon of Americanization. It is now therefore the issue of Americanization of the cultures of the world.Keywords: hegemony, media, mass communication, imperialism, globalizatio

Educational Data Processing Centers; Determinants of Security Innovations at Higher Education Institutions

Higher education institutions are facing unprecedented security challenges due to the increasing recognition of the importance of integrating technology into the core business of teaching and learning. This study sought to investigate the determinants of security innovation for data processing centers of higher educational institutions. Studies related to security innovation of higher educational institutions are limited considering the vast amount of data processing centers deployed for academic operations. In all, 300 respondents were selected from higher education institutions to participate in a survey to test the proposed model by using multinomial logistic regression. The study found out that four predictor variables; relative advantage, complexity, board approval, and IT competencies were significant and hence the model was suitable for studying security innovation at the organizational level. Keywords: Security Innovation, Educational Data Processing Center, Information Security DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-7-02 Publication date:March 31st 202

The effect of community engagement on healthcare utilization and health insurance enrollment in Ghana:Results from a randomized experiment

Health insurance enrollment in many Sub-Saharan African countries is low, even with highly subsidized premiums and exemptions for vulnerable populations. One possible explanation is low service quality, which results in a low valuation of health insurance. Using a randomized control trial in 64 primary health care facilities in Ghana, this study assesses the impact of a community engagement intervention designed to improve the quality of healthcare and health insurance services on households living nearby the facilities. Although the intervention improved the medical-technical quality of health services, our results show that households' subjective perceptions of the quality of healthcare and insurance services did not increase. Nevertheless, the likelihood of illness and concomitant healthcare utilization reduced, and especially households who were not insured at baseline were more likely to enroll in health insurance. The results show that solely increasing the technical quality of care is not sufficient to increase households' subjective assessments of healthcare quality. Still, improving technical quality can directly contribute to health outcomes and further increase health insurance coverage, especially among the previously uninsured

Comparison of Perceived and Technical Healthcare Quality in Primary Health Facilities:Implications for a Sustainable National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana

BackgroundQuality care in health facilities is critical for a sustainable health insurance system because of its influence on clients’ decisions to participate in health insurance and utilize health services. Exploration of the different dimensions of healthcare quality and their associations will help determine more effective quality improvement interventions and health insurance sustainability strategies, especially in resource constrained countries in Africa where universal access to good quality care remains a challenge.PurposeTo examine the differences in perceptions of clients and health staff on quality healthcare and determine if these perceptions are associated with technical quality proxies in health facilities. Implications of the findings for a sustainable National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in Ghana are also discussed.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study in two southern regions in Ghana involving 64 primary health facilities: 1,903 households and 324 health staff. Data collection lasted from March to June, 2012. A Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test was performed to determine differences in client and health staff perceptions of quality healthcare. Spearman’s rank correlation test was used to ascertain associations between perceived and technical quality care proxies in health facilities, and ordered logistic regression employed to predict the determinants of client and staff-perceived quality healthcare.ResultsNegative association was found between technical quality and client-perceived quality care (coef. = -0.0991, p<0.0001). Significant staff-client perception differences were found in all healthcare quality proxies, suggesting some level of unbalanced commitment to quality improvement and potential information asymmetry between clients and service providers. Overall, the findings suggest that increased efforts towards technical quality care alone will not necessarily translate into better client-perceived quality care and willingness to utilize health services in NHIS-accredited health facilities.ConclusionThere is the need to intensify client education and balanced commitment to technical and perceived quality improvement efforts. This will help enhance client confidence in Ghana’s healthcare system, stimulate active participation in the national health insurance, increase healthcare utilization and ultimately improve public health outcomes

A cross-sectional study on the nutritional status, dietary diversity, and small fish consumption patterns in coastal fishing communities of Ghana

Fish is readily available to fishing communities. Given the high nutritional value of fish, these communities are expected to have better nutritional status, compared to non-fishing communities. However, this assumption is not well studied across coastal fishing communities in Ghana. Hence, this cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the nutritional status, dietary patterns, and fish consumption of children living in coastal fishing communities in Ghana. Nutritional status of 384 randomly selected children was assessed using the mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) measurement. MUAC less than 12.5 cm was used as the cutoff to identify malnourished children. Food and fish consumption patterns were assessed using an adopted and pretested food frequency questionnaire. The findings showed a prevalence of 0.5% wasting among surveyed children. The mean dietary diversity score (DDS) of the study participants was 4.3 ± 1.2. The mean DDS of the children of fisher mothers was less than that of the children of the female caregivers who are involved in other occupations. However, no significant difference was observed in the DDS across the coastal regions. Seventy eight percent of the children who participated in the study consumed an adequately diversified diet, and more than 40 different small fish species were consumed across the four coastal regions. The average median weekly fish intake among the children in the study sample was 213 (64–468) g. Considering that one-third of the employed respondents were fisherfolk, coupled with the availability of a great diversity of small fish in the communities, the findings of our study suggest that there is great potential to incorporate small fish into strategic interventions aimed at improving nutrition, food security, and achieving economic sustainability in these communities.publishedVersio

Prevalence and Associated Risk Factors of Symptomatic Dry Eye in Ghana: A cross-sectional population-based study

Purpose This study sought to estimate the prevalence and associated risk factors of symptomatic dry eye in the general non-clinical Ghanaian population. Methods This was a cross-sectional population-based study conducted from November 2019 to February 2020. A stratified, multistage, random sampling technique was used to select participants aged 18 years and above from the capital cities of eight administrative regions in Ghana. Symptomatic dry eye was assessed using the Ocular Surface Disease Index questionnaire (OSDI). A study specific structured questionnaire was administered to collect information on participants’ demographics and self-reported risk factors of dry eye disease such as smoking, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, ocular allergies, pregnancy, contact lens wear, use of topical glaucoma medication and multivitamin supplement. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to explore associations between symptomatic dry eye and participant characteristics. A p-value of 0.05 was considered statistically significant