Some Factors in the Establishment of Autocracy in Ghana

In October, 1961, the Ghanaian legislature enacted two laws which received considerable attention from the world press. One made illegal any statement which could be taken as criticism of the President. This was to apply even in the legislature, so that it would be extremely difficult for any anti-Nkrumah forces there to operate effectively. The other law empowered the President to appoint special courts to deal with crimes against the state. This might not have been especially noteworthy except that they were clearly set up so that they could easily be used to bring about the execution of persons who had done nothing more than express opposition to the President in some ordinarily legal manner. The law gave the President the right to appoint personally and without restriction the judges who would try any specific case of subversive activities; there would be no jury or appeal, and only a majority of two out of three opinions would be necessary for conviction. If one of the three judges dissented, his opinion would not become public. Penalties would range to death. That a single dictator would decree such powers for himself is not difficult to understand, but why a legislature would extend them to anyone, retaining no means for controlling their use, is. It implied either that the legislators who voted with the majority had some evidence that such extraordinary powers were necessary in the interests of the state or their constituents, that the constituents themselves demanded it, that their behavior was irrational in some way, or that the Chief Executive held some power over them which forced them in effect to enact the legislation. Or the explanation could have been a combination of these

Oracle Applications in the Food and Drink Industries

This paper reviews supply chain operations in the Food and Drink industries and the benefits of implementing integrated solutions to improve efficiencies and drive down costs. It examines the case study of cider-maker H.P.Bulmer, where Oracle Manufacturing and Oracle Financials modules are now being implemented, alongside a number of bespoke Oracle applications

A review of the Costa Rican myxomycetes (Amebozoa)

There has not been a comprehensive review of the taxonomic composition of the assemblage of myxomycetes known from Costa Rica since 1975. As a result of a series of studies carried out in the country during the last decade, considerable additional data now exist, and the review presented herein provides an update on this group of organisms. Collecting carried out in Costa Rica since 1975, a review of the published literature, and an examination of herbarium specimens were used to generate an annotated list consisting of a total of 208 species in 36 different genera. This includes 62 species not previously reported from Costa Rica. The relative abundance of the different orders follows the expected distribution for the Neotropics, with the order Physarales being the most abundant. Interestingly, the data also show that the distribution of species is highly heterogenous. This result suggests that most myxomycetes in Costa Rica are highly specialized for certain microhabitats defined by macro- and microenvironmental factors.Desde 1975 no se ha llevado a cabo una revisión exhaustiva de la composición taxonómica de los mixomicetes de Costa Rica. Como resultado de una serie de proyectos de investigación que se han desarrollado durante la última década, nueva información se encuentra disponible y es por ello que la presente revisión se considera como una actualización sobre este grupo de organismos para este país. El material recolectado desde 1975, una profunda revisión bibliográfica y el examen de especímenes de herbario fueron usados para generar una lista de 208 especies pertenecientes a 36 géneros diferentes. Esta lista incluye 62 especies no comunicadas anteriormente para Costa Rica. La abundancia relativa de los diferentes órdenes concuerda con la distribución esperada para el Neotrópico, siendo el orden Physarales el más abundante. De forma interesante, los datos también muestran que la distribución de las especies es altamente heterogénea. Este resultado sugiere que la mayoría de los mixomicetes en Costa Rica están altamente especializados alrededor de microhabitats definidos por factores macro y microambientales.Ministerio del Ambiente y Energía/[]/MINAE/Costa RicaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Docencia::Ciencias Básicas::Facultad de Ciencias::Escuela de Biologí

Phase Transition Strength through Densities of General Distributions of Zeroes

A recently developed technique for the determination of the density of partition function zeroes using data coming from finite-size systems is extended to deal with cases where the zeroes are not restricted to a curve in the complex plane and/or come in degenerate sets. The efficacy of the approach is demonstrated by application to a number of models for which these features are manifest and the zeroes are readily calculable.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figure

Hill of Banchory Geothermal Energy Project Feasibility Study Report

This feasibility study explored the potential for a deep geothermal heat project at Hill of Banchory, Aberdeenshire. The geology of the Hill of Fare, to the north of Banchory, gives cause to believe it has good geothermal potential, while the Hill of Banchory heat network, situated on the northern side of the town, offers a ready-made heat customer. The partners in the consortium consisted of academics and developers with relevant expertise in deep geothermal energy, heat networks, and financial analysis, together with representatives of local Government. They conducted geological fieldwork around the Hill of Fare, engaged with local residents to establish their attitudes to geothermal energy, and built business models to predict the conditions under which the heat network at Hill of Banchory would be commercial if it utilised heat from the proposed geothermal well. They also estimated the potential carbon emission reductions that could be achieved by using deep geothermal energy, both at Hill of Banchory and more widely

O(a)O(a) Improvement of Nucleon Matrix Elements

We report on preliminary results of a high statistics quenched lattice QCD calculation of nucleon matrix elements within the Symanzik improvement programme. Using the recently determined renormalisation constants from the Alpha Collaboration we present a fully non-pertubative calculation of the forward nucleon axial matrix element with $O(a)$ lattice artifacts completely removed. Runs are made at $\beta=6.0$ and $\beta=6.2$, in an attempt to check scaling and $O(a^2)$ effects. We shall also briefly describe results for $$, the matrix element of a higher derivative operator.Comment: 3 pages, Latex, 4 figures, epsf.sty and espcrc2.sty needed, Talk given at LATTICE97. Figure 4 correcte

Correlations between the mechanical loss and atomic structure of amorphous TiO2-doped Ta2O5 coatings

<p>Highly reflective dielectric mirror coatings are critical components in a range of precision optics applications including frequency combs, optical atomic clocks, precision interferometry and ring laser gyroscopes. A key limitation to the performance in these applications is thermal noise, arising from the mechanical loss of the coatings. The origins of the mechanical loss from these coatings is not well understood.</p> <p>Recent work suggests that the mechanical loss of amorphous Ta2O5 coatings can drop by as much as 40% when it is doped with TiO2. We use a combination of electron diffraction data and atomic modelling using molecular dynamics to probe the atomic structure of these coatings, and examine the correlations between changes in the atomic structure and changes in the mechanical loss of these coatings. Our results show the first correlation between changes in the mechanical loss and experimentally measured changes in the atomic structure resulting from variations in the level of TiO2 doping in TiO2-doped Ta2O5 coatings, in that increased homogeneity at the nearest-neighbour level appears to correlate with reduced mechanical loss. It is demonstrated that subtle but measurable changes in the nearest-neighbour homogeneity in an amorphous material can correlate with significant changes in macroscopic properties.</p&gt

Erosion of rocky shore platforms by block detachment from layered stratigraphy

The majority of shore platforms form in rocks that are characterised by layered stratigraphy and pervasive jointing. Plucking of weathered, joint and bed bounded blocks is an important erosion process that existing models of platform development do not represent. Globally, measuring platform erosion rates have focused on microscale (< 1 mm) surface lowering rather than mesoscale (0.1‐1 m) block detachment, yet the latter appears to dominate the morphological development of discontinuity rich platforms. Given the sporadic nature of block detachment on platforms, observations of erosion from storm event to multi‐decadal timescales (and beyond) are required to quantify shore platform erosion rates. To this end, we collected aerial photography using an unmanned aerial vehicle to produce structure‐from‐motion‐derived digital elevation models and orthophotos. These were combined with historical aerial photographs to characterise and quantify the erosion of two actively eroding stratigraphic layers on a shore platform in Glamorgan, south Wales, UK, over 78‐years. We find that volumetric erosion rates vary over two orders of magnitude (0.1‐10 m3 yr‐1) and do not scale with the length of the record. Average rates over the full 78‐year record are 2‐5 m3 yr‐1. These rates are equivalent to 1.2‐5.3 mm yr‐1 surface lowering rates, an order of magnitude faster than previously published, both at our site and around the world in similar rock types. We show that meso‐scale platform erosion via block detachment processes is a dominant erosion process on shore platforms across seasonal to multi‐decadal timescales that have been hitherto under‐investigated

Environmental enteric dysfunction and the fecal microbiota in malawian children

Environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) is often measured with a dual sugar absorption test and implicated as a causative factor in childhood stunting. Disturbances in the gut microbiota are hypothesized to be a mechanism by which EED is exacerbated, although this supposition lacks support. We performed 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing of fecal samples from 81 rural Malawian children with varying degrees of EED to determine which bacterial taxa were associated with EED. At the phyla level, Proteobacteria abundance is reduced with severe EED. Among bacterial genera, Megasphaera, Mitsuokella, and Sutterella were higher in EED and Succinivibrio, Klebsiella, and Clostridium_XI were lower in EED. Bacterial diversity did not vary with the extent of EED. Though EED is a condition that is typically believed to affect the proximal small bowel, and our focus was on stool, our data do suggest that there are intraluminal microbial differences that reflect, or plausibly lead to, EED