Explaining Radical Change in Ghanaian Health Care Policy

The existing literature about the causes of welfare state change, including health care reform, emphasizes stability, yet there is evidence of remarkable changes taking place in welfare systems in much of the developing world. This study analyzes health care reform in Ghana, a country which has experienced significant path-departing changes in just four decades (1957-2003). These changes – the establishment of a National Health Service system with deep (first-dollar) coverage, the introduction of a user-fee system, and the transition to a social health insurance scheme – have been pursued despite key countervailing factors, especially the high political costs associated with them. The study argues that to adequately account for these changes, the policy process should be given special consideration, particularly through the examination of how new policy proposals moved onto the agenda; how they were formulated, adopted, implemented and sustained; and how the reformers managed the entire reform process over time. Based on this analysis, I identified three main interconnected contextual and agential explanatory factors: (a) conjunctural factors, which created windows of opportunity for the changes to occur; (b) policy entrepreneurs, whose leadership, commitment and strategies helped in taking advantage of these opportunities to propel, sponsor, design, adopt, implement and sustain the policy changes; and (c) the concentrated institutional configuration of Ghana, which limited the number and scope of the veto points available to interest groups opposed to the proposed changes. While these three factors contributed to why and how the changes occurred, I identified policy entrepreneurs’ commitment, leadership and strategies, including the feedback effects of those strategies, as the most crucial factors. The study contributes to existing health policy literature by showing how perspectives such as the window of opportunity thesis, the dynamic political process model, the historical institutionalist approach to radical policy change and, finally, the ideational scholarship on framing processes can be combined to enrich our understanding of radical policy change. The study also introduces additional mechanisms of policy change that involve the use of repressive strategies before suggesting some modifications to a number of widely-shared assumptions within the welfare state literature focusing on path dependency, globalization, partisan ideology and vested interests

Influencing Factors Bedeviling the Study of Science among Ghanaian Students in Senior High Schools

The study unveils factors affecting the teaching and learning of science among secondary schools in Ghana. However, from open and available literature, it can be established that eleven (11) influencing factors impedes the conduct and development of science as a subject. The study aims to bring to light the factors affecting the Study of Science among Ghanaian Students in Senior High Schools. The results found that inadequate and lack of skilled science teachers, mode of delivery of science, Lack of Resources, changing of policies affect the teaching and learning of science. The study however posit various innovative measures and methodologies that policy makers can adopt towards improving the teaching of science as an academic discipline in the country. Keywords: Science, Education, Ghana, Senior High Schools DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-9-28 Publication date:March 31st 202

The Roots of Indiscipline in Contemporary Ghanaian Society – A Sociological Perspective

The spate of indiscipline in contemporary Ghanaian society is quite alarming and this certainly is a source of concern for many law abiding Ghanaians. As a social problem, indiscipline manifests itself in several forms and represents all that is a violation of healthy and decent existence in society. The manifestation of indiscipline in the Ghanaian society has been the outcome of external and internal factors. The former has to do with the nature of external interventions, influences and the international economic order and the latter problems of mismanagement as a result of failed political leadership, characterized by greed and ignorance. Keywords: Society, Orderliness, Major Institutions, Structural Contradictions and Indiscipline. Journal of Science and Technology Vol. 28 (2) 2008: pp. 117-12

Drug-drug interactions: A machine learning approach

Automatic detection of drug-drug interaction (DDI) is a difficult problem in pharmaco-surveillance. Recent practice for in vitro and in vivo pharmacokinetic drug-drug interaction studies have been based on carefully selected drug characteristics such as their pharmacological effects, and on drug-target networks, in order to identify and comprehend anomalies in a drug\u27s biochemical function upon co-administration.;In this work, we present a novel DDI prediction framework that combines several drug-attribute similarity measures to construct a feature space from which we train three machine learning algorithms: Support Vector Machine (SVM), J48 Decision Tree and K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) using a partially supervised classification algorithm called Positive Unlabeled Learning (PU-Learning) tailored specifically to suit our framework.;In summary, we extracted 1,300 U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved pharmaceutical drugs and paired them to create 1,688,700 feature vectors. Out of 397 drug-pairs known to interact prior to our experiments, our system was able to correctly identify 80% of them and from the remaining 1,688,303 pairs for which no interaction had been determined, we were able to predict 181 potential DDIs with confidence levels greater than 97%. The latter is a set of DDIs unrecognized by our source of ground truth at the time of study.;Evaluation of the effectiveness of our system involved querying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration\u27s Adverse Effect Reporting System (AERS) database for cases involving drug-pairs used in this study. The results returned from the query listed incidents reported for a number of patients, some of whom had experienced severe adverse reactions leading to outcomes such as prolonged hospitalization, diminished medicinal effect of one or more drugs, and in some cases, death

Microbiological, physical and chemical studies on fresh red meats packaged under different modified gas atmospheres

The effects of various modified gas atmospheres on the microbiological, physical and chemical characteristics of fresh red meats (pork chops, beef steak and ground beef) were studied. Fresh pork chops were packaged in air, vacuum or eleven modified gas atmospheres containing carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations from 0% to 40%. Increasing the initial CO[subscript]2 concentration delayed growth of aerobic psychrotrophic and mesophilic bacteria, and Enterobacteriaceae, but slightly enhanced that of lactic acid bacteria. Increasing the initial O[subscript]2 concentration reduced growth of facultative anaerobic and anaerobic bacteria and enhanced growth of Brochotrix thermosphacta. In general, carbon dioxide had more influence on the microbiological storage life of the chops than oxygen. Increasing the CO[subscript]2 concentration also reduced the redness of the chops, increased purge losses and promoted lipid oxidation, but retarded the formation of volatile basic nitrogen. Increasing the O[subscript]2 concentration also increased lipid oxidation. Modified gas atmospheres with 20% CO[subscript]2 or more were superior to air for extending the microbiological storage life of fresh pork chops. Gas mixtures containing 40% CO[subscript]2 with or without O[subscript]2 had better performance than vacuum in delaying growth of psychrotrophic and mesophilic bacteria and Enterobacteriaceae during 21 days of storage. Vacuum was more effective in reducing lipid oxidation than modified atmospheres, but the latter greatly reduced purge losses;Listeria monocytogenes and Yersinia enterocolitica grew on inoculated pork chops stored in atmospheres consisting of three gas mixtures, vacuum and air. Doubling the CO[subscript]2 concentration reduced the growth rate of L. monocytogenes and increased that of Y. enterocolitica, but not significantly. Increasing the O[subscript]2 concentration reduced the growth rates of L. monocytogenes and Y. enterocolitica. Vacuum packaging was more effective than gas mixtures in slowing down the growth of L. monocytogenes or Y. enterocolitica;Fresh meat were treated with a mixture of color maintenance substances, packaged in a 50%CO[subscript]2/15%O[subscript]2/35%N[subscript]2 gas mixture, and stored at 2°C under conditions simulating wholesale distribution, followed by retail display at 2°C. The chemical treatment in combination with modified atmosphere storage did not select for the growth of naturally occurring pathogenic microorganisms. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.

Silencing Seed Dormancy Genes to Mitigate Risk of Transgene Flow to Weedy Rice

The flow of fitness-enhancing transgenes from genetically modified crops into wild/weed relatives may cause serious ecological and economic consequences. Seed dormancy (SD) is a key adaptive trait that distributes germination over time, resulting in weed persistence in agroecosystems. Thus, silencing major genes controlling SD would reduce the adaptive fitness of weeds. SD-enhancing genes cloned from weedy rice include SD7-1, SD7-2, SD12a, SD12b, and SD12c. The goal of this study was to develop a transgenic mitigation (TM) strategy using SD gene-silencing structures as mitigating factors to reduce the risk of transgene flow to wild/weed populations. TM vector constructs consisted of the Bar herbicide resistance (HR) transgene linked to either an RNA interference (RNAi) or CRISPR/Cas9 SD gene-silencing cassettes. In the RNAimediated TM strategy, a two-locus and a three-locus TM constructs were designed to target two or three SD genes in weedy rice, respectively. Hemizygous T0 plants were crossed with the weedy rice line Ludao to generate HR and herbicide susceptible (HS; without TM construct) genotypes for fitness evaluations under greenhouse and field conditions. The two-locus TM construct significantly reduced (p \u3c 0.0001) the degree of dormancy among HR genotypes when compared to the HS genotypes. However, the three-locus TM construct could not reduce the degree of dormancy in HR genotypes when evaluated under greenhouse and field conditions. To maximize silencing efficiency, a CRISPR/Cas9-based TM construct was designed to knockout six SD genes in weedy rice simultaneously. Of the mutations identified in the T0 plants, 62% were deletions, 33% insertions and 5% substitutions, and were classified into homozygous, heterozygous and biallelic types. The Cas9-induced mutations were found to be heritable when a biallelic T0 plant was crossed with the weedy rice line SS18-2 to generate F1 hybrid plants, but no new mutations were observed in the SS18-2 allele for three of the six targeted genes. The results obtained in this study proved that a TM strategy based on SD gene-silencing mitigating factors is feasible. However, the tandemly linked mitigating factors need to be modified to enhance their silencing efficiency -- a CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive approach was thus proposed

3D Processing, Imaging and Interpretation of Dense Sub Bottom Profile Data Acquired in Avaldsnes and Hafrsfjord

This thesis addresses the challenges associated with conducting archaeological seismic surveys in shallow water and nearshore environments, focusing on the effects of dynamic elements such as wind, tide, and waves. These environments are known to contain a wealth of submerged archaeological remains, yet they are often overlooked due to the difficulties posed by their dynamic nature. While seismic geophysical methods are the preferred approach for archaeological prospection and investigations, the presence of dynamic elements hinders the acquisition of data in a regular grid pattern. The methodology employed to tackle these challenges involves creating a 3D grid of various sizes, tidal correction, interpolation and migration of the seismic dataset using the 3D grid. The proposed methodology was tested in Avaldsnes and Hafrsfjord - historically significant areas in Norway known to have shipwrecks. These locations serve as ideal test sites for evaluating the effectiveness of the methodology in addressing the problems posed by dynamic elements in shallow water and nearshore environments. Three 3D grid sizes were tested – 0.1 by 0.1 m, 0.25 by 0.25 m and 0.5 by 0.5 m - and two interpolation methods – cubic and Shepard’s interpolation – were tested. Results showed 0.1 by 0.1 m 3D grid size interpolated with Shepard’s method and migrated after showed the best seismic image and detail making identifying the shipwreck straightforward. The overall conclusion is that a 3D grid with small sizes, preferably 0.25 by 0.25 m or less, interpolated with Shepard’s method show the best seismic image for interpretation eliminating most of the problems caused by dynamic elements

Analysis of Impact of Female Education and Labour Force Participation on Disparities in Under-Five Mortality Rate among Selected African Countries

The role of female education is crucial for the development of any country, especially for the third-world countries. The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of female education and female labour force participation disparities serving as key influential factors of under-five mortality among some selected developing countries in Africa. Annual panel data sets of the selected countries from the year 2000 to 2017 were used for the study. The panel random effect model was used to estimate the polled data for the selected countries. Moreover, the time series multiple regression analysis was used to estimate the predictors of the disparities of under-five mortalities in the individual countries.  The study also examined the major causes of the disparities in under-five mortality among the selected countries by emphasizing on female education as major predator of the disparities inter-alia some key control variables such as gross domestic product(GDP) per capita, educational expenditure, female labour force participation, and gross fixed capital. The paper concludes that female primary school enrolment and labour force participation are statistically significant and predominately strong predators of the disparities in the rate of under-five mortality among the selected countries.  The study further recommends that health policies to reduce child mortality should be designed inter-alia with educational policies since education makes an individual more conscious about their health. Keywords: Female education; Under-five mortality; Female labour force participation, Education expenditure, Economic growth, Panel analysis. DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/9-3-14 Publication date:March 31st 201