The computer revolution: its impact and application to national reconstruction

An inter-faculty lecture delivered at the University of Ghana on 21st May, 198

Sexual Misconduct Suspension: The Impact of Guilt in Members of The Church of Pentecost, Ghana

The research utilized 13 respondents to investigate the impact of guilt because of sexual misconduct suspension on the church member using The Church of Pentecost in Axim as a focus. The Church of Pentecost has the practice to discipline by suspending a member who commits sexual misconduct such as premarital sex or extramarital sex. In extra-marital relations, the misconduct is mostly detected when the other partner discovers extra-marital relationships and for that matter, a cheat by his or her partner and reports to the church leadership. Pre-marital sexual misconduct is recognized when a young lady is discovered pregnant without a husband, usually when the young man and young lady are going to marry and the lady is discovered pregnant before the marriage is officially contracted. The condition of the member suspended because of sexual misconduct was investigated. Subjective evidence were obtained by getting closer to interviewing the respondents who were members of The Church of Pentecost in Axim and have been suspended because of sexual misconduct. The hermeneutical phenomenological approach of qualitative study was adopted. Numerous studies conducted on sexual misconduct and church discipline found varying rates of prevalence in the church. The Church of Pentecost in Axim has a 4% prevalence rate of suspension because of sexual misconduct. The most salient characteristic experienced after suspension for sexual misconduct is, in fact, guilt. The scripture also provides hermeneutic support for this conclusion. At the same time, research on guilt in suspended church members is limited. The study revealed that sexual misconduct suspension is a disciplinary action employed by the church to curb sexual sin. The findings will contribute to the church literature on the impact of guilt on the suspended church member and appropriate pastoral care recommendations

The Blind Ophthalmologist: A Theological Study of Revelation 3:14-22

The only church Jesus does not commend among the seven churches of Asia is the Church of Laodicea. This is as strange as it calls for a critical look at the problem of the church. As an expansion of the existing studies on the text to Laodicea, this theological study investigates the content of the letter to the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3:14-22 to identify the church’s core problem and the central message it carries. The study examines the theological understanding of the key imagery Jesus employs to describe Laodicea’s church. The main argument is that the major problem of the church is the lack of perception, and the focus of the message lies in the caution that being spiritually indifferent is perilous, but even worse is the peril that lies in being oblivious to one's spiritual state due to a shift of focus from Jesus

Feok Festival Costumes: Evolution & Socio-Cultural Importance

The Feok festival is an important festival celebrated annually by the people of Sandema and its environs, to commemorate the victory of the indigenes over slave raiders led by ‘Babatu’ in the 18th century, and to celebrate good harvest. The historical evolution and cultural importance of the Feok festival costume was studied using descriptive survey. Purposive sampling technique was used to recruit respondents for data extraction. The final sample size for the study was 70. Data was collected using questionnaires and interview guides. The final data was coded and inputted into SPSS version 16.0. The SPSS ran the analysis and the results were presented using descriptive statistics. The study found that the Feok costumes were originated by warriors, traditional leaders and ancestors who fought and defeated Babatu, as revealed by respondents during the study. The survey further shows that the costumes, which are now annually used in the celebration of the popular feok festival by the people of Sandema, were specially designed to protect the warriors from weapons of war. The research equally established some degree of economic spin-off through the sale of tourist-targeted costumes and hand woven fabrics. Some recommendations were also detailed towards the preservation and sustenance of this important cultural art form

Al-Robotics team: A cooperative multi-unmanned aerial vehicle approach for the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotic Challenge

The Al-Robotics team was selected as one of the 25 finalist teams out of 143 applications received to participate in the first edition of the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotic Challenge (MBZIRC), held in 2017. In particular, one of the competition Challenges offered us the opportunity to develop a cooperative approach with multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) searching, picking up, and dropping static and moving objects. This paper presents the approach that our team Al-Robotics followed to address that Challenge 3 of the MBZIRC. First, we overview the overall architecture of the system, with the different modules involved. Second, we describe the procedure that we followed to design the aerial platforms, as well as all their onboard components. Then, we explain the techniques that we used to develop the software functionalities of the system. Finally, we discuss our experimental results and the lessons that we learned before and during the competition. The cooperative approach was validated with fully autonomous missions in experiments previous to the actual competition. We also analyze the results that we obtained during the competition trials.Unión Europea H2020 73166

Effects of seismic lines on peatland carbon cycling in boreal Alberta, Canada

Peatlands serve as long-term carbon (C) sinks as well as a significant source of methane (CH4) to the atmosphere. Over 134,000 km2 of peatlands are in northern Alberta, a part of the boreal region of Canada where extensive industrial exploration and extraction activities are ongoing to access vast oil sands deposits. These anthropogenic disturbances, including a vast network of linear disturbances, such as seismic lines and roads, could impact long-term peatland C storage by altering ecohydrological conditions. Prior studies reported changes to hydrology, microclimatic conditions, and vegetation communities. Yet, the cumulative impact of these changes on peatland functions, that is, microbial functional activity, peat accumulation rates and carbon dioxide (CO2) and CH4 exchange is not very well understood. Due to rising concerns related to climate change and the need to develop nature-based climate interventions, peatland management should be of utmost importance to Canada, which is home to the largest global peatland C stock. We therefore measured in-situ and in-vitro soil respiration, net primary production (NPP) and litter decomposition, and CH4 emissions on eight seismic lines across one fen and two bog peatland sites affected by seismic exploration in northern Alberta and compared the results to adjacent natural areas. Soil respiration was slightly lower on seismic lines than from natural peatlands, likely due to minimal contributions of tree root respiration on the lines. Ground layer NPP was higher on the lines, but this did not offset the loss of overstory NPP. The litter decomposition rate was similar on and off the seismic line, but a shift in plant community composition towards species with more easily decomposable litter, particularly at the fen site, resulted in greater loss of litter overall. The potential peat accumulation rate, calculated as the difference between NPP and litter loss to decomposition over two years, was therefore lower on the seismic lines. This implies that recovery of an overstory in these wooded peatlands is necessary to achieve pre-disturbance C accumulation rates. Methane emissions were significantly higher on the seismic lines, increasing 176% (fens) and 261–308% (bogs) compared to the adjacent natural peatland. Higher CH4 emissions on the seismic lines were associated with warmer, wetter conditions and, at the fen site, higher sedge cover. Results from this study provide important baseline information about C cycling in peatlands affected by seismic line disturbance. Our findings contribute to accurate greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting for anthropogenic disturbances in boreal peatlands and can be used to assess the potential benefits, from a C storage perspective, of restoration efforts aimed at returning forest cover

Assessment of the impact of awareness programs on the transmission dynamics of COVID-19

COVID-19, since its discovery in 2019, has posed a major health problem in the world. It is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and transmitted via infected respiratory droplets and contaminated surfaces. There is an urgent need to understand the transmission characteristics of the virus in response to social interventions. This is important to evaluate the overall impact of such programs in the management of the disease. We seek to develop a mathematical model that characterizes the transmission dynamics of COVID-19. The model analyzes the impact of preventive practices on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by incorporating human behavior in modeling disease prevalence depending on contact rates for direct and indirect transmissions and infectious host shedding. The model is also applied to reported data from Wuhan and the state of Tennessee. Our results imply that applying strategically created awareness programs to a geological setting can eradicate COVID-19

Length-Weight Relationships and Food Preference of Two Coastal Marine Fishes, Galeoides decadactylus (Polynemidae) and Sphyraena sphyraena (Sphyraenidae) off Cape Coast, Ghana

The food and feeding habits of most commercially important marine fish species in Ghana had not been studied. The aim of the paper was to study the diet spectrum of two coastal fishes of Ghana; Galeoides decadactylus (Polynemidae) Bloch, 1795 and Sphyraena sphyraena (Sphyraenidae) Linnaeus, 1758, both of tropical fish species. Fish samples were obtained in 2011 from sandy beaches near Cape Coast township in the Central Region of Ghana, noted for beach seining. Length-weight measurements were taken from well-preserved fish specimens from which stomachs were extracted for the analysis of the food contents, using frequency of occurrence, numerical and gravimetric methods, as well as index of relative importance. The length-frequency analysis showed a size distribution with a modal size of 11.0–13.9 cm for both species. The length-weight relationships for both fish species showed strong correlation between the weight and length with correlation coefficient (r2) and exponent b for Galeoides decadactylus as 0.9869 and 2.9893, and that for Sphyraena sphyraena as 0.9861 and 2.9094, respectively. Juvenile shrimp and fish fry formed the bulk of the food items in the stomachs of the two fish species. Juvenile shrimps occurred in 77.18% of the stomachs observed for G. decadactylus and accounted for 80.20% of the total number of the food items whilst comprising 63.14% of the weight of food consumed. That of S. sphyraena was, respectively, 66.7% by frequency, 87.0% by numbers and 96.3% by weight. Juvenile shrimp had the highest IRI in the diet of G. decadactylus whereas in S. sphyraena fish fry recorded the highest IRI. Literature evidence showed that the diet spectrum and aspects of growth of the two fish species reported elsewhere in the tropics were comparable to that off the coast of Cape Coast despite the differences in geographical location. The findings in this study will contribute to the knowledge gap on the diet of most commercially important fish species in Ghanaian waters

Ionic Interactions at the Crude Oil–Brine–Rock Interfaces Using Different Surface Complexation Models and DLVO Theory: Application to Carbonate Wettability

The impact of ionic association with the carbonate surface and its influence toward carbonate wettability remains unclear and is an important topic of interest in the current literature. In this work, a triple layer model (TLM) approach was used to capture the electrokinetic interactions at both calcite–brine and oil–brine interfaces. The developed TLM was assembled against measured ζ-potential values from the literature, successfully capturing the trends and closely matching the ζ-potential magnitudes. The developed TLM was compared to a diffused layer model (DLM) presented in previous works, with the DLM showing a better match to the ζ-potential values for seawater brine solutions. The ζ-potential values predicted from both surface complexation models (SCMs) were used to calculate the total interaction energy (or potential) based on the Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey, and Overbeek (DLVO) theory. It was observed that low Mg2+ and high SO42– concentrations in modified composition brine (MCB) made the calcite–brine interface more negative. However, at the oil–brine interface, low Mg2+ made the oil–brine interface more negative but high SO42– concentrations slightly shifted the oil–brine ζ-potential toward negative. At the crude oil–brine–rock (COBR) interfaces, low Mg2+ and high SO42– concentrations in the MCB were observed to generate a greater repulsive interaction energy, which could trigger carbonate wettability alteration toward water wetness. The absolute sum of the ζ-potential at both interfaces was observed to be correlated to the total interaction potential at a 0.25 nm separating distance. Thus, an increase in the absolute sum of the ζ-potentials would generate a greater repulsive interaction potential and trigger wettability alteration. Therefore, these SCMs can be applied to design modified composition brine capable of triggering a repulsive interaction energy to alter carbonate wettability toward water wetness