College of Basic and Applied Sciences
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Item The Ghana Energy Sector: Current Challenges and Opportunities and Job Prospects.(University of Ghana, 2020-03-17) Essandoh-Yeddu, J.The development of a country is to a large extent dependent on the optimal development and utilization of its energy resources and the provision of energy services in a reliable, cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner. Recognizing the importance of energy to national development, Past and present governments have been struggling with establishing the most optimal administrative infrastructure both soft and hard to execute and implement policies to achieve such an energy vision. The Energy Sector since its formal establishment has come up with a number of policies to promote the sector as well as addressing the challenges. These include the Power Sector Reform in the 1990s to help attract private investment into the power subsector value chain; the 2001 Energy Policy which focused on poverty alleviation and economic growth; and the 2010 Energy Policy necessitated largely by the discovery of oil in substantial commercial quantities in 2007 and which provided the initial framework for the development and utilization of indigenous oil and gas resources in the country. There have been significant changes in the national and global energy landscape. The country had also undergone years of frequent power outages and planned power rationing across the country in the past, and the severest and longest occurred from 2013-2015, leading to reduced workforce productivity, unreliable supply of electricity, relatively high electricity tariff compared to the last decade culminating in the high cost of doing business, etc. These have compelled recent and present governments to come up with restructuring of the sector on a number of occasions. The presentation is a discourse on the entire Energy Sector and the challenges since the immediate colonial era to what prevails today. It will also touch on the potential opportunities for the country and job prospects in the sector.Item Intellectual Property Right and Scientific Research in Ghana(University of Ghana, 2020-03-03) Abaidoo, C.Science research and Innovation are key to national development especially in an era of expanding global market and the growth of knowledge based resources. In Africa, one of the underlying setbacks for our development is the slow pace of innovation and technology development. However, exploitation of the Intellectual Property Right (IPR) system presents one of the greatest opportunities for scientists and researchers to create wealth for themselves and contribute to the innovation eco-system. This paper, therefore, seeks to expose the participants to IPR creation and management with emphasis on patenting and utility modelsItem Response of Late Valencia Sweet Orange (Citrus sinensi (L.) Osbeck) to fertilization in the semi-deciduous forest agro-ecological zone of Ghana(University of Ghana, 2020-03-03) Akosah, D.K.; Adjei-Nsiah, S.; Brentu, F.C.We conducted a study to determine the response of Late Valencia sweet orange to organic and inorganic fertilizer application for two seasons in the semi-deciduous forest agro-ecological zone of Ghana. The experiment which was conducted in a randomized complete block design with four replications consisted of six treatments: 9 t/ha oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB); 4t/ha Poultry manure (PM); NPKZn (90kg/ha N, 60kg/ha P, 80kg/ha K and 4.8kg/ha Zn); 4.5 t/ha EFB+NPKZn (45kg/ha N, 30kg/ha P, 40kg/ha K and 2.40kg/ha Zn); 2t/ha PM + NPKZn) (45kg/ha N, 30kg/ha P, 40kg/ha K and 2.40kg/ha Zn) and Control. In the 2019 harvest season, the treatment PM+NPKZn recorded the highest yield of 14.71t/ha while the control recorded the least yield (6.37t/ha). In the 2020 harvest season, fruit yield ranged from 17.3 t/ha with the NPKZn treated plots 28.8t/ha with the EFB treated plots to. Economic analysis shows that for the five fertilizer application treatments, the highest benefit/cost ratio was attained with the EFB treatment for the two harvesting seasons combined. Fertilization did not significantly affect leaf nutrient content 253 days after application. However, leaf N and K contents were generally higher 253 days after fertilizer application than the initial levels while P level did not change. Soil analysis 253 days after nutrient application showed an increase in total N, OC and available P while pH level decreased. The study suggests the need for farmers to adopt the use of crop residues for maintaining soil fertility of citrus orchards for improved fruit production.Item First record of the occurrence of cassava mosaic begomovirus-associated satellites on cassava in Ghana(University of Ghana, 2020-03-03) Nisah, S.A.; Tokpor, S.K.; Owusu, S.; Owusu, B.O.; Amponsah, E.; Arhin, C.D.; Offei, S.K.Cassava mosaic disease (CMD), arguably the most important viral disease of cassava, an important food security crop has in recent times been reported to be associated with satellites in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa. This study investigated the status of cassava mosaic begomovirus and associated satellites in CMD-affected cassava plants in Ghana using species specific primers in polymerase chain reaction. In all, 110 CMD-affected cassava leaf samples were collected along some selected routes in the southern parts of the Country. Africa cassava mosaic virus (ACMV) was detected in 107 (97%) cassava leaf samples, out of which 74 (69 %) was in mixed infections East Africa cassava mosaic virus-Cameroon (EACMV-CM). EACMV (CM) alone was detected in 3 (3%) cassava leaf samples. Out of the 110 cassava leaf samples affected by cassava mosaic begomoviruses, satIII was present in 73 (66%) of the cassava leaf samples whereas 47 (43%) sample tested positive for satII. Detection of CMB-associated satellites in Ghana is to the best of our knowledge the first in the country and possibly in West Africa, and has serious epidemiological implications on the management of CMD therefore requiring further studies and concerted efforts to safeguard cassava productionItem Climate Change Issues: where we have come from and where we are going(2020-02-18) Klutse, N.A.B.The earth is warming at a steady pace and is having a devastating impact on the earth’s climate. Climate change is mostly natural. However, clear evidence exists that the rate of the occurrence of the changes we are experiencing in the climate and the intensity of the impacts are closely related to human activity. We understand the reason for this is the increase in human-caused greenhouse gases causing more warming of the earth's climate. How much have humans contributed to the greenhouse gases and what is the contribution of humans to climate change is still a global discussion. The presentation will focus on what climate change is, where we have come from and where we are going with the level of human influence. A debate on whether climate change mitigation is a moral or political issue will also be opened.Item Thermochemical Conversion of Biomass for Fuels & Chemicals at the USDA(2017-04-05) Boateng, A.A.; Onwona-Agyeman, B.Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant renewable carbon resource available for the production of biofuels and bio-based chemicals. To harness this biogenic carbon biochemical or thermochemical conversion technologies are employed. Thermochemical methods for the conversion of biomass comprise i) pyrolysis, the heating in the absence of air, ii) gasification, heating under partial oxygen conditions, and iii) combustion, the heating in excess oxygen environment. Among these, pyrolysis is the only route that has the full potential to provide small design footprint that is adaptable to the farm/forest setting and with the capability to handle a wide array of agricultural residues. Done properly, thermochemical liquefaction pathways, such as pyrolysis, offer a unique potential to directly produce hydrocarbon fuel intermediates i.e., refinery fuel blendstocks that can potentially enter existing petroleum refinery flow streams without added expenses of creating a whole new refinery infrastructure. The talk will provide an overview of on-farm pyrolysis biorefining research at the USDA highlighting various scales of bio-oil production, defunctionalization of the organic oxygenates contained in the bio-oil to drop-in fuels and separation/extraction of valuable chemical coproducts with the added benefit of enhancing the economic viability of a pyrolysis based bio-refineryItem Validation of Malaria Predictive Model with Missing Covariates(2016-09-29) Duah, D.This study develops a statistical methodology for validating a predictive clinical malaria model when data has missing values in predictor variables. Using the logistic regression framework, multiple imputation techniques for missing values and a penalized likelihood approach to avoid overfitting of the data were adopted. Models with different functional forms were built using known predictors (age, sickle cell, blood group, parasite density, and mosquito bed net use) and some malaria antibody specific antigens and FCGR3B polymorphism. Models were assessed through visualization and differences between the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUROC) and Brier Score (BS) estimated by suitable internal cross-validation designs. The contributions of this research are in three folds: (i) addresses the statistical question on how to build and validate a risk prediction model in the presence of missing explanatory variables (ii) improves the general statistical approach for malaria epidemiology (iii) identifies potential malaria antibodies and FCGR3B polymorphism which should be the research focus in the search for potential malaria vaccine candidateItem On the Estimation of Conditional Tail Index and Extreme Quantiles under Random Censoring(2016-09-29) Minkah, R.In the area of Statistics of Extremes, the main assumption on any set of univariate data is to regard them as a complete sample of independent and identically distributed observations from an unknown distribution function, F. However, in many real life applications such as survival analysis, observations are usually subject to random censoring and may be influenced by an underlying covariate information. In such case, the classical extreme value theory needs some adjustment to take into account the presence of censoring and covariates. In this presentation, we propose estimators of the conditional tail index and conditional extreme quantiles for heavy-tailed distributions in the presence of random censoring and covariate information. We compare the proposed estimators with the existing estimators in the literature in a large scale simulation study. The results show improvement in bias and median absolute deviation over the existing estimators of the conditional tail index and conditional extreme quantiles.Item The Problem of Environmental Estrogens from the Wastewater Perspective(2017-12-14) Novak, P.Environmental estrogens are discharged from wastewater treatment plants and can cause physiological, developmental, and behavioral changes in fish and other aquatic organisms. Sources of environmental estrogens vary, with some sources under appreciated. In addition, the fate of these compounds in treatment plants and the environment is complicated, with degradation rates varying widely and degradation products sometimes causing physiological effects as well. Given this, how should we approach the management of these compounds? Do we impose regulations on the discharge of environmental estrogens, and if so, how? Finally, how do we pay for the treatment required to protect ecosystems?Item A Watershed-wide Investigation of the Biological Effects of Contaminants of Emerging Concern: A Case Study in the North American Great Lakes(2017-12-14) Schoenfuss, H.L.Dr. Schoenfuss will explore the effects of Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) on resident fish species in the North American Great Lakes watershed. CECs include common pharmaceuticals, household products and industrial and agricultural chemicals known to cause harm to aquatic life. We analyzed nearly 500 surface water samples at 54 sites in tributaries of the Great Lakes Watershed to confirm the ubiquitous presence of CECs. A subsequent cluster analyses of commonly detected CECs in this data matrix suggests that the co-occurrence of approximately half of the CECs can be attributed to dichotomous urban or agricultural upstream land use. Almost 3,000 resident and caged sunfish (Lepomis ssp.) were collected from 27 of the 54 sampling sites and analyzed for indicators of stress associated with CEC exposure. Canonical correspondence analyses revealed that concurrent with indicators of toxic stress, biomarkers of reproductive potential declined. To further examine the population level consequences, fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) were exposed in the laboratory for three generations to the empirically derived urban CEC mixture at three environmentally relevant concentrations. Taken together, this integrated series of studies provides a case study on how to develop a comprehensive assessment of the presence and biological effects of CECs across a continental watershed. Dr. Schoenfuss will close the seminar by providing a brief introduction to the research activities, facilities and educational programs found in the Department of Biological Sciences at St. Cloud State University.