ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Truck Use of Newly-Installed Roundabouts on the Kumasi-Ejisu Section of the Accra-Kumasi-Gonokrom Road (Route N6)

Truck use of four newly-installed roundabouts on a rehabilitated section of Route N6 in Ghana was investigated. The study was motivated by public opposition to the roundabouts as a result of the occurrence of a number of accidents, particularly truck accidents, shortly after the rehabilitated section had been opened to traffic. The study involved observation of truck driver manoeuvres at the roundabouts, interview on truck driver knowledge of use of the device, and review of the accident records for as well as the as-built drawings of the roundabouts. Of a total of 16 accidents that have occurred to date since the installation, seven (46.7%) involved trucks with all the truck accidents taking place only at a particular roundabout (the University Police Station Roundabout). Of the seven truck accidents, five involved vehicle rollover (overturning). A comparison of the accident records at the intersections before and after conversion to roundabouts did not point to deterioration in safety following conversion except for the intersection at the University Police Station where the reverse was the case. Of 240 truck drivers interviewed who use the route, none knew the essence of the truck apron forming part of the roundabouts as they all considered tracking the apron a traffic offence and as many as 185 (77.1%) said they never use the apron. This perception was well corroborated by the results of the truck manoeuvre study at one of the roundabouts in which 150 (80.2%) of the 187 trucks captured on video manoeuvred the roundabouts in such a way as to avoid tracking the apron. All the drivers interviewed admitted that avoiding the truck apron made manoeuvring the roundabouts very difficult as it required extra caution especially when their vehicles carried load because of the possibility of load shifting. No significant differences existed between the roundabouts in terms of geometric details except that the topography at the location of the roundabout with the highest accident record was relatively steeper than that at the other roundabout locations. It is believed that the high incidence of truck overturning accidents at the University Police Station Roundabout could be attributed to a combination of a possible vehicle imbalance caused by load shifting as the truck drivers manoeuvred to avoid tracking the truck apron and the unfavorable gradient at that roundabout. The installation of the roundabouts should have been preceded by elaborate driver education on how to use the device.

Source: KNUST
Trust in government and tax compliance; the mediating role of tax justice perception

This study aims to explore the intricate interplay between trust in government, tax justice perception and tax compliance among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana. Tax compliance is a crucial aspect of governance and revenue collection, and this research delves into the often-overlooked non-economic factors that influence it. By examining how trust in government impacts tax justice perception and, in turn, tax compliance, this study sheds light on essential aspects of tax compliance. The research findings underscore the pivotal role of trust in government in shaping tax compliance behavior among SMEs. Trust fosters a perception of fairness within the tax system and encourages citizens to willingly fulfill their tax obligations. Conversely, a lack of trust can lead to disillusionment and decreased motivation for tax compliance The study reveals a significant connection between trust in government and tax justice perception. Trust serves as a catalyst, shaping perceptions of tax justice and reinforcing notions of fairness, legitimacy, and accountability within the tax system. Positive perceptions of tax justice motivate SMEs to comply with tax laws, while negative perceptions can deter compliance. The study uncovers a profound link between tax justice perception and tax compliance among SMEs. Those who perceive the tax system as just and fair are more inclined to fulfill their tax obligations willingly. This positive perception fosters a sense of responsibility and duty, contributing to higher tax compliance rates. The research elucidates the mediating role of tax justice perception in the relationship between trust in government and tax compliance. Trust in government influences tax compliance through its impact on tax justice perception. When trust is present, it fosters positive perceptions of tax justice, encouraging tax compliance. Conversely, a lack of trust leads to negative perceptions of tax justice and reduced compliance. The study provides valuable insights into the dynamics of trust in government, tax justice perception, and tax compliance among SMEs in Ghana. It highlights the importance of building and maintaining trust in government to promote tax compliance and emphasizes the critical role of a fair and just tax system in maintaining high compliance rates. These findings offer recommendations for policymakers, SMEs, and future researchers, providing a nuanced understanding of the factors influencing tax-related behaviors and encouraging further exploration of this essential topic.

Source: KNUST
Trust and Customer Satisfaction in Ghana Commercial Bank

The study sought to assess trust and customer satisfaction in Ghana Commercial Bank Ltd. Does trust affect customer satisfaction and service delivery? In order to answer the research question, 205 questionnaires were distributed to customers of the High Street branch of Ghana Commercial Bank Ltd. Descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation were used to describe the responses and spearman’s correlation matrix was used to assess the relationship between trust and customer satisfaction. The findings establish that all the attributes were significant and positively correlated with customer satisfaction which is an indication that customers of the bank were generally satisfied with the services of the bank. The findings further indicate positive correlation between trust and customer satisfaction indicating that as banks improve on customer trust, the overall customer satisfaction of the bank is enhanced. Specific factors that promote trust between the bank and its customers included respect, urgency of meeting customers’ expectations and software reliability. The study also revealed that one of the key hindrances to customer trust is when the bank does not deliver on its promises. In conclusion, trust plays a very key role in the overall satisfaction of the customer. It is recommended that banks should endeavor to be transparent and honor their promises in order to satisfy and retain their customers.

Source: KNUST
Tuberculosis treatment outcomes in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality.

Research has shown that mineral mining is a high risk for tuberculosis morbidity and mortality. It is against this background that this study was conducted at Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality, which is a busy mining community. This study was conducted to examine the pattern of tuberculosis prevalence and treatment outcome in the municipality. Special attention was given to the TB treatment outcome among persons involved with illegal mining activities in the municipality. A retrospective study was conducted in Tarkwa, a mining community in the Western Region of Ghana. There are six TB treatment centers in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality. The various institutional TB registers in the six TB treatment centers and the district TB register were used as the source data. A data collection tool was developed, guided by the study objectives and used to extract relevant information on each TB patient from the source data. All 510 registrants from 2011 to 2013 were enrolled. The data collected was entered into SPSS® statistics 21 version and analysed.

Source: KNUST
Tuition fees and equality of university enrolment: The case of Ghana technology university college

Higher Education now a days has become more of a necessity than a luxury as many are the employers that expect job applicants and employees to be holders of degrees. Undoubtedly, Private Higher Education is now the option for many post-second cycle school graduates, as private higher education has gradually gained ground and become a force to reckon with within the educational environment. The study sought to examine tuition fees and equality of university enrolment by using GTUC as a case study. It also explored the impacts of tuition fees, gender, and age on GTUC’s enrolment. The study was quantitative in nature and used internally generated secondary data archived by GTUC’ admissions directorate from 2006 to 2019.The findings of this study indicated that university enrolment varied across tuition fees, gender and age. The study found that tuition fees impacts university enrolment positively. It was also found that more males compared with their female counterparts get enrolled and that the young have a big appetite when it comes to enrolment. Finally, it was recommended that GTUC should establish a more competitive and attractive tuition fees payment policy that will attract potential student applicants not to enroll with other sister universities. Policy makers should put in measures that will encourage and make HE appealing to the girl child without compromising recommended qualifications. The citizenry must be educated on need of education for all irrespective of one’s age, gender, religion or ethnicity. The government of the land may consider it a national policy to extend free education to tertiary institutions as the wellbeing of every nation depends of the educational foundation of her citizens.

Source: KNUST
The twins cult of the people of Teshie in Greater Accra

This thesis is introduced by defining the term ‘twine’ according to the tradition of the Ga people of the Greater Accra Region. The study of the twin’s cult of Teshie people has brought to light the reason why our parents have maintained its celebrations. However, the cult is not celebrated by many people today as done many years ago. This is because families have refrained from taking part whilst others have embraced foreign religion such as Islam and Christianity. The celebration in held in homes where the ageing fetish priest and priestess have their shrines and gods. The thesis is made up of seven chapters. Chapter one deals with the location of Teshie and the origin of its people. Chapter two discuses twin birth. It examines various attributes of twin’s birth including its related superstitious beliefs. In the chapter three, the spirit connected with twin’s cult is briefly discussed. A number of rites such as ‘shitoo’, ‘tsemo’ and ‘awroke hamo’ are also examined. It would be realized that most of these rites are done purposely to protect the twins against evil spirits. Chapter tour describes the outdooring of twin and the significant of it. This Chapter also shows how presents are donated to the mother and twins during the naming ceremony as required by tradition. Chapter five gives an account on how twins’ horns are bathed with consecrated water. It also outlines the decoration of the horns with ‘tun’, ‘ayilo’ and ‘krobo’ pigment from trees. In addition to this the dressing and decoration of twins with beads and other ornaments are elaborately described. The ornaments include wristlets made up of black and white beads. Some of the rites for twins involve feasting. An attempt has been made in chapter five to examine some of the feasts such as ‘oto’ which is prepared for an annual twin festival. The chapter ends by showing how some of the festivals are observed. Lastly, chapter six and seven discuss twins’ social life and funeral customs. It will be observed that Ga expressions in the form of songs, and supplications accompanying some of the rites are used during various performances; as a result the author has made an effort to give their meaning in English

Source: KNUST
Turning frequency regimes and inactivation of pathogenic microorganisms in municipal organic solid waste compost

One of the simplest ways of reducing the ever-increasing amounts of municipal solid waste and inactivating the pathogenic microorganisms associated with them involves composting techniques to make the product hygienically safe to handle. An experimental waste management option was conducted to determine the best time interval within which when compost is turned will undergo optimum composting, eliminate pathogenic microorganisms and helminthes eggs and increase the CN ratio. In this study, municipal solid waste was sorted to separate the organic component from the inorganic portion. Eighteen compost heaps were made from the organic portion with three replicates each. These piles were subjected to six different turning frequencies at 3,5,7,10,14 and 15 days intervals. Temperature, moisture, C/N ratio, pH, faecal coliforms and total colifonns, and helminthes eggs were monitored to ascertain the effects of the turning frequencies on the compost. The results showed significant (p<0.05) reduction in microbial numbers for turning frequency 7 for faecal coliforms from logio 10.37/l00ml to log10 4.361100m1; total coliforms from logio 18.37/lOOml to logo 4.36/l00ml; and helminthes eggs from 80/10Og wt to 0/100g wt with a Carbon/Nitrogen ratio of 19.33. However, all other turning frequencies did not produce any significant (p > 0.05) differences in bacterial numbers. It is therefore recommended that at turning frequency 7, helminthes eggs would significantly be reduced even though compost produced in all the compost piles were of quality for improvement of arable soil.

Source: KNUST
Two different Topologies on the Dual of a Hilbert Space and the Merits of each of them

In this work we considered two topologies of a Hilbert space . The first one was its normed vector space topology, which is its natural topology. The second was its weak topology. Among other properties we show that the closed unit ball is not compact when is given its topology as a Banach space. On the other hand is compact when is given its weak topology.

Source: KNUST
Two-Electron Capture From Helium-Like Atomic Systems by Completely Stripped Projectiles

Solution to four-body version of the boundary corrected first Born (CB1-4B) approximation has been solved by D zevad Belki´c. We consider symmetric double-charge exchange in fast collisions of bare nuclei with helium-like atomic systems. We particularly are interested in the calculation of the four-body version of the boundary corrected second Born (CB2-4B) approximation with full account of the long-range Coulomb e ects arising from the relative motion of the scattering aggregates. Using the formalism of Perturbation Theory in Quantum Mechanics, we employ Lippman-Schwinger Equation with free Green Function. We write the transition matrix elements for the second order contribution as a set of nine integrals. This makes use of unperturbed wavefunctions from the entrance and exit channels. We did not consider calculating the matrix elements.

Source: KNUST
Two-Electrons Capture from Helium-Like Atomic Systems by completely stripped Projectiles

Solution to four-body version of the boundary corrected rst Born (CB1-4B) approximation has been solved by D zevad Belki c. We consider symmetric double-charge exchange in fast collisions of bare nuclei with helium-like atomic systems. We particularly are interested in the calculation of the four-body version of the boundary corrected second Born (CB2-4B) approximation with full account of the long-range Coulomb e ects arising from the relative motion of the scattering aggregates. Using the formalism of Perturbation Theory in Quantum Mechanics, we employ Lippman- Schwinger Equation with free Green Function. We write the transition matrix elements for the second order contribution as a set of nine integrals. This makes use of unperturbed wavefunctions from the entrance and exit channels. We did not consider calculating the matrix elements. iii

Source: KNUST
Two-Hit in vitro T-Cell Stimulation Detects Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection in QuantiFERON Negative Tuberculosis Patients and Healthy Contacts From Ghana

IFN-γ release assays [e.g., QuantiFERON (QFT)] are widely used for diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection. T-cell responses against QFT antigens ESAT6 and CFP10 are highly Mtb specific but previous studies indicated suboptimal assay sensitivity. Especially for potentially infected healthy contacts (HCs) of tuberculosis patients, alternative antigen usage and more sensitive tests may contribute to improved detection of latent Mtb infection. In a pilot case-control study of tuberculosis patients (n = 22) and HCs (n = 20) from Ghana, we performed multifaceted in vitro assays to identify optimal assay conditions. This included a two-hit stimulation assay, which is based on initial and second re-stimulation with the same antigen on d6 and intracellular IFN-γ analysis, to compare T-cell responses against ESAT6/CFP10 (E6/C10) and selected latency antigens (i.e. Rv2628, Rv1733, Rv2031, Rv3407) of Mtb. Considerable subgroups of tuberculosis patients (64%) and HCs (75%) had negative or indeterminate QFT results partially accompanied by moderate PHA induced responses and high IFN-γ background values. Intracellular IFN-γ analysis of E6/C10 specific CD4+ T-cell subpopulations and evaluation of responder frequencies had only moderate effects on assay sensitivity. However, two-hit in vitro stimulation significantly enhanced E6/C10 specific IFN-γ positive T-cell proportions especially in QFT non-responders, and in both study groups. Mtb latency antigen-specific T cells against Rv1733 and Rv2628 were especially detected in HCs after two-hit stimulation and T-cell responses against Rv2628 were highly capable to discriminate tuberculosis patients and HCs. Two-hit in vitro stimulation may improve moderate sensitivity of short term IFN-γ based assays, like QFT, to detect Mtb infection. Latency stage-specific antigens added significantly to detection of Mtb infection in HCs and tuberculosis patients with negative QFT test results

Source: KNUST
Two-Hit in vitro T-Cell Stimulation Detects Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection in QuantiFERON Negative Tuberculosis Patients and Healthy Contacts From Ghana

IFN-g release assays [e.g., QuantiFERON (QFT)] are widely used for diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection. T-cell responses against QFT antigens ESAT6 and CFP10 are highly Mtb specific but previous studies indicated suboptimal assay sensitivity. Especially for potentially infected healthy contacts (HCs) of tuberculosis patients, alternative antigen usage and more sensitive tests may contribute to improved detection of latent Mtb infection. In a pilot case-control study of tuberculosis patients (n = 22) and HCs (n = 20) from Ghana, we performed multifaceted in vitro assays to identify optimal assay conditions. This included a two-hit stimulation assay, which is based on initial and second re-stimulation with the same antigen on d6 and intracellular IFN-g analysis, to compare T-cell responses against ESAT6/CFP10 (E6/C10) and selected latency antigens (i.e. Rv2628, Rv1733, Rv2031, Rv3407) of Mtb. Considerable subgroups of tuberculosis patients (64%) and HCs (75%) had negative or indeterminate QFT results partially accompanied by moderate PHA induced responses and high IFN-g background values. Intracellular IFN-g analysis of E6/C10 specific CD4+ T-cell subpopulations and evaluation of responder frequencies had only moderate effects on assay sensitivity. However, two-hit in vitro stimulation significantly enhanced E6/C10 specific IFN-g positive T-cell proportions especially in QFT non-responders, and in both study groups. Mtb latency antigen-specific T cells against Rv1733 and Rv2628 were especially detected in HCs after two-hit stimulation and T-cell responses against Rv2628 were highly capable to discriminate tuberculosis patients and HCs. Two-hit in vitro stimulation may improve moderate sensitivity of short term IFN-g based assays, like QFT, to detect Mtb infection. Latency stage-specific antigens added significantly to detection of Mtb infection in HCs and tuberculosis patients with negative QFT test results.

Source: KNUST
Two-factor authentication in cloud computing: using kerberos with one-time password via sms

Cloud computing is an emerging style of IT delivery that intends to make the Internet the ultimate home of all computing resources- storage, computations, and accessibility. It holds the promise of helping organizations because of its performance, high availability, least cost and many others. But the promise of the cloud cannot be fulfilled until IT professionals have more confidence in the security and safety of the cloud. However cloud computing has the security issues such as service availability, massive traffic handling, application security and authentication. In this, user authentication requires high guaranteed security. To ensure secure authentication of client in the cloud environment, an effective method is being proposed. This paper mainly focused on authentication issues in the cloud computing environment, where an enhancement is made to the intrusion login by Kerberos authentication service having One-Time Password via SMS as an added security base. First, the model of the proposed services is described. Through this model all system entities that are necessary for managing and providing those authentication services are defined. Then, the design and specification of each service is described and explained. These services are based on existing and standardized security mechanisms and frameworks. As a demonstration, a prototype java codes of an authentication service is developed and tested based on the designed authentication solution. It is shown that the model is feasible to secure against potential security risks associated with replay attacks, message information disclosure, message tampering, repudiation and impersonation. Keywords: cloud computing, Kerberos, authentication

Source: KNUST