'To move or not to move': Reflections on the resettlement of artisanal miners in the western region of Ghana

This article critically reflects upon the shortcomings of the 'Prestea Action Plan', an ambitious initiative undertaken to facilitate the resettlement of artisanal miners operating in the Western Region of Ghana. The aim of the exercise was to identify viable areas for the thousands of operators who were working illegally in the town of Prestea, an area under concession to the US-based multinational, Golden Star Resources Ltd. At the time of its launch, it was one of the few support initiatives to target artisanal miners, whose claims to land are generally not recognized by governments. It was a particularly significant exercise in Ghana because it suggested that the authorities, who traditionally have exercised a policy of non-negotiation with such groups, had finally recognized that dialogue was needed if the growing rift between the country's indigenous artisanal miners, foreign mining companies and government bodies was to be bridged. It soon emerged, however, that despite its commendable policy objectives, the Plan was fundamentally flawed-problems which would undermine the entire exercise.

Drought stress differentially affects leaf-mining species

1. The impact of climate change on phytophages is difficult to predict, due in part to variation between species in their responses to factors such as drought stress. Here, the hypothesis that several species within the leaf-mining feeding guild will respond in a consistent way to changes in rainfall patterns is tested, using a manipulative field experiment. 2. Summer drought, enhanced summer rainfall, and control treatments were imposed on a calcareous grassland community, and the responses of five leaf-mining species were assessed. 3. One leaf-mining species was more abundant under enhanced rainfall, one was more abundant under drought, and the other three species showed no consistent response to the rainfall treatments. Higher parasitism levels under drought may partly explain the response of one species (Stephensia brunnichella) to the treatments. 4. These results show that generalisations relating to drought stress impacts cannot be drawn at the feeding guild level for leaf-mining insects.

The engineer under FDIC's conditions of contract for construction

FIDIC has over the years produced standard forms of contracts for the international procurement of projects. A source of continuing criticism of its Red Book concerns the duality in the traditional role of the engineer as the employer's agent and as an independent third party holding the balance fairly between the employer and the contractor. In response to this and other criticisms FIDIC produced a replacement for it in 1999. The role of the engineer under the new Red Book is critically examined in the light of relevant case law, expert commentaries and feedback from two multidisciplinary workshops with international participation. The examination identified three major changes: (1) a duty to act impartially has been replaced by a duty to make fair determination of certain matters; (2) it is open to parties to allow greater control of the engineer by the employer by stating in the appropriate part of the contract powers the engineer must not exercise without the employer's approval; (3) there is provision for a Dispute Adjudication Board (DAB) to which disputes may be referred. Although the duality has not been eliminated completely, the contract is structured flexibly enough to support those who wish to contract on the basis of the engineer acting solely as the agent of the employer.

Responsiveness to change by standard-form contract drafters: A case study of the FIDIC White Book

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs-Conseils (FIDIC) White Book standard form of building contract. It tracks the changes to this contract over its four editions, and seeks to identify their underlying causes. Design/methodology/approach – The changes made to the White Book are quantified using a specific type of quantitative content analysis. The amended clauses are then examined to understand the nature of the changes made. Findings – The length of the contract increased by 34 per cent between 1990 and 2006. A large proportion of the overall increase can be attributed to the clauses dealing with “conflict of interest/corruption” and “dispute resolution”. In both instances, the FIDIC drafting committees have responded to international developments to discourage corruption, and to encourage the use of alternative dispute resolution. Between 1998 and 2006, the average length of the sentences increased slightly, raising the question of whether long sentences are easily understood by users of contracts. Research limitations/implications – Quantification of text appears to be particularly useful for the analysis of documents which are regularly updated because changes can be clearly identified and the length of sentences can be determined, leading to conclusions about the readability of the text. However, caution is needed because changes of great relevance can be made to contract clauses without actually affecting their length. Practical implications – The paper will be instructive for contract drafters and informative for users of FIDIC's White Book. Originality/value – Quantifying text has been rarely used regarding standard-form contracts in the field of construction.

Understanding the indoor environment through mining sensory data - A case study

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a group of sensors linked by wireless medium to perform distributed sensing tasks. WSNs have attracted a wide interest from academia and industry alike due to their diversity of applications, including home automation, smart environment, and emergency services, in various buildings. The primary goal of a WSN is to collect data sensed by sensors. These data are characteristic of being heavily noisy, exhibiting temporal and spatial correlation. In order to extract useful information from such data, as this paper will demonstrate, people need to utilise various techniques to analyse the data. Data mining is a process in which a wide spectrum of data analysis methods is used. It is applied in the paper to analyse data collected from WSNs monitoring an indoor environment in a building. A case study is given to demonstrate how data mining can be used to optimise the use of the office space in a building.

Knowledge-elicitation and data-mining: fusing human and industrial plant information

Knowledge-elicitation is a common technique used to produce rules about the operation of a plant from the knowledge that is available from human expertise. Similarly, data-mining is becoming a popular technique to extract rules from the data available from the operation of a plant. In the work reported here knowledge was required to enable the supervisory control of an aluminium hot strip mill by the determination of mill set-points. A method was developed to fuse knowledge-elicitation and data-mining to incorporate the best aspects of each technique, whilst avoiding known problems. Utilisation of the knowledge was through an expert system, which determined schedules of set-points and provided information to human operators. The results show that the method proposed in this paper was effective in producing rules for the on-line control of a complex industrial process. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Fusing data-mining and knowledge elicitation for the supervisory control of an aluminium plate mill

Knowledge-elicitation is a common technique used to produce rules about the operation of a plant from the knowledge that is available from human expertise. Similarly, data-mining is becoming a popular technique to extract rules from the data available from the operation of a plant. In the work reported here knowledge was required to enable the supervisory control of an aluminium hot strip mill by the determination of mill set-points. A method was developed to fuse knowledge-elicitation and data-mining to incorporate the best aspects of each technique, whilst avoiding known problems. Utilisation of the knowledge was through an expert system, which determined schedules of set-points and provided information to human operators. The results show that the method proposed in this paper was effective in producing rules for the on-line control of a complex industrial process.

Mining gene networks with application to GAW15 problem 1

The genetic analysis workshop 15 (GAW15) problem 1 contained baseline expression levels of 8793 genes in immortalised B cells from 194 individuals in 14 Centre d’Etude du Polymorphisme Humane (CEPH) Utah pedigrees. Previous analysis of the data showed linkage and association and evidence of substantial individual variations. In particular, correlation was examined on expression levels of 31 genes and 25 target genes corresponding to two master regulatory regions. In this analysis, we apply Bayesian network analysis to gain further insight into these findings. We identify strong dependences and therefore provide additional insight into the underlying relationships between the genes involved. More generally, the approach is expected to be applicable for integrated analysis of genes on biological pathways.