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Technology, Engineering & AgricultureSeptember 2018Mutation Breeding in Oil Palm
A Manual
by Fazrin Nur, Brian P Forster, Samual A. Osei, Samuel Amiteye, Jennifer Ciomas, Soeranto Hoeman, Ljupcho Jankuloski, Brian P Forster, Peter D. S. Caligari
This is a practical guide to mutation breeding in oil palm, representing completely novel work supported by the Plant Breeding and Genetics Section of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division (Vienna, Austria). Oil palm is the top oil crop and the only major crop and only oil crop not to have been improved by plant mutation breeding. The manual is hands-on, providing step-by-step illustrated methods in mutation induction, mutation detection and mutant line development for oil palm improvement. Presenting sound practices based on scientific innovation and knowledge, this guide provides techniques integrated with expertise and is authored by practitioners actively engaged in oil palm seed production and breeding. Promoting green, eco-friendly agriculture, this book features coverage of: Radio-sensitivity testing Challenges and opportunities for mutation breeding Protocol for developing mutant generations for mutant screening Services in irradiation treatments The only available resource containing protocols and guidelines on how oil palm can be manipulated for mutation breeding, this book is essential reading for oil palm breeders, seed producers and plantation companies, oil palm traders, students and research institutes across the world. It provides a resource for training, a knowledge base for people new to oil palm and a reference guide for managers, to ensure best practices in maximising sustainability and production of this important crop. .
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Children's & YALami's Nightmare
by Kwaku Osei-Bonsu
The life of fourteen-year-old Lami changes when she takes part in a dancing competition organised by the chief of her village. Now her dreams seem to be crumbling before her very eyes, threatened by an impending marriage to a very wealthy man from the next village.
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EducationBeginning With Brandon's Interest
by Osei, A.
"This is a must read book and you definitely need a copy at home or in school to help you process the communication coming from the child or adult who is living with autism. The study uses a family’s experience with autism to address some of the challenges these children face at home and in school. A practical community based resources are discussed as one of the most important tools for helping children and adults with autism to not only cope with their day to day challenges but as a pathway for engaging people with autism in effective communication." -- Vaughan Centre Publication Centre This book provides a critical account and analysis of one child on the autism spectrum who throughout his life has demonstrated that interest-based education offers children with autism problem-solving skills to deal with the myriad of problems that prevent educators as well as learners from developing an effective communication. Traditionally, behaviors of children with autism have been studied by researchers from diverse disciplines. On the other hand, many of these studies have grossly misrepresented autism related behaviors. The problem has been the role given to the applied behaviour analysis (ABA) by behavior experts as a colander for understanding differences in autism. The book reveals another flaw in autism studies and that is how researchers have harnessed their findings into an institutional effort permitting them to mandate and discriminate between differences in behaviours in autism. This dilemma has prevented many parents from employing their best practices to advance their children’s interest and skills beyond the institutional frontier. This book invites readers to experience how one child with autism communicated his interest and skills beyond the conformist maxim to advance his language, social and academic skills.
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Personal & social issues: body & health (Children's/YA)Akosua and Osman
by Manu Herbstein
Akosua Annan is a confident and fiercely intelligent student at a posh school in Cape Coast, Ghana. There she comes under the influence of a charismatic feminist teacher. Osman Said’s background is very different. Upon the death of his parents, a police sergeant and an unschooled market trader, immigrants to Accra from the North, he is adopted by a retired school teacher, Hajia Zainab. After a spell as an apprentice in an auto workshop, he returns to school. There, finding the teaching inadequate, he becomes an avid reader and educates himself. Akosua and Osman are thrown together by chance in the course of a school visit to the slave dungeon at Cape Coast Castle. Their paths cross again as finalists in the national school debating competition where the subject is “The problem of poverty in Ghana is insoluble.” They meet for the third time as students at the University of Ghana and as we leave them, it looks as if their relationship might develop into something permanent. The friendship between Akosua and Osman is one that transcends differences of ethnic origin, class and religion. This story celebrates the diversity of Ghanaian society. “This fascinating novel tells the story of how these two young people from these disparate backgrounds are brought together as if by an unseen hand, in a process that teaches us about our history, our common humanity despite ethnic differences, the need to pursue our ambitions, the strength of human sexuality and the need for self-discipline, and, above all, the power of love.” The Judges, Burt Award for African Literature, 2011. The Burt Award for African Literature recognises excellence in young adult fiction from African countries. It supports the writing and publication of high quality, culturally relevant books and ensures their distribution to schools and libraries to help develop young people’s literacy skills and foster their love of reading. The Burt Award is generously sponsored by the Canadian philanthropist, Bill Burt, and is part of the ongoing literacy programmes of the Ghana Book Trust and of CODE, a Canadian NGO which has been supporting development through education for over 50 years. The Burt Award includes the guaranteed purchase of 3000 copies of the winning books for free distribution to secondary school libraries.
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Teaching, Language & ReferenceFebruary 2015Sweet Rosa
by Kingsley Osei, David Asimeng
Sweet Rosa is a picture book which details the brave stance of a young African-American woman named Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat to a white person on bus in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. Ms. Parks' actions led to the infamous Montgomery bus boycott and helped establish the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The bold and courageous act of Ms. Parks, Dr. King and thousands of boycotters and civil rights advocates eventually pushed the Supreme Court to declare segregation on buses unconstitutional, helping to put racial discrimination to rest. This book takes young readers on an historic, illustrious journey through this staple event and how it has forever shaped the racial outlook of equality for adults and children alike in today's society.
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Children's & YASeptember 2014The Boy who Spat in Sargrenti's Eye
by Manu Herbstein
On 13 June 1873 British forces bombarded Elmina town in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and destroyed it. To this day it has not been rebuilt. Later that same year, using seaborne artillery, the British flattened ten coastal towns and villages – including Axim, Takoradi and Sekondi. On 6th February, 1874, after looting the Asantehene’s palace in Kumase, British troops blew up the stone building and set the city on fire, razing it to the ground. 15-year old Kofi Gyan witnesses these events and records them in his diary. This novel, first published soon after the 140th anniversary of the sack of Kumase, tells his story. Several historical characters feature in the novel: the Asantehene Kofi Karikari, the war correspondents Henry Morton Stanley and G. A. Henty and the war artist of the Illustrated London News, Melton Prior, who employs Kofi as his assistant. The novel is illustrated with 70 black and white images, mainly from the Illustrated London News of 1873 and 1874 The image on the front cover is of a solid gold mask looted from the Asantehene’s palace. It now resides in the vaults of the Wallace Collection in London. The Boy who Spat in Sargrenti’s Eye is one of three winners of the 2013 Burt Award for African Literature in Ghana. The Burt Award for African Literature recognises excellence in young adult fiction from African countries. It supports the writing and publication of high quality, culturally relevant books and ensures their distribution to schools and libraries to help develop young people’s literacy skills and foster their love of reading. The Burt Award is generously sponsored by the Canadian philanthropist, Bill Burt, and is part of the ongoing literacy programmes of the Ghana Book Trust and of CODE, a Canadian NGO which has been supporting development through education for over 50 years. The Burt Award includes the guaranteed purchase of 3000 copies of the winning books for free distribution to secondary school libraries.
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FictionAugust 2014Ramseyer's Ghost
by Manu Herbstein
Ramseyer’s Ghost is a stand-alone dystopian/utopian political novel set in West Africa in 2050. The global village has disintegrated. The Atlantic Ocean has become an American sea. West Africa has become a desert of failed states and anarchy, dotted with mines and oil rigs, stockaded and armed by U. S. corporations. The Americans dispatch expeditions of geologists and mining engineers into the dangerous interior of the Dark Continent to search for untapped resources. One such expedition has gone missing. Ekem “Crash” Ferguson, born in the U.S. in 2008 of African parents and abandoned to the care of foster parents, is a Captain in the Marine Corps. His career blocked and his marriage failing, he accepts an offer to proceed to Ghana on a one-man mission to find the missing experts. He suspects that his supervising officer, Bud Power, is having an affair with this wife. His arrival in Africa is inauspicious: in a shack amongst the coconut palms he comes across two human skeletons. A boy guides him to a coastal village. He tells the chief that he has come to Ghana to search for his natural parents. The chief welcomes him and delegates fisherman Kofi Kom to accompany him to Kumase, the Asante capital, 120 miles up-country. In Kumase, Crash goes to the stadium at dead of night to await the arrival of the three Thunderbirds, each carrying an armoured vehicle that will take the rescue party to the Fort. As the Thunderbirds touch down, they are blown up. Crash survives and is arrested. Anokye, the Asante king’s first minister, interrogates Crash. He is put on trial and convicted but Anokye intervenes to save him from execution. As part of his sentence, Crash travels the country as a movie about the abortive invasion is screened in one village after another. He is impressed by what he perceives as a unique social experiment, led by Anokye, an attempt to build a decent, viable society in an economy barely above subsistence level. After a year, Crash has completed his sentence and is permitted to return to the U.S. Anokye, now retired, accompanies him to the coastal village at which Crash arrived. There Anokye reveals to him that they are brothers and that the skeletons Crash found on his arrival are those of their parents. After burying his parents’ remains, Crash arranges a passage to New York in a passing oil tanker. As soon as he rings his doorbell, Millicent phones the Marines and Crash is arrested. He is charged with treason, tried and subsequently executed. Bud abandons Millicent. Years later, after he has graduated from college, Crash’s son Fergus questions his mother about his late father. She refuses to talk. He gets a job as a cleaner in the Marine archives, “borrows” his father’s file and publishes the contents in the public domain. When the authorities start looking for him, he is already on his way to Africa, where he hopes to find his Uncle Anokye.
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Illumination
by Nthikeng Mohlele
Mohlele describes the book as “…an exploration of the nature and pitfalls of an artistic life. The backbone of the narrative is essentially a love story, but also how the charges and passions inherent in art, particularly music, interface and become transformed when fused with passions and anxieties of a more personal and discreet kind” Bantubonke is an accomplished and revered musician, composer and band leader in decline – an absent present and inadequate spouse. He lives for art at the expense of all else, an imbalance that derails his life and propels him to the brink of madness and despair. A story of direct and implied betrayals, Illumination is an unrelenting study of art, possession and loss, of the beauty and uncertainty of love, of friendship and the dangers and intrusions of fame.
