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The Guiding Principles on Civil Service Reform were endorsed by the Special Programme of Assistance for Africa (SPA) as a tool for better co‐ordination of donor support. Because of the range of administrative problems, and the economic and political urgency of solving them, African governments need a strategic framework for civil service reform. This should be based on a vision of the role of the state, and take into account leadership, commitment, governance, economic reforms, sequencing, ministerial restructuring, decentralisation, downsizing, pay and incentives, capacity building, service delivery, aid mechanisms, and change management processes. Because of the enormity and political sensitivity of the task, and the severe limitations on capacity to manage reform, such a framework will take 10‐20 years to implement fully in most countries. Civil service reform is an art, not a science. Committed reformers within the concerned government know best what they need, and how to get there. The role of donors should be mainly facilitation: identifying committed reformers (or potentially committed ones), and then empowering them to design and carry out needed changes.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare a water-resistant adhesive (SA) from soy flour (SF) with less water-soluble components.

Defatted SF was suspended and stirred in water. Then, the pH of dispersion was adjusted to a predetermined value (i.e. 8, 9 or 10) by the addition of 2M sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution. After stirring at a predetermined temperature (25°C, 35°C, 45°C) for different time (1 h, 2 h, 3 h), the 2M hydrochloric acid (HCl) solution was added in a dropwise manner into the dispersion until the pH value was adjusted to 4.5. Then, the dispersion was centrifuged at 6,000 rpm for 2 min. The obtained precipitate with less water-soluble components was used as an adhesive (SA) directly.

SA had a wet strength of 1.02 MPa when used for the fabrication of poplar plywood. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) solution was applied to improve the tack of SAs to wood surface and the viscosities of SAs were decreased from 10,200 cP to 4,100 cP at room temperature after the PVA addition. The soy proteins in SAs were not denatured to a large extent according to the differential scanning calorimetry and light microscopy. The remained multilevel structures of soy protein played a positive contribution to the water resistance of SAs, and the bond lines of cured SAs were much more stable than those of the cured SF and soy protein concentrate (SPC).

The fluidity and solid content of soy adhesives is much lower than formaldehyde adhesives. Further investigations are needed to improve the fluidity of soy adhesives with high solid contents.

Novel water-resistant soy adhesives were provided.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare high-performance agro-based composites from the non-toxic rice bran-urea-formaldehyde (RB-UF) adhesive system. Investigations have continued for production high performance agro-based composites using environmentally acceptable approaches. The utilisation of such system with the available used local agro-based wood products (sugar-cane bagasse, SCB) adds economic value and helps reducing the environmental impact of commercial urea-formaldehyde (UF) adhesive, and most importantly, provides a potentially inexpensive alternative to the existing commercial artificial wood-panel mills.

Optimising the process for incorporating the RB in UF, as wood adhesive for binding the bagasse fibres, was carried out, by partially replacing commercial UF by denaturalised RB in slurry (wet) and dry form or through synthesis of UF. The denaturalisation of RB was carried out at different pHs (10-11) and at temperature 60°C for two hours. While incorporating the RB during synthesis of UF, it was carried out according to the method reported elsewhere. The formulation of adhesive components, pH value of the denaturalisation stage and the process of incorporating the RB were optimised. Assessment of the role of RB adhesive was specified from its free-formaldehyde (HCHO) content, as well as the properties (mechanical and physical properties) of the produced composites of bagasse particle board type, in comparison with the environmental impact of commercial thermosetting resin (UF).

The promising adhesive system exhibits improvement in the environmental performance (as E1 type) over a commercially UF adhesive (as E2 type), besides providing boards fulfill the requirements of grade H-3 (according to ANSI A208.1 (NPA1993). This adhesive system was resulted from replacing 30 per cent of UF by denalturalised RB (at pH 10) in slurry form. Where, its reduction in free-HCHO reached 53 per cent, as well as modulus of rupture (MOR), modulus of elasticity (MOE), internal bond (IB) and TS of the produced boards were approximately 24.2 N/mm2, approximately 3753 N/mm2, approximately 0.84 N/mm2 and approximately 11.4 per cent, respectively.

The eco-adhesive with relatively high percentage of low-cost commercial UF (70 per cent) and 30 per cent RB, as oil production by-product, in slurry form provides good board strength and is environmentally friendly compared to SCB-based composite properties, with that produced from commercial UF. The mechanical (MOR, MOE and IB) and water-resistance properties of the produced composite comply with the standard values.

The approach provided low HCHO-free UF adhesive with good comparative board strength and water resistance and reasonable working life. Replacing 30 per cent of UF by RB in slurry form and denaturalised at pH 10 is considered a promising inexpensive alternate adhesive (as E1) in the wood industry based on SCB wastes.

Incorporating the RB by-product of oil production to commercial UF will be beneficial for saving the health of wood co-workers and motivating the wood mill to export its wood products.

It provided a potentially simple way to improve both the utilisation of commercial UF and SCB as industrial substrates for particle-board production. This will benefit farmers, local wood mills in Upper Egypt, significantly. Meanwhile, incorporating low percentage of RB, as oil-mill by-products, is promising to partly replace UF resin in the wood industry, minimising formaldehyde emission or toxic gasses during board formation.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

The purpose of this article is to provide a quantitative analysis of the extent to which folksonomies replicate the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to see if folksonomies would successfully complement cataloger‐supplied subject headings in library catalogs.

The paper compares social tags and LC subject headings for ten books from various library‐related applications including next generation OPACs and LibraryThing by ranking tags and subject headings using scales modified from research by Golder and Huberman, Voorbij, and Kipp.

Social tagging does indeed augment LCSH by providing additional access to resources.

Several of our applications lacked tags for the books we chose in our study. Tags are primarily taken from LibraryThing.

A hybrid catalog combining both LCSH and a folksonomy would result in richer metadata and be stronger than the sum of its parts, giving patrons the best of both worlds in terms of access to materials.

This paper supplies quantitative support for the use of folksonomies in a library's catalog. The data also supports many of the previous theories proposed in literature about folksonomies and social tagging.