Classroom Strategies to Increase Kindergarten Readiness of Preschool ELL Students

Abstract There are more preschool children in the United States who are English Language Learners than any other age group. This research examines the effects of providing modeling, visuals, and music strategies to English Language Learners in a preschool classroom to increase their literacy, language, and communication skills. The study’s goal was to determine if the specific classroom strategies would improve the participants English language, literacy and communication skills to be kindergarten ready with their same age English speaking peers. The study used language surveys and an assessment to determine which students were English Language Learners, and if they needed extra support learning English. The strategies were used and observed during small group, circle time, and center time. Observations by the co-investigator as well as K-12 English as a Second Language Proficiency Benchmarks and letter cards were used to determine the effectiveness of the study. According to the quantitative data, the effects of using interventions using visuals and modeling eight of the participants increase their level of speaking English and three participants increased their level of listening/understanding English. The data also shows the increase of letter and letter sound knowledge by one to four letters and letter sounds

Family-Friendly Workplace Policies as Predictors of Sustainable Workforce in the Service Industry in Lagos State, Nigeria

This paper examined family-friendly policies as predictors of committed/sustainable workforce in service industry. Using a descriptive survey research design, 440 participants were randomly selected for the study. Findings revealed that there is a relationship between family friendly policies and committed/ sustainable workforce in both private and public service organizations in Lagos State, Nigeria and that there is a difference in the family friendly policies of private and public institutions in Lagos State with the private institution recording higher mean score. The study recommended among others that there should be harmonization of family friendly policies in the private and public institutions

A PC-based fluid and heat transfer analyzer for two-phase flow in pipes

Modeling the simultaneous flow of gas and liquid or two-phase gas-liquid flow in pipes is a key aspect in petroleum production. These models can enhance our ability to estimate fluid properties, predict pressure loss, liquid holdup, and flow pattern, and to see the effects of introducing concepts such as heat transfer to the system. Modeling two-phase flow phenomenon also allows visualization of the interaction of one property or parameter to another. The understanding of heat transfer in two-phase gas-liquid flow is important for economic and optimized operations.;This work focuses on the design of a PC-Based Software for modeling the effect of convective heat transfer on flow patterns in two-phase gas-liquid flow in pipes at all inclinations from -90° to +90° from horizontal, with the utilization of a temperature and pressure traverse along the length of the pipe. The implementation of this model in a computer program involves substantial calculations and correlations, some of which require iterative procedures

Preventing Or Mitigating The Irreversible RO Membrane Fouling Caused By Dissolved Organic Matter And Colloidal Materials During Surface Water Treatment

Reverse osmosis (RO) is increasingly being used for water treatment because of its small ecological footprint and improved membrane technology. However, a major challenge to the application of this technology in water treatment is the irreversible fouling observed in RO membranes. Fouling, mainly caused by dissolved organic matter (DOM) and colloidal materials (CM) in water, can increase the energy and maintenance costs and decrease the permeation flux and membrane life. Different pretreatments, such as coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, and membrane-filtration, need to be applied upstream of the RO system to remove potential RO foulants. Membrane remediation by chemical cleaning also needs to be conducted to restore the membrane water flux. The purpose of the models constructed for the treatment trains in this pilot study is to investigate and identify system-specific performance parameters. The following paragraphs will discuss the findings from the investigations conducted during the Grand Forks Water Treatment Plant pilot study. The pilot study on pretreatment indicated that DOM and turbidity could be effectively removed using ferric chloride (FeCl3) or polyaluminum chloride (PACl) as coagulants if the pH and chemical coagulant dose were optimized. Under the optimized pretreatment conditions, the irreversible fouling of RO membranes could be reduced or mitigated. This research showed that pretreatment, including coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, and ultrafiltration, lead to the removal of 42.2% and 59.44% of DOM on using PACl and FeCl3 as coagulants, respectively, indicating improvement over the average baseline removal of 30% under non-optimized conditions. In addition, the removal of more than 90% turbidity (with PACl, at temperatures \u3e20 °C; with FeCl3, at temperatures \u3c4 °C) was achieved. PACl and FeCl3 exhibited very good removal efficiency for DOM and turbidity at doses of 40 and 50 mg/L, respectively, at pH 6.5. In this study, a new testable neural platform prediction model was constructed for the removal of turbidity and total organic carbon (TOC) in the pilot pretreatment study at the Grand Forks Water Treatment Plant. The model accurately predicted the quantitative dependence of the effluent TOC on coagulant dose, acid dose, temperature, influent-TOC, conductivity, and total dissolved solids (TDS). Similarly, it predicted the quantitative dependence of effluent turbidity on flow rate, coagulant dose, acid dose, temperature, influent-TOC, conductivity, TDS, and total suspended solids. These analyses investigate and identify system-specific performance parameters in the pretreatment unit that are responsible for turbidity and TOC removal. A new testable mathematical model of normalized permeability and normalized system salt passage was developed to predict the quantity and quality of the product water during the pilot study on RO systems A and D. The model constructed from RO system A data accurately predicts the quantitative dependence of normalized permeability on temperature, feed flow, system recovery, net driving pressure, and system water flux. The model constructed from RO system D data accurately predicts the quantitative dependence of normalized system salt passage on temperature, feed flow, post-recycle feed conductivity, system recovery, permeate TDS, manufacturer’s rated membrane salt passage, and system water flux. This analysis explains the manner in which fouling is caused by both physical and chemical interactions between the membrane and fouling agents. The strong interdependence of these fundamental operating conditions and the correlation between permeability and system salt passage were confirmed when the models were tested on data collected from RO systems A, B, C, and D. Although reasonable agreement between the results was obtained when the model was tested on these four RO systems, the models slightly overestimated the permeability values and underestimated the system salt passage values for RO system B. This discrepancy may be attributed to fouling, concentration polarization, the morphology and structure of the RO membrane. Additionally, system recovery (RO B ran at 75%, RO systems A and D ran at 82%) and the increase in membrane water flux for RO systems A and D from 11 gallons/ft2/day (gfd) to 12 gfd may also be important. An effective cleaning sequence that restores 100% of membrane performance has been demonstrated for the RO membranes. The effects of fouling on RO permeability and salt rejection were studied by comparing the permeabilities of clean and fouled membranes, and by relating the values to the cleaning sequence used for recovery. The reported results indicate that the recovery of RO membrane performance depends on the physicochemical properties of the membrane foulant, the cleaners, and the sequence in which the cleaners are used. Caustic cleaning, followed by acid cleaning, was very effective, leading to a permeability recovery of more than 100%. On the contrary, acid cleaning followed by caustic cleaning only caused partial restoration of the membrane’s ion retention ability. The use of either acid cleaning or caustic cleaning resulted in partial water flux recovery, while a combination of the two led to complete water flux recovery

Components of Communication and Effective Service Delivery in Open Distance Learning Programmes in Southwest, Nigeria

Communication is germane to the management and success of every programme. Open and Distance learning institutions’ effort to positively reach out and go beyond imparting knowledge to their learners may never be realized without effective communication. Thus, the effective utilization of components of communication is important in the learning process. This study examined the relationship between the communication components in Open Distance Learning (ODL) institutions and effective service delivery of ODL programmes. Five objectives were developed to guide the study. The study adopted a mixed research design involving both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques. 420 participants selected using a multi-stage sampling procedure involving both stratified random sampling and simple random sampling techniques. Both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used for data analysis.  The study, among other things, found a significant relationship between the communication components and the efficacy of the service delivery. Based on the findings, it was recommended that for service delivery to be effective, feedback mechanism must be varied, adequate and effective so that learners can use the one that best suit them; facilitators must be continuously trained on the use of different channels of communication to be able to produce and deliver quality content.

Development of a framework for scaling surfactant enhanced CO₂ flooding from laboratory scale to field implementation

The efficiency of the use of CO2 as a displacement fluid in oil recovery is hampered by the existence of an unfavorable mobility ratio that is caused by the large difference in viscosity between the injected fluid (CO2) and the reservoir fluids. This viscosity contrast results in early CO2 breakthrough, viscous fingering, gas channeling, and consequently, the inability of CO2 to effectively contact much of the reservoir and the oil it contains. Improvement of sweep efficiency and mobility control in CO2 injection require solutions to these problems. The use of surfactants and other chemical means for mobility control has been studied extensively and offer promising results, as they provide ways of increasing the viscosity of CO2 and/or block high permeability zones. One common problem that researchers encounter occurs when moving from core-scale experiments to field-scale implementation. Results obtained from laboratory experiments serve as inputs to reservoir simulators for modeling field-scale processes and estimating surfactant requirements. Generally, core-scale permeability is assumed to be homogeneous. While this assumption simplifies laboratory experiments and provides information of some flow properties, it does not present in-depth knowledge on the true heterogeneity of a reservoir system as a whole, and how the varying permeability affects recovery. Core-scale results also typically imply that chemical requirements for field-scale implementation are uneconomic. It is thereby crucial to develop a method to characterize scaling of results from the core-scale to the field-scale, especially as it pertains to the amount of chemical to use in this recovery method. This will provide an insight into the dynamics of water, oil, surfactant and CO2 flow within a stratified system using results obtained from laboratory experiments. This study focused on the development, evaluation and validation of scaling (dimensionless) groups for surfactant transport in porous media that affect sweep efficiency. The groups were obtained through dimensional and inspectional analysis and verified through practical laboratory coreflood experiments and numerical simulation. Design of experiments was used to generate an appropriate sample space for the dimensionless groups from which a model that is capable of predicting oil recovery and pressure difference is developed. The scaling groups derived correspond to existing scaling methods for homogeneous systems. Therefore, Dykstra-Parson’s coefficient, VDP, was introduced so as to incorporate heterogeneity for the evaluation of surfactant requirements. Borchardt et al. (1985), Yin et al. (2009), Bian et al. (2012) and Emadi et al. (2012) have conducted experimental studies to understand the mechanism of foam generation and propagation from CO2 and surfactant solution in the presence of oil. The findings reported by these researchers were based solely on laboratory investigations as they did not utilize numerical simulation to further understand the behavior of their respective systems. One researcher, Ren (2012b), used history-matching to relate surfactant transport properties measured during core experiments to a simulator-derived Mobility Reduction Factor, MRF. While very good matches were obtained, Ren (2012b) reported that each of the fitted parameters that led to a good fit of pressure and saturation data may not represent actual foam physics. For the first time, a comprehensive study that interfaced laboratory experiments and numerical simulation, while maintaining realistic interactions between phases, was conducted. This research work led to the development of a process that can be used to design a CO2-surfactant oil recovery project. This process is very flexible, and can be applied to a wide range of reservoir types as long as there is physical commonality between the laboratory and field models. The process allows for the assessment of ranges of parameters such as surfactant concentration and Dykstra-Parsons coefficients so as to aid in the selection of the optimum and economic surfactant concentration and to account for uncertainties due to heterogeneity

Relationship between Serum Heat-Stable Alkaline Phosphatase Activity and Blood Pressure in Patients with Pre-Eclampsia and Eclampsia

Background: The objective of this study was to explore the relationship, if any, between theserum heat-stable alkaline phosphatase (HS-ALP) activity and the blood pressure (BP) of patients with pre-eclampsia and eclampsia. Method: The activity of HS-ALP was measured using the 4 - nitrophenyl phosphate (4 - NPP) method after incubation at a high temperature of 65\ub0C for exactly 30 minutes in one hundred normal pregnant women and in another one hundred with pre-eclampsia/eclampsia. The normal pregnant women were used as controls. The blood pressure (BP), systolic as well as diastolic was measured in each of the studied patient using desktop mercury sphygmomanometer. Results: In the patients with pre-eclampsia/eclampsia, it was found that the higher the systolic and diastolic BP, the higher is the activity of the HS-ALP. Conclusion: It can be concluded that the HS-ALP activity in patients with pre-eclampsia/eclampsia is positively related to the severity of the hypertension and therefore this could help in detecting early complication.Fond : L'objectif de cette \ue9tude \ue9tait d'explorer le rapport, s'il y en a, entre l'activit\ue9 thermostable de la phosphatase alkaline de s\ue9rum (TS-PAL) et la tension art\ue9rielle (TA) des malades avec la pr\ue9-\ue9clampsie et l'\ue9clampsie. M\ue9thode : L'activit\ue9 de TS-PAL a \ue9t\ue9 mesur\ue9e en utilisant La m\ue9thode de 4-phosphate nitroph\ue9nylique (4-PPN) apr\ue8s l'incubation \ue0 temp\ue9rature \ue9lev\ue9e de 65 0C pendant exactement 30 minutes dans cent femmes enceintes normales et dans encore cent avec l' pre-\ue9clampsie/\ue9clampsie. Les femmes normalement enceintes ont \ue9t\ue9 employ\ue9es comme commandes. La tension art\ue9rielle (TA), systolique aussi bien que diastolique a \ue9t\ue9 mesur\ue9e dans chaque malade \ue9tudi\ue9 en employant le sphygmomanom\ue8tre mecure de bureau intelligent. R\ue9sultats: Dans les malades avec la pre-\ue9clampsie et \ue9clampsie, on a constat\ue9 que plus la TA systolique et diastolique est haute, plus est haute l'activit\ue9 du TS-PAL . Conclusion: On peut conclure que l'activit\ue9 de TS-PAL dans les patients avec la pre-\ue9clampsie/\ue9clampsie est franchement li\ue9 \ue0 la s\ue9v\ue9rit\ue9 de l'hypertension et donc ceci pourrait aider pour d\ue9tecter la toute promi\ue9re complication

AfriNames: Most ASR models "butcher" African Names

Useful conversational agents must accurately capture named entities to minimize error for downstream tasks, for example, asking a voice assistant to play a track from a certain artist, initiating navigation to a specific location, or documenting a laboratory result for a patient. However, where named entities such as ``Ukachukwu`` (Igbo), ``Lakicia`` (Swahili), or ``Ingabire`` (Rwandan) are spoken, automatic speech recognition (ASR) models' performance degrades significantly, propagating errors to downstream systems. We model this problem as a distribution shift and demonstrate that such model bias can be mitigated through multilingual pre-training, intelligent data augmentation strategies to increase the representation of African-named entities, and fine-tuning multilingual ASR models on multiple African accents. The resulting fine-tuned models show an 81.5\% relative WER improvement compared with the baseline on samples with African-named entities.Comment: Accepted at Interspeech 2023 (Main Conference

GIS Based Appraisal of Waste Disposal for Environmental Assessment and Management in Mainland Area of Lagos State, NG

An appraisal of Waste disposal for environmental assessment and management in Lagos Mainland of Lagos state using the GIS has been carried out. GIS has been a veritable tool for analyzing, storing, querying, capturing, displaying and managing of Geographic information or data. This paper addressed the usefulness of Geographic information system applications in Waste disposal distribution and in management. The coordinates of the existing waste dump were collected through field survey and a Garmin 78Sc hand held Global positioning system (GPS) receiver was used in the coordinate acquisition. The result of the field observations and analysis showed that the GIS can be used to efficiently monitor waste disposal location, Scheduling of Waste-Bin and this can invariably be used for proper planning in environmental sanitation, assessment and management holistically. This study shows that the use of Geographic Information system cannot be overemphasized in the spatial mapping of solid waste disposal for environmental management and sanitation assessment