A Study of Errors in the Pronunciation of English Sounds in Adamawa Television, Yola and Gotel Television, Yola, Nigeria

This study examined errors in the pronunciation of English sounds in Adamawa Television, Yola and Gotel Television, Yola, Nigeria. This was to identify pronunciation errors by programme presenters, their guests or other participants in various programmes in the two television stations within a given time frame. ‘Behaviourist Theory of Language Transfer’ by Ormrod (1990) was adopted as the theoretical framework for the study. The theory implied that transfer of language features depend on how similar the learning and transfer tasks are or where identical elements are concerned in the influencing and influenced language. In other words, errors in sounds occur because of the absence of such sounds in the speakers’ mother tongue thereby pronouncing any sound on its behalf with or without some degree of resemblance. Because of the sound conflicts mostly found between source and target languages, speakers often build English sound systems from their first language. The finding shows that errors of addition, subtraction, interchanging and omission were realized. The study recommends strategies that presenters and in fact, speakers with pronunciation errors as a result of cross-linguistic phonological influence will follow to possibly overcome the pronunciation errors; such that presenters and other participants in programmes to be encouraged to speak confidently and practice pronouncing difficult words correctly and regularly

Physico-chemical properties of well water samples from some villages in Nigeria with cases of stained and mottle teeth

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Book Review “The Tkt Course Clil Module”

The aim of this book is to provide teachers and trainee teachers with a guide on how best to improve teaching knowledge through an additional module, tagged: CLIL – Content and Language Integrated Learning. The volume is particularly relevant to both teachers who teach different curricular subjects through the medium of English and English language teachers who use curriculum content in their teaching. The book is centrally focused on the fact that Teaching Knowledge Test TKT and Content and Language Integrated Learning CLIL, play a significant role in helping both the trainer and students to achieve success in short term learning outcomes. As a module for development of trainers, the course covers four key areas: (i)               Knowledge and principles of CLIL (ii)             Lesson preparation (iii)           Lesson delivery, and (iv)            Assessment   The units underscore the usefulness of the TKT: CLIL theory and practice to all teachers and learners working with English as an additional language – the challenges of the bridge period   between L1 and L2 and in other circumstances where English is used for specific purposes. Divided into two parts of seventeen units, the book begins with an introduction that explains both the content and the target of TKT: CLIL. As a preamble to the module, the introduction further presents objectives and most specifically the theoretical concepts guiding the entire course – ‘how each unit is organized and how it can be used’. To achieve this, the author prescribes an extensive use of TKT: CLIL glossary not contained in the book though essential to ELT – English Language Teaching

Indexicals in Television News Broadcast

This work investigated the use of indexicals in television news broadcast. Indexicals are expressive words that signal the appropriate use of information in text. They serve to point to objects, personalities and ideas particularly in television news broadcast. This paper therefore aimed at examining the characteristic indexicals used as text creating linguistic features in news broadcast. The corpus for the study consists of news bulletins of TV Gotel, Yola, Adamawa State- Nigeria. Four bulletins broadcasted within the month of August, 2012, were randomly selected from the television. The method of data analysis was descriptive. The findings show that indexicals are significant features of television news broadcast. Pronoun indexicals point at personalities and topics, while adjectives describe events, and adverbs point at times and manners in which such events occur. The paper, suggests that practicing journalists and students of mass communication should be encouraged to use indexicals as they write, report and cast news over the television. Key words: indexicals, bulletins, news broadcast, deixis

Agricultural Management Strategy on Food Security in Taraba State

The increasing population of the world is becoming worrisome compare with the food production or agricultural activities that is considered to be backward or inadequate because of certain factors that thwart agricultural activities like the climate change and lack of modern agricultural equipments for commercial agricultural activities, family, community and government are developing a means to an end on how food security and other agricultural activities can be boaster to meet up the growing population. This paper suggest strategic of agricultural management that will support food security in Taraba state in order to meet up the growing population in the state. The paper further recommends food security measures for the state and the Nation at large. Keywords: agricultural management strategy, food security and Taraba Stat

Evaluation of Veterinary Non-Living Anthrax Vaccine Candidates in Cattle

Anthrax has been the plague of animals and humans for centuries, even though it is primarily a disease of herbivores. Anthrax is caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis, the virulence of B. anthracis is regulated by two plasmids pXO1 and pXO2. The pXO1 regulates the anthrax toxins by encoding the tripartite proteins, protective antigen (PA), oedema and lethal factors (EF and LF) while the pXO2 regulates the capsule formation by encoding a poly-D-glutamic acid capsule (PDGA) which is immunogenically weak. PA plays a catalytic role to form the anthrax toxins and is the main antigenic component of anthrax. Anthrax is one of the earliest bacterial diseases controlled by vaccination. The B. anthracis Pasteur’s Duplex vaccine and Sterne 34F2 live spore vaccine (SLSV) are live attenuated vaccines which renders them incompatible with accompanying antibiotic treatment in the phase of a disease outbreak. The use of non-living anthrax vaccine (NLAV) which include recombinant PA (rPA), could overcome the shortcomings associated with live attenuated anthrax vaccine by allowing the concurrent use of antibiotics. However, costeffective production of rPA in a biologically active and up-scalable form is a major challenge. Attempts were made to produce a more cost-effective NLAV that compares with the SLSV. The NLAV used in this study was formulated by improving upon NLAV’s that use rPA, bacillus collagen-like antigen (BclA) and formaldehyde inactivated spores (FIS) in laboratory animals and goats. However, in our study, the NLAV comprised of two formulations of rPA and FIS; purified rPA + FIS (PrPA+FIS) and crude rPA + FIS (CrPA+FIS) both were adjuvanted with a combination of Emulsigen-D®/Alhydrogel®. A two-step vaccination schedule was employed in both vaccination categories and their immunogenicity in vaccinated cattle groups assessed with and without penicillin-G (Pen-G) treatment. Their immunogenicity was compared to cattle groups vaccinated with SLSV with and without Pen-G treatment. An Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for immunoglobulins; IgG, IgG1, IgG2 and IgM against rPA and FIS, a toxin neutralisation assay (TNA) and an opsonophagocytic assay were used to assess the immune response in all studies. The level of in vivo protection was determined using a passive mouse protection test. Our findings amongst all groups vaccinated without Pen-G treatment revealed that the polyclonal IgGs, particularly IgG1 and IgM, showed a significant increase across all vaccine groups after the first vaccination. After the second vaccination all IgG subset titres significantly increased across all vaccine groups at week 5 and retained these titres at week 12 when compared to pre-vaccination titres. The toxin neutralisation titres (NT50) among cattle groups vaccinated with the NLAV showed a similar pattern of response but had lower titres, compared with those observed with the ELISA titres. In addition, opsonising antibody responses showed significant spore phagocytosis of 75% (PrPA+FIS), 66% (CrPA+FIS) and 80% (SLSV) following spore opsonisation. In the passive protection test, A/J mice injected with purified polyclonal IgG from cattle vaccinated with PrPA+FIS+Emulsigen D®/Alhydrogel® and SLSV revealed 73% and 75% protection following challenge with B. anthracis strain 34F2 spores, whereas only 20% protection was recorded among cattle vaccinated with CrPA+FIS+Emulsigen-D®/Alhydrogel®. Furthermore, our findings in the cattle groups vaccinated twice with NLAVs plus Pen-G treatment compared to cattle groups vaccinated twice with SLSV alone, and SLSV plus Pen- G revealed that the IgG titres against rPA for NLAVs plus Pen-G and SLSV without pen-G treatment displayed a significant increase, whereas the titres of the cattle groups immunised with SLSV plus Pen-G treatment was not significant. Contrarily, the IgG titres against FIS revealed a significant antibody titres level among all vaccine groups at week 3 and 5 compared to pre-vaccination titres. The IgM, IgG1 and IgG2 titres against rPA were significant for vaccine groups vaccinated with NLAVs plus Pen-G and SLSV without Pen-G at week 3 and 5 but insignificant for group vaccinated SLSV plus Pen-G. Similar patterns were also revealed for IgM, IgG1 and IgG2 titres against FIS. However, the group vaccinated with SLSV plus Pen-G treatment displayed significant titres against FIS. The toxin neutralisation titres (NT50) was significant among the cattle group vaccinated with NLAVs plus Pen-G and SLSV but not for SLSV plus Pen-G at week 3 and 5 when compared to pre-vaccination titres. Our finding showed the effect of antibiotics on the immunogenicity of SLSV as compared to NLAV and reinforced that cocktails of immune response against both rPA and FIS complement each other thereby conferring better immune response than either rPA or FIS alone. Furthermore, the stimulation of both IgG1 and IgG2 implies a balance between Th1 and Th2 response. The spore opsonising antibodies at all dilution showed a significant opsonisation response among NLAVs plus Pen-G and SLSV without Pen-G vaccine group except at 1:10000 dilution. Our data support the important role of opsonising antibodies in the immune response against infection by presenting spores of B. anthracis to phagocytes. Hence, opsonisation can be adopted as a correlate for the protective immune response against B. anthracis infection. The passive mouse protection test demonstrated significant protection among mice that received polyclonal IgG from SLSV and PrPA+FIS plus Pen-G but not significant for SLSV plus Pen-G and CrPA+FIS plus Pen-G vaccine groups. It is significant to indicate that, in both vaccination categories our findings revealed that there were equivalent to SLSV in protective immune response in cattle vaccinated twice with either the PrPA+FIS or PrPA+FIS plus Pen-G when compared to SLSV without Pen-G treatment. Importantly, our results further confirmed the incompatibility of SLSV with antibiotic treatment. Additionally, NLAV did not show any residual side effects in vaccinated cattle. Finally, our study revealed that NLAV can be used simultaneously with Pen-G antibiotics that will provide long term benefits for future anthrax outbreaks, feedlots and valuable breeding stock.Thesis (PhD (Veterinary Tropical Diseases))--University of Pretoria, 2020.Veterinary Tropical DiseasesPhD (Veterinary Tropical Diseases)Unrestricte

Determination of selected metals in coal samples from Lafia-Obi and Chikila

The concentration of iron, aluminum, chromium, magnesium cadmium, potassium, lead and copper in Lafia-Obi and Chikila coal samples were determined using atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). All the samples have comparable chromium and copper contents, while iron, aluminum, magnesium and potassium content vary to some extent. Metals concentrations in both Lafia-Obi and Chikila coal samples are within the limits allowed by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) except in Chikila (UBCJ-1) and Lafia-Obi (MBJJ-6) coal samples where iron was observed to be higher than the stipulated 20 ppm. These show that the disposal of ash generated from the combustion of these coals may not pose a potential threat to environment. Key words: Coal ash, environment, heavy metals, pollution, proximate analysis, Atomic Absorption Spectroscop

Analysis of Presupposition in Selected Speeches of Martin Luther King

This study investigated the use of presupposition and the predominant speech acts used in the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. to enhance persuasion/impact. Descriptive research design, which document events as they are, was adopted to conduct the study on two purposively selected speeches of Martin Luther King Jr which formed the corpus of the study. The speeches are: “I have a Dream speech” and “Nobel peace prize Acceptance speech”. The data was subjected to analysis based on descriptive method using socio-psychological theoretical approach to pragmatics, which is speech acts of Austin (1962) Seal’s (1969) classification of illocutionary acts: (Assertives, Directives, Commissives, Expressives, and Declaratives). The study revealed that Martin Luther King Jr. uses appropriate illocutionary acts and presuppositions to make strong his points and to change the mindset of his audience. The author uses all classes of illocutionary acts, i.e. Assertives, Directives, Expressives, Commissives and Declaratives, depending on the intentions he wants to express which have great impact on people mentally. This study also revealed that Martin Luther King Jr’s effective structure along with the usages of all the three rhetorical modes: ethos, pathos and logos with certain rhetorical tropes and schemes were also effective in making his speeches impactful. In line with these; this study recommends that: Speech writers for political leaders should explore these language resources in order to improve on the speeches they write: Students of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), who choose to specialize in speech writing should concern themselves with how to harness language resources to write persuasive and impactful speeches for political leaders in line with the findings of this study. The Nigerian Education policy should as a matter of urgency include speech and public speaking into our national curriculum

Acceptance of Aerial Yam (Dioscorea bulbifera L.) for Food in Biu Emirate Council, Borno State, Nigeria

Aerial yam is a semi-wild food that grows on vines climbing onto poles and trees. The bulb is eaten on peeling off the hard back after cooking. Questionnaire was administered to investigate its acceptance for food in Biu environ as well as its taste. Proximate analysis was carried out to determine its nutritive value. About 85% of the respondents eat aerial yam as a supplement to their major food or meals. The result shows that elderly people of 36 years and above (58.83% of respondents) eat aerial yam being a common resource and cheap in the dry season. The taste varied with individuals as 58.82% stated that it is tasteless; 17.66%, bitter and 11.76%, indefinite. The samples analysed gave an average of 32% DM; 3.61%, CP; 3.06%, EE or fat; 8.65%, CF; 1.33%, ash and 83.56%, NFE. The integration of aerial yam in cropping system is therefore recommended as it has such a nutritional profile and ease of production. Keywords: Aerial yam, Consumption, Taste, Nutritive value