The Black Family Structure: A Viable Structure or a Myth?

My objective for writing this essay on the black family was to examine and interrogate a myriad of stereotypes surrounding this family structure. Slavery and its inception need to be explored because it enables one to acquire a better understanding of the modern day black family. It is my hope that once we achieve this level of understanding, if not acceptance, that we may be able to start the healing process that is so necessary

A Bilingual Thesaurus of Everyday Life in Medieval England: Some Issues at the Interface of Semantics and Lexicography

This paper reports on issues at the interface between semantics and lexicography that arose out of the data collection and classification of vocabulary in Anglo-Norman and Middle English in order to create a bilingual thesaurus of everyday life in medieval England. The Bilingual Thesaurus project is based at Birmingham City University and the University of Westminster. Issues to be resolved included the definition of an occupational domain; the creation of a methodology of data collection; the delimitation of domain-specific vocabulary; making distinctions between sense and usage; and the categorisation of the lexical items. Some of these issues are general to thesaurus-making, some are specific to the making of historical thesauruses, while some are unique to the production of a thesaurus of two languages whose use overlapped for several centuries in the late medieval period in England

An Assessment of the evidence of Climate change in Bauchi, Nigeria

The study aimed at identifying the evidences of climate change in Bauchi. The emphasis was to find out if there are changes on the temperature and rainfall over time; to what extent these changes occur and likely impact these changes will have in Bauchi. The study was done in Bauchi town, Bauchi state of northeastern Nigeria. Elements of climate such as temperature and rainfall of the study area for a period of thirty (30) years between 1978 and 2008 were collected and analyzed using statistical method of Time Series Analysis. Findings from the study showed that rainfall in Bauchi was increasing by 0.2mm per annum. The findings also showed that temperature was increasing by 0.02990c per annum. This implies that Bauchi may be vulnerable to flooding and ecosystem change. And having a detrimental effect on agricultural produce thereby leading to food scarcity in the town. The annual increase in temperature by 0.02990c and rainfall by 0.2mm indicate that Climate Change is real in BauchiKeywords: climate change, Bauchi, food scarcity, Time Series Analysis, temperature and rainfall

Lone other-language items in later medieval texts

This paper addresses the use in medieval texts of ‘lone other-language items’ (Poplack and Dion 2012), considering their status as loans or code-switches (Durkin 2014; Schendl and Wright 2011). French-origin and English-origin lexemes in Middle English, respectively, were taken from the Bilingual Thesaurus of Everyday Life in Medieval England, a source of loan words chosen for its sociolinguistic representativeness and studied via Middle English Dictionary citations and textbase occurrences. Four criteria were applied for whether they should be treated as code-switches or as loans: the textual context in which the item appears, the adoption of target language verbal morphology, the length of attestation within the target language of individual lexical items (Matras 2009), and the integration of items into the syntactic structure of nominal phrases in conflict sites for code-switching (Poplack et al. 2015). Results provide little support for code-switching as the channel for the integration of lone other-language items, suggesting rather that individual items of foreign origin were immediately borrowed, consistently with Poplack and Dion’s (2012) treatment of contemporary contact phenomena

EFFECTIVENESS OF COMPUTER TUTORIAL MODEL, DRILL AND PRACTICE ON STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT AND RETENTION IN FABRICATION AND WELDING TECHNOLOGY IN TECHNICAL COLLEGES

The study determined the effectiveness of computer tutorial model, drill and practice on students’ achievement and retention of students of fabrication and welding technology in technical colleges in Delta State. Two research questions were answered, and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Quasi-experimental design was used for the study. Population of the study was 136 National Technical Certificate (NTC) year 2 fabrication and welding students in state owned technical colleges. Purposive sampling technique was used to draw four schools out of the six technical colleges with 101 students for the study. Instruments for data collection were Fabrication and Welding Achievement Test (FWAT). The instrument was face and content validated by three experts. Test–retest method was used to establish its reliability of FWAT and was calculated using Pearson product moment correlation which yielded a correlation coefficient value of 0.87. Treatment procedure of computer tutorial model, drill and practice instructional strategy and Lecture-demonstration teaching method for the study was carried out. Arithmetic mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses. The students in the experimental group obtained higher mean scores than in the control group in cognitive achievement as well as in cognitive and psychomotor retention. There was a significant difference between the mean scores of experimental group and control group in the cognitive achievement and psychomotor retention of students in fabrication and welding in technical college. In view of the positive effects of computer tutorial, drill and practice it was recommended among others, that the method should be adopted to teaching fabrication and welding technology in order to enhance students’ cognitive achievement and psychomotor retention. Also, the school administration should provide opportunities for in-service training and provide computers for fabrication and welding technology teachers and students to enable them acquire competencies needed in the use of modern technology instructional approach for teaching and learning fabrication and welding in technical colleges. Article visualizations

A Resolved Molecular Gas Disk around the Nearby A Star 49 Ceti

The A star 49 Ceti, at a distance of 61 pc, is unusual in retaining a substantial quantity of molecular gas while exhibiting dust properties similar to those of a debris disk. We present resolved observations of the disk around 49 Ceti from the Submillimeter Array in the J=2-1 rotational transition of CO with a resolution of 1.0x1.2 arcsec. The observed emission reveals an extended rotating structure viewed approximately edge-on and clear of detectable CO emission out to a distance of ~90 AU from the star. No 1.3 millimeter continuum emission is detected at a 3-sigma sensitivity of 2.1 mJy/beam. Models of disk structure and chemistry indicate that the inner disk is devoid of molecular gas, while the outer gas disk between 40 and 200 AU from the star is dominated by photochemistry from stellar and interstellar radiation. We determine parameters for a model that reproduces the basic features of the spatially resolved CO J=2-1 emission, the spectral energy distribution, and the unresolved CO J=3-2 spectrum. We investigate variations in disk chemistry and observable properties for a range of structural parameters. 49 Ceti appears to be a rare example of a system in a late stage of transition between a gas-rich protoplanetary disk and a tenuous, virtually gas-free debris disk.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Sub-millimeter images of a dusty Kuiper belt around eta Corvi

We present sub-millimeter and mid-infrared images of the circumstellar disk around the nearby F2V star eta Corvi. The disk is resolved at 850um with a size of ~100AU. At 450um the emission is found to be extended at all position angles, with significant elongation along a position angle of 130+-10deg; at the highest resolution (9.3") this emission is resolved into two peaks which are to within the uncertainties offset symmetrically from the star at 100AU projected separation. Modeling the appearance of emission from a narrow ring in the sub-mm images shows the observed structure cannot be caused by an edge-on or face-on axisymmetric ring; the observations are consistent with a ring of radius 150+-20AU seen at 45+-25deg inclination. More face-on orientations are possible if the dust distribution includes two clumps similar to Vega; we show how such a clumpy structure could arise from the migration over 25Myr of a Neptune mass planet from 80-105AU. The inner 100AU of the system appears relatively empty of sub-mm emitting dust, indicating that this region may have been cleared by the formation of planets, but the disk emission spectrum shows that IRAS detected an additional hot component with a characteristic temperature of 370+-60K (implying a distance of 1-2AU). At 11.9um we found the emission to be unresolved with no background sources which could be contaminating the fluxes measured by IRAS. The age of this star is estimated to be ~1Gyr. It is very unusual for such an old main sequence star to exhibit significant mid-IR emission. The proximity of this source makes it a perfect candidate for further study from optical to mm wavelengths to determine the distribution of its dust.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures. Scheduled for publication in ApJ 10 February 2005 issu

Bacteriological Profile of Palm Oil Sale Sites in Selected Markets in Kaduna State, Nigeria

The bacteriological profile of palm oil sale sites in selected markets in Kaduna state, Nigeria were evaluated using standard techniques by collecting a (60) soil samples. Aside from bacteriological profile, pH, moisture content, temperature and lipase activity analyzed. The soil samples had pH that ranged from acidic to neutral (3.0-8.00) which indicates the presence of hydrolytic enzymes. Microorganisms isolated from soil samples palm oil sale sites were screened from their lipase producing ability. A total of (10) ten bacteria belonging to the genera Bacillus, Streptococcus, Lactobacillus, Streptobacillus, Micrococcus, Staphylococcus and Pseudomonas. The lipolytic activity of the bacteria when screened on solid agar ranged for 1.1 to 3.2cm, 2.3-3.7cm, 2.3-6.7cm at 24, 48 and 72hours respectively while that of fungal species ranged from 0.6 to12cm, 0.3-1.5cm and 1.1-1. 7cm at 3,7,14 days of incubation respectively. Exo-enzyme was produced from the various species screened for lipolytic activities. The study shows that Bacillus subtilis and Trichoderma spp. had high potential

A study on the interaction between metformin and constituents of a commercial herbal product

Purpose: To investigate the interactions between metformin and Yoyo Bitters® including some of its constituents in the management of diabetes mellitus.Method: Using the generic form of metformin (Glucophage®) tablets, tests such as disintegration time, dissolution profile, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and in vivo hypoglycaemia tests using Wistar albino rat were performed for metformin to investigate its behaviour in the presence and absence of Yoyo Bitters and some plant extracts used in its formulation.Results: Metformin tablets used met BP specification in terms of pharmaceutical properties. There was no significant change in the disintegration properties of the metformin tablets in the presence of Yoyo Bitters (p > 0.05) while a significant change occurred in the dissolution profile (p < 0.05). The FTIR spectra showed some level of interactions due to disappearance of some spectral peaks. In vivo result showed a significant reduction (p < 0.05) in the duration of action of metformin.Conclusion: Concomitant administration of metformin and Yoyo Bitters showed interaction that appeared antagonistic to the hypoglycaemic effect of metformin both in vitro and in rat modelsKeywords: Metformin, In vitro interactions, Yoyo Bitters, Diabete