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Academic Achievement and Admission Policy as Correlate of Student Retention in Nigerian Federal Universities
Get PDFThe research focused on Nigerian federal universities to determine the relationship between academic performance of students admitted through criteria policy and their retention. A Sample of 42,288 first-year undergraduate students from five federal universities in South-West, Nigeria was surveyed. Variables being examined vis-a-vis retention rate were admission policy and academic achievement. Data collected were analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that significant relationship existed between academic performances of students admitted through criteria policy and retention. The study suggested that admission policy should be better align with institutional strategies that can improve student academic performance and subsequently impact on the retention of students.
Key words: admission criteria, merit, locality, educationally less developed, quality
Zinc-Plated roofing Sheets and the effect of atmospheric pollution on the durability of the sheets.
Get PDFThis study was conducted in an area of Jos, in North Central Nigeria, where the main sources of atmospheric pollution were due to emissions from high vehicular traffic on the Jos-Zaria road, automobile repairs and welding shops, and burning of rubber materials, and waste automobile tyres. This work took into consideration an earlier work which has shown that there has been a considerable amount of H2S, CO, and particulate matter in the environment around this area under study. The study was extensively carried out, and the building structures assessed, were those constructed from 2001 to 2013 covering a period of thirteen (13) years. The study has shown that there is a relationship between atmospheric pollution and the rusting of zinc plated roofing sheets indicated by brown and reddish spots. Building structures for the period 2001-2005 showed serious corrosion problems which were indicated by large reddish rust spots all over the structures. Further test on various brand symbols of galvanized steel sheets used in the structures studied revealed that the corrosion resistance of the galvanized steel sheets increases with increase in coating mass of the galvanized steel sheets.
Keywords: Galvanized, Zinc-plated, Durability, Roofing sheets, Atmospheric pollution, Corrosion and Red rust
Identifying sources of efficiency among resource poor indigenous vegetable farmers in Uyo, Nigeria
Get PDFIndigenous vegetables have historically played an important role in farming and consumption systems in Nigeria. Vegetable production like any other farming activity requires the use of inputs as efficiently as possible to optimize production. To identify the sources of efficiency among indigenous vegetable farmers, the stochastic frontier production function which incorporates a model for the technical efficiency effect was employed. Data from 100 indigenous vegetable (waterleaf) producers were obtained through two-stage sampling procedure with the aid of questionnaire. Using the maximum likelihood estimation analysis, asymptotic parameter estimates were evaluated to describe efficiency sources. Results revealed that the average resource use efficiency is 0.81 (81%) leaving an inefficiency gap of 0.19 (19%), indicating that about 19% higher production could be achieved using the same input mix. Land, labour, waterleaf cuttings were evaluated and identified as the most critical efficiency sources. Age, access to credit facilities, and market were identified as the most important explainers of inefficiency. To derive the benefits of economies of scale, indigenous waterleaf producers should increase their farm sizes devoted to waterleaf cultivation either by land consolidation or acquiring new farm plots.
Keywords: Sources, efficiency, indigenous, waterleaf, Nigeria
Statistical modeling and analysis of hardness value change with diametric distance of heat treated steel
Get PDFThe work ‘Statistical Modeling and Analysis of Hardness Value Change with Diametric Distance of Heat Treated Steel’ has been carefully undertaken using data generated empirically at the University of Jos, Makurdi Campus, Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering heat treatment laboratory. A large data was generated through the carburization of carburizing steel using 80 wt% charcoal/ 20 wt. % cowbone. The operation was carried out at 900OC for 6 hrs using electric furnace. The quenching was done in water and tempering was done at 150OC. The data was subjected to statistical analysis and it was discovered that there was strong relationship between the hardness and the distance below the surface of the carburized steel. This was reflected in the coefficient of determination (r2) which was +0.98. A mathematical model was developed for the prediction of hardness at any point below the surface of the heat treated steel and the accuracy of the model was determined using various parameters like standard error, confidence limits and significance tests
Keywords: Statistical modeling, Analysis, Hardness, Steel, heat treatment, Temperature and Distance
Statistical parametric speech synthesis for Ibibio
Get PDFIbibio is a Nigerian tone language, spoken in the south-east coastal region of Nigeria. Like most African languages, it is resource-limited. This presents a major challenge to conventional approaches to speech synthesis, which typically require the training of numerous predictive models of linguistic features such as the phoneme sequence (i.e., a pronunciation dictionary plus a letter-to-sound model) and prosodic structure (e.g., a phrase break predictor). This training is invariably supervised, requiring a corpus of training data labelled with the linguistic feature to be predicted. In this paper, we investigate what can be achieved in the absence of many of these expensive resources, and also with a limited amount of speech recordings. We employ a statistical parametric method, because this has been found to offer good performance even on small corpora, and because it is able to directly learn the relationship between acoustics and whatever linguistic features are available, potentially mitigating the absence of explicit representations of intermediate linguistic layers such as prosody. We present an evaluation that compares systems that have access to varying degrees of linguistic structure. The simplest system only uses phonetic context (quinphones), and this is compared to systems with access to a richer set of context features, with or without tone marking. It is found that the use of tone marking contributes significantly to the quality of synthetic speech. Future work should therefore address the problem of tone assignment using a dictionary and the building of a prediction module for out-of-vocabulary words.
Key words: speech synthesis, Ibibio, low-resource languages, HT
Pertophysical Characterization of Eight Wells from WireLine Logs, Niger Delta, Nigeria
Get PDFWell log data from eight wells located in the X fields of the Niger Delta Basin were used in the determination of some Petrophysical characteristics of the reservoir sands. Well log data were obtained from sonic, gamma-ray, matrix density and
resistivity logs. The Petrophysical characteristics investigated were porosity, water saturation, tortuosity and permeability. The results of the analysis revealed the presence of different sand and shale units. The thickness of each sand unit was highly variable, ranging between 6.1 and 21.5 m. Average porosities vary between 25.0 and 72.0 percent and generally decreasing with depth. A modeled water saturation showed a better value for water saturation (calculation) for non-Archie media. The correlation between the modeled water saturation method (using a different value of cementation factor m and tortuosity a as given by some literature) gives a weaker correlation for the non-Archie media while the Archie media gives a stronger correlation when compared with the Archie equation. The average water saturation of these units varied between 5.0 and 64.0 percent. These values are generally high for the sand units in varying wells. Similarly, the average permeability values varied between 22.0 and 70.0 mD. The results of this study will enhance the proper characterization of the reservoir sands and a better estimation of hydrocarbon saturation
Analysis of loan default among agricultural credit guarantee scheme (ACGS) loan beneficiaries in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria
Get PDFThis study analyzed factors influencing defaults in loan repayments among agricultural credit guarantee scheme (ACGS) loan beneficiaries in Akwa Ibom State using Tobit model. A total of 109 ACGS loan beneficiaries were randomly sampled from the study area. Analysis of data using the model revealed that 12 explanatory variables namely: age of the beneficiaries, family dependency level, total farm cost, farm income, time interval between loan application and disbursement, other loan schemes, visits by credit officers, loan duration, government policies, years of experience, loan size and average interest rate charged were significant variables influencing default in loan repayment among the beneficiaries in the study area. The study recommended that efforts should be directed towards promoting a good credit culture and discipline through client education and moral persuasion.
Key words: Loan, default, credit scheme, bank credit, loan repayment
Regression Analysis of Ashaka Clay-Bonded Sand
Get PDFRegression Analysis of Ashaka Clay-Bonded Sand has been successfully carried out. The study data were generated at the National Metallurgical Development Centre, Jos Sand Testing Laboratory. The result of the regression analysis showed that both dry compression strength and dry shear strength have a very strong relationship with clay content and moisture content. The correlation coefficient, coefficient of determination and the coefficient of multiple determination in each relationship was very high. The coefficient of multiple determination for the relationship between dry compression strength, clay content and moisture content was 0.91, while that of dry shear strength, clay and moisture content was 0.97. Two mathematical models have been developed for the estimation of dry compression strength and dry shear strength on the shop floor
Preliminary Evaluation of Effects of Herbicide Types and Rates on Growth and Yield of Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz)
Get PDFA field experiment was conducted at the University of Uyo Teaching and Research Farm, located at Use-Offot, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria between September, 2007 and August, 2008.cropping season. to evaluate the effects of type and rate of herbicides on growth and yield of cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz). The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with a split plot arrangement and replicated three times. The main treatments were types of herbicides viz: Primextra (Atrazine +Metolachlor) (2-chloro-4(ethylamino-6-(isopropylamino-s-triazine and 2-chloro-N-(-2-ethyl-6-methy-phenyl-N-(2-methozylmethylethyl acetamide), Atrazine (2-chloro-4-(ethylamino)-6-(isopropylamino) s-triazine) and Diuron (N-(3,4-dichlorophenyl)-N, Ndimethlurea, while the sub-treatments were rates of application of the herbicides (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 kga.i ha ֿ◌ ¹ applied as preemergence as well as control treatments where no herbicide was applied. Results showed that type and rate of herbicides had significant effects on , stand establishment, plant height leaf area index, number of tubers /stand, tuber length(cm), weight of tuber per plant and tuber yield(t/ha) at (P<0.05). Primextra at 2.0kga.i/ha had the significantly superior growth and yield (19.8tha) than Atrazine (17.3t/ha) and Diuron (16. 8t/ha). Based on the findings, this study suggests that Primextra at 2.0kga.i/ha is effective for weed control in cassava due to low phytotoxicity, better crop growth, and higher storage root yield
Growth and foliar yield responses of waterleaf (Talinum triangulare Jacq) to complementary application of organic and inorganic fertilizers in a Ultisol
Get PDFAims: Growth and foliar yield responses of waterleaf (Talinum triangulare Jacq) to complementary application of organic and inorganic fertilizers were studied in a Ultisol.
Study Design: The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replicates.
Place and Duration of Study: The University of Uyo Teaching and Research Farm, located at Use Offot - Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria and was conducted between March, 06 and June, 06 in both 2009 and 2010 cropping seasons.
Methodology: Treatments were various combinations of organic and inorganic fertilizers applied to the soil, and these included NPK (15:15:15) at 400 kg ha-1, poultry manure (PM) at 5 t ha-1, PM at 2.5 tha-1 + NPK at 200 kgha-1, PM at 3.75 tha-1 + NPK at 100 kgha-1 , PM at 1.25 tha-1 + NPK at 300 kgha-1 and control (without amendment).
Results: There were significant differences (P<0.05) among treatments in height, number of branches, number of leaves, stem girth, leaf area, and total foliage yield of waterleaf in
both years. Generally, application of PM alone and complementary use of PM and NPK,
irrespective of the ratio, enhanced waterleaf growth and total foliage yield better compared to application of NPK alone and the control treatment. Total foliage yield from 100 kgha-1
NPK + 3.75 tha-1 of PM treatment (56 .03 tha-1 30 and 54 36 tha-1 31 in 2009 and 2010, respectively) superseded other treatments by 38 - 78% in 2009 and 35 -78% in 2010.
Conclusion: With the high cost, scarcity, and environmental problems associated with the use of mineral fertilizer in Nigeria; and based on the foliage yield obtained in this study, it is
obvious that the use of organic manure in combination with mineral fertilizer (particularly with 100kgha-1 NPK + 3.75tha-1 PM or 200kgha-1 NPK + 2.5tha-1 PM treatment) can sustain
waterleaf production. It is also demonstrated that it would be more rewarding to apply 5tha-1 PM alone compared to sole application of 400kgha-1 mineral fertilizer for waterleaf
production in a Ultisol.
Keywords: Waterleaf; organic inorganic fertilizers; growth; foliar yield; ultisol