Archives-December 

As Ellis (1997) underscores, it is mandatory that we evaluate every single textbook used to teach a language. The present study aimedto evaluate Learning to Read English for Pre-University Students (Birjandi et. al), currently taught at Iranian high schools. To this purpose, 75 high school EFL teachers were given Litz (2000)textbook evaluation questionaire. Their answers were analyzed based on a Likert scale. The results of the study showed that the textbook mostly did not live up to the teachers standards, mainly because it has ignored listening, and writing skills and does not follow a communicative approach in teaching different skills and components of language. Results of this study have implications both for teaching and material development.

Mobile Internet has become a convenient tool for information exchange, the new 4C business rules in the mobile commerce are co-creation, commodity, community and connecting. In today's mobile commerce, enterprises should pursue the following competitive strategies, which are strategic planning period is shortened?adjusting to changing circumstances is crucial, organizational structure will be more flat, flexible, and adapted to the environment, enterprises become customer operators, remove intermediaries, reduce distribution channels or service networks etc.

The study focused on the need to evolve design criteria for designing and optimal utilization of recreational open spaces in relation to the appropriate percentage of indoor to outdoor facilities. The amount of time available for leisure, available facilities, accessibility to recreational areas, architectural planning, marketing and publicity, contribute significantly to people’s participation and utilization quality in open space recreation. It is therefore necessary to collect and analyze primary social data to form the basis of architectural planning and design of recreational facilities for people in Owerri. The paper explored the constituents of existing recreational open spaces in the study area and using a well structured questionnaire, social data of preference the indoor and outdoor facilities data were derived to constitute the guideline to issue recommendations for the improvement and revitalization of the free and recreational spaces that will enhance quality of utilization.

The present study aims to investigate the relationship of oil, non-oil exports, capital formation and economic growth in Iran. Empirical results show that there is positive significant relationship between these variables and economic growth. Thus, findings of this study recommend that government should create an enabling environment that would facilitate non-oil exports and augment capital formation.

A field experiment was carried out in the mashkhab rice research station of the Agricultural Foundation of Researches at the Ministry of Agriculture, during the growing season of summer 2015. Two rice cultivars included amber 33 and Jasmine, which represented main plots, and three levels of transplanting methods included mechanical transplanting by riding transplanter, mechanical transplanting by walking transplanter and manual transplanting, which represent sub plots were used in the experiment. Fuel consumption, actual field capacity, ratio of hill missing, Percentage of hill damage and grains yield were measured in this study. Split plot design under randomized complete block design with four replications was used in this study. Least significant differences (LSD) at 5% level was used to compare the mean of treatments. The results were showed: The superiority of walking transplanter consumes less amount of fuel amounted 8.56 liters / hect. compared with riding transplanter which consume 11.20 liters / hect.. The riding transplanter Achieved field capacity amounted 0.2380 hect / h which significant superior than manual transplanting and walking transplanter, which achieved a capacity stood 0.0038 and 0.1370 hectares / h respectively. Hand transplanting recorded less ratio of hill missing stood 5.93% comparing with riding transplanter which recorded ratio of hill missing and walking transplanter which recorded a rate of 8.14%. 5.42% percentage of hill damage for riding transplanter comparing with 7.77% for manual transplanting. There was not significant differences appear in the grains product for used transplanting. It appears from the research results that the mechanical transplanting achieves more field capacity compared with manual transplanting. Demonstrating the success of using rice mechanic transplanting in Iraq.

The rate at which oil is moved from the reservoir to the wellbore is directly proportional to the pressure draw down with other parameters kept constant, hence inflow performance relationship provides a direct relationship between the flowing bottom hole pressure and flow rate. Since the reservoir fluids are usually not single phase but are often accompanied by bottom water aquifers, oil well drilled in such reservoir may produce some water depending on the production practice, hence determining the flow rate of the individual fluids is often difficult, and in this work we have determined the real flow rate of oil in the presence of other fluids for real case in Niger Delta and also determining its IPR using IHS WellTest Simulator 2014 V2 which made use of multirate test data from a Niger Delta well. From this research it can be clearly said that if other constraints in the production tubing are kept constant, the higher the difference between the static reservoir pressure and the flowing bottom hole pressure, the higher the production rate. The idea of this pressure rate behavior will enable the Production Engineers to evaluate various operating scenarios to ascertain the optimum production. Understanding and measuring the variables that control the relationship that exist between oil and other fluids and their effect on inflow rate is the focus of this work. These issues is looked into by modeling the present conditions with the use of a simulator called FAST WELL TEST using production data from a Niger Delta well in Nigeria.

Kenya’s economic growth and development agenda depends on donor funding. The recent world wide recession and the stringent measures of awarding credit by the major banks to the low- income earners need not to over emphasize the importance and crucial role of micro-finance institutions in Kenya to the growth of small business enterprises. The reduction of the donor funding to MFI’s has drastically affected its operations and expansions and thus it’s continuous involvement with small business enterprise operations and activities in Uasin-Gishu County. The study sought to evaluate the effects of MFI’s as a microfinance institution on small scale enterprise’s growth in Uasin-Gishu County. The study adopted a survey research design and targeted a population of 285, while simple random sampling was used to select 50 respondents. Questionnaires were administered by the researcher to the selected client groups while an interview schedule was used to collect information from the MFI’s management. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The study findings showed that MFI’s plays a very crucial role in the growth of small business enterprise in the division and to further ascertain this claim a modified Evans Growth Model was conducted to examine the effects of MFI’s on small business growth. Level of education, training, gender, monitoring and evaluation, meeting with client groups were found to significantly influence small business enterprises growth. The result has implications for the role microfinance institutions in economics development, small business growth and poverty alleviation in Kenya.

Surface texturing by fabricating micro dimple on a surface have been proven to be very effective to improve tribological performances of sliding surfaces. Studies and research shown that micro-dimple reduced friction coefficient significantly and increase the service life of artificial hip replacement. This study aim to investigate and to compare the wear factor between four different micro-dimpled dimensions which comprise diameter, depth and pitch. The main objectives are firstly to determine parameter to fabricate micro-dimple surface, secondly to optimise surface micro-dimple pattern and finally to determine surface characterisation. Four samples have been chosen with different dimple parameter. In this experiment, pin-on-plate wear test machine was used. The result shown that wear factor at the pin for pattern 1 (1.53905 x 10-6 mm3/Nm), pattern 2 (1.50764 x 10-6 mm3/Nm) and pattern 3 (1.61234 x 10-6 mm3/Nm) were compatible with result done at the same test rig at Newcastle University, where else result for pattern 4 (3.66440 x 10-6 mm3/Nm) slightly off for varies reasons. On the other hand, there are no significant mass loss at the plates although the surface roughness of the plates have record changes. Conclusion from the experiment is wear factor from less dense micro-dimple is lower than wear factor in denser micro-dimple.

This study adopted a correlational research design to find out the relationship between the roles of Library and Information Science (LIS) Education and the 21st Century Information Users in Nigeria. The study covered six higher institutions with twelve Departments and a population of 2, 400 year 1 and National Diploma I students. A researcher-designed instrument and four point scale was used. 331 was the sample size using Krejcie and Morgan sampling method of determining the sample of a known population. Mean statistics was used to answer the research question and Pearson Product Moment Correlation adopted in analysing the hypothesis. The study discovered that LIS education played high level of roles for the 21st century information users in Nigeria. Among other things, it was recommended that government should formulate a workable policy that will see that students are introduced to the use of library education from the Nursery, Primary and Secondary school levels.

This paper explored the hedonic price model to demonstrate the effects of housing attributes on the price structure for duplexes in Lekki Peninsular area of Lagos metropolis. The hypothesis that house prices are influenced by a combination of housing attributes was tested with a standard hedonic model using a sample of 193 duplexes sold between 2008 and 2010. Each of the sixteen explanatory variables involved manifested their a priori signs and statistically significant at the required level of significance except for quality of sanitary wares, availability of shopping centers and availability of swimming pool. The results suggest, among others, that structural attributes, particularly attributes that border on convenience, comfort and display of affluence, constitute the principal predictors of duplexes’ prices in the study area.