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Developing effective spoken language processing systems for low-resource languages poses several challenges due to the lack of parallel data and limited resources for fine-tuning models. In this work, we target on improving upon both text classification and translation of Nigerian Pidgin (Naija) by collecting a large-scale parallel English-Pidgin corpus and further propose a framework of cross-lingual adaptive training that includes both continual and task adaptive training so as to adapt a base pre-trained model to low-resource languages. Our studies show that English pre-trained language models serve as a stronger prior than multilingual language models on English-Pidgin tasks with up to 2.38 BLEU improvements; and demonstrate that augmenting orthographic data and using task adaptive training with back-translation can have a significant impact on model performance., Comment: To appear in INTERSPEECH 2023

Cement kiln dust (CKD) is a by-product material of cement manufacturing. The composition of this material is approximately like the cement composition but it carries high ratio of alkali which is harmful material if it is used in structural construction members. In this study it was used after removing most of alkali by washing, in cement mortars as partial replacement of cement. After washing it was left to be dried. The material was grinded by Los Angeles machine firstly and then milled by a planetary mill in periods of 1,1.5,2,2.5,3,3.5, and 4 hours respectively to reach nano sizes of particles. It was added to cement mortars using five ratios, 0% (without milling as control ratio) and an addition of 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% ratios compared to cement weight respectively. The properties which were studied include compressive strength of mortar through curing periods 7, 28, 56 days, physical and chemical properties of the mortars. The results of this work ensure the work of one of the authors in the literature and an improvement in mortar compressive strength reaches 35%. Other physical and chemical properties were also improved. Depending upon the governed results washed CKD can be used safely in cement mortars.