Comparative Study of e-Practice in an American University and an Australian University

The overall aim of this study was to further comparative understanding of e-practice in Australian and American universities. The study used one Faculty in an Australian university and one Faculty in an American university as examples. The theoretical focus was on the cultural context as well as on practice in the e-learning area. The variables of instructivism and constructivism were explored for establishing the differing cultural context of the two countries. The pedagogical, performance appraisal, instructional design, technological, administrative and support service were investigated to establish e-practice differences between the two countries. Studies 1 to 3 used both a qualitative and quantitative methodology in order to ascertain the current status of e-learning. Participants were students, lecturers and administrative staff of one Faculty in an Australian university and one Faculty in an American university engaged with e-learning programs. Study 1 investigated the dominant cultural dimensions of the two universities. The results of this study showed that the dominant e-learning approach of one Faculty in an American university was toward constructivism while the dominant e-learning approach of one Faculty in an Australian university was toward instructivism. In Study 2, the current status of e-learning practice was investigated in the two universities using a quantitative methodological approach.«br /» The results indicated that the level of e-practice in all aspects of e-learning was above average in both universities. Participants of the American university rated their system consistently higher in most aspects of e-practice than the Australian university participants. In Study 3, the current issues of e-learning practice in four aspects, namely pedagogy, culture, technology and e-practice, that need to be improved, were investigated by applying a qualitative method. The results of interviews identified pedagogical challenges in approaches to learning, effective learning practice, assessment method and learning content as areas that need attention. Cultural sensitivity, effective cultural practice and key technological challenges as well as issues like faculty policies, quality, learning management system, and online support were revealed as areas that could improve the e-learning systems in both universities.Although both America and Australia have shown progress in the field of e-practice, it is apparent that the quality and quantity of e-practice factors in an Australian university needs to be sped up. This is despite the fact that the context of e-learning in an Australian university studied has been improved by Asian cultural contact. From this perspective applying the pattern and technology that has been used in the American university could help to guide an Australian university e-learning system practice in the future

C3: Cross-instance guided Contrastive Clustering

Clustering is the task of gathering similar data samples into clusters without using any predefined labels. It has been widely studied in machine learning literature, and recent advancements in deep learning have revived interest in this field. Contrastive clustering (CC) models are a staple of deep clustering in which positive and negative pairs of each data instance are generated through data augmentation. CC models aim to learn a feature space where instance-level and cluster-level representations of positive pairs are grouped together. Despite improving the SOTA, these algorithms ignore the cross-instance patterns, which carry essential information for improving clustering performance. This increases the false-negative-pair rate of the model while decreasing its true-positive-pair rate. In this paper, we propose a novel contrastive clustering method, Cross-instance guided Contrastive Clustering (C3), that considers the cross-sample relationships to increase the number of positive pairs and mitigate the impact of false negative, noise, and anomaly sample on the learned representation of data. In particular, we define a new loss function that identifies similar instances using the instance-level representation and encourages them to aggregate together. Moreover, we propose a novel weighting method to select negative samples in a more efficient way. Extensive experimental evaluations show that our proposed method can outperform state-of-the-art algorithms on benchmark computer vision datasets: we improve the clustering accuracy by 6.6%, 3.3%, 5.0%, 1.3% and 0.3% on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, ImageNet-10, ImageNet-Dogs, and Tiny-ImageNet.Comment: 10 pages, 8 Figures, 1 Table

Physico-mechanical properties of rough rice (Oryza sativa L.) grain as affected by variety and moisture content

 M. Sadeghi, H. Ashtiani Araghi, A. Hemmat(Department of Farm Machinery, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran) Abstract: Rice varieties in Isfahan Province (central Iran) have high breakage losses during processing.  In order to optimize the design of machinery used for milling of these varieties it is quite important to determine their engineering properties.  In this study, physical and mechanical properties of Sorkheh and Sazandegi varieties were determined at three moisture content levels.  To determine the mechanical properties, compression and three-point bending tests were conducted.  It was observed that, by increasing moisture content, geometric mean diameter, sphericity, true density, and angle of repose were all increased, whereas bulk density decreased.  In contrary to the moisture content at the tested range, variety had a significant effect on rough rice mechanical properties.  For Sorkheh, the average fracture force, fracture energy, modulus of elasticity, and toughness obtained by compression test, were 169.1 N, 44.2 J×10-3, 996.1 MPa, and 1.88 MJ/m3, respectively.  The corresponding values for Sazandegi were 125.1 N, 24.4 J×10-3, 555.6 MPa, and 1.11 MJ/m3.  In three-point bending test, the average fracture force, fracture energy, and bending strength of Sorkheh were 24.2 N, 5.1 J×10-3, and 23.4 MPa, respectively.  For Sazandegi, these values were 19.1 N, 3.7 J×10-3, and 17.7 MPa, respectively.  Comparison of obtained mechanical properties with the literature revealed that the high milling losses of Isfahan province rice varieties could be due to the methods and devices used for their processing operations.Keywords: mechanical characteristic, milling, moisture content, physical property, Iran Citation: Sadeghi M, H. Ashtiani Araghi, A. Hemmat.  Physico-mechanical properties of rough rice (Oryza sativa L.) grain as affected by variety and moisture content.  Agric Eng Int: CIGR Journal, 2010, 12(3): 129-136. &nbsp

Constructing a New High Rise Building in Historical Places: In the Case of Jahan Nama Tower in Naqsh-E Jahan Square

The adaptability of the historical setting to “changes”, to new technologies and new socio-economical standards is necessity for the vitality of it. Introduction of the new buildings is actually one aspect of change but also it is the reflection of changes in many cases on the architecture of the city. In this respect, new building as the last layer of the historical tissue comes out to be an urban conservation problem to be discussed. The city of Isfahan in Iran is aware that its historic square is part of our common world heritage. Naqsh-E-Jahan is a historical city square in Isfahan which was registered as a World Heritage Site in 1979 at UNESCO’s conference in Egypt. Also, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Isfahan old city is one of the main destinations for tourists from all over the world (Vadiati & Kashkooli, 2011). Today a large number of historical cities including those in Isfahan are facing a challenge for harmonization between the conservation of cultural property and the development or economic interest. Reducing the height of Jahan Nama Tower up to the determined level is an inevitable task in order to save the position of Naqsh-E-Jahan Square in the list of World Heritage Site. Jahan Nama tower has a direct impact on how this historic square presents itself to the viewers by distracting the eye from the focus of the view. Accordingly, the present study on new buildings in historic environments, tries to evaluate the positive and negative impacts of the new buildings in historic environments according to views and vistas. It is investigated for two case studies, Naghsh-E-Jahan square in Esfahan, Iran which is affected by the height of Jahan Nama tower and London city hall nearby Tower Bridge. To achieve this purpose, influence of new buildings in historic environment and possible ways to create a balance between conservation and development in the World Heritage areas which is an important issue for each historic environment have been investigated. The method is qualitative and data collection is based on literature review and library study. Keywords: historic environment, new buildings, cultural heritage, public squares, new developments; Isfahan-Iran

Physical Properties and Chemical Composition of Pistacia atlantica subsp. kurdica (Zohary) Rech. F. gum: Effect of Geographical Region and Tree Gender

Pistacia atlantica subsp. kurdica (PAK) is one of three species in Iran and is indigenous to Kurdistan province. The aim of this reaserch was survey of the chemical composition and physical properties of oleoresin gum extracted from different gender of trees in six regions of Kurdistan province (Armardeh, Kanisoor, Marivan, Dezli, Hawraman and Sarvabad). Principal component analysis (PCA) assisted in analyzing the dependence of geographical regions and tree gender with the variations of chemical components of gum. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were observed in the surface tension, interfacial tension and intrinsic viscosity contents according to gender and geographic region. Spearman rank correlation coefficient results showed significantly positive and negative correlations between gum chemical components and physical characteristics. According to the obtained results and also various medical, cosmetic and food applications of oleoresin, when collecting, the separating extracted oleoresins from trees different regions andgenera is necessary

Effect of electroplating temperature on microstructure, corrosion, and wear behavior of Ni-P-W-TiO2 coating

108-115Nickel-phosphorus-titanium oxide coating is fabricated on the AISI 304L steel substrate using the electroplating method. Electroplating is performed at temperatures of 55°C, 60°C, and 65°C, and the effect of electroplating temperature on microstructure, corrosion behavior, and wear behavior is investigated. The coatings are characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In order to investigate corrosion resistance, potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) tests are performed in a 3.5% NaCl aqueous solution. A pin-on-disk test is employed to investigate the wear resistance of uncoated and coated samples. Sample micro-hardness is also measured by the Vickers hardness test. The results of potentiodynamic polarization and EIS tests show that the coating created at the temperature of 60°C has the highest corrosion resistance (7058 Ω.cm2) compared with the samples coated at temperatures of 55°C (2115 Ω.cm2) and 65°C (2289 Ω.cm2). Moreover, the results of the wear and micro-hardness test show that the composite coating formed at the temperature of 60°C has the highest wear resistance and micro-hardness (677 Vickers) compared with the samples coated at temperatures of 55°C (411 Vickers) and 65°C (536 Vickers)

Effect of electroplating time on microstructure, corrosion and wear behaviour of Ni-P-W-TiO2 coating

Ni-P-W-TiO2 coating has been deposited on the AISI 304L steel substrate using the electroplating method. Electroplating has been performed at 30, 45, and 60 min, and the effect of electroplating time on microstructure, corrosion and wear behaviour has been investigated. The coatings have been characterized by use of scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In order to investigate corrosion resistance, potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) tests have been used in 3.5% of NaCl aqueous solution. A pin on disk test has been used to test the wear resistance of uncoated and coated samples. Sample micro-hardness has also been measured by the Vickers hardness test. Examination of the microstructure has shown that the best time for deposition is 45 min. The results of potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy tests are also consistent with microscopic images, and the results have shown that the coating created within 45 min has the highest corrosion resistance (7058 Ω.cm2) compared to coated sample within 30 (4142 Ω.cm2) and 60 (3059 Ω.cm2) minutes. Also, the results of the wear test and micro-hardness have shown that composite coating formed within 45 minutes has the highest wear resistance and micro-hardness (677 Vickers) compared to coated sample within 30 (257 Vickers) and 60 (638 Vickers) minutes

Physical Properties and Chemical Composition of Pistacia atlantica subsp. kurdica (Zohary) Rech. F. gum: Effect of Geographical Region and Tree Gender

Pistacia atlantica subsp. kurdica (PAK) is one of three species in Iran and is indigenous to Kurdistan province. The aim of this reaserch was survey of the chemical composition and physical properties of oleoresin gum extracted from different gender of trees in six regions of Kurdistan province (Armardeh, Kanisoor, Marivan, Dezli, Hawraman and Sarvabad). Principal component analysis (PCA) assisted in analyzing the dependence of geographical regions and tree gender with the variations of chemical components of gum. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were observed in the surface tension, interfacial tension and intrinsic viscosity contents according to gender and geographic region. Spearman rank correlation coefficient results showed significantly positive and negative correlations between gum chemical components and physical characteristics. According to the obtained results and also various medical, cosmetic and food applications of oleoresin, when collecting, the separating extracted oleoresins from trees different regions andgenera is necessary