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The present study explored the effect of explicit Communication Strategies (CSs) instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ usage of these strategies in their educational tasks at different proficiency levels. To conduct the study, the researchers chose 20 Iranian EFL teachers and their 150 students at two universities in Tabriz, Iran. Accepting a mixed-methods design, the researchers used a questionnaire, an English language proficiency test, and a semi-structured interview to collect the required data. The findings indicated that after receiving communication strategy instruction, teachers and students had positive attitudes toward the usefulness of CSs in the language learning process. However, learners in different proficiency levels had different preferences toward CSs. While advanced learners showed their inclination to use compensation strategies, intermediate learners preferred to use metacognitive. Elementary learners favoured using cognitive CSs. These differences can be attributed to individual differences and contextual factors that suggest pedagogical implications for both teachers and students and provide tentative subjects for further studies.

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A method based on Machine Vision System (MVS) is hereby employed to evaluate grape drying through an assessment of the fruit’s shrinkage and quality during the dehydration. Experimental data as well as captured images are obtained at an air velocity of 1.4 m s^-1 and different drying temperatures (50, 60, 70ºC). The results indicated the effect of temperature on the moisture content, shrinkage and color changes. The moisture content along with color changes (ΔE) were modeled and linear regressions applied to correlate the fruit’s shrinkage as well as color features to the moisture content. The results obtained, displayed that there existed good linear relationships between the fruit’s moisture content, and shrinkage as well as color. The results also revealed that the moisture content vs. quality of the grape could be online evaluated through machine vision during the drying process.

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With the development of micro-mechanical systems, human became interested in concentrating on the small-scale impact on the flow and heat transfer in micro-channels. A micro-channel is required for a gas sensor to guide the gas flow. Reducing the size of channel has lead the scientist to concentrate on micro-sensor. Metal oxide gas micro-sensors are used to detect gases such as O3, SO2, CO2, NO, NH3, CH4 and etc. Metal oxide gas micro-sensors are small in size, low cost in fabrication and consume little power. The purpose of the current study is to numerically investigate the micro-channel wall thickness and diameter on gas inlet temperature under the influence of thermal creeping. The governing nonlinear differential equations, mass, momentum, energy, and species, are coupled and solved by a commercial code. The channel is assumed to be two dimensional. Since the Knudsen number is between 0.01 and 0.1, the slip boundary condition, Maxwell equation, is utilized. The result shows that as wall thickness increases the gas inlet temperature increases and temperature difference between gas inlet and outlet decreases. On the other hand as channel diameter decreases the gas inlet temperature increases.