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Although there are many studies addressing the relationship of learning style to outcomes in engineering courses, few have attempted direct cross-cultural comparisons. This study investigates similarities and differences in the learning styles of computer science and engineering students at a Middle Eastern institution and an American university in the Midwestern United States. Comparative data on student learning style profiles and course outcomes suggest that, despite vast cultural differences, strong similarities exist between learning styles of these students. Seemingly, a consistent pattern in how these students learn across cultures also exists. These findings have significant implications for the creation of globally effective teaching materials. Index Terms--Computer engineering, computer science, learning styles, programming, training and education.

The development of efficient algorithms to process the different forms of transitive-closure (TC) queries within the context of large database systems has recently attracted a large volume of research efforts. In this paper, we present two new algorithms suitable for processing one of these forms, the so called strong partially instantiated transitive closure, in which one of the query's arguments is instantiated to a set of constants and the processing of which yields a set of tuples that draw their values from both of the query's instantiated and uninstantiated arguments. These algorithms avoids the redundant computations and high storage cost found in a number of similar algorithms. Using simulation, this paper compares the performance of the new algorithms with those found in literature and shows clearly the superiority of the new algorithms. Index Terms - Database algorithms, deductive databases, performance evaluation, recursive rules, and transitive closure queries.