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T his study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of using various types of feedback on students' writings at the primary school to enhance their ability to express their ideas. This study adopted the quasi experimental design. The participants of the study were forty students in the sixth year primary school. They were divided randomly into three experimental groups. The first one received oral conferences feedback while the second one got peer feedback. The third group was provided the traditional written feedback directly by teachers. Instruments of the study were a pre-post EFL writing test and a writing rubric to assess pupils' writing according to the identified sub-skills. The instruction using various types of feedback was applied in the first term of academic year (2016/2017) and lasted for two months. The findings suggested that using Oral Conferences Feedback affects students' writing in a positive way than providing only the traditional written feedback from teachers or Peer Feedback. Oral Conferences Feedback enhances students' motivation to practise writing skill. It provides opportunities for pupils to negotiate the meaning and clarify teachers' written Feedback.

The current study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of using a proposed virtual environment based on DAISY technology for developing EFL reading comprehension skills of preparatory stage visually- impaired pupils and reducing their cognitive load while reading. Based on the literature review, related studies and content specification of first year prep, seven EFL reading comprehension sub-skills were determined. Two intact groups were assigned as experimental studying reading through the proposed E- environment; and the other as control studying through the traditional method. Instruments of the study included: a reading comprehension test, and a cognitive load scale for measuring those pupils’ cognitive load level before and after the experiment. The content of the units was taught to pupils through the proposed virtual environment. Results revealed that the proposed virtual environment had a great effect on enhancing the pupils’ EFL reading skills and reducing their cognitive load while reading as there were statistically significant differences between each of the pre- and post- administrations of both the reading comprehension test and the cognitive load scale. The study also proposed some recommendations and suggestions for further research. Key Words: DAISY Technology, EFL Reading comprehension skills, Cognitive load, the Visually-Impaired. Introduction: Learning a foreign language is important for everybody, particularly if the person’s native language is not very widespread, and it is a demand for communication in modern cognitive load level before and after the experiment. The content of the units was taught to pupils through the proposed virtual environment. Results revealed that the proposed virtual environment had a great effect on enhancing the pupils’ EFL reading skills and reducing their cognitive load while reading as there were statistically significant differences between each of the pre- and post- administrations of both the reading comprehension test and the cognitive load scale. The study also proposed some recommendations and suggestions for further research. Key Words: DAISY Technology, EFL Reading comprehension skills, Cognitive load, the Visually-Impaired.

Location-Based Services (LBSs) are increasingly popular in today’s society. LBSs are used in a broad variety of applications such as social networks with location sharing. LBSs can help people enjoying a convenient life and has attracted considerable interest recently. However, the privacy issues of LBS are still challenging today. Usually LBS Providers (LBSPs) offer user privacy protection statement to assure users that their private location information would not be given away. However, many LBSs run-on third-party cloud infrastructures. So, the privacy is still in a big problem. While a large number of privacy-preserving solutions for LBS have been proposed, nowadays most of these solutions do not consider the fact that LBS is typically cloud-based. Aiming at the challenges, in this paper, we present a new efficient Privacy Preserving LBS Query scheme based on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (PPQ_FHE). In PPQ_FHE scheme, the LBSP’s data are outsourced to the cloud server in an encrypted manner, and a registered user can get accurate LBS query results without divulging his/her location information to the LBSP and cloud Server Provider (CSP). Specifically, based on improving FHE over Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). We provide a security analysis to show that PPQ_FHE scheme preserves privacy in the presence of different threats. PPQ_FHE analysis and evaluation results demonstrate that proposed PPQ_FHE scheme can preserve the privacy of the LBS users in an efficient and secure way. The results prove the feasibility and efficiency of PPQ_FHE scheme in terms of query's response time, query accuracy, throughput and query overhead.

The rhesus monkey virus Simian Virus 40 (SV40) is a member of the polyomavirus family. It was introduced inadvertently to human populations through contaminated polio vaccine during the years 1956-1963, can induce experimental tumors in animals and transform human cells in culture. SV40 DNA has been identified in mesothelioma and other human tumors in some but not all studies. We tested prediagnostic sera from 49 mesothelioma cases and 147 matched controls for antibodies against the viral capsid protein VP1 and the large T antigen of SV40 and of the closely related human polyomaviruses BK and JC, and for SV40 DNA. Cases and controls were identified among donors to the Janus Serum Bank, which was linked to the Cancer Registry of Norway. Antibodies were analyzed by recently developed multiplex serology based on recombinantly expressed fusions of glutathione-S transferase with viral proteins as antigens combined with fluorescent bead technology. BKV and JCV specific antibodies cross-reactive with SV40 were preabsorbed with the respective VP1 proteins. Sera showing SV40 reactivity after preabsorption with BKV and JCV VP1 were further analyzed in SV40 neutralization assays. SV40 DNA was analyzed by SV40 specific polymerase chain reactions. The odds ratio for being a case when tested positive for SV40 VP1 in the antibody capture assay was 1.5 (95% CI 0.6-3.7) and 2.0 (95% CI 0.6-7.0) when only strongly reactive sera where counted as positive. Although some sera could neutralize SV40, preabsorption with BKV and JCV VP1 showed for all such sera that this neutralizing activity was due to cross-reacting antibodies and did not represent truly SV40-specific antibodies. No viral DNA was found in the sera. No significant association between SV40 antibody response in prediagnostic sera and risk of mesothelioma was seen. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.