The Potential Economic Impact of Avian Flu Pandemic on Taiwan

This study analyzes the potential consequences of an outbreak of avian influenza (H5N1) on Taiwan¡¦s macro economy and individual industries. Both the Input-Output (IO) Analysis Model and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model are used to simulate the possible damage brought by lowering domestic consumption, export, and labor supply. The simulation results indicates that if the disease is confined within the poultry sector, then the impact on real GDP is around -0.1%~-0.4%. Once it becomes a human-to-human pandemic, the IO analysis suggests that the potential impacts on real GDP would be as much as -4.2%~-5.9% while labor demand would decrease 4.9%~6.4%. In the CGE analysis, which allows for resource mobility and substitutions through price adjustments, the real GDP and labor demand would contract 2.0%~2.4% and 2.2%~2.4%, respectively, and bringing down consumer prices by 3%. As for the individual sector, the outbreak will not only damage the poultry sector and its upstream and downstream industries, but also affect the service sectors including wholesale, retail, trade, air transportation, restaurants, as well as healthcare services. These results can be used to support public investment in animal disease control measures.Avian Flu Pandemic, Input-output Model, Computable General Equilibrium Model, Livestock Production/Industries,

Study of Effector CD8+ T Cell Interactions with Cortical Neurons in Response to Inflammation in Mouse Brain Slices and Neuronal Cultures

Cytotoxic CD8+ T cells contribute to neuronal damage in inflammatory and degenerative CNS disorders, such as multiple sclerosis (MS). The mechanism of cortical damage associated with CD8+ T cells is not well understood. We developed in vitro cell culture and ex vivo brain slice co-culture models of brain inflammation to study CD8+ T cell–neuron interactions. To induce inflammation, we applied T cell conditioned media, which contains a variety of cytokines, during CD8+ T cell polyclonal activation. Release of IFNγ and TNFα from co-cultures was verified by ELISA, confirming an inflammatory response. We also visualized the physical interactions between CD8+ T cells and cortical neurons using live-cell confocal imaging. The imaging revealed that T cells reduced their migration velocity and changed their migratory patterns under inflammatory conditions. CD8+ T cells increased their dwell time at neuronal soma and dendrites in response to added cytokines. These changes were seen in both the in vitro and ex vivo models. The results confirm that these in vitro and ex vivo models provide promising platforms for the study of the molecular details of neuron–immune cell interactions under inflammatory conditions, which allow high-resolution live microscopy and are readily amenable to experimental manipulation

PREDICTING COMPANY REVENUE TREND USING FINANCIAL NEWS

Text data analysis has found its way in many applications, and our study focuses on the financial fields. Previous studies in financial indicator prediction are mostly based on econometric models. In recent years, with the advance of text mining techniques, more and more studies employ financial news as the data source for analysis. Most studies, however, aim to predict stock prices, identify the trend of stock market, and detect company bankruptcy or company fraud. We observe that company’ revenue, which can imply the company\u27s cash flow and market share, is indeed an important financial indicator. In our study, we identify a few features that potentially impact company’s revenue and further propose an approach to deriving feature values from financial news data. Specifically, we develop a lexicon-based method that involves the automatic expansion of existing financial sentiment dictionary and the aggregation of sentiment values. Preliminary experimental results show that we are able to predict the revenue trend through the news articles in the last quarter with the accuracy up to 80%

PDA: Pooled DNA analyzer

BACKGROUND: Association mapping using abundant single nucleotide polymorphisms is a powerful tool for identifying disease susceptibility genes for complex traits and exploring possible genetic diversity. Genotyping large numbers of SNPs individually is performed routinely but is cost prohibitive for large-scale genetic studies. DNA pooling is a reliable and cost-saving alternative genotyping method. However, no software has been developed for complete pooled-DNA analyses, including data standardization, allele frequency estimation, and single/multipoint DNA pooling association tests. This motivated the development of the software, 'PDA' (Pooled DNA Analyzer), to analyze pooled DNA data. RESULTS: We develop the software, PDA, for the analysis of pooled-DNA data. PDA is originally implemented with the MATLAB(® )language, but it can also be executed on a Windows system without installing the MATLAB(®). PDA provides estimates of the coefficient of preferential amplification and allele frequency. PDA considers an extended single-point association test, which can compare allele frequencies between two DNA pools constructed under different experimental conditions. Moreover, PDA also provides novel chromosome-wide multipoint association tests based on p-value combinations and a sliding-window concept. This new multipoint testing procedure overcomes a computational bottleneck of conventional haplotype-oriented multipoint methods in DNA pooling analyses and can handle data sets having a large pool size and/or large numbers of polymorphic markers. All of the PDA functions are illustrated in the four bona fide examples. CONCLUSION: PDA is simple to operate and does not require that users have a strong statistical background. The software is available at

Enhancing crispr-mediated CHO cell antibody productivity through concentrated fed- batch or continuous perfusion

Integrated continuous bioprocessing technology has high productivity and cost saving benefit, which combines the upstream (Cell culture) and downstream (Purification) processing. The continuous bioprocessing based biopharmaceutical manufacturing is more profitable than traditional batch/fed-batch processing in increasing quality and quantity. The goal of this study focuses on the upstream continuous process development with crispr-mediated targeted gene integration CHO cell line producing monoclonal antibody. In the upstream processing, we developed concentrated fed-batch culture (CFB) and high density perfusion culture in 2-5 L bioreactor with a cell retention device (alternating tangential flow, ATF). With our concentrated fed-batch culture system, the VCD achieved 8.4x107 cells/m in 11days operation with 1VVD producing antibody 3.3-fold that of fed-batch culture system; in the high density perfusion culture system, the VCD achieved 5x107 cells/ml in 28 days operation with 1 VVD producing antibody greater than 1g/L/day with on the Day10 and keep the cell density, viability and productivity more than 1 month