Transcription analysis on response of swine lung to H1N1 swine influenza virus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>As a mild, highly contagious, respiratory disease, swine influenza always damages the innate immune systems, and increases susceptibility to secondary infections which results in considerable morbidity and mortality in pigs. Nevertheless, the systematical host response of pigs to swine influenza virus infection remains largely unknown. To explore it, a time-course gene expression profiling was performed for comprehensive analysis of the global host response induced by H1N1 swine influenza virus in pigs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>At the early stage of H1N1 swine virus infection, pigs were suffering mild respiratory symptoms and pathological changes. A total of 268 porcine genes showing differential expression (DE) after inoculation were identified to compare with the controls on day 3 post infection (PID) (Fold change ≥ 2, p < 0.05). The DE genes were involved in many vital functional classes, mainly including signal transduction, immune response, inflammatory response, cell adhesion and cell-cell signalling. Noticeably, the genes associated with immune and inflammatory response showed highly overexpressed. Through the pathway analysis, the significant pathways mainly concerned with Cell adhesion molecules, Cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, Toll-like receptor signaling pathway and MAPK signaling pathway, suggesting that the host took different strategies to activate these pathways so as to prevent virus infections at the early stage. However, on PID 7, the predominant function classes of DE genes included signal transduction, metabolism, transcription, development and transport. Furthermore, the most significant pathways switched to PPAR signaling pathway and complement and coagulation cascades, showing that the host might start to repair excessive tissue damage by anti-inflammatory functions. These results on PID 7 demonstrated beneficial turnover for host to prevent excessive inflammatory damage and recover the normal state by activating these clusters of genes.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study shows how the target organ responds to H1N1 swine influenza virus infection in pigs. The observed gene expression profile could help to screen the potential host agents for reducing the prevalence of swine influenza virus and further understand the molecular pathogenesis associated with H1N1 infection in pigs.</p

Optimism bias evaluation and decision-making risk forecast on bridge project cost based on reference class forecasting: Evidence from China

The high uncertainty of megaproject results in increasing complexity in the decisionmaking and ultimately leads to different degrees of cost overrun and project delays. One of the critical reasons for cost overrun and delay is the optimism bias of decision makers. Although the previous literature has analyzed the cost overrun distribution of bridges, roads and other infrastructure projects, there is still a lack of research on how to make more reasonable decisions according to the cost overrun risk and cost-benefit theory by considering the expectation of cost overrun. Therefore, this paper firstly measures optimism bias by conducting the field research and interviews regarding over 30 long bridges in China. On the basis of the optimism bias measure, a decision-making risk model of bridge projects with the expectation of cost overrun has been built. Then the paper takes Hangzhou Bay Bridge as an example to discuss the influence of cost overrun predication, implicit benefits and the project's operation time on NPV results. Moreover, the probability of project unbuildability risk under different degrees of cost optimism bias has also been discussed. Finally, suggestions for risk forecast are provided for decision-makers to make more objective and comprehensive judgments.Integral Design and Managemen