Pathogenesis of Korean SapelovirusA in piglets and chicks.

Sapelovirus A (SV-A), formerly known as porcine sapelovirus as a member of a new genus Sapelovirus, is known to cause enteritis, pneumonia, polioencephalomyelitis and reproductive disorders in pigs. We have recently identified α2,3-linked sialic acid on GD1a ganglioside as a functional SV-A receptor rich in the cells of pigs and chickens. However, the role of GD1a in viral pathogenesis remains elusive. Here, we demonstrated that a Korean SV-A strain could induce diarrhoea and intestinal pathology in piglets but not in chicks. Moreover, this Korean SV-A strain had mild extra-intestinal tropisms appearing as mild, non-suppurative myelitis, encephalitis and pneumonia in piglets, but not in chicks. By real-time reverse transcription (RT) PCR, higher viral RNA levels were detected in faecal samples than in sera or extra-intestinal organs from virus-inoculated piglets. Immunohistochemistry confirmed that high viral antigens were detected in the epithelial cells of intestines from virus-inoculated piglets but not from chicks. This Korean SV-A strain could bind the cultured cell lines originated from various species, but replication occurred only in cells of porcine origin. These data indicated that this Korean SV-A strain could replicate and induce pathology in piglets but not in chicks, suggesting that additional porcine-specific factors are required for virus entry and replication. In addition, this Korean SV-A strain is enteropathogenic, but could spread to the bloodstream from the gut and disseminate to extra-intestinal organs and tissues. These results will contribute to our understanding of SV-A pathogenesis so that efficient anti-sapelovirus drugs and vaccines could be developed in the future.This study was supported by a grant (2014R1A2A2A01004292) of the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Bio-industry Technology Development Program (315021-04) through the Korea Institute of Planning and Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (iPET) funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and Korea Basic Science Institute grant (C33730), Republic of Korea. IG is a Wellcome Senior Fellow supported by the Wellcome Trust (097997/Z/11/Z). Chonnam National University provided funding to Mun-Il Kang (2012). The Mab against SV-A capsid protein was received as a generous gift from Dr. M. Dauber (Friedrich-Loeffler Institute, Germany).This is the accepted version of the article. The final version is available from the Microbiology Society via http://dx.doi.org/10.1099/jgv.0.00057

Estimating Willingness to Pay for Livestock Industry Support Policies to Solve Livestock's Externality Problems in Korea

This research examines the externalities of livestock production by classifying them into positive and negative effects and measures the willingness to pay for livestock industry support policy using the CVM. The survey result reveals that 65.4% of the population considers that a positive function of livestock production is more important than its negative function. They are willing to pay 7,495-10,314 won per household every year to expand positive externalities of the livestock production and to reduce its negative externalities. The value of the externalities of livestock production is estimated to be approximately 134.5–185.1 billion won

New Thermal Design Strategy to Achieve an 80-kg-Class Lightweight X-Band Active SAR Small Satellite S-STEP

The main objective of the S-STEP (the Small Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Technology Experimental Project (S-STEP)) mission is developing an 80-kg-class active X-band SAR observation small satellite. For lighter, smaller, better, and cheaper development of the S-STEP system, a new thermal design strategy is essential. Therefore, we proposed a new thermal design strategy in this study. The main features of the proposed thermal design involve the minimization of heater power consumption by optimizing environmental heat fluxes on the satellite, the provision of long-term SAR imaging duration in both right- and left-looking modes, and the use of a lightweight flexible graphite sheet as a thermal interface for some high-power instruments. These features contribute to minimizing the satellite’s mass budget through heater power minimization and achieving on-orbit system performance of S-STEP. The effectiveness of the proposed thermal design was numerically verified by on-orbit thermal analysis of the S-STEP system. In addition, the thermal design on a key payload component and the multifunctional transmit/receive module structure were verified through a space-simulated thermal vacuum test