An Updated Review of Porcine Deltacoronavirus in Terms of Prevalence, Pathogenicity, Pathogenesis and Antiviral Strategy

The recent experience with SARS-COV-2 has raised our alarm about the cross-species transmissibility of coronaviruses and the emergence of new coronaviruses. Knowledge of this family of viruses needs to be constantly updated. Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV), a newly emerging member of the genus Deltacoronavirus in the family Coronaviridae, is a swine enteropathogen that causes diarrhea in pigs and may lead to death in severe cases. Since PDCoV diarrhea first broke out in the United States in early 2014, PDCoV has been detected in many countries, such as South Korea, Japan and China. More importantly, PDCoV can also infect species other than pigs, and infections have even been reported in children, highlighting its potential for cross-species transmission. A thorough and systematic knowledge of the epidemiology and pathogenesis of PDCoV will not only help us control PDCoV infection, but also enable us to discover the common cellular pathways and key factors of coronaviruses. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge on the prevalence, pathogenicity and infection dynamics, pathogenesis and immune evasion strategies of PDCoV. The existing anti-PDCoV strategies and corresponding mechanisms of PDCoV infection are also introduced, aiming to provide suggestions for the prevention and treatment of PDCoV and zoonotic diseases.

Student Voices on the Use of International Telecollaboration and Sustainability During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown up many challenges to international cooperation, to the promotion of sustainable development, and indeed, to education. This chapter describes a telecollaborative project between university students in Japan and China. The students planned, wrote, recorded, and produced video podcasts on the theme of sustainable development, which were then exchanged via a password-protected, online, collaborative platform. On completion of the project, students wrote reflective essays, which are used here to gain insights into their impressions of topics such as sustainable development and telecollaboration. Results indicate that students improved their understanding of sustainability in addition to developing video editing and podcasting production skills. They also improved their pronunciation as well as other English skills. Overall, they were proud of their podcasts and enjoyed collaborating online with students from another country.

Does Innovation, Investment and Trade influence Labour Productivity? Empirical Evidence from Selected Countries

Labour productivity is linked to improved living standards of a country, where higher productivity is usually seen as a competitive advantage for the country. The current study aims to identify the influence of investment, trade, and innovation on labour productivity using multi-regression. The sample involved four countries: the United States, Russia, Japan, and China. The results reveal varying degrees of relationships between labour productivity and other variables. In general, investment showed a strong correlation, trade showed a weaker relationship, and innovation showed insignificant relationship. When needed, the policymakers may consider raising labour productivity by improving investment or trade.

Unknown Suns: Laszlo Hudec, Antonin Raymond and the Rising of a Modern Architecture for Eastern Asia

The purpose of this article is to disclose the strenuous efforts of Laszlo Hudec in China and Antonin Raymond in Japan and India to create a modern architectural stance by heralding an incipient space syntax. In the turn of the 19th Century, for dynastic, politic and economic reasons, Eastern Asia had very little modern Architecture. It is a surprising fact that, out of happenstance, two European architects Antonin Raymond and Laszlo Hudec, had to intervene to remedy this situation, to the point of becoming 20th Century icons in Japan and China. Their fruitful careers spanned over thirty years and included locations, like Tamil Nadu or the Philippines. The Oriental territories were not an easy ground for the bold architectural achievements that they produced. Despite of faraway strangeness and uncountable personal losses, in revolutions and wars, which eventually forced them both to leave for the United States of America and never to return, they were successful in the manner of establishing a broad avenue for Modern Asian Architecture which is still recognisable today thanks to their systematic approach. However, theirs is an endangered heritage and the intention of this article is to be a just remembrance of in which way such actions could be performed, how they predated by many years a syntactic approach to architectural composition and why their legacy should be preserved.

Altruistic or Egocentric, or even Hypocritic? - A Cross-Cultural Study of the Safety Priority Choice of Autonomous Car

How should the autonomous car behave when faced with an unavoidable accident? In particular, in situations where either the driver or the pedestrian will inevitably be killed, whose safety should the autonomous car prioritize? There can be cases in which sacrificing the driver would be the best solution to maximize lives and minimize deaths. And we also need to consider the possibility that the victim could be ourselves. In this cross-cultural study with participants from US, Japan, and China, we investigated the drivers' safety setting preferences and found some interesting cultural differences in such preferences.

Altruistic or Egocentric, or even Hypocritic? - A Cross-Cultural Study of the Safety Priority Choice of Autonomous Car

How should the autonomous car behave when faced with an unavoidable accident? In particular, in situations where either the driver or the pedestrian will inevitably be killed, whose safety should the autonomous car prioritize? There can be cases in which sacrificing the driver would be the best solution to maximize lives and minimize deaths. And we also need to consider the possibility that the victim could be ourselves. In this cross-cultural study with participants from US, Japan, and China, we investigated the drivers' safety setting preferences and found some interesting cultural differences in such preferences.

Research Progress on the Development of Domestic and Foreign Tourism Road

This paper compares and analyzes the development process of tourism road in the United States, Germany, Japan and China, and summarizes the relevant research results of tourism road with great significance so far. From the development of other countries, we put forward suggestions for our country's tourism roads. The goal is to explore the scientific and reasonable development path of our country's tourism roads, and build our country's tourism road design and evaluation system.

The Sogdians and Their Religions in Turfan: Evidence in the Catalogue of the Middle Iranian Fragments in Sogdian Script of the Berlin Turfan Collection

We are able to verify the variety of the religions of the Sogdians by the text fragments found in the Turfan oasis (East Turkistan, today’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China). They are housed in several libraries and museums in Europe, Japan, and China. The Berlin Turfan collection contains a large part of them. The catalogue of the Sogdian text fragments in the indigenous Sogdian script of that collection was completed in 2018. The fragments represent parts of the literature of Christian, Manichaean and Buddhist communities in Turfan from the eighth to eleventh century CE. The best represented religion in the homeland of the Sogdians is a type of the Zoroastrian religion, as evidenced by archaeological findings and wall paintings. However, there are only very few texts found in Turfan and other locations in Central Asia which could be interpreted as Zoroastrian. The discussion about the religious affiliation of those texts is going on. The religious background of some other text fragments from Turfan is difficult to identify as well. Two of these examples will be published here. A remarkable feature of the religious communities in Turfan is the multilingual character of their literature, reflecting the development and path of the believers and the multi-ethnical structure of the community.