Publications by authors named "Shitong Hou"

PRRS is a viral disease that profoundly impacts the global swine industry, causing significant economic losses. The development of a novel and effective vaccine is crucial to halt the rapid transmission of this virus. There have been several vaccination attempts against PRRSV using both traditional and alternative vaccine design development approaches.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious and infectious disease affecting cloven-hoofed animals. Disease control is complicated by its highly contagious nature and antigenic diversity. Host microRNAs (miRNAs) are post-transcriptional regulators that either promote or repress viral replications in virus infection.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Modern fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP)-reinforced concrete structures are excepted to achieve superior mechanical performances and long service lives, even in harsh service environments. Hybrid FRP material could potentially meet this goal with its relatively high strength-to-cost ratio. This paper presents an experimental study on the compressive behavior of concrete cylinders confined by a novel hybrid fiber-reinforced polymer (HFRP) spiral.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is a highly contagious viral disease that mainly infects cloven-hoofed animals. Propagation of FMDV by cell culture is an important method to preserve viral biological and antigenic characteristics, which is crucial in FMD monitoring and vaccine production. However, only a few cell lines are sensitive to FMDV, and there is still a lot of room for improvement.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Underwater structural damage inspection has mainly relied on diver-based visual inspection, and emerging technologies include the use of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for improved efficiency. With the goal of performing an autonomous and robotic underwater inspection, a novel Tactile Imaging System for Underwater Inspection (TISUE) is designed, prototyped, and tested in this paper. The system has two major components, including the imaging subsystem and the manipulation subsystem.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important regulatory roles during interactions between virus pathogens and host cells, but whether and how they work in the case of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is less understood. Based on a microarray-based miRNA profiling in the porcine kidney cell line PK-15, we identified 36 differentially expressed host miRNAs at the early stage of FMDV infection, among which miR-1307 was significantly induced. Functional characterization demonstrated that miR-1307 attenuated FMDV replication.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF