It is believed that Borna disease virus (BDV), an etiological agent of progressive polioencephalomyelitis in horses and sheep, is closely associated with psychiatric disorders in humans since the prevalence of BDV is higher in psychiatric patients than in blood donors. We investigated whether or not BDVs in humans are derived from infected domestic animals, by characterizing the BDVs in blood donors and horses derived from the same region of Hokkaido island, Japan. The seroprevalences (2.6 to 14.8%) of BDV were significantly higher in the blood donors from four regions where most horse farms are concentrated, compared with only 1% in the blood donors from Sapporo, the largest city in Hokkaido.BDV RNA was also detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from most of the seropositive horses and blood donors by nested reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. These findings support that BDV may be horizontally transmitted, at least in part, from infected horses to humans.
Steel production requires iron ore and coal, and accompanies greenhouse gas emissions. The annual production of the world crude steel increased from 0.9 to 1.3 billion tonnes since 2002, and is anticipated to increase due to the continuous economic growth in developing countries especially in Asia.About two thirds of the crude steel is produced by BF-BOF route whose ratio in the total crude steel production has gradually been increasing. The BF-BOF process is an excellent process in terms of productivity and energy efficiency, the process, however requires high grade iron ore and coal, and the large steel production by the BF-BOF route will accelerate the exhaustion of the high grade raw materials. The CO2 emissions are also anticipated to increase as does the steel production, since approximately 2 tonnes of CO2 is generated per tonne of steel by the BF-BOF process.On the other hand, world in-use steel stock has been increasing year by year due to the continuous large steel production, and will be recycled as a large amount of scrap to the market in the future.Steelmaking by feeding Iron Nuggets to EAF together with the scrap can significantly decrease the CO2 emissions while satisfying the steel quality by diluting the impurities containing in the scrap, as well as conserving the natural resources of high grade iron ore and coal. Steel production by using the direct reduction processes together with the scrap is a suitable and reasonable solution for a sustainable iron and steel making.
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