Since 1997, several epizootic avian influenza viruses (AIVs) have been transmitted to humans, causing diseases and even deaths. The recent emergence of severe human infections with AIV (H7N9) in China has raised concerns about efficient interpersonal viral transmission, polygenic traits in viral pathogenicity and the management of newly emerging strains. The symptoms associated with viral infection are different in various AI strains: H5N1 and newly emerged H7N9 induce severe pneumonia and related complications in patients, while some H7 and H9 subtypes cause only conjunctivitis or mild respiratory symptoms. The virulence and tissue tropism of viruses as well as the host responses contribute to the pathogenesis of human AIV infection. Several preventive and therapeutic approaches have been proposed to combat AIV infection, including antiviral drugs such as M2 inhibitors, neuraminidase inhibitors, RNA polymerase inhibitors, attachment inhibitors and signal-transduction inhibitors etc. In this article, we summarize the recent progress in researches on the epidemiology, clinical features, pathogenicity determinants, and available or potential antivirals of AIV.

Colour preference for lighting is generally influenced by three kinds of contextual factors, the light, the object and the observer. In this study, a series of psychophysical experiments were conducted to investigate and compare the effect of certain factors on colour preference, including spectral power distribution of light, lighting application, observers’ personal colour preference, regional cultural difference and gender difference. LED lights with different correlated colour temperatures were used to illuminate a wide selection of objects. Participant response was quantified by a 7-point rating method or a 5-level ranking method. It was found that the preferred illumination for different objects exhibited a similar trend and that the influence of light was significantly stronger than that of other factors. Therefore, we conclude that the light itself (rather than, e.g. the objects that are viewed) is the most crucial factor for predicting which light, among several candidates with different correlated colour temperatures, an observer will prefer. In addition, some of the gamut-based colour quality metrics correlated well with the participants’ response, which corroborates the view that colour preference is strongly influenced by colour saturation. The familiarity of the object affects the ratings for each experiment while the colour of the objects also influences colour preference.

In this study, two psychophysical experiments, one on colour preference and the other on colour discrimination, were conducted. To investigate the colour preference for blue jeans, 27 subjects with normal colour vision were asked to rate their visual appreciation of seven pairs of jeans with a colour gradient pattern. Nine LEDs, with uniformly sampled correlated colour temperature (CCT) values ranging from 2500 K to 6500 K, were used to illuminate the jeans. These lights produced a constant illuminance of approximately 200 lux, and their colour rendering indexes were between 79 and 91. In addition, using a Farnsworth-Munsell (FM)-100 Hue Test, the blue-region colour discrimination of 42 observers was assessed for five LEDs of the same type but with different CCTs (2500 K–6500 K, 1000 K interval). The results indicate that there is an optimum CCT of 5500 K for jeans, at which observers were found to exhibit the greatest capability for colour discrimination and the highest rating for colour preference. Interestingly, a significant gender difference was found in this study, which had not been observed in our previous work with quite similar experimental settings but different experimental objects. The findings of this study should provide a deeper understanding for the lighting design of shopping malls for jeans.