National Income Inequality, Society, and Multinational Enterprises

This chapter calls for understanding the perspective of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on international differences in income inequality. The authors set a research agenda on how national differences in income inequality influence MNE expansion strategies. Applying a transaction cost framework, both negative and positive economic outcomes of income inequality, from the MNE\u27s perspective, are identified. Low levels of income inequality may deter foreign investment, as MNEs prefer countries where they incur lower levels of transaction costs arising from interactions with various market and non-market actors. However, the positive effect of income inequality on location attractiveness will likely diminish at higher levels of inequality when benefits are increasingly offset by additional monitoring, bargaining and security costs owing to instability and conflict. The chapter further explores the implications for level of MNE equity applied in the choice of entry mode under different levels of income inequality

National Income Inequality and International Business Expansion

We examine the extent to which host country income inequality influences multinational enterprises’ (MNE) expansion strategy for foreign production investment, depending on their specific strategic objectives. Applying a transaction cost framework, we predict that national income inequality has an inverted U-shaped relationship with foreign production investment. As inequality increases, MNEs accrue lower transaction costs arising from interactions with various local actors, leading to higher probability of investment. As income inequality increases further, its effect on location attractiveness will become negative, as its attraction effect is increasingly offset by additional monitoring, bargaining, and security costs owing to the more fractious nature of high inequality societies. In addition, we suggest that the impact of income inequality is contingent on investment objectives: The inverted U-shaped relationship is stronger for efficiency-seeking investment but weaker for market-seeking and competence-enhancing investments. We find substantial support for our hypotheses through an analysis of 27 years (1986-2012) of data on Japanese MNEs’ overseas production entries

Consensus under Misaligned Orientations

This paper presents a consensus algorithm under misaligned orientations, which is defined as (i) misalignment to global coordinate frame of local coordinate frames, (ii) biases in control direction or sensing direction, or (iii) misaligned virtual global coordinate frames. After providing a mathematical formulation, we provide some sufficient conditions for consensus or for divergence. Besides the stability analysis, we also conduct some analysis for convergence characteristics in terms of locations of eigenvalues. Through a number of numerical simulations, we would attempt to understand the behaviors of misaligned consensus dynamics.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figure

The Importance of CSR Strategic Fit and the Times of Economic Hardship

Previous research investigating the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance (CFP) revealed the importance of industry specificity. Drawing on strategic stakeholder theory, we argue that the strategic fit between CSR activities and value chain activities contributes to the industry-specific effects in the CSR-CFP relationship. Given the multidimensional nature of CSR, some CSR activities will be more impactful for certain industries than others, because industries differ in value chain activities and salient stakeholders. Specifically, we propose and test a set of hypotheses for two industries positioned on the different ends of the industry spectrum based on their ecological footprint – healthcare and resource extraction. We further examine the industry specificity of the CSR-CFP relationship by exploring external economic conditions (the 2008-2009 recession) as a boundary condition. Our study contributes to the extant literature by demonstrating the role of strategic fit between CSR and value chain activities in explaining the influence of CSR on CFP. Additional testing of this mechanism in the times of economic hardship adds a unique aspect to our theoretical and empirical contributions

Preparation of Antibacterial Color-Coated Steel Sheets

A simple method to fabricate antibacterial color-coated steel sheet was presented. The Ag-loaded TiO2 was well dispersed in steel coil coating coupled with some special additives, such as plasticizer, wetting dispersant, and flow agent, and finally became the part of coil coating without any negative influence on the properties of final products. The best process parameters were obtained by substantive trial experiments. Ag-loaded TiO2 with the addition of 2% (w/w) in steel coil coating not only improved antibacterial efficiency of the antibacterial color-coated sheet by reaching 99.99%, but also greatly increased the degradation percentage of methyl orange to 88% without decreasing physical properties. The antibacterial color-coated sheets are expected to be used as antimicrobial products in the construction industry considering its low cost and high effectiveness in inhibiting the growth of bacteria

Acute osimertinib exposure induces electrocardiac changes by synchronously inhibiting the currents of cardiac ion channels

Introduction: As the third generation of epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI), osimertinib has demonstrated more significant cardiotoxicity than previous generations of EGFR-TKIs. Investigating the mechanism of osimertinib cardiotoxicity can provide a reference for a comprehensive understanding of osimertinib-induced cardiotoxicity and the safety of the usage of this drug in clinical practice.Methods: Multichannel electrical mapping with synchronous ECG recording was used to investigate the effects of varying osimertinib concentrations on electrophysiological indicators in isolated Langendorff-perfused hearts of guinea pigs. Additionally, a whole-cell patch clamp was used to detect the impact of osimertinib on the currents of hERG channels transfected into HEK293 cells and the Nav1.5 channel transfected into Chinese hamster ovary cells and acute isolated ventricular myocytes from SD rats.Results: Acute exposure to varying osimertinib concentrations produced prolongation in the PR interval, QT interval, and QRS complex in isolated hearts of guinea pigs. Meanwhile, this exposure could concentration-dependently increase the conduction time in the left atrium, left ventricle, and atrioventricular without affecting the left ventricle conduction velocity. Osimertinib inhibited the hERG channel in a concentration-dependent manner, with an IC50 of 2.21 ± 1.29 μM. Osimertinib also inhibited the Nav1.5 channel in a concentration-dependent manner, with IC50 values in the absence of inactivation, 20% inactivation, and 50% inactivation of 15.58 ± 0.83 μM, 3.24 ± 0.09 μM, and 2.03 ± 0.57 μM, respectively. Osimertinib slightly inhibited the currents of L-type Ca2+ channels in a concentration-dependent manner in acutely isolated rat ventricular myocytes.Discussion: Osimertinib could prolong the QT interval; PR interval; QRS complex; left atrium, left ventricle, and atrioventricular conduction time in isolated guinea pig hearts. Furthermore, osimertinib could block the hERG, Nav1.5, and L-type Ca2+ channels in concentration-dependent manners. Therefore, these findings might be the leading cause of the cardiotoxicity effects, such as QT prolongation and decreased left ventricular ejection fraction

Regulatory Effect of High-Protein Diet on Circadian Rhythm of Lipid Metabolism in Obese Mice

This study aimed to investigate the regulatory effect of high-protein diet on circadian rhythm disturbances of lipid metabolism in obese mice induced by high-fat diet. Totally 120 specific pathogen-free (SPF)-grade C57BL/6J mice were randomly divided into normal, high-fat and high-fat/high-protein groups. The metabolic status of mice was monitored at the 4th and 12th week of intervention, and mice were sacrificed at 2, 8, 14, and 20 o’clock after completion of feeding. Lipid levels in blood and liver, the expression of genes related to fat anabolism and catabolism and the expression of circadian rhythm-related genes were measured, and circadian rhythm changes were analyzed. The results showed that high-fat feeding caused an increase in body mass and obesity index and a decrease in voluntary activity and caloric expenditure during the active period. The changes were accompanied by dyslipidemia and an abnormal increase in liver lipid levels, manifested by continuous gene expression of acetyl-CoA carboxylase and fatty acid synthetase, key enzymes involved in fat anabolism in liver, at high levels during the active and resting periods, a slow increase in the gene expression of sensitive lipase and acetyl-CoA oxidase, key enzymes involved in fat catabolism in liver, and changes in the diurnal variation pattern. Compared with high-fat intervention, high-protein intervention significantly increased the amount of voluntary activity and energy expenditure during the active period, restored the expression rhythm of fat synthase that was higher during the active period and lower during the rest period, and resulted in high-level expression of ACOX, a key enzyme gene involved in fat catabolism, after ingestion, showing obvious circadian rhythms. Further analysis showed that the improvement effects of high-protein intervention on circadian rhythm disorders of lipid metabolism caused by high-fat diet were closely related to the regulation of the expression of two clock genes in liver, circadian locomotor output cycle kaput (CLOCK) and brain and muscle-Arnt-like protein 1 (BMAL1). In conclusion, high-protein diets can alleviate biological clock disorders in liver induced by high-fat diets and ameliorate hepatic lipid metabolism disorders in mice by stabilizing circadian rhythms

Cloning and Comparative Studies of Seaweed Trehalose-6-Phosphate Synthase Genes

The full-length cDNA sequence (3219 base pairs) of the trehalose-6-phosphate synthase gene of Porphyra yezoensis (PyTPS) was isolated by RACE-PCR and deposited in GenBank (NCBI) with the accession number AY729671. PyTPS encodes a protein of 908 amino acids before a stop codon, and has a calculated molecular mass of 101,591 Daltons. The PyTPS protein consists of a TPS domain in the N-terminus and a putative TPP domain at the C-terminus. Homology alignment for PyTPS and the TPS proteins from bacteria, yeast and higher plants indicated that the most closely related sequences to PyTPS were those from higher plants (OsTPS and AtTPS5), whereas the most distant sequence to PyTPS was from bacteria (EcOtsAB). Based on the identified sequence of the PyTPS gene, PCR primers were designed and used to amplify the TPS genes from nine other seaweed species. Sequences of the nine obtained TPS genes were deposited in GenBank (NCBI). All 10 TPS genes encoded peptides of 908 amino acids and the sequences were highly conserved both in nucleotide composition (>94%) and in amino acid composition (>96%). Unlike the TPS genes from some other plants, there was no intron in any of the 10 isolated seaweed TPS genes