The Impact of Youtube on International Trade

Many researchers in the field of international business have argued that cultural proximity can positively influence bilateral trade. These researchers have attempted to develop proxy measures for cultural proximity, such as language, ethnicity, religion, and trade of cultural goods. However, the conventional measures failed to capture the time-variant characteristics of cultural affinity or digitization in international trade. As an alternative approach, in this study, we focused on cultural affinity in social media like YouTube. Based on the recent popularity of Korean pop (K-pop) on YouTube, we hypothesized that online consumption of K-pop content creates an affinity for Korea as a country, resulting in higher Korean exports. We used panel data analysis for YouTube comments on K-pop music videos that were published from the second quarter of 2009 to the third quarter of 2012; these comments were segregated on the basis of the users’ home countries. We found that the YouTube comments of each country in the current and previous quarters are significant predictors of Korea’s total exports and exports of consumer goods such as processed food, clothes, and cosmetics to that particular country

Pharmacogenetics Meets Metabolomics: Discovery of Tryptophan as a New Endogenous OCT2 Substrate Related to Metformin Disposition

Genetic polymorphisms of the organic cation transporter 2 (OCT2), encoded by SLC22A2, have been investigated in association with metformin disposition. A functional decrease in transport function has been shown to be associated with the OCT2 variants. Using metabolomics, our study aims at a comprehensive monitoring of primary metabolite changes in order to understand biochemical alteration associated with OCT2 polymorphisms and discovery of potential endogenous metabolites related to the genetic variation of OCT2. Using GC-TOF MS based metabolite profiling, clear clustering of samples was observed in Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis, showing that metabolic profiles were linked to the genetic variants of OCT2. Tryptophan and uridine presented the most significant alteration in SLC22A2-808TT homozygous and the SLC22A2-808G>T heterozygous variants relative to the reference. Particularly tryptophan showed gene-dose effects of transporter activity according to OCT2 genotypes and the greatest linear association with the pharmacokinetic parameters (Clrenal, Clsec, Cl/F/kg, and Vd/F/kg) of metformin. An inhibition assay demonstrated the inhibitory effect of tryptophan on the uptake of 1-methyl-4-phenyl pyrinidium in a concentration dependent manner and subsequent uptake experiment revealed differential tryptophan-uptake rate in the oocytes expressing OCT2 reference and variant (808G>T). Our results collectively indicate tryptophan can serve as one of the endogenous substrate for the OCT2 as well as a biomarker candidate indicating the variability of the transport activity of OCT2

Helpfulness of online consumer reviews: readers' objectives and review cues

With the growth of e-commerce, online consumer reviews have increasingly become important sources of information that help consumers in their purchase decisions. However, the influx of online consumer reviews has caused information overload, making it difficult for consumers to choose reliable reviews. For an online retail market to succeed, it is important to lead product reviewers to write more helpful reviews, and for consumers to get helpful reviews more easily by figuring out the factors determining the helpfulness of online reviews. For this research, 75,226 online consumer reviews were collected from Amazon.com using a Web data crawler. Additional information on review content was also gathered by carrying out a sentiment analysis for mining review text. Our results show that both peripheral cues, including review rating and reviewer's credibility, and central cues, such as the content of reviews, influence the helpfulness of reviews. Based on dual process theories, we find that consumers focus on different information sources of reviews, depending on their purposes for reading reviews: online reviews can be used for information search or for evaluating alternatives. Our findings provide new perspectives to online market owners on how to manage online reviews on their Web sites

Factors Affecting Secondhand Smoke Avoidance Behavior of Vietnamese Adolescents

The purpose of this study was to examine the stage of secondhand smoke avoidance behavior of adolescents in rural areas of Vietnam and the related factors affecting such behavior. The participants were recruited from two middle schools located in Hai Thuong and Trieu Trach commune, Vietnam. Data were collected in January 2016 by distributing and collecting a self-administrated questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed (n = 166) using SPSS 21.0 for frequency, percentage, and ordinal logistic regression. The largest proportion of secondhand smoke avoidance behavior was classified in maintenance (41.6%), followed by action (19.9%), preparation (15.1%), pre-contemplation (13.3%), and contemplation (10.2%) stages. The factors related to higher secondhand smoke avoidance behavior were higher self-efficacy (p = 0.003) and more frequent discussion with parents about dangers of smoking (p = 0.001). The findings indicated that self-efficacy of avoiding secondhand smoke and discussion with parents were associated with secondhand smoke avoidance behavior of adolescents. These findings can be used for developing education programs to prevent secondhand smoke for adolescents in Vietnam

Psychosocial Factors and Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders among Southeastern Asian Female Workers Living in Korea

Objectives: A rapid increase in the population of migrant workers in Korea has brought new challenges regarding the possible effects of acculturation on health. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of acculturation- and work-related psychosocial factors on work-related musculoskeletal disorders among migrant female workers living in Korea. Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was used. A translated, structured questionnaire was administrated to 156 southeastern Asian female full-time workers living in Korea. Results: About 35% of the participants experienced some type(s) of work-related musculoskeletal disorder(s), which were more prevalent in Vietnamese women than in Thai and Filipino women. Women who preferred to maintain their own heritage and to reject the host country heritage were at risk for work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Conclusion: Acculturation strategy and nationality were found to be significant factors associated with work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Health professionals need to accommodate acculturation contexts into risk assessment and intervention development for work-related musculoskeletal disorders separately for different nationalities

Crucial Factors for Lyα Transmission in the Reionizing Intergalactic Medium: Infall Motion, H ii Bubble Size, and Self-shielded Systems

International audienceUsing the CoDa II simulation, we study the Lyα transmissivity of the intergalactic medium (IGM) during reionization. At z > 6, a typical galaxy without an active galactic nucleus fails to form a proximity zone around itself due to the overdensity of the surrounding IGM. The gravitational infall motion in the IGM makes the resonance absorption extend to the red side of Lyα, suppressing the transmission up to roughly the circular velocity of the galaxy. In some sight lines, an optically thin blob generated by a supernova in a neighboring galaxy results in a peak feature, which can be mistaken for a blue peak. Redward of the resonance absorption, the damping-wing opacity correlates with the global IGM neutral fraction and the UV magnitude of the source galaxy. Brighter galaxies tend to suffer lower opacity because they tend to reside in larger H ii regions, and the surrounding IGM transmits redder photons, which are less susceptible to attenuation, owing to stronger infall velocity. The H ii regions are highly nonspherical, causing both sight-line-to-sight-line and galaxy-to-galaxy variation in opacity. Also, self-shielded systems within H ii regions strongly attenuate the emission for certain sight lines. All these factors add to the transmissivity variation, requiring a large sample size to constrain the average transmission. The variation is largest for fainter galaxies at higher redshift. The 68% range of the transmissivity is similar to or greater than the median for galaxies with M$_{UV}$ ≥ −21 at z ≥ 7, implying that more than a hundred galaxies would be needed to measure the transmission to 10% accuracy

Scattering of Ly{\alpha} Photons through the Reionizing Intergalactic Medium: I. Spectral Energy Distribution

During reionization, a fraction of galactic Ly$\alpha$ emission is scattered in the intergalactic medium (IGM) and appears as a diffuse light extending megaparsecs from the source. We investigate how to probe the properties of the early galaxies and their surrounding IGM using this scattered light. We create a Monte Carlo algorithm to track individual photons and reproduce several test cases from previous literature. Then, we run our code on the simulated IGM of the CoDaII simulation. We find that the scattered light can leave an observable imprint on the emergent spectrum if collected over several square arcminutes. Scattering can redden the emission by increasing the path lengths of photons, but it can also make the photons bluer by upscattering them according to the peculiar motion of the scatterer. The photons emitted on the far blue side of the resonance appear more extended in both frequency and space compared to those emitted near the resonance. This provides a discriminating feature for the blueward emission, which cannot be constrained from the unscattered light coming directly from the source. The ionization state of the IGM also affects the scattered light spectrum. When the source is in a small HII region, the emission goes through more scatterings in the surrounding HI region regardless of the initial frequency and ends up more redshifted and spatially extended. This can result in a weakening of the scattered light toward high $z$ during reionization. Our results provide a framework for interpreting the scattered light to be measured by high-$z$ integral-field-unit surveys.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Ap