The Productivity of Public Capital: Evidence from the 1994 Electoral Reform of Japan

This paper attempts to estimate the causal effect of public capital stock on production using Japanese prefectural data. We first articulate the difficulty of consistently estimating the regional-level production function with public capital due to the endogeneity of the public capital stock amount. As the central government allocates most of the public capital across regions in Japan, the stock amount of public capital could be endogenous because it could be allocated to either booming regions to support private activity or to stagnating regions to help them become more productive. The endogeneity of public capital is more serious when local governments make decisions regarding public capital investments, as in the US, because such decisions are directly affected by local governments' budgetary constraints. We need an exogenous variation of public capital investment across regions in order to estimate the causal effect of public capital on production. Japan's electoral reform in 1994 offers an exogenous variation of this sort. The reform drastically changed the distribution of political representation in the Lower House across regions, and it accordingly changed the allocation of public capital across regions as well. The productivity of public capital based on this natural experimental identification strategy indicates higher productivity due to public capital than indicated by the OLS estimation.

Farming in Fishing Communities in Japan: Case Study in the Sanriku Region

Farming in fishing communities has been little investigated in Japan up to now. Agriculture and fisheries are sectionalized and treated as different industries, and the farming situations in fishing households have not been studied statistically since 2003. This paper investigates farming in fishing communities (fishing-cum-farming households). Two methods used in the study. They are census analysis and survey analysis by picking up Sanriku Region, Japan. The results show that, fishing-cum- farming households were more than 80% of farming households in 1968. By 2003, the percentages had decreased to 15% and below. For fishing-cum-farming households, whether one owns paddy fields or not is significant because rice has been the dominant staple food in Japan. It was fortunate for fishermen to live in communities where paddies could be cultivated, but paddy fields were owned by a limited number of households. The total area of paddy fields increased as the northern limit of paddy production was extended

Películas vietnamitas de los noventa

Kawaguchi, K. (2001). Películas vietnamitas de los noventa. Nosferatu. Revista de cine. (36):123-130. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/41234.1231303

モルヒネは血管内皮増殖因子VEGFを抑制することによって、口腔癌細胞HSC-3細胞の活性および細胞増殖を阻害する

Purpose: Although many oral cancer patients require opioids, the effects of morphine and related drugs on oral cancer progression have not been well established. Thus, we examined the effects of morphine exposure on the viability of human oral squamous carcinoma HSC-3 cells and aimed to identify the underlying mechanism. Methods: We exposed HSC-3 cells to the various concentrations of morphine (0, 0.1, 1, 10, 100, or 1000 μmol/L) for 48 h and, subsequently, evaluated cell viability using the 3-[4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2, 5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay and cytotoxicity using the lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) assay. To explore the effects of morphine on cell proliferation further, colony formation assay and cell cycle analysis were performed. Additionally, the intracellular expression of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) was analyzed using flow cytometry, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A was evaluated using human VEGF assay. Results: Morphine exposure reduced cell viability and enhanced cytotoxicity in HSC-3 cells in a concentration-dependent manner. The number of colonies in the morphine-treated groups was significantly lower than that in the control group. Consistent with these results, morphine exposure significantly reduced the concentration of VEGF in the cell culture medium in a concentration-dependent manner. However, our data show that morphine at clinical concentrations (0.1-10 μmol/L) does not affect cell cycle and apoptosis. Conclusions: Our results suggest that in human oral cancer HSC-3 cells, morphine exposure inhibits cell viability and growth via suppression of VEGF in clinical conditions.博士（医学）・甲第727号・令和2年3月16日© Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists 2019This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of anesthesia. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00540-019-02645-1

Synthesis of 2-Acetamido-2,5-dideoxy-5-phosphoryl-D-glucopyranose Derivatives: New Phospha-sugar Analogs of N-Acetyl-D-glucosamine

Starting with N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, methyl 2-acetamido-3,6-di-O-benzyl-2-deoxy-beta-D-xylo-hexofuranosid-5-ulose (18) was prepared in 7 steps. The addition reaction of dimethyl phosphonate to 18, followed by deoxygenation of its 5-hydroxy group, provided the 5-deoxy-5-dimethoxyphosphoryl-D-glucofuranoside derivative (21a). The hydride reduction of 21a, followed by the action of hydrochloric acid and then hydrogen peroxide, afforded the first D-glucosamine analog (23) having a phosphoryl group in the hemiacetal ring. This was converted into the per-O-acetylated N-acetyl-D-glucosamine phospha-sugar (25), while the same treatment of the 5-deoxy-5-dimethoxyphosphoryl-L-idose dimethyl acetal derivative (13b) afforded the N-acetyl-L-idosamine phospha-sugar (29)

Standalone Percutaneous Vertebroplasty for Hyperextension Injuries of the Ankylosed Thoracolumbar Spinal Kyphosis

Hyperextension injuries of the ankylosed thoracolumbar spine, particularly those with preexisting kyphotic deformity, present significant therapeutic challenges. The authors viewed that such injuries without displacement or fractures of the posterior elements are reasonable candidates for standalone percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP). In such cases, the posterior tension band is spared; thus, fractures are unstable not in the lateral direction, which would lead to the translation of the fracture, but in the vertical direction. Such vertical instability of the fracture can be stabilized if the open mouth-type vertebral cleft is adequately filled with a sufficiently large amount of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) cement. Our three patients receiving standalone PVP received injections of 12 mL, 16.5 mL, and 18 mL of PMMA cement. This minimally invasive surgical procedure achieved both short-term (immediate pain relief and mobilization) and long-term (fracture healing) goals

Explanation of hand, foot, and mouth disease cases in Japan using Google Trends before and during the COVID-19: infodemiology study

[Background] Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affects common diseases, but its impact on hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is unclear. Google Trends data is beneficial for approximate real-time statistics and because of ease in access, is expected to be used for infection explanation from an information-seeking behavior perspective. We aimed to explain HFMD cases before and during COVID-19 using Google Trends. [Methods] HFMD cases were obtained from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, and Google search data from 2009 to 2021 in Japan were downloaded from Google Trends. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between HFMD cases and the search topic “HFMD” from 2009 to 2021. Japanese tweets containing “HFMD” were retrieved to select search terms for further analysis. Search terms with counts larger than 1000 and belonging to ranges of infection sources, susceptible sites, susceptible populations, symptoms, treatment, preventive measures, and identified diseases were retained. Cross-correlation analyses were conducted to detect lag changes between HFMD cases and search terms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Multiple linear regressions with backward elimination processing were used to identify the most significant terms for HFMD explanation. [Results] HFMD cases and Google search volume peaked around July in most years, excluding 2020 and 2021. The search topic “HFMD” presented strong correlations with HFMD cases, except in 2020 when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred. In addition, the differences in lags for 73 (72.3%) search terms were negative, which might indicate increasing public awareness of HFMD infections during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of multiple linear regression demonstrated that significant search terms contained the same meanings but expanded informative search content during the COVID-19 pandemic. [Conclusions] The significant terms for the explanation of HFMD cases before and during COVID-19 were different. Awareness of HFMD infections in Japan may have improved during the COVID-19 pandemic. Continuous monitoring is important to promote public health and prevent resurgence. The public interest reflected in information-seeking behavior can be helpful for public health surveillance