Industrial Diversity and Metropolitan Unemployment Rate

Although it has for years had a lower unemployment rate than other industrialized countries, Japan has begun to see an increase in unemployment since its economy was hit by the recession of the late 90?s. The level of a nation?s unemployment is commonly seen as a barometer of its economy?s health, so that Japan?s increased unemployment has worried the government and prompted it to consider several policy options. Unemployment rate in Japan varies by region. In general, while large metropolitan areas such as Tokyo have lower unemployment rates, smaller metropolitan areas have higher unemployment. Strangely, however, Osaka, the second largest metropolitan area after Tokyo, is suffering from a high unemployment rate. In October of 2002, the Kansai region including the Osaka metropolitan area recorded an unemployment rate of 7.2%, much higher than the average rate (5.5%). Theoretically, regional differentials of the unemployment rate are attributed to the friction resulting from adjusting for the mismatch between demand and supply of labor markets among regions. These frictional factors consist of the costs of information, moving, transactions related to housing, and psychological costs. Frictional components are important factors but are not all. Industrial structure differences also affect regional differentials of the unemployment rate. This paper investigated the relationship between unemployment rate and industrial structure in metropolitan areas, with the aim of testing the hypothesis that more industrially diversified metropolitan areas have lower unemployment rates. Previous studies have been done on the relationship between industrial diversity and unemployment rate but these do not provide concrete agreement because of the failure to control other factors affecting unemployment rate. This paper follows the theoretical justification of Simon (1988), who argues that industrial diversity attains a lower unemployment rate by assuming that the frictional component of employment fluctuations is a random variable and independent across industries. Because fluctuations are uncorrelated across industries, frictional hiring in some industries may coincide with frictional layoffs at others. Unemployed individuals can fill concurrently occurring vacancies. Therefore, the unemployment rate will be lower in the more industrially diverse metropolis. Simon?s empirical analysis of 91 large U.S. SMSAs strongly supports the hypothesis. In this study, we analyze 117 metropolitan areas in Japan for the year 1995. Because there is no authoritative definition of a metropolitan area in Japan, we began by defining metropolitan areas and collected data for each. As for a variable expressing industrial diversity, the Herfindahl index is used, which is made of both numbers of employments and numbers of firms for ten industrial classifications. Other factors used in this analysis are size of metropolitan areas, transportation conditions, unemployment insurance, average schooling length, and so on. The basic equation for the empirical analysis of the relationship between industrial diversity and metropolitan unemployment rate is as follows: Metropolitan unemployment rate = f (Herfindahl index (industrial diversity), metropolitan size, transportation conditions, unemployment insurance, average schooling length in metropolis) In addition to this analysis, we also analyze whether or not a higher location quotient shows a lower unemployment rate. In the preliminary analysis, we found there are negative relationships in almost all industries.

Photoinduced layer alignment control in ferroelectric liquid crystal with N*-C* phase transition doped with photochromic dye

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Tatsunosuke Matsui, Keizo Nakayama, Masanori Ozaki, and Katsumi Yoshino, Appl. Phys. Lett. 76, 1228 (2000) and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.125992

Temperature tuning of the stop band in transmission spectra of liquid-crystal infiltrated synthetic opal as tunable photonic crystal

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Katsumi Yoshino, Yuki Shimoda, Yoshiaki Kawagishi, Keizo Nakayama, and Masanori Ozaki, Appl. Phys. Lett. 75, 932 (1999) and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.124558

Remarkable sequence similarity between the dinoflagellate-infecting marine girus and the terrestrial pathogen African swine fever virus

Heterocapsa circularisquama DNA virus (HcDNAV; previously designated as HcV) is a giant virus (girus) with a ~356-kbp double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) genome. HcDNAV lytically infects the bivalve-killing marine dinoflagellate H. circularisquama, and currently represents the sole DNA virus isolated from dinoflagellates, one of the most abundant protists in marine ecosystems. Its morphological features, genome type, and host range previously suggested that HcDNAV might be a member of the family Phycodnaviridae of Nucleo-Cytoplasmic Large DNA Viruses (NCLDVs), though no supporting sequence data was available. NCLDVs currently include two families found in aquatic environments (Phycodnaviridae, Mimiviridae), one mostly infecting terrestrial animals (Poxviridae), another isolated from fish, amphibians and insects (Iridoviridae), and the last one (Asfarviridae) exclusively represented by the animal pathogen African swine fever virus (ASFV), the agent of a fatal hemorrhagic disease in domestic swine. In this study, we determined the complete sequence of the type B DNA polymerase (PolB) gene of HcDNAV. The viral PolB was transcribed at least from 6 h post inoculation (hpi), suggesting its crucial function for viral replication. Most unexpectedly, the HcDNAV PolB sequence was found to be closely related to the PolB sequence of ASFV. In addition, the amino acid sequence of HcDNAV PolB showed a rare amino acid substitution within a motif containing highly conserved motif: YSDTDS was found in HcDNAV PolB instead of YGDTDS in most dsDNA viruses. Together with the previous observation of ASFV-like sequences in the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling metagenomic datasets, our results further reinforce the ideas that the terrestrial ASFV has its evolutionary origin in marine environments

Genome-wide association study revealed novel loci which aggravate asymptomatic hyperuricaemia into gout

Objective The first ever genome-wide association study (GWAS) of clinically defined gout cases and asymptomatic hyperuricaemia (AHUA) controls was performed to identify novel gout loci that aggravate AHUA into gout. Methods We carried out a GWAS of 945 clinically defined gout cases and 1003 AHUA controls followed by 2 replication studies. In total, 2860 gout cases and 3149 AHUA controls (all Japanese men) were analysed. We also compared the ORs for each locus in the present GWAS (gout vs AHUA) with those in the previous GWAS (gout vs normouricaemia). Results This new approach enabled us to identify two novel gout loci (rs7927466 of CNTN5 and rs9952962 of MIR302F) and one suggestive locus (rs12980365 of ZNF724) at the genome-wide significance level (p<5.0×10– 8). The present study also identified the loci of ABCG2, ALDH2 and SLC2A9. One of them, rs671 of ALDH2, was identified as a gout locus by GWAS for the first time. Comparing ORs for each locus in the present versus the previous GWAS revealed three ‘gout vs AHUA GWAS’-specific loci (CNTN5, MIR302F and ZNF724) to be clearly associated with mechanisms of gout development which distinctly differ from the known gout risk loci that basically elevate serum uric acid level. Conclusions This meta-analysis is the first to reveal the loci associated with crystal-induced inflammation, the last step in gout development that aggravates AHUA into gout. Our findings should help to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of gout development and assist the prevention of gout attacks in high-risk AHUA individuals