Trade of Differentiated Goods:Heterogeneity of Consumers, Love of Quality and Quantity,and the Vertical Trade

Existing studies have found that the opening of trade results in the price-decreasing competition among horizontally differentiated goods and the quality upgrade of vertically differentiated goods, which results in the replacement of low-quality goods by high-quality goods. This paper spotlights what existing studies have overlooked and challenges these conventional results. First, this paper challenges the price decreasing competition by focusing on the heterogeneity of consumers. If each consumer has his own ideal good and the price elasticity of demand decreases with the distance from his ideal good, the opening of trade followed by the increase in the number of goods gives firms a chance to sell its product intensively to closer and less price elastic consumers. Facing lower price elastic consumers, firms will raise their prices after trade, and the price increasing competition is a result. In these days, we sometimes observe that high-quality goods from developed countries are replaced by low-quality goods from developing countries, which contradicts with predictions of conventional studies of vertically differentiated goods. One reason why conventional studies cannot show the replacement of high-quality goods is because most studies use a Unit-Demand (UD) model. The model implicitly assumes that consumers care the quality of goods but not the quantity of it. Without the volume effect, it less likely that inexpensive low-quality goods, which attract consumers with quantity rater than quality beat high-quality goods. This paper uses a new Non UD model, which relaxes the assumption of the UD and shows that producers of low-quality goods steal consumers from producers of high-quality goods if the income gap between two countries is large enough. Besides the UD assumption, another reason why existing studies predict the quality upgrade after trade is because they assume that consumers value quality so much that the utility value of the added quality always exceeds the cost of it. This paper relaxes the assumption and considers a case where the utility increases with quality at a decreasing rate. With severe concave utility function, numerical examples show that expensive high-quality goods from a developed country are replaced by inexpensive low-quality goods from a developing country

Biological Effects of Negatively Charged Particle-Dominant Indoor Air Conditions

To identify health-promoting indoor air conditions, we developed negatively charged particle-dominant indoor air conditions (NCPDIAC). Experiments assessing the biological effects of NCPDIAC comprised (1) 2.5-h stays in NCPDIAC or control rooms, (2) 2-week nightly stays in control followed by NCPDIAC rooms, (3) 3-month OFF to ON and ON to OFF trials in individual living homes equipped with NPCDIAC in their sleeping or living rooms, and (4) in vitro assays comparing the immune effects between negatively charged particle-dominant and control cell culture incubators. The most significant difference examined between NCPDIAC and control rooms in the 2.5-h stays was an increase in interleukin (IL)-2 with occupancy of the NCPDIAC room. For the 2-week nightly stay experiments, natural killer (NK) cell activity increased with occupancy of the NCPDIAC room. The 3-month OFF to ON trial showed an increase in NK cell activity, while the ON to OFF trial yielded a decrease in NK cell activity. Additionally, the in vitro assays also showed an increase in NK cell activity. The use of NCPDIAC resulted in increased NK cell activity, which has the effect of enhancing immune surveillance for the occurrence of cancer and improving symptoms associated with viral infections

Asbestos Induces Reduction of Tumor Immunity

Asbestos-related cancers such as malignant mesothelioma and lung cancer are an important issue in the world. There are many conflicts concerning economical considerations and medical evidence for these cancers and much confusion regarding details of the pathological mechanisms of asbestos-induced cancers. For example, there is uncertainty concerning the degree of danger of the iron-absent chrysotile compared with iron-containing crocidolite and amosite. However, regarding bad prognosis of mesothelioma, medical approaches to ensure the recognition of the biological effects of asbestos and the pathological mechanisms of asbestos-induced carcinogenesis, as well as clinical trials to detect the early stage of mesothelioma, should result in better preventions and the cure of these malignancies. We have been investigating the immunological effects of asbestos in relation to the reduction of tumor immunity. In this paper, cellular and molecular approaches to clarify the immunological effects of asbestos are described, and all the findings indicate that the reduction of tumor immunity is caused by asbestos exposure and involvement in asbestos-induced cancers. These investigations may not only allow the clear recognition of the biological effects of asbestos, but also present a novel procedure for early detection of previous asbestos exposure and the presence of mesothelioma as well as the chemoprevention of asbestos-related cancers

Cytotoxicity Caused by Asbestos Fibers and Acquisition of Resistance by Continuous Exposure in Human T Cells

The cytotoxic effects of asbestos fibers on human T cells and the acquisition of resistance against asbestos-induced apoptosis have been studied. These analyses are based on the establishment of a continuous and relatively low-dose exposure model of human immune cells exposed to asbestos that resembles actual exposure in the human body. The MT-2 T cell line was selected as the candidate for the investigations. A transient and high-dose exposure to chrysotile resulted in apoptosis with production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and activation of the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway. However, sublines continuously exposed to low dose of asbestos exhibited resistance to asbestos-induced apoptosis. The mechanism of resistance acquisition involved excess production of IL-10, activation of STAT3, and enhanced expression of Bcl-2 located downstream of STAT3. These changes were also found in a subline continuously exposed to crocidolite. Furthermore, sublines showed a marked decrease in the expression of forkhead box O1 (FoxO1) transcription factor. FoxO1 is known to regulate apoptosis and various other cellular processes. Regarding apoptosis, sublines continuously exposed to asbestos showed reduction of FoxP1-driven proapoptotic genes. This pathway is also considered one of the mechanisms that result in resistance to asbestos-induced apoptosis in sublines. These sublines also exhibited several characteristics suggesting reduction of antitumor immunity

ViPTree: the viral proteomic tree server

ViPTree is a web server provided through GenomeNet to generate viral proteomic trees for classification of viruses based on genome-wide similarities. Users can upload viral genomes sequenced either by genomics or metagenomics. ViPTree generates proteomic trees for the uploaded genomes together with flexibly selected reference viral genomes. ViPTree also serves as a platform to visually investigate genomic alignments and automatically annotated gene functions for the uploaded viral genomes, thus providing virus researchers the first choice for classifying and understanding newly sequenced viral genomes