Intertemporal Substitution and Sectoral Comovement in a Sticky Price Model

Strong procyclical fluctuations in the durable production are the most prominent feature of the empirical response to monetary shocks. This paper investigates the role of preferences in matching this feature of the data in a two-sector sticky price model with flexibly priced durables. The reaction of durables depends crucially on whether preferences are separable between labor and aggregate consumption. When preferences are separable, the model exhibits perverse behavior. Flexibly priced durables contract during periods of economic expansion. However, sticky price model with non-separable preferences can replicate the empirically plausible response of durable spending. The key to the model’s success hinges upon the fact that the non-separable preferences imply the complementarity between aggregate consumption and labor supply, absent in the separable preference. Finally, we present empirical evidence supporting the non-separable preferences.

Costly Labor Reallocation, Non-Separable Preferences, and Expectation Driven Business Cycles

A key feature of the business cycle data is that output, employment and investment move up and down together in dierent sectors of the economy. However, standard business cycle models fail to generate this business cycle sectoral co-movement. In this paper we propose a two-sector business cycle model that generates the sectoral cycle co-movement in response to both contemporaneous shocks and news shocks about fundamentals. The key elements to the model’s success are frictions in intersectoral labor mobility and non-separable preferences in consumption and leisure, along with adjustment costs to investment and variable capital utilization.

Merging panchromatic multispectral images for enhanced image analysis

This study evaluates several methods that enhance the spatial resolution of multispectral images using a finer resolution panchromatic image. The resultant hybrid, high resolution, multispectral data set has increased visible interpretation and improved classification accuracy, while preserving the radiometry of the original multispectral images. These methods can therefore be applied to create simulated high resolution multispectral data, as well as to enhance image analysis

Enhanced Intracellular Delivery and Improved Antitumor Efficacy of Menaquinone-4

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major malignant tumor type that occurs globally. HCC incidence is increasing, especially in Asian countries. Despite many therapeutic approaches, the long-term prognosis of HCC remains poor because of frequent recurrence due to intrahepatic metastasis or multicentric carcinogenesis. Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective and safe chemopreventive agents to improve the prognosis of HCC. Menaquinone-4 (MK-4) has a suppressive effect on HCC, but cellular delivery is poor. We hypothesized that effective cellular delivery of menahydroquinone-4 (MKH), a fully reduced form of MK-4, would regulate HCC growth and metastasis. We developed a bioreductive activation-independent delivery system with the N,N-dimethylglycine ester of MKH (MKH-bis-DMG) to deliver MKH to HCC cells without any bioreductive processing of MK-4. MKH-bis-DMG inhibited the proliferation of both DCP-positive and DCP-negative HCC cell lines in a time- and dose-dependent manner via G1/S cell-cycle arrest. We assessed the effect of MKH-derivatives on HCC metastasis using a mouse model of spleen-liver metastasis. The mean tumor hepatic replacement area of MKH-bis-DMG treated mice was significantly less than that of untreated mice. In conclusion, MKH-bis-DMG may be beneficial as a chemopreventive agent for recurrent HCC

Nutrition and Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: The Significance of Cholesterol

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a common chronic liver disease that ranges in severity from simple steatosis to cirrhosis. NAFLD is considered to be associated with hepatic metabolic disorders, resulting in overaccumulation of fatty acids/triglycerides and cholesterol. The pathogenesis and progression of NAFLD are generally explained by the “two-hit theory.” Most studies of lipid metabolism in the NAFLD liver have focused on the metabolism of fatty acids/triglycerides; therefore, the impact of cholesterol metabolism is still ambiguous. In this paper, we review recent studies on NAFLD from the viewpoint of hepatic lipid metabolism-associated factors and discuss the impact of disordered cholesterol metabolism in the etiology of NAFLD. The clinical significance of managing cholesterol metabolism, an option for the treatment of NAFLD, is also discussed

Metabolic Disorders and Steatosis in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C: Metabolic Strategies for Antiviral Treatments

It has been reported that hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is closely associated with hepatic metabolic disorders. Hepatic steatosis and insulin resistance are both relatively common in patients with chronic hepatitis C. Recent investigations suggest that HCV infection changes the expression profile of lipid-metabolism-associated factors in the liver, conferring advantages to the life cycle of HCV. Moreover, insulin resistance and steatosis are independent predictors of impaired response to antiviral treatment in chronic hepatitis C. In this paper, we summarize our current knowledge of hepatic metabolic disorders and describe how HCV leads to and exploits these hepatic disorders. We also discuss the clinical significance of insulin sensitizers used to improve insulin resistance and lipid modulators used to manage lipid metabolism as potential treatment options for chronic hepatitis C