Trade Policy and Economic Integration in a Cournot Duopoly Model

This paper investigates the policy and welfare implications of forming an economic region in the context of a Cournot duopoly model. Some theoretical results are obtained. First, the economic region lowers the external tariff (against non-partner countries) less than its pre-integration level when a sufficiently large subsidy on the imports from the partner is carried out. Second, economic integration reduces the non-partner country’s welfare. Third, although the region still gains from integration even under some partial trade liberalisation regimes, complete trade liberalisation within the region leads to higher regional welfare. Finally, trade liberalisation within the region improves the welfare of the world as a whole.Trade Policy, Economic Integration

Trade Policy and Economic Integration in a Cournot Duopoly Model

This paper investigates the policy and welfare implications of forming an economic region in the context of a Cournot duopoly model. Some theoretical results are obtained. First, the economic region lowers the external tariff (against non-partner countries) less than its pre-integration level when a sufficiently large subsidy on the imports from the partner is carried out. Second, economic integration reduces the non-partner country’s welfare. Third, although the region still gains from integration even under some partial trade liberalisation regimes, complete trade liberalisation within the region leads to higher regional welfare. Finally, trade liberalisation within the region improves the welfare of the world as a whole

The nucleolar protein NIFK promotes cancer progression via CK1α/β-catenin in metastasis and Ki-67-dependent cell proliferation.

Nucleolar protein interacting with the FHA domain of pKi-67 (NIFK) is a Ki-67-interacting protein. However, its precise function in cancer remains largely uninvestigated. Here we show the clinical significance and metastatic mechanism of NIFK in lung cancer. NIFK expression is clinically associated with poor prognosis and metastasis. Furthermore, NIFK enhances Ki-67-dependent proliferation, and promotes migration, invasion in vitro and metastasis in vivo via downregulation of casein kinase 1α (CK1α), a suppressor of pro-metastatic TCF4/β-catenin signaling. Inversely, CK1α is upregulated upon NIFK knockdown. The silencing of CK1α expression in NIFK-silenced cells restores TCF4/β-catenin transcriptional activity, cell migration, and metastasis. Furthermore, RUNX1 is identified as a transcription factor of CSNK1A1 (CK1α) that is negatively regulated by NIFK. Our results demonstrate the prognostic value of NIFK, and suggest that NIFK is required for lung cancer progression via the RUNX1-dependent CK1α repression, which activates TCF4/β-catenin signaling in metastasis and the Ki-67-dependent regulation in cell proliferation

Using Capacitance Sensor to Extract Characteristic Signals of Dozing from Skin Surface

Skin is the largest organ of the human body and a physiological structure that is directly exposed to the environment. From a theoretical perspective, numerous physiological and psychological signals use the skin as a medium for input and output with the outside world. Therefore, the skin is considered an optimal signal interception point when developing noninvasive, direct, and rapid signal exploration devices. To date, skin signal interceptions are predominantly performed by measuring skin impedance. However, this method is prone to interference such as sweat secretion, salt accumulation on the skin, and muscle contractions, which may result in a substantial amount of interference and erroneous results. The present study proposes novel and effective methods for skin signal interception, such as using a nested probe as a sensor to measure capacitance to be further processed as physiological and psychological signals. The experimental results indicate that the capacitance curve for the transition between wakefulness and dozing exhibits significant changes. This change in the curve can be analyzed by computer programs to clearly and rapidly determine whether the subject has entered the initial phases of sleep

Foreign Aid as a Signal to Investors: Predicting FDI in Post-conflict Countries

Does development aid attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in post-conflict countries? This article contributes to the growing literature on effects of aid and on determinants of FDI by explaining how development aid in low-information environments is a signal that can attract investment. Before investing abroad, firms seek data on potential host countries. In post-conflict countries, reliable information is poor, in part because governments face unusual incentives to misrepresent information. In these conditions, firms look to signals. One is development aid, because donors tend to give more to countries they trust to properly handle the funds. Our results show that aid seems to draw FDI—however, this is conditional on whether the aid can be considered geostrategically motivated. We also show that this effect decreases as time elapses after the conflict. This suggests that aid’s signaling effect is specific to low-information environments, and helps rule out alternative causal mechanisms linking aid and FDI

The histone H3K36 demethylase Rph1/KDM4 regulates the expression of the photoreactivation gene PHR1

The dynamics of histone methylation have emerged as an important issue since the identification of histone demethylases. We studied the regulatory function of Rph1/KDM4 (lysine demethylase), a histone H3K36 demethylase, on transcription in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Overexpression of Rph1 reduced the expression of PHR1 and increased UV sensitivity. The catalytically deficient mutant (H235A) of Rph1 diminished the repressive transcriptional effect on PHR1 expression, which indicates that histone demethylase activity contributes to transcriptional repression. Chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis demonstrated that Rph1 was associated at the upstream repression sequence of PHR1 through zinc-finger domains and was dissociated after UV irradiation. Notably, overexpression of Rph1 and H3K36A mutant reduced histone acetylation at the URS, which implies a crosstalk between histone demethylation and acetylation at the PHR1 promoter. In addition, the crucial checkpoint protein Rad53 acted as an upstream regulator of Rph1 and dominated the phosphorylation of Rph1 that was required for efficient PHR1 expression and the dissociation of Rph1. The release of Rph1 from chromatin also required the phosphorylation at S652. Our study demonstrates that the histone demethylase Rph1 is associated with a specific chromatin locus and modulates histone modifications to repress a DNA damage responsive gene under control of damage checkpoint signaling

Understanding biomolecular motion, recognition, and allostery by use of conformational ensembles

We review the role conformational ensembles can play in the analysis of biomolecular dynamics, molecular recognition, and allostery. We introduce currently available methods for generating ensembles of biomolecules and illustrate their application with relevant examples from the literature. We show how, for binding, conformational ensembles provide a way of distinguishing the competing models of induced fit and conformational selection. For allostery we review the classic models and show how conformational ensembles can play a role in unravelling the intricate pathways of communication that enable allostery to occur. Finally, we discuss the limitations of conformational ensembles and highlight some potential applications for the future

Binding Free Energy Landscape of Domain-Peptide Interactions

Peptide recognition domains (PRDs) are ubiquitous protein domains which mediate large numbers of protein interactions in the cell. How these PRDs are able to recognize peptide sequences in a rapid and specific manner is incompletely understood. We explore the peptide binding process of PDZ domains, a large PRD family, from an equilibrium perspective using an all-atom Monte Carlo (MC) approach. Our focus is two different PDZ domains representing two major PDZ classes, I and II. For both domains, a binding free energy surface with a strong bias toward the native bound state is found. Moreover, both domains exhibit a binding process in which the peptides are mostly either bound at the PDZ binding pocket or else interact little with the domain surface. Consistent with this, various binding observables show a temperature dependence well described by a simple two-state model. We also find important differences in the details between the two domains. While both domains exhibit well-defined binding free energy barriers, the class I barrier is significantly weaker than the one for class II. To probe this issue further, we apply our method to a PDZ domain with dual specificity for class I and II peptides, and find an analogous difference in their binding free energy barriers. Lastly, we perform a large number of fixed-temperature MC kinetics trajectories under binding conditions. These trajectories reveal significantly slower binding dynamics for the class II domain relative to class I. Our combined results are consistent with a binding mechanism in which the peptide C terminal residue binds in an initial, rate-limiting step

Вихретоковый анизотропный термоэлектрический первичный преобразователь лучистого потока

Представлена оригинальная конструкция первичного преобразователя лучистого потока, который может служить основой для создания приемника неселективного излучения с повышенной чувствительностью