A Market Experiment on Trade Promotion Budget and Allocation

We design a market experiment to examine how firm size and ability to choose trade promotion types influence trade promotion budget, its allocation and channel profits. Our experimental results show that larger manufacturers offer smaller trade promotion budgets. Manufacturers with ability to influence the allocation decision favor scan-backs while retailers favor off-invoices. Trade promotion decisions affect profit sharing within the channel but not total channel profit. We validate these findings with an econometric analysis of survey data from supermarket executives. Overall, our results suggest that market experiments can shed light on trade promotion outcomes for which industry data are sparse.trade promotion, market experiments, Marketing,

Longitudinal trends in prostate cancer incidence, mortality, and survival of patients from two Shanghai city districts: a retrospective population-based cohort study, 2000-2009.

BackgroundProstate cancer is the fifth most common cancer affecting men of all ages in China, but robust surveillance data on its occurrence and outcome is lacking. The specific objective of this retrospective study was to analyze the longitudinal trends of prostate cancer incidence, mortality, and survival in Shanghai from 2000 to 2009.MethodsA retrospective population-based cohort study was performed using data from a central district (Putuo) and a suburban district (Jiading) of Shanghai. Records of all prostate cancer cases reported to the Shanghai Cancer Registry from 2000 to 2009 for the two districts were reviewed. Prostate cancer outcomes were ascertained by matching cases with individual mortality data (up to 2010) from the National Death Register. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to analyze factors associated with prostate cancer survival.ResultsA total of 1022 prostate cancer cases were diagnosed from 2000 to 2009. The average age of patients was 75 years. A rapid increase in incidence occurred during the study period. Compared with the year 2000, 2009 incidence was 3.28 times higher in Putuo and 5.33 times higher in Jiading. Prostate cancer mortality declined from 4.45 per 105 individuals per year in 2000 to 1.94 per 105 in 2009 in Putuo and from 5.45 per 105 to 3.5 per 105 in Jiading during the same period. One-year and 5-year prostate cancer survival rates were 95% and 56% in Putuo, and 88% and 51% in Jiading, respectively. Staging of disease, Karnofsky Performance Scale Index, and selection of chemotherapy were three independent factors influencing the survival of prostate cancer patients.ConclusionsThe prostate cancer incidence increased rapidly from 2000 to 2009, and prostate cancer survival rates decreased in urban and suburban Chinese populations. Early detection and prompt prostate cancer treatment is important for improving health and for increasing survival rates of the Shanghai male population

Who Shrunk China? Puzzles in the Measurement of Real GDP

The latest World Bank estimates of real GDP per capita for China are significantly lower than previous ones. We review possible sources of this puzzle and conclude that it reflects a combination of factors, including substitution bias in consumption, reliance on urban prices which we estimate are higher than rural ones, and the use of an expenditure-weighted rather than an output-weighted measure of GDP. Taking all these together, we estimate that real per-capita GDP in China was 50% higher relative to the U.S. in 2005 than the World Bank estimates.

Single photo-electron trapping, storage, and detection in a one-electron quantum dot

There has been considerable progress in electro-statically emptying, and re-filling, quantum dots with individual electrons. Typically the quantum dot is defined by electrostatic gates on a GaAs/AlGaAs modulation doped heterostructure. We report the filling of such a quantum dot by a single photo-electron, originating from an individual photon. The electrostatic dot can be emptied and reset in a controlled fashion before the arrival of each photon. The trapped photo-electron is detected by a point contact transistor integrated adjacent to the electrostatic potential trap. Each stored photo-electron causes a persistent negative step in the transistor channel current. Such a controllable, benign, single photo-electron detector could allow for information transfer between flying photon qubits and stored electron qubits.Comment: 4 Pages, 5 Figure

Genome organization and interaction with capsid protein in a multipartite RNA virus.

We report the asymmetric reconstruction of the single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) content in one of the three otherwise identical virions of a multipartite RNA virus, brome mosaic virus (BMV). We exploit a sample consisting exclusively of particles with the same RNA content-specifically, RNAs 3 and 4-assembled in planta by agrobacterium-mediated transient expression. We find that the interior of the particle is nearly empty, with most of the RNA genome situated at the capsid shell. However, this density is disordered in the sense that the RNA is not associated with any particular structure but rather, with an ensemble of secondary/tertiary structures that interact with the capsid protein. Our results illustrate a fundamental difference between the ssRNA organization in the multipartite BMV viral capsid and the monopartite bacteriophages MS2 and Qβ for which a dominant RNA conformation is found inside the assembled viral capsids, with RNA density conserved even at the center of the particle. This can be understood in the context of the differing demands on their respective lifecycles: BMV must package separately each of several different RNA molecules and has been shown to replicate and package them in isolated, membrane-bound, cytoplasmic complexes, whereas the bacteriophages exploit sequence-specific "packaging signals" throughout the viral RNA to package their monopartite genomes

Room-temperature ferromagnetism in nanoparticles of superconducting materials

Nanoparticles of superconducting YBa2Cu3O7-delta (YBCO) (Tc = 91 K) exhibit ferromagnetism at room temperature while the bulk YBCO, obtained by heating the nanoparticles at high temperature (940 degree C), shows a linear magnetization curve. Across the superconducting transition temperature, the magnetization curve changes from that of a soft ferromagnet to a superconductor. Furthermore, our experiments reveal that not only nanoparticles of metal oxides but also metal nitrides such as NbN (Tc = 6 - 12 K) and delta-MoN (Tc ~ 6 K) exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Minimalist Traffic Prediction: Linear Layer Is All You Need

Traffic prediction is essential for the progression of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and the vision of smart cities. While Spatial-Temporal Graph Neural Networks (STGNNs) have shown promise in this domain by leveraging Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) integrated with either RNNs or Transformers, they present challenges such as computational complexity, gradient issues, and resource-intensiveness. This paper addresses these challenges, advocating for three main solutions: a node-embedding approach, time series decomposition, and periodicity learning. We introduce STLinear, a minimalist model architecture designed for optimized efficiency and performance. Unlike traditional STGNNs, STlinear operates fully locally, avoiding inter-node data exchanges, and relies exclusively on linear layers, drastically cutting computational demands. Our empirical studies on real-world datasets confirm STLinear's prowess, matching or exceeding the accuracy of leading STGNNs, but with significantly reduced complexity and computation overhead (more than 95% reduction in MACs per epoch compared to state-of-the-art STGNN baseline published in 2023). In summary, STLinear emerges as a potent, efficient alternative to conventional STGNNs, with profound implications for the future of ITS and smart city initiatives.Comment: 9 page