Assessing the Strategic Situation Underlying International Antitrust Cooperation

This Article disputes the widely held view that the strategic situations underlying antitrust cooperation among developed antitrust regimes and developing antitrust regimes are similar, particularly the conclusion that the current set of policy options to address private and hybrid public-private restraints of trade is feasible in all situations. This Article utilizes an empirical inquiry into trade flows that affect the general level of antitrust regulations in open economies (here, Japan and China). Based on this empirical foundation, the current set of policy options are explored, including the extraterritoriality of U.S. antitrust law, Section 301’s competition-related clause, the World Trade Organization dispute settlement, and bilateral cooperation mechanisms. This Article contends that each policy option is feasible only to address competition-related trade concerns in developed antitrust regimes, but is ill-equipped to address competition-related trade concerns in emerging market economies that are in the process of developing antitrust regimes. Thus, when one compares the successful cooperation and convergence in developed antitrust regimes with the failed attempts to increase cooperation and convergence in emerging market economies, it indicates that the existing paradigm in antitrust cooperation is less likely to preempt the need to resort to a multilateral framework. The comparison further suggests that the optimal antitrust regime for a global integrated economy is to strengthen a network of bilateral agreements, supplemented by efforts toward a multilateral agreement

Rethinking Decentralized Antitrust Regimes: A Window on the Future of Protectionism and Overregulation

Over 100 jurisdictions have a domestic competition law, making competition law one of the most widespread forms of economic regulation around the world. The existing decentralized antitrust regimes have increased transaction costs and uncertainties, enforcement conflicts, antitrust protectionism, and global overenforcement of antitrust laws. Yet international coordination has received little attention. Why? Two interest-based explanations suggest that the European Union and the United States have adopted different approaches to regulating competition, making the two leading regulators race to spread their regulatory models. Moreover, the balance of benefits under existing international legal rules continues to favor major corporations in both developed and developing countries. As a result, the developed world, particularly the United States, has viewed attempts at multilateral coordination as against its interests. This Article challenges this conventional wisdom. It argues that the increasing heterogeneity among decentralized antitrust regimes poses a larger long-term threat to the US than is commonly believed. A closer examination of the proliferation of antitrust laws demonstrates why antitrust protectionism and overregulation are not temporary and not destined to level off. In addition, as more developing countries have the capacity to prosecute multinationals and as the strictest jurisdiction has the power to set the de facto world standard, today’s positive balance of benefits will disappear tomorrow. This Article argues that the United States should reverse its hands-off approach to international antitrust coordination and instead enact proposals that place greater convergence among national antitrust regimes. It highlights why the present moment is an opportune time to initiate, but notes that the window for initiation is likely to close as developing countries acquire increased economic strength and enforcement capacity. &nbsp

MVNC: A Multiview Network Computer Architecture

In this paper, MVNC, a multiview network computer system for a high usability thin-client computing environment, is introduced. MVNC uses a revised SBC model to offer a new framework for thin client computing. MVNC can be used as a full functional Windows machine, or used as a Linux workstation, or a~graphic terminal. Its multiview work style is achieved by the attempts on GUI seamless integration technology, device integration technology and local video playback support. MVNC is implemented in an embedded Linux environment using a MIPS-4KC microprocessor. Test results on video application show that MVNC system uses its client hardware more efficiently and the load of MVNC server is lightened

The Radio Properties of Radio-Loud Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies on Parsec Scales

We present the detection of compact radio structures of fourteen radio-loud narrow line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies from Very Long Baseline Array observations at 5 GHz, which were performed in 2013. While 50\% of the sources of our sample show a compact core only, the remaining 50\% exhibit a core-jet structure. The measured brightness temperatures of the cores range from $10^{8.4}$ to $10^{11.4}$ K with a median value of $10^{10.1}$ K, indicating that the radio emission is from non-thermal jets, and that, likely, most sources are not strongly beamed, then implying a lower jet speed in these radio-loud NLS1 galaxies. In combination with archival data taken at multiple frequencies, we find that seven sources show flat or even inverted radio spectra, while steep spectra are revealed in the remaining seven objects. Although all these sources are very radio-loud with $R > 100$, their jet properties are diverse, in terms of their milli-arcsecond (mas) scale (pc scale) morphology and their overall radio spectral shape. The evidence for slow jet speeds (i.e., less relativistic jets), in combination with the low kinetic/radio power, may offer an explanation for the compact VLBA radio structure in most sources. The mildly relativistic jets in these high accretion rate systems are consistent with a scenario, where jets are accelerated from the hot corona above the disk by the magnetic field and the radiation force of the accretion disk. Alternatively, a low jet bulk velocity can be explained by low spin in the Blandford-Znajek mechanism.Comment: 39 pages, 17 figures, ApJS accepte

Multi-Modality Deep Network for Extreme Learned Image Compression

Image-based single-modality compression learning approaches have demonstrated exceptionally powerful encoding and decoding capabilities in the past few years , but suffer from blur and severe semantics loss at extremely low bitrates. To address this issue, we propose a multimodal machine learning method for text-guided image compression, in which the semantic information of text is used as prior information to guide image compression for better compression performance. We fully study the role of text description in different components of the codec, and demonstrate its effectiveness. In addition, we adopt the image-text attention module and image-request complement module to better fuse image and text features, and propose an improved multimodal semantic-consistent loss to produce semantically complete reconstructions. Extensive experiments, including a user study, prove that our method can obtain visually pleasing results at extremely low bitrates, and achieves a comparable or even better performance than state-of-the-art methods, even though these methods are at 2x to 4x bitrates of ours.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, accepted by AAAI 202

Green Tea Polyphenols Reduce Body Weight in Rats by Modulating Obesity-Related Genes

Beneficial effects of green tea polyphenols (GTP) against obesity have been reported, however, the mechanism of this protection is not clear. Therefore, the objective of this study was to identify GTP-targeted genes in obesity using the high-fat-diet-induced obese rat model. A total of three groups (n = 12/group) of Sprague Dawley (SD) female rats were tested, including the control group (rats fed with low-fat diet), the HF group (rats fed with high-fat diet), and the HF+GTP group (rats fed with high-fat diet and GTP in drinking water). The HF group increased body weight as compared to the control group. Supplementation of GTP in the drinking water in the HF+GTP group reduced body weight as compared to the HF group. RNA from liver samples was extracted for gene expression analysis. A total of eighty-four genes related to obesity were analyzed using PCR array. Compared to the rats in the control group, the rats in the HF group had the expression levels of 12 genes with significant changes, including 3 orexigenic genes (Agrp, Ghrl, and Nr3c1); 7 anorectic genes (Apoa4, Cntf, Ghr, IL-1β, Ins1, Lepr, and Sort); and 2 genes that relate to energy expenditure (Adcyap1r1 and Adrb1). Intriguingly, the HF+GTP group restored the expression levels of these genes in the high-fat-induced obese rats. The protein expression levels of IL-1β and IL-6 in the serum samples from the control, HF, and HF+GTP groups confirmed the results of gene expression. Furthermore, the protein expression levels of superoxide dismutase-1 (SOD1) and catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) also showed GTP-regulated protective changes in this obese rat model. Collectively, this study revealed the beneficial effects of GTP on body weight via regulating obesity-related genes, anti-inflammation, anti-oxidant capacity, and estrogen-related actions in high-fat-induced obese rats

Cerebroprotective Effects of Dimeric Copper(II) Bis(o-acetoxybenzoate) on Ischemia-reperfusion Injury in Gerbils

The cerebroprotective effects of copper aspirinate [dimeric copper(II) bis(o-acetoxybenzoate)] were investigated in gerbils subjected to 10-min global cerebral ischemia followed b 60-min reperfusion. The results showed that intragastric copper aspirinate (7.5, 15.0 and 30.0 mg Kg−1) markedly promoted the recovery of the electroencephalogram amplitude, attenuated the increase of lipid peroxide content and the decrease of superoxide dismutase activity in the cortex during ischemia-reperfusion injury. It suggested that copper aspirinate possesses potential neuroprotective properties, the mechanism of which might be related to an increase of the activity of endogenous superoxide dismutase

Gender Gaps in the Measurement of Public Opinion About Homosexuality in Cross-national Surveys: A Question-Wording Experiment

Measures of attitudes towards homosexuality in cross-national studies have received criticism for not being ‘gender-sensitive’. The current study used a split-ballot design allowing for separate analyses of the attitudes towards ‘gay men and lesbian women’, ‘gay men’, and ‘lesbian women’ in a pooled sample of 3,381 participants from Great Britain, Hungary, and Portugal. Analyses controlling for sociodemographics showed that differences in attitudes towards male and female targets were generally small and did not interact with the gender of the rater. In addition, results showed that men’s attitudes towards homosexuality were more strongly related to their gender ideology than women’s attitudes. Implications of these findings for cross-national studies measuring attitudes towards homosexuality are discussed

Dealloyed porous gold anchored by: In situ generated graphene sheets as high activity catalyst for methanol electro-oxidation reaction

A novel one-step method to prepare the nanocomposites of reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/nanoporous gold (NPG) is realized by chemically dealloying an Al2Au precursor. The RGO nanosheets anchored on the surface of NPG have a cicada wing like shape and act as both conductive agent and buffer layer to improve the catalytic ability of NPG for methanol electro-oxidation reaction (MOR). This improvement can also be ascribed to the microstructure change of NPG in dealloying with RGO. This work inspires a facile and economic method to prepare the NPG based catalyst for MOR