Antidumping Petition: To File or Not To File

Given the “normal value†of a product as common knowledge in an import-competing market, the profitability of a home firm in filing an antidumping (AD) petition against its foreign rival is shown to depend on the marginal cost differential between the home and foreign firms. When the marginal cost differential is “significantly large,†the home firm's ability to put the foreign firm at the risk of an AD violation is limited. But when the marginal cost differential is “significantly small,†the home firm is able to increase its output and lower the price of the product below its normal value, putting the foreign firm in the situation of an illegal dumping. One interesting implication is that, relative to the case without an AD law, the home firm has a stronger incentive to undertake cost-reducing activities (e.g., R&D investment or the adoption of a more efficient technology) under the law.antidumping laws, antidumping duties, dumping margins

Singing voice correction using canonical time warping

Expressive singing voice correction is an appealing but challenging problem. A robust time-warping algorithm which synchronizes two singing recordings can provide a promising solution. We thereby propose to address the problem by canonical time warping (CTW) which aligns amateur singing recordings to professional ones. A new pitch contour is generated given the alignment information, and a pitch-corrected singing is synthesized back through the vocoder. The objective evaluation shows that CTW is robust against pitch-shifting and time-stretching effects, and the subjective test demonstrates that CTW prevails the other methods including DTW and the commercial auto-tuning software. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method in a practical, real-world scenario

Pharmacokinetics of p

The characteristics of aristolochic acid nephropathy (AAN) are interstitial fibrosis and atrophy of the proximal tubules, but with no change in glomeruli. To investigate the effects of AA on renal functions and the pharmacokinetics (PKs) of p-aminohippuric acid (PAH) and inulin, New Zealand white rabbits were used in this study. The plasma concentrations of PAH and inulin were determined by validated HPLC methods. After a single intravenous administration of 0.5 mg/kg aristolochic acid sodium (AANa), rabbits exhibited mild to moderate nephrotoxicity on the 7th day. Significant tubulointerstitial damage to kidney specimens was found, but there were no remarkable glomerular changes. Clearance rates of PAH and inulin both significantly decreased in AANa-treated rabbits. In addition, there was a significant correlation among the degree of tubulointerstitial changes and PK parameters of PAH after AANa administration, but no correlation was noted with the PKs of inulin. With mild to moderate AAN in rabbits, the renal plasma flow significantly decreased by 55%, and the glomerular filtration rate also significantly decreased by 85%. In conclusion, major renal lesions were found on proximal tubules after AANa administration. The PKs of PAH and inulin significantly changed, and kidney functions, including the RPF and GFR, were reduced

Regulation of axon repulsion by MAX-1 SUMOylation and AP-3.

During neural development, growing axons express specific surface receptors in response to various environmental guidance cues. These axon guidance receptors are regulated through intracellular trafficking and degradation to enable navigating axons to reach their targets. In Caenorhabditis elegans, the UNC-5 receptor is necessary for dorsal migration of developing motor axons. We previously found that MAX-1 is required for UNC-5-mediated axon repulsion, but its mechanism of action remained unclear. Here, we demonstrate that UNC-5-mediated axon repulsion in C. elegans motor axons requires both max-1 SUMOylation and the AP-3 complex β subunit gene, apb-3 Genetic interaction studies show that max-1 is SUMOylated by gei-17/PIAS1 and acts upstream of apb-3 Biochemical analysis suggests that constitutive interaction of MAX-1 and UNC-5 receptor is weakened by MAX-1 SUMOylation and by the presence of APB-3, a competitive interactor with UNC-5. Overexpression of APB-3 reroutes the trafficking of UNC-5 receptor into the lysosome for protein degradation. In vivo fluorescence recovery after photobleaching experiments shows that MAX-1 SUMOylation and APB-3 are required for proper trafficking of UNC-5 receptor in the axon. Our results demonstrate that SUMOylation of MAX-1 plays an important role in regulating AP-3-mediated trafficking and degradation of UNC-5 receptors during axon guidance

Productivity Change in Taiwan's Farmers' Credit Unions: A Nonparametric Risk-Adjusted Malmquist Approach

This article proposes an extended three-stage DEA methodology similar to Fried et al. (2002) to improve the measurement of productivity growth then the assumption of free disposability of undesirable outpu t does not apply. A directional distance function is used to construct adjusted Malmquist-Luenberger productivity indexes which simultaneously account for the impacts of undesirable outputs, environmental variables, and statistical noise. Panel data for 264 farmers' credit unions (FCUs) in Taiwan covering the 1998-2000 period are employed to illustrate the advantages of this method. On average, the productivity of Taiwan's FCUs is found to have deteriorated over the 1998-2000 period. Although an improvement in efficiency has been observed, the major reason for the deterioration is found to be due to the regression of techno logy.Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index, three-stage DEA, undesirable outputs, directional distance function, Agricultural Finance, Productivity Analysis,

The computation of Wavelet-Galerkin approximation on a bounded interval

International audienceThis paper describes exact evaluations of various finite integrals whose integrands involve products of Daubechies' compactly supported wavelets and their derivatives and/or integrals. These finite integrals play an essential role in the wavelet-Galerkin approximation of differential or integral equations on a bounded interval