The Transfer Paradox In a Two-Sector Overlapping Generatoins Model: The Duality Approach

In this paper, we apply the duality approach, which is generally used in a static framework, to a two-sector overlapping generations model. Applying the duality approach enables one to determine clearly the welfare effects of a transfer and to explain how the transfer paradox might occur. Especially, we showed that whether the transfer paradox occurs depends on two effects: the dynamic terms-of-trade effect and the capital accumulation effect.

Mitochondrial Cardiomyopathy

Mitochondrial diseases are multisystem disorders, resulting from mitochondrial electron transport chain dysfunction and oxidative phosphorylation due to pathogenic variants in mitochondrial or nuclear DNA. The clinical presentations are variable in the age of onset, symptoms, and range and severity of organ involvement. Diagnosis requires a multidisciplinary approach and is based on clinical symptoms, laboratory tests, histopathological findings, and genetic analysis. Due to the multi-organ involvement, the evaluation of mitochondrial diseases should include a systemic screening for all targeted organs, including neuroimaging, ophthalmology, and hearing examinations. Cardiac involvement should be evaluated at the time of diagnosis, as cardiac involvement is an independent predictor of morbidity and early mortality, even in asymptomatic cases. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the most common cardiac manifestation; however, mitochondrial cardiomyopathy might also present as left ventricular non-compaction (LVNC) or as dilated, histiocytoid, or restrictive cardiomyopathy. The precise evaluation of cardiac involvement is of clinical use in predicting future cardiac events and prognosis. Despite advancements in molecular biology, no satisfactory treatments for mitochondrial diseases exist. Treatment remains largely symptomatic and does not significantly alter disease progression

Symmetry-breaking and trade in neoclassical economies with domestic policies having diminishing effect to production scale

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate whether a Nash equilibrium of a two-country trading economy is symmetry-breaking or not. Design/methodology/approach – The approach to tackle this topic is a theoretical treatment by the general equilibrium trade theory and game theory. Findings – If each government's domestic policy serving private production is diminishing to the private production scale, the Nash equilibrium is not symmetry-breaking. Originality/value – In the existing study of Chatterjee (2017), a similar result is derived by focusing on the properties of each country's GDP function. The authors, however, consider an economy where each country's PPF is strictly concave and show that the Nash equilibrium uniquely exists and this equilibrium is symmetry

Self-perceived food literacy in relation to the quality of overall diet and main meals: A cross-sectional study in Japanese adults

This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the relationship between self-perceived food literacy (SPFL) and quality of overall diet and main meals in Japanese adults. In total, 5998 adults aged 20-79 years were included in this analysis. The SPFL was assessed using the Japanese version of the 29-item Dutch SPFL scale (score range 1-5). Using validated dietary information, the Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015) was calculated (score range 0-100). The mean SPFL was 3.18; the internal consistency of the overall scale was considered good (Cronbach's alpha: 0.80). The mean HEI-2015 for overall diet was 50.4. The SPFL was significantly and positively associated with the HEI-2015. Using multiple linear regression, one point increase of SPFL corresponded to an increase in HEI-2015 by a point of 4.8 for overall diet, 6.2 for breakfast, 4.6 for lunch, and 3.6 for dinner (all P

Structure and crystallization behavior of Na₂O–ZrO₂–SiO₂–P₂O₅ glass for solid-state electrolyte separation

Sakaeda K., Shinozaki K., Kitta M., et al. Structure and crystallization behavior of Na₂O–ZrO₂–SiO₂–P₂O₅ glass for solid-state electrolyte separation. Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids 638, 123070 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnoncrysol.2024.123070.Glass ceramics containing Na super-ionic conductor (NASICON) crystals are promising candidates for solid-state electrolyte separators in aqueous sodium ion batteries due to their high ion conductivity, water stability, and productivity. Our objective was to fabricate a glass-ceramic separator by crystallizing a NASICON phase within the glass via heat-treatment. We conducted a detailed investigation into the structural evolution of the glass and the crystallization morphology. Upon heat-treatment, Si units polymerized to form an island-like phase, while P contributed to increasing non-bridging O to form a sea-like phase during droplet phase separation; subsequently, the Na₂Zr₂SiP₂O₁₂ crystalline phase formed. The remaining glass comprised Q⁴ units of Si in the island-like phase, and Q¹ and Q² units of P in the sea-like phase. The ionic conductivity of the sample increased by crystallization up to 5.4 × 10⁻⁵ S⋅cm ⁻¹ at 300 K. Furthermore, the water leakage tests showed that both the glass and glass-ceramics exhibited low leakages

Web-Based Content on Diet and Nutrition Written in Japanese: Infodemiology Study Based on Google Trends and Google Search

The increased availability of content of uncertain integrity obtained through the internet is a major concern. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive scrutiny of the fitness-for-purpose of web-based content on diet and nutrition. This cross-sectional study aims to describe diet- and nutrition-related web-based content written in Japanese, identified via a systematic extraction strategy using Google Trends and Google Search. We first identified keywords relevant for extracting web-based content (eg, blogs) on diet and nutrition written in Japanese using Google Trends. This process included identification of 638 seed terms, identification of approximately 1500 pairs of related queries (top) and search terms, the top 10% of which were extracted to identify 160 relevant pairs of related queries (top) and search terms, and identification of 107 keywords for search. We then extracted relevant web-based content using Google Search. The content (N=1703) examined here was extracted following a search based on 107 keywords. The most common themes included food and beverages (390/1703, 22.9%), weight management (366/1703, 21.49%), health benefits (261/1703, 15.33%), and healthy eating (235/1703, 13.8%). The main disseminators were information technology companies and mass media (474/1703, 27.83%), food manufacturers (246/1703, 14.45%), other (236/1703, 13.86%), and medical institutions (214/1703, 12.57%). Less than half of the content (790/1703, 46.39%) clearly indicated the involvement of editors or writers. More than half of the content (983/1703, 57.72%) was accompanied by one or more types of advertisement. The proportion of content with any type of citation reference was 40.05% (682/1703). The themes and disseminators of content were significantly associated with the involvement of editors or writers, accompaniment with advertisement, and citation of reference. In particular, content focusing on weight management was more likely to clearly indicate the involvement of editors or writers (212/366, 57.9%) and to be accompanied by advertisement (273/366, 74.6%), but less likely to have references cited (128/366, 35%). Content from medical institutions was less likely to have citation references (62/214, 29%). This study highlights concerns regarding the authorship, conflicts of interest (advertising), and the scientific credibility of web-based diet- and nutrition-related information written in Japanese. Nutrition professionals and experts should take these findings seriously because exposure to nutritional information that lacks context or seems contradictory can lead to confusion and backlash among consumers. However, more research is needed to draw firm conclusions about the accuracy and quality of web-based diet- and nutrition-related content and whether similar results can be obtained in other major mass media or social media outlets and even other languages. [Abstract copyright: ©Kentaro Murakami, Nana Shinozaki, Nana Kimoto, Hiroko Onodera, Fumi Oono, Tracy A McCaffrey, M Barbara E Livingstone, Tsuyoshi Okuhara, Mai Matsumoto, Ryoko Katagiri, Erika Ota, Tsuyoshi Chiba, Yuki Nishida, Satoshi Sasaki. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (https://formative.jmir.org), 16.11.2023.

Curated genome annotation of Oryza sativa ssp. japonica and comparative genome analysis with Arabidopsis thaliana

We present here the annotation of the complete genome of rice Oryza sativa L. ssp. japonica cultivar Nipponbare. All functional annotations for proteins and non-protein-coding RNA (npRNA) candidates were manually curated. Functions were identified or inferred in 19,969 (70%) of the proteins, and 131 possible npRNAs (including 58 antisense transcripts) were found. Almost 5000 annotated protein-coding genes were found to be disrupted in insertional mutant lines, which will accelerate future experimental validation of the annotations. The rice loci were determined by using cDNA sequences obtained from rice and other representative cereals. Our conservative estimate based on these loci and an extrapolation suggested that the gene number of rice is ~32,000, which is smaller than previous estimates. We conducted comparative analyses between rice and Arabidopsis thaliana and found that both genomes possessed several lineage-specific genes, which might account for the observed differences between these species, while they had similar sets of predicted functional domains among the protein sequences. A system to control translational efficiency seems to be conserved across large evolutionary distances. Moreover, the evolutionary process of protein-coding genes was examined. Our results suggest that natural selection may have played a role for duplicated genes in both species, so that duplication was suppressed or favored in a manner that depended on the function of a gene

The ASTRO-H X-ray Observatory

The joint JAXA/NASA ASTRO-H mission is the sixth in a series of highly successful X-ray missions initiated by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). ASTRO-H will investigate the physics of the high-energy universe via a suite of four instruments, covering a very wide energy range, from 0.3 keV to 600 keV. These instruments include a high-resolution, high-throughput spectrometer sensitive over 0.3-2 keV with high spectral resolution of Delta E < 7 eV, enabled by a micro-calorimeter array located in the focal plane of thin-foil X-ray optics; hard X-ray imaging spectrometers covering 5-80 keV, located in the focal plane of multilayer-coated, focusing hard X-ray mirrors; a wide-field imaging spectrometer sensitive over 0.4-12 keV, with an X-ray CCD camera in the focal plane of a soft X-ray telescope; and a non-focusing Compton-camera type soft gamma-ray detector, sensitive in the 40-600 keV band. The simultaneous broad bandpass, coupled with high spectral resolution, will enable the pursuit of a wide variety of important science themes.Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures, Proceedings of the SPIE Astronomical Instrumentation "Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray

Hitomi (ASTRO-H) X-ray Astronomy Satellite

The Hitomi (ASTRO-H) mission is the sixth Japanese x-ray astronomy satellite developed by a large international collaboration, including Japan, USA, Canada, and Europe. The mission aimed to provide the highest energy resolution ever achieved at E  >  2  keV, using a microcalorimeter instrument, and to cover a wide energy range spanning four decades in energy from soft x-rays to gamma rays. After a successful launch on February 17, 2016, the spacecraft lost its function on March 26, 2016, but the commissioning phase for about a month provided valuable information on the onboard instruments and the spacecraft system, including astrophysical results obtained from first light observations. The paper describes the Hitomi (ASTRO-H) mission, its capabilities, the initial operation, and the instruments/spacecraft performances confirmed during the commissioning operations for about a month