Benefit Evaluation of the Country of Origin Labeling in Taiwan: Results from Auction Experiment

This research is aimed at investigating the consumer’s preference for food produced in Taiwan and the economic benefits for the country of origin labeling. The study uses both experimental auction and contingent valuation method (CVM) to investigate factors that affect the consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP) for products under country-of-origin labeling (COOL). Experimental auctions of Taiwan and China preserved olives as well as Taiwan, China and Vietnam oolong teas were conducted using the Vickrey’s second price sealed bid auction. For CVM, the study used the double-bounded dichotomous choice method in which we started assuming the same base price for all products in the first question and then varied the prices in the second CV question. The products not chosen in the first question were offered with a discount in a range from 10% to 50% in the following question. Based on auction data, the Tobit model shows that the estimated premiums are 58.1%, 78.15% and 98.13% for Taiwan products over their alternatives of China olives, China oolong tea, and Vietnam oolong tea, respectively. Based on the CVM, the estimated premiums for Taiwan over China olives from a Logit model is 67%, and the premiums for Taiwan produced oolong tea should lie between 50% to an unknown upper bound over China and Vietnam alternatives as the Multinomial Logit model cannot be successfully estimated due to too few choice switches with discounted prices. The study thus demonstrates the superiority of the experimental auction over the CVM in eliciting the WTP for foods produced in Taiwan. The study concludes that enacting a COOL law would increase economic benefits to consumers in Taiwan, and at the same time, placing the imported products in the level playing field.country-of-origin labeling, experimental auction, Tobit model, contingent valuation method, logit model, multinomial logit model, willingness to pay, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Q13, D12.,

Religious Attendance and subjective Well-being in an Eastern-Culture Country: Empirical Evidence from Taiwan

This paper investigates the relationship between religious attendance and subjective well-being in an Eastern-culture country. The findings of this study indicate that religious attendance has positive relationships with happiness as well as domain satisfactions with interpersonal relationship, health, and marital life, but it is not significantly related to the satisfaction with personal financial status. Interestingly, for believers of Eastern religions, those who have a higher level of relative income tend to have higher levels of satisfaction with financial status and health status, but are less satisfied with being free of worry and interpersonal relationship. Moreover, for the adherents of Eastern religions, those who have a higher educational attainment appear to report lower levels of overall happiness and the satisfaction with being free of worry. It appears that the differences in the religious practices and organizational settings between Eastern religions and Western Christianity lead to different patterns of the relationships between religious attendance and various measures of subjective well-being

International human rights law and the right to mental health

Purpose: Why did the WHO claim that there is “no health without mental health”? In its reform of the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW), why did the Taiwan government add oral health into the Department of Mental Health? This paper explores normative accounts for the right to health which include physical and mental health as a highest state for everyone. Challenge the government should not excuse for inadequate resource to add oral to Department of mental health. Methods: We apply an analysis of international human rights law and international conventions to justify how mental health is a human right. Results: The right to the highest attainable standard of health is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, as well as the constitution of the World Health Organization. A person’s state of health is conceptualized with a holistic perspective. Mental health, by definition and elements, is critical to an individual’s personal dignity, lifestyle, and living condition. Thus, as the fundamental basis of personal development and functioning, physical and mental health are recognized as a human right in international human rights law. The governments need to take responsibilities to build a mental healthy environment to their people. Conclusions: We found that in practice, governments (including Taiwan) often ignore people’s mental health needs when initiating health or welfare policies, especially if mental health is not regarded as a human right by the government. In fact, some governments refuse to honor mental health as a right although it is a legal obligation under international law. We urge Taiwan’s government to return the structure of the MOHW back to include an independent Department of Mental Health. To influence governmental policies, a change is needed in the research community, because researchers and practitioners in mental health and psychiatry still rarely view mental health from an international human rights perspective as well as for all public not disease oriented. We hope to initiate a review of the basic requirements of the right to mental health in terms of its positive, rather than negative, aspects

Pharmacological activation of the amygdala, but not single prolonged footshock-induced acute stress, interferes with cue-induced motivation toward food rewards in rats

In the face of threats, animals adapt their behaviors to cope with the situation. Under such circumstances, irrelevant behaviors are usually suppressed. In this study, we examined whether food-seeking motivation would decrease under activation of the amygdala, an important nucleus in the regulation of stress response in the central nervous system, or after a physical acute stress session. In Experiment 1, we pharmacologically activated the basolateral nucleus (BLA) or the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) before a cue-induced reinstatement test in rats. Our results showed that activation of the BLA or the CeA abolished cue-induced motivation toward food rewards, while locomotor activity and free food intake were not affected. In Experiments 2 and 3, we further assessed anxiety and despair levels, as well as cue-induced reinstatement, after a single prolonged footshock-induced acute stress in rats. Behaviorally, acute stress did not affect anxiety level, despair level, or cue-induced motivation toward food rewards. Physiologically, there was no difference in cellular activities of the amygdala immediately after acute stress. To conclude, our results suggested that pharmacological activation of the amygdala decreased cue-induced motivation toward food reward. However, physiological acute stress did not immediately interfere with the negative emotions, motivation, or amygdala activities of the animals

Construction and verification of digital electronics contestants' indicators for vocational education in Taiwan

No AbstractKeywords: competency indicator, digital electronics, important-performance analysis, skill competitio

Sequence features involved in the mechanism of 3' splice junction wobbling

Background Alternative splicing is an important mechanism mediating the diversified functions of genes in multicellular organisms, and such event occurs in around 40-60% of human genes. Recently, a new splice-junction wobbling mechanism was proposed that subtle modifications exist in mRNA maturation by alternatively choosing at 5'- GTNGT and 3'- NAGNAG, which created single amino acid insertion and deletion isoforms. Results By browsing the Alternative Splicing Database information, we observed that most 3' alternative splice site choices occur within six nucleotides of the dominant splice site and the incidence significantly decreases further away from the dominant acceptor site. Although a lower frequency of alternative splicing occurs within the intronic region (alternative splicing at the proximal AG) than in the exonic region (alternative splicing at the distal AG), alternative AG sites located within the intronic region show stronger potential as the acceptor. These observations revealed that the choice of 3' splice sites during 3' splicing junction wobbling could depend on the distance between the duplicated AG and the branch point site (BPS). Further mutagenesis experiments demonstrated that the distance of AG-to-AG and BPS-to-AG can greatly influence 3' splice site selection. Knocking down a known alternative splicing regulator, hSlu7, failed to affect wobble splicing choices. Conclusion Our results implied that nucleotide distance between proximal and distal AG sites has an important regulatory function. In this study, we showed that occurrence of 3' wobble splicing occurs in a distance-dependent manner and that most of this wobble splicing is probably caused by steric hindrance from a factor bound at the neighboring tandem motif sequence

Nuclear localization of orphan receptor protein kinase (Ror1) is mediated through the juxtamembrane domain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Several receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) such as EGFR, FGFR, TRK, and VEGFR are capable of localizing in the cell nucleus in addition to their usual plasma membrane localization. Recent reports also demonstrate that nuclear-localized RTKs have important cellular functions such as transcriptional activation. On the basis of preliminary bioinformatic analysis, additional RTKs, including receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 1 (Ror1) were predicted to have the potential for nuclear subcellular localization. Ror1 is a receptor protein tyrosine kinase that modulates neurite growth in the central nervous system. Because the nuclear localization capability of the Ror1 cytoplasmic domain has not been reported, we examined the cellular expression distribution of this region.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The Ror1 cytoplasmic region was amplified and cloned into reporter constructs with fluorescent tags. Following transfection, the nuclear distribution patterns of transiently expressed fusion proteins were observed. Serial deletion constructs were then used to map the juxtamembrane domain of Ror1 (aa_471-513) for this nuclear translocation activity. Further site-directed mutagenesis suggested that a KxxK-16 aa-KxxK sequence at residues 486-509 is responsible for the nuclear translocation interaction. Subsequent immunofluorescence analysis by cotransfection of Ran and Ror1 implied that the nuclear translocation event of Ror1 might be mediated through the Ran pathway.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We have predicted several RTKs that contain the nuclear localization signals. This is the first report to suggest that the juxtamembrane domain of the Ror1 cytoplasmic region mediates the translocation event. Ran GTPase is also implicated in this event. Our study might be beneficial in future research to understand the Ror1 biological signaling pathway.</p