Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Economic Growth? Evidence from a Threshold Regression Analysis

Using threshold regression techniques developed by Caner and Hansen(2004),this paper examines whether the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth is dependent upon different absorptive capacities. There are three absorptive capacities, namely, initial GDP, human capital and the volume of trade, that are used as threshold variables in our paper. The empirical analysis shows that FDI alone plays an ambiguous role in contributing to economic growth based on a sample of 62 countries covering the period from 1975 through 2000. Under the threshold regression, we find that initial GDP and human capital are important factors in explaining FDI. FDI is found to have a positive and significant impact on growth when host countries have better levels of initial GDP and human capital.

Asymmetric Exchange Rate Exposure and Industry Characteristics : Evidence from Japanese Data

This paper investigates the asymmetric effects of exchange rate exposure on Japanese stock returns at the industry level.Using the asymmetric correlation test of Hong et al.(2007), we examine five major currencies against the yen and thirty-three Japanese sectoral stock returns.Signi ficant asymmetric responses in stock returns to exchange rate changes are found in the pharmaceutical, real estate, and air transportation industries.These findings are consistent with the pricing-to-market and hysteretic behavior for the pharmaceutical and air transportation industries and with the hedging behavior for the real estate industry.The results for the threshold models confirm that the asymmetric exposures are based on industry characteristics.exchange rate exposure, asymmetric correlation, threshold model

Mechanism of Evolution Shared by Gene and Language

We propose a general mechanism for evolution to explain the diversity of gene and language. To quantify their common features and reveal the hidden structures, several statistical properties and patterns are examined based on a new method called the rank-rank analysis. We find that the classical correspondence, "domain plays the role of word in gene language", is not rigorous, and propose to replace domain by protein. In addition, we devise a new evolution unit, syllgram, to include the characteristics of spoken and written language. Based on the correspondence between (protein, domain) and (word, syllgram), we discover that both gene and language shared a common scaling structure and scale-free network. Like the Rosetta stone, this work may help decipher the secret behind non-coding DNA and unknown languages.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, 3 tabl

Visfatin mediates malignant behaviors through adipose-derived stem cells intermediary in breast cancer

Adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) have been implicated in tumor growth and metastasis in breast cancer. ADSCs exhibit tumor tropism, and are of increasing clinical relevance due to the autologous fat grafting for breast reconstruction. Although we have previously shown that a high level of the adipocytokine visfatin in human breast cancer tissues correlated with tumor progression mediated by cAbl and STAT3, the effects of visfatin in the tumor microenvironment are unclear. To understand how visfatin modulates breast cancer within the tumor-stromal environment, we examined determinants of breast cancer progression using a visfatin-primed ADSCs-tumor co-culture model. ADSCs were isolated from tumor-free adipose tissue adjacent to breast tumors. ADSCs were treated with or without visfatin for 48 h and then collected for co-culture with breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 for 72 h in a transwell system. We found that the MDA-MB-231 cells co-cultured with visfatin-treated ADSCs (vADSCs) had higher levels of cell viability, anchorage independent growth, migration, invasion, and tumorsphere formation than that co-cultured with untreated ADSCs (uADSCs). Growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15) upregulation was found in the co-culture conditioned medium, with GDF15 neutralizing antibody blocking the promoting effect on MDA-MB-231 in co-culture. In addition, a GDF15-induced AKT pathway was found in MDA-MB-231 and treatment with PI3K/AKT inhibitor also reversed the promoting effect. In an orthotopic xenograft mouse model, MDA-MB-231 co-injected with vADSCs formed a larger tumor mass than with uADSCs. Positive correlations were noted between visfatin, GDF15, and phosphor-AKT expressions in human breast cancer specimens. In conclusion, visfatin activated GDF15-AKT pathway mediated via ADSCs to facilitate breast cancer progression

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies eight new loci for type 2 diabetes in east Asians

We conducted a three-stage genetic study to identify susceptibility loci for type 2 diabetes (T2D) in east Asian populations. We followed our stage 1 meta-analysis of eight T2D genome-wide association studies (6,952 cases with T2D and 11,865 controls) with a stage 2 in silico replication analysis (5,843 cases and 4,574 controls) and a stage 3 de novo replication analysis (12,284 cases and 13,172 controls). The combined analysis identified eight new T2D loci reaching genome-wide significance, which mapped in or near GLIS3, PEPD, FITM2-R3HDML-HNF4A, KCNK16, MAEA, GCC1-PAX4, PSMD6 and ZFAND3. GLIS3, which is involved in pancreatic beta cell development and insulin gene expression1,2, is known for its association with fasting glucose levels3,4. The evidence of an association with T2D for PEPD5 and HNF4A6,7 has been shown in previous studies. KCNK16 may regulate glucose-dependent insulin secretion in the pancreas. These findings, derived from an east Asian population, provide new perspectives on the etiology of T2D