Comparison of Short-grain Rice Cultivars Grown in Japan and the United States

Although short-grain rice accounts for less than 2% of U.S. rice production, the demand for short-grain rice is expected to increase because of the increasing popularity of sushi and sake. The objective of this study was to compare the physical, chemical and textural properties of short-grain rice cultivars grown in Japan and in the U.S. Seven short-grain rice cultivars from the 2016 crop year were collected, including five cultivars (Hatsushimo, Kinuhikari, Koshihikari, Nanatsuboshi, and Yumepirika) grown and purchased in grocery stores in Japan, one (RU9601099) grown in Arkansas, and one (CH-202) grown in California. The rice cultivars were characterized for kernel dimensions, color, chemical composition, amylopectin fine structure, and gelatinization, pasting and textural properties. RU9601099 had a smaller kernel width and a greater whiteness (L*) value than the other cultivars. Japanese cultivars were comparable in protein content, while RU9601099 had the greatest and CH-202 had the lowest protein content. RU9601099, CH-202 and Kinuhikari shared a similar value of average amylopectin chain length and gelatinization temperatures and enthalpy, which were significantly greater than the other cultivars. Kinuhikari and RU9601099 displayed greater peak and trough viscosities, whereas Hatsushimo and Nanatsuboshi had lower peak and breakdown viscosities. When cooked, the Japanese cultivars exhibited significantly greater hardness than the U.S. cultivars. Based on Ward’s cluster analysis considering all data, CH-202 shared similar properties with Kinuhikari, and RU9601099 was distinctively different from the other cultivars in most properties. The information obtained from this study will help future cultivar development and marketing of existing short-grain rice cultivars in the U.S

Measuring the Effect of Infant Industry Protection: The Japanese Automobile Industry in 1955-1965

This paper examines the Japanese automobile industry to measure the effect of import restriction policy for infant industry. Import restriction policy can provide large amount of domestic demand for producers and help them to acquire the experience of production. It has been said to be a key driving force of the dramatic growth of the Japanese automobile industry. Compared with a subsidy policy, however, an import restriction causes some types of distortions. Conducting the counterfactual exercise, I explore what it would have happened if instead the optimal subsidy had been provided to Japanese automakers. This exercise measures the welfare effect of an actual restriction policy in terms of an optimal one. That is, it quantifies how close the welfare level of the actual policy was to the level of the optimal subsidy policy. From the experimental exercise, I find the fact that the import restriction reached to only 55 percent of the optimal welfare level.

A bound on Universal Extra Dimension Models from up to 2fb^{-1} of LHC Data at 7TeV

The recent up to 2fb^{-1} of data from the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at 7TeV put an upper bound on the production cross section of a Higgs-like particle. We translate the results of the H -> WW -> l nu l nu and H -> gamma gamma as well as the combined analysis by the ATLAS and CMS into an allowed region for the Kaluza-Klein (KK) mass M_{KK} and the Higgs mass $M_H$ for all the known Universal Extra Dimension (UED) models in five and six dimensions. Our bound is insensitive to the detailed KK mass splitting and mixing and hence complementary to all other known signatures.Comment: (v2) accepted for publication in Phys. Lett. B, newer data shown in Lepton-Photon conference (especially from separate WW and di-photon channels) are included, title changed accordingly, comments and references added; (v1) 10 pages, 2 figures, 2 table

ttHttH Anomalous Coupling in Double Higgs Production

We study the effects of top-Higgs anomalous coupling in the production of a pair of Higgs boson via gluon fusion at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The introduction of anomalous $ttH$ coupling can alter the hadronic double Higgs boson cross section and can lead to characteristic changes in certain kinematic distributions. We perform a global analysis based on available LHC data on the Higgs to constrain the parameters of $ttH$ anomalous coupling. Possible overlap of the predictions due to anomalous $ttH$ coupling with those due to anomalous trilinear Higgs coupling is also studied. We briefly discuss the effect of the anomalous $ttH$ coupling on the $HZ$ production via gluon fusion which is one of the main backgrounds in the $HH \to \gamma\gamma b {\bar b}$ channel.Comment: 22 pages, 22 figures, 4 tables. Text reorganized, main results unchanged, new plots and references added. Journal versio

Phenomenology of flavorful composite vector bosons in light of BB anomalies

We analyze the flavor structure of composite vector bosons arising in a model of vectorlike technicolor, often called hypercolor (HC), with eight flavors that form a one-family content of HC fermions. Dynamics of the composite vector bosons, referred to as HC rho in this paper, are formulated together with HC pions by the hidden local symmetry (HLS), in a way analogous to QCD vector mesons. Then coupling properties to the standard model (SM) fermions, which respect the HLS gauge symmetry, are described in a way that couplings of the HC rhos to the left-handed SM quarks and leptons are given by a well-defined setup as taking the flavor mixing structures into account. Under the present scenario, we discuss significant bounds on the model from electroweak precision tests, flavor physics, and collider physics. We also try to address B anomalies in processes such as B -> K(*) mu+ mu- and B -> D(*) tau nu, recently reported by LHCb, Belle, (ATLAS, and CMS in part.) Then we find that the present model can account for the anomaly in B -> K(*) mu+ mu- consistently with the other constraints while it predicts no significant deviations in B -> D(*) tau nu from the SM, which can be examined in the future Belle II experiment. The former is archived with the form C9 = -C10 of the Wilson coefficients for effective operators of b -> s mu+ mu-, which has been favored by the recent experimental data. We also investigate current and future experimental limits at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and see that possible collider signals come from dijet and ditau, or dimuon resonant searches for the present scenario with TeV mass range. To conclude, the present b -> s mu+ mu- anomaly is likely to imply discovery of new vector bosons in the ditau or dimuon channel in the context of the HC rho model. Our model can be considered as a UV completion of conventional U(1)' model.Comment: 62 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, typos modified, published versio