Economies of Vertical Integration in the Japanese Water Supply Industry

The merging of some water utilities in Japan has become possible since the 2000 Outline of Administrative Reform and the 2001 Water Act Revision. There are two avenues to merge water utilities, horizontal consolidation and vertical integration. Horizontal consolidation enables water distributors, such as the large water supply systems, to merge into one. Vertical integration enables water distributors and water wholesalers, such as the bulk water supply systems, to merge into one. However, these wide area consolidations or integrations havenÂft been promoted at local government level due to an absence of authority. Further, promotion has also been hindered by the lack of previous studies to support the economies of wide area consolidations or integrations. This paper focuses especially on the vertical integration between the water intake-purification and water distribution stages. To investigate economies of vertical integration, I estimate translog cost function in the Japanese water supply industry and test the separability hypotheses among water intake, purification and distribution stages. The results show that the economies of vertical integration exist between the water intake-purification and water distribution stages, so that the bulk water supply systems and the large water supply systems will be able to merge in order to achieve greater cost efficiency.

New IT Business Models in the "Asian Age" - Multilateral Collaboration and Business Innovation

China, after its implementation of foreign direct investment policy in December 1978, has continued to receive investments from international companies, and this has been one of the primary driving engines behind the Asian business development. Electronics products originating either from U.S.A. or Europe have experienced tremendous industry shifts to the Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. This paper examines, from the general perspective, the recent development of the Asian electronics industry and business models focusing on the personal computers and mobile communication products. Based on the analysis of the basic characteristics of the business models developed in Asia, future strategic directions for Japanese firms in the “Asian Age” will be discussed. Due to the interconnected global environment, the competition field has increasingly become leveled out. In the light of the global nature of the playing field, a multilateral collaboration approach will be emphasized and a complementary relationship will be sought.IT Business; "Asian Age"; China; Multilateral Collaboration

A private-public comparison of bus service operators

Due to the steady increase in the use of private autos in Japan, the bus business is facing hard times. In particular, bus services owned by public organizations have been struggling with increases in operating deficits and subsidies, so that recently in many cities there has been a call for restructuring. Publicly and privately owned bus operators co-exist in the Japanese market. Although their financial situation is not completely healthy, privately owned bus operators have performed better than their publicly owned counterparts. The main purpose of this study is to find the key factors causing the differences in efficiency between private and public bus operators, especially in these areas: efficiency in service production, wage, utilization of vehicles, and cost. In this study, we will make an analysis using observations of both private and public bus operators in the Kansai region in Japan for the five years from 1996 to 2000. After we examine the performance differences between the two sectors, we will estimate with econometric methods certain functions such as the production function of bus services and the wage function. Based on these functions, we will evaluate the differences in efficiency between private and public bus operators.

Comparisons of efficiencies between two types of DMUs : an application to Japanese public water companies

A water supply system composed of water production facilities and transmission facilities obtains water from various sources such as surface water, groundwater and so on. Although there are many empirical studies such as measuring efficiency, productivity and/or returns to scale for water supply organizations, almost all of them neglect the variety of water sources. The main purpose of this study is to compare the efficiencies of two types of DMUs (decision making units) e.g. water companies whose major source is underground vs. those whose major source is non-underground. In this study, using observations of Japanese public water companies, we will apply rank-sum-test of DEA (data envelopment analysis) approach developed by Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney to identify whether the differences between two gropes are significant. After we examine whether two groups of DMUs have different distribution functions of efficiency, we will measure efficiencies of two gropes and compare them.

Dementia Prevention and Aromatherapy in Japan

Until recently, it was thought that dementia prevention was not possible. However, a recent paper reported that 40% of the risk factors for developing dementia are modifiable. Large-scale clinical studies on dementia prevention and various initiatives to reduce the risk of developing dementia have been made worldwide. In addition to the introduction of a global initiative in dementia prevention, I also introduce the results of our research on the development of the Tottori method dementia prevention program and aromatherapy to approach olfactory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease

DoorGym: A Scalable Door Opening Environment And Baseline Agent

In order to practically implement the door opening task, a policy ought to be robust to a wide distribution of door types and environment settings. Reinforcement Learning (RL) with Domain Randomization (DR) is a promising technique to enforce policy generalization, however, there are only a few accessible training environments that are inherently designed to train agents in domain randomized environments. We introduce DoorGym, an open-source door opening simulation framework designed to utilize domain randomization to train a stable policy. We intend for our environment to lie at the intersection of domain transfer, practical tasks, and realism. We also provide baseline Proximal Policy Optimization and Soft Actor-Critic implementations, which achieves success rates between 0% up to 95% for opening various types of doors in this environment. Moreover, the real-world transfer experiment shows the trained policy is able to work in the real world. Environment kit available here: https://github.com/PSVL/DoorGym/Comment: Full version (Real world transfer experiments result

Triphenyl{(E)-4-[4-(phenyldiazenyl)phenyl]-4H-1,2,4-triazol-1-yl}boron

In the title compound, C32H26BN5 or [(C14H11N5)B(C6H5)3], the B atom is approximately tetra­hedrally coordinated. The diazo unit is in a trans conformation, which is generally more stable than a cis one for aromatic azo compounds. The crystal structure features very weak C—H⋯π inter­actions. The dihedral angles between the central benzene ring and the terminal rings in the heterocycle are 62.64, 73.54 and 61.60°

Attenuation of ischemic liver injury by prostaglandin E<inf>1</inf> analogue, misoprostol, and prostaglandin I<inf>2</inf> analogue, OP-41483

Background: Prostaglandin has been reported to have protective effects against liver injury. Use of this agent in clinical settings, however, is limited because of drugrelated side effects. This study investigated whether misoprostol, prostaglandin E1 analogue, and OP-41483, prostaglandin I2 analogue, which have fewer adverse effects with a longer half-life, attenuate ischemic liver damage. Study Design: Thirty beagle dogs underwent 2 hours of hepatic vascular exclusion using venovenous bypass. Misoprostol was administered intravenously for 30 minutes before ischemia and for 3 hours after reperfusion. OP-41483 was administered intraportally for 30 minutes before ischemia (2 μg/kg/min) and for 3 hours after reperfusion (0.5 μg/kg/min). Animals were divided into five groups: untreated control group (n = 10); high-dose misoprostol (total 100 μg/kg) group (MP-H, n = 5); middle-dose misoprostol (50 μg/kg) group (MP-M, n = 5); low-dose misoprostol (25 μg/kg) group (MP-L, n = 5); and OP-41483 group (OP, n = 5). Animal survival, hepatic tissue blood flow (HTBF), liver function, and histology were analyzed. Results: Two-week animal survival rates were 30% in control, 60% in MP-H, 100% in MP-M, 80% in MP-L, and 100% in OP. The treatments with prostaglandin analogues improved HTBF, and attenuated liver enzyme release, adenine nucleotrides degradation, and histologic abnormalities. In contrast to the MP-H animals that exhibited unstable cardiovascular systems, the MP- M, MP-L, and OP animals experienced only transient hypotension. Conclusions: These results indicate that misoprostol and OP-41483 prevent ischemic liver damage, although careful dose adjustment of misoprostol is required to obtain the best protection with minimal side effects