266 research outputs found
Clinical and histopathological characteristics of patients with prostate cancer in the BioBank Japan project
No full textBackground: Prostate cancer is the sixth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Japan. We aimed to elucidate the clinical and histopathological characteristics of patients with prostate cancer in the BioBank Japan (BBJ) project. Methods: Four thousand, seven hundred and ninety-three patients diagnosed with prostate cancer in the BBJ project were included. Clinical and histopathological data, including causes of death, were analyzed. Relative survival (RS) rates of prostate cancer were calculated. Results: Four thousand, one hundred and seventy-one prostate cancer patients with available histological data had adenocarcinoma. The mean age of the patients was 72.5 years. The proportion of patients who were non-smokers, non-drinkers, had a normal body mass index, did not exercise, had a normal prostate-specific antigen level, and had a family history of prostate cancer were 30.7%, 28.0%, 66.6%, 58.1%, 67.6%, and 6.5%, respectively. The proportion of patients with Stage II, III, and IV disease were 24.4%, 7.3%, and 4.4%, respectively. After limiting to patients with a time from the initial diagnosis of prostate cancer to entry into the study cohort of ≤90 days (n = 869), the 5- and 10-year RS rates were 96.3% and 100.5%, respectively, although we were unable to consider management strategies due to a plenty of data missing. Conclusions: We provide an overview of patients with prostate cancer in the BBJ project. Our findings, coupled with those from various high throughput “omics” technologies, will contribute to the implementation of prevention interventions and medical management of prostate cancer patients
Clinical and histopathological characteristics of patients with prostate cancer in the BioBank Japan project
No full textBackground: Prostate cancer is the sixth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Japan. We aimed to elucidate the clinical and histopathological characteristics of patients with prostate cancer in the BioBank Japan (BBJ) project.
Methods: Four thousand, seven hundred and ninety-three patients diagnosed with prostate cancer in the BBJ project were included. Clinical and histopathological data, including causes of death, were analyzed. Relative survival (RS) rates of prostate cancer were calculated.
Results: Four thousand, one hundred and seventy-one prostate cancer patients with available histological data had adenocarcinoma. The mean age of the patients was 72.5 years. The proportion of patients who were non-smokers, non-drinkers, had a normal body mass index, did not exercise, had a normal prostate-specific antigen level, and had a family history of prostate cancer were 30.7%, 28.0%, 66.6%, 58.1%, 67.6%, and 6.5%, respectively. The proportion of patients with Stage II, III, and IV disease were 24.4%, 7.3%, and 4.4%, respectively. After limiting to patients with a time from the initial diagnosis of prostate cancer to entry into the study cohort of ≤90 days (n = 869), the 5- and 10-year RS rates were 96.3% and 100.5%, respectively, although we were unable to consider management strategies due to a plenty of data missing.
Conclusions: We provide an overview of patients with prostate cancer in the BBJ project. Our findings, coupled with those from various high throughput “omics” technologies, will contribute to the implementation of prevention interventions and medical management of prostate cancer patients
Foreign direct investment and China's bilateral intra-industry trade with Japan and the US
No full textThis paper analyzes dynamic changes of China's intra-industry trade with its major trading partners, Japan and the US, from 1980 to 2004. It also investigates to what extent foreign direct investment promoted intra-industry trade. The empirical results show that, while shares of China's intra-industry trade with both Japan and U.S rose substantially, its intra-industry trade with Japan has reached 35 per cent of the overall trade, considerably larger than 10 per cent with the US. Sino-Japan intra-industry trade concentrated in the electrical and machinery sectors accounted for 52 per cent and 46 per cent of overall trade respectively. On the other hand, it is in the chemical and food sectors where intra-industry trade represented a relatively large proportion of Sino-US trade, 50 per cent and 30 per cent accordingly in each sector. In addition, the analysis indicates that Japanese direct investment in China performed a significant role in enhancing intra-industry trade between Japan and China. However, it found no evidence that the US direct investment in China contributed to the growth of the bilateral intra-industry trade between the two countries.intra-industry trade; FDI; China
Turgot's missing manuscripts - partially recovered
No full textSince 2015 it has become clear that various manuscripts that once belonged to the Turgot family archive are missing. This paper reports on the recent recovery in Japan of photographs of some of these manuscripts and presents a case study of the images of the famous draft known as Valeurs et monnaies. It allows one to appreciate the practices of previous editors of Turgot’s writings as well as the writing process of the author
Making noisy data sing : a micro approach to measuring industrial efficiency
No full textTechnical, scale and allocative inefficiency are widely believed to plague the industrial sectors of developing countries. This paper presents a way to measure this inefficiency with imperfect data. There is great interest in documenting the patterns and magnitudes of inefficiency, so that appropriate corrective policies can be designed. This paper presents a new approach to analyzing plant efficiency that recognizes and deals with such data imperfections as measurement error, missing observations and selectivity bias. The author has developed full-information maximum-likelihood (FIML) estimators of production technologies that deal with missing data and measurement errors, making alternative assumptions about the missing data patterns and the timing of employment and decisions. These estimators yield indices of the returns to scale, means square deviation from the efficient frontier and - when labor is treated as endogenous - mean square deviation from efficient factor mixes. To gauge the performance of the alternative estimators, the author applies them to census data on Chilean industry, and compares the results with naive estimators that do not recognize data imperfections.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Statistical&Mathematical Sciences,Information Technology,Banks&Banking Reform
Handle with care! Post-crisis growth in the EU. Bruegel Policy brief 2009/02, April 2009
No full textIn this new Bruegel policy brief, Jean Pisani-Ferry and Bruno van Pottelsberghe show that although the crisis originated in the US, Europe’s outlook has deteriorated faster and more sharply leading to the worst crisis observed during the post-war era. However, the length of the crisis matters at least as much at its depth, and policymakers should not overlook the medium term consequences of their actions
Handle with care! Post-crisis growth in the EU
No full textIn this policy brief, Jean Pisani-Ferry and Bruno van Pottelsberghe show that although the crisis originated in the US, Europeâ??s outlook has deteriorated faster and more sharply leading to the worst crisis observed during the post-war era. However, the length of the crisis matters at least as much at its depth, and policymakers should not overlook the medium term consequences of their actions.
Data-driven regulation: theory and application to missing bids
No full textWe document a novel bidding pattern observed in procurement auctions from Japan: winning bids tend to be isolated. There is a missing mass of close losing bids. This pattern is suspicious in the following sense: it is inconsistent with competitive behavior under arbitrary information structures. Building on this observation, we develop a theory of data-driven regulation based on “safe tests,” i.e. tests that are passed with probability one by competitive bidders, but need not be passed by non-competitive ones. We provide a general class of safe tests exploiting weak equilibrium conditions, and show that such tests reduce the set of equilibrium strategies that cartels can use to sustain collusion. We provide an empirical exploration of various safe tests in our data, as well as discuss collusive rationales for missing bids.First author draf
Chemistry of OH and HO2 radicals observed at Rishiri Island, Japan, in September 2003: Missing daytime sink of HO2 and positive nighttime correlations with monoterpenes
No full textWe used laser-induced fluorescence to measure concentrations of OH and HO2 at Rishiri Island, Japan, during September 2003. The average maximum daytime concentrations were 2.7 × 106 cm−3 for OH and 5.9 pptv for HO2. The observed concentrations were compared to those predicted by a photochemical box model constrained by ancillary observations. During the daytime, the model overestimated HO2 levels by an average of 89% and OH levels by an average of 35%. This overestimate of OH was rectified when the model was constrained by observed HO2 levels, suggesting that loss processes of HO2 were missing in the model. We calculated the loss rates of HO2 required to bring the modeled HO2 levels into agreement with observed levels. We then studied processes that are capable of explaining the loss rates, including halogen chemistry, heterogeneous loss of HO2 on aerosol surfaces, and the possibility of more rapid HO2 + RO2 reactions than expected. In the nighttime, most of the observed hourly averaged OH and 10-min-averaged HO2 concentrations were statistically significant and fell in the ranges (0.7–5.5) × 105 cm−3 and 0.5–4.9 pptv, respectively. Both HO2 and OH concentrations showed strong positive correlations with total monoterpene concentrations, strongly suggesting that the radicals were produced via reactions of monoterpenes. The median nighttime modeled-to-observed ratios were 1.29 and 0.56 for HO2 and OH, respectively. These ratios dropped to 0.49 and 0.29 during the evening of 25 September, possibly related to the presence of unmeasured olefinic species or chemical reactions involving RO2 that are poorly represented in the model
Long Term Patterns of International Merchandise Trade
No full textThis FIW Special International Economics takes a long term perspective on international merchandise trade and tracks specialisation patterns of 19 world regions over the period 1980 to 2009. The data reveals that the path of trade specialisation is not predetermined: globalisation may intensify initial specialisations or may induce technological upgrading leading to new specialisation patterns. The emergence of the highly successful East Asian electronics cluster is easily discernible from our analysis as is the catch-up process of Eastern Europe. The experience of these dynamic regions contrasts with that of the African regions, West Asia and to some extent South America, whose primary role in the world economy is still that of oil and raw material suppliers. We also show that international trade in technology intensive industries has broadened geographically. High income countries in Europe, Japan and the US which dominated trade in high tech manufactures until the 1980s have suffered a considerable loss of market shares to the benefit of emerging East Asian countries causing a lot of concern about the EU’s export performance in high technology industries among European policy makers. R&D policy has become a major component of Europe’s industrial policy which is intended to support the continuous process of technological upgrading high income countries need to remain competitive in world markets. European high income regions have been successful in this respect in the sense that their export structures continue to shift towards more technology intensive industries despite the losses of global market shares which must be seen as a consequence of a broader participation in world trade. We read the major shifts in global world trade over the past decades and in particular the ‘rise of Asia’ as evidence that active trade and industrial policies can ignite and support the industrialisation process and technological upgrading within the manufacturing sector. At the same time Eastern Europe showed that a technological catch-up process can also be achieved by relying on foreign direct investment and deep trade integration with more advanced trading partners in the region. In contrast, the policies pursued by South American countries after the debt-crisis of the 1980s did not seem to have fostered significant technological upgrading. Given the undetermacy of trade specialisation over time and the multiple paths to technological upgrading we believe that international trade rules should ensure – more than they do now – that all countries have the required policy space to implement policies that foster structural changes in their economies.export specialisation, structural change, technological upgrading, industrial policy
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