No abstract

In literature, the common wisdom is that entry in an industry with homogeneous products may be socially insufficient instead of excessive in the absence of scale economies. In this paper, we formally introduce endogenous research and development (R&D) and cost asymmetry into both Cournot and Stackelberg competition, and show that entry is socially insufficient in the presence of ex ante asymmetric costs coupled with the spillover effect of R&D.

Although GroE chaperonins and osmolytes had been used separately as protein folding aids, combining these two methods provides a considerable advantage for folding proteins that cannot fold with either osmolytes or chaperonins alone. This technique rapidly identifies superior folding solution conditions for a broad array of proteins that are difficult or impossible to fold by other methods. While testing the broad applicability of this technique, we have discovered that osmolytes greatly simplify the chaperonin reaction by eliminating the requirement for the co-chaperonin GroES which is normally involved in encapsulating folding proteins within the GroEL-GroES cavity. Therefore, combinations of soluble or immobilized GroEL, osmolytes and ATP or even ADP are sufficient to refold the test proteins. The first step in the chaperonin/osmolyte process is to form a stable long-lived chaperonin-substrate protein complex in the absence of nucleotide. In the second step, different osmolyte solutions are added along with nucleotides, thus forming a 'folding array' to identify superior folding conditions. The stable chaperonin-substrate protein complex can be concentrated or immobilized prior to osmolyte addition. This procedure prevents-off pathway aggregation during folding/refolding reactions and more importantly allows one to refold proteins at concentrations (approximately mg/ml) that are substantially higher than the critical aggregation concentration for given protein. This technique can be used for successful refolding of proteins from purified inclusion bodies. Recently, other investigators have used our chaperonin/osmolyte method to demonstrate that a mutant protein that misfolds in human disease can be rescued by GroEL/osmolyte system. Soluble or immobilized GroEL can be easily removed from the released folded protein using simple separation techniques. The method allows for isolation of folded monomeric or oligomeric proteins in quantities sufficient for X-ray crystallography or NMR structural determinations.

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China’s economy steps into the “new normal” phase, as it is growing in an innovation-driven instead of a factor-driven mode. In this paper, we constructed the corporate behavioral decision models in different scenarios of policy and analyzed the effect of energy policies on corporate behavior and societal welfare, in a duopoly market. The following conclusions were derived. (1) In a duopoly, the product pricing is irrelevant to the resource cost in their production process. (2) For the firm undertaking the social responsibility, the energy tax imposed by the government would increase either the production or the profit, but decrease the consumer surplus. In contrast, for the other firms, the energy tax rate is opposite to their profit. (3) Low-energy-consuming products will promote efficiency, which reduces either the price or the marginal cost, resulting in a more conspicuous cost advantage to the firm adopting the ecological innovation. (4) The marginal cost for a low-energy-consuming technology research and development steadily decreases, which turns their short-term financial disadvantages into the long-term competitive advantages. The marginal contribution of this paper was to build a simultaneously moving model, in duopoly market, and provide theoretical evidence to endogenize the firm strategy to undertake social responsibilities and to realize sustainable growth.