Buyer cooperatives, buyer alliances, and horizontal mergers are often perceived as attempts to increase buyer power. While prior theoretical and empirical work has emphasized that buyer size can increase buyer surplus, I show that even a small group of buyers with heterogeneous preferences can increase price competition among rival sellers by forming a buyer group and committing to buy exclusiv...

The explosive growth of user data on the Internet has introduced significant security threats. In recent years, large data breaches and malicious content distribution (spam, malware) become prevalent. With the rapid adoption of mobile and wearable devices, user data now includes a wide range of personal mobile and physical data. It ranges from GPS location traces, to biometrics data, to user in...

No account of Hao Wang’s philosophy can be complete without discussion of his serious engagement with Wittgenstein. This began in the period 1953-1958, immediately following the publication of Philosophical Investigations [1953] and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics [1956], and culminated in a second phase of engagement from 1981 to 1995. It closed in the final chapter, “Alternative phi...

Toxoplasmosis is caused by the intracellular protozoan Toxoplasma gondii. It is anopportunistic zoonosis in warm-blooded animals and humans, with a worldwide distribution. Toxoplasma gondii dense granule protein 16 (TgGRA16) can modulate some functions in host cells and is considered a significant virulent factor of the parasite. The present study reports sequence variation in TgGRA16 gene amon...

A malignant transformation or a tumor rupture is a rare complication of ovarian mature cystic teratoma (MCT). A tumor rupture in a malignant-transformed MCT has never been reported in the literature. We present the CT images of a 39-yearold woman showing a large, predominantly cystic mass in the lower abdomen, with fat-fluid-level ascites. A contrast-enhanced solid component, with regional disc...