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Purpose: This study examined interrelationships among insomnia, stress, anxiety, and metabolic risk factors. Methods: A total of 124 college students were included in the analysis (age = 21 ± 1 years). Insomnia, stress of life events, and anxiety were assessed using self-reported questionnaires. Fasting blood samples were assayed for glucose, insulin, total cholesterol, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-cholesterol), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-cholesterol). Results: Insomnia was positively associated with stress of life events ([beta] = 0.28, p < 0.001) and anxiety ([beta] = 0.46, p < 0.001). Insomnia was related to elevated fasting insulin ([beta] = 0.12, p = 0.04) and triglyceride level ([beta] = 1.85, p < 0.001). An inverse association was found between insomnia and HDL-cholesterol ([beta] = -0.45, p = 0.03). Sobel's test for mediation showed that stress of life events (p = 0.020) and anxiety (p = 0.013) mediated the relationship between insomnia and hypertriglyceridemia. Conclusions: Reducing stress and anxiety among college students with insomnia may influence subsequent cardiovascular health.

The effect of government epidemic prevention policies on controlling COVID-19 is of great importance to health, politics, and development economics. This paper thus investigates the impacts of government responses on confirmed cases related to COVID-19 in Taiwan for the period January 1, 2020 to May 13, 2021 by employing ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation. Overall, our empirical results indicate that there is a significantly impact of government responses on COVID-19 pandemic spread in Taiwan. In addition, the speed of government responses would significantly affect confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Taiwan. The earlier government epidemic prevention responses led to fewer confirmed cases. After conducting a series of robustness checks, the above conclusions are still robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper specifies a dynamic model of voter turnout in Taiwan legislative elections using the generalized method of moments (GMM) model. We utilize data recorded over the 1998–2008 period, covering 23 counties of Taiwan. We find that previous levels of voter turnout are significantly associated with current levels of voter turnout. In particular, we provide strong evidence for a dynamic decline in voter turnout in Taiwan legislator elections. We also find that the perceived closeness of the election by the potential voters prior to the election, greater number of parties and densely populated areas, are significantly associated with higher voter turnout, whereas larger costs of voting, greater educational inequality and higher levels of education contribute to lower electoral participation. Further, population stability and disposable income have a limited impact on voter turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The issue of asymmetry and nonlinearity in the context of economic voting was proposed as far back as the 1970s. The aim of this paper is to revisit the economic voting phenomenon by investigating the asymmetric cointegration between government popularity and economic conditions in Taiwan over the period from 1992 to 2007. We employ an advanced threshold autoregressive model and find strong evidence of threshold cointegration relationships between our observed variables. Furthermore, an asymmetric error correction model indicates that voters use different economic indicators to evaluate government popularity in different regimes and the speed of adjustment to the long-run equilibrium is more rapid in the lower regime and slower in the higher regime. Finally, the evidence shows that the economic voting behavior is supported by the presence of the threshold effects. Based on the nonlinear, asymmetric and threshold effects, we are able to provide several critical implications concerning the governance of the incumbent political party, particularly, in relation to the promotion of economic policy aimed at improving its popularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secularization thesis is based on the idea that a country becomes more secular as it becomes richer and more industrialized. In order to investigate whether this hypothesis is valid, we examine the relationship between religion in Taiwan and economic development across 23 counties by adopting the panel data approach for the period 1998 to 2003. We select six religious activity proxy variables and five economic development variables in a cross-county panel data framework. The evidence indicates that the ratio of females to males has a significantly positive effect and that the literacy rate and population density each have a significantly negative effect on the religious variables. Finally, except for the Christian culture, the unemployment rate has a positive effect on the religious variables. Our findings thus support the view that the religious secularization hypothesis is valid in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the importance of political expenditures as the primary determinants of vote shares for the Taiwan 2004 legislator campaigns with multi-member districts. Our main findings are as follows. First, advertising spending, candidates in the same party as the mayor, the education level of voters and the degree of race competition had a strong effect on the candidates' vote shares but not on economic performance. Second, the advertising spending of both incumbents and challengers had a significant effect on vote shares, but the effects were greater for challengers than for incumbents. Third, the two major political camps, that is, the Pan-Blue and Pan-Green, showed that spending exerts a corresponding influence on vote shares. Fourth, we also discovered that the spending coefficients for the winners were larger than those for the losers. Finally, the logit model demonstrates the result of the impact of advertising expenditures on the predicted probability of winning the election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on the nonlinearity of the money demand function focus only on short-run dynamics and assume that the long-run cointegrated relationship is linear, which, according to economic theory, need not be the case. Thus, this article focuses on the variables that make up the long-run money demand function in Taiwan and their determinants by using the cointegrating smoothing transition regression (CSTR) test developed by Choi and Saikkonen (2004). This model is more general than the previous STR model in that it may contain several transition functions and has more than a single transition variable. We demonstrate our empirical results for robustness and adopt two models to ascertain whether or not the stock price should be added as a determinant of the demand for money. Our empirical results show the existence of a stationary long-run relationship among real money demand functions for the period from 1976Q1 to 2005Q1 and the robustness test covers the 1980Q1-2005Q1 period in Taiwan. By comparing the two types of model, we find more evidences of a long-run nonlinear cointegrated relationship for the money demand function when we consider stock prices as one of its variables. Finally, the empirical results give rise to some critical policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper considers the possibility of both a linear effect and nonlinear effect of energy consumption on economic growth, using data for the period 1955–2003 in Taiwan. We find evidence of a level-dependent effect between the two variables. Allowing for a nonlinear effect of energy consumption growth sheds new light on the explanation of the characteristics of the energy-growth link. We also provide evidence that the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in Taiwan is characterized by an inverse U-shape. Some previous studies support the view that energy consumption may promote economic growth. However, the conclusion drawn from the empirical findings suggests that such a relationship exists only where there is a low level of energy consumption in Taiwan. We show that a threshold regression provides a better empirical model than the standard linear model and that policy-makers should seek to capture economic structures associated with different stages of economic growth. It is also worth noting that the energy consumption threshold was reached in the case of Taiwan in the world energy crises periods of 1979 and 1982. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In a meta-analysis of three GWAS for susceptibility to Kawasaki disease (KD) conducted in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan and follow-up studies with a total of 11,265 subjects (3428 cases and 7837 controls), a significantly associated SNV in the immunoglobulin heavy variable gene (IGHV) cluster in 14q33.32 was identified (rs4774175; OR = 1.20, P = 6.0 × 10 -9 ). Investigation of nonsynonymous SNVs of the IGHV cluster in 9335 Japanese subjects identified the C allele of rs6423677, located in IGHV3-66, as the most significant reproducible association (OR = 1.25, P = 6.8 × 10 -10 in 3603 cases and 5731 controls). We observed highly skewed allelic usage of IGHV3-66, wherein the rs6423677 A allele was nearly abolished in the transcripts in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of both KD patients and healthy adults. Association of the high-expression allele with KD strongly indicates some active roles of B-cells or endogenous immunoglobulins in the disease pathogenesis. Considering that significant association of SNVs in the IGHV region with disease susceptibility was previously known only for rheumatic heart disease (RHD), a complication of acute rheumatic fever (ARF), these observations suggest that common B-cell related mechanisms may mediate the symptomology of KD and ARF as well as RHD.

Background: The GLA IVS4+919G>A which is linked to late-onset Fabry disease shows high frequency in Taiwan., Methods: To determine whether IVS4+919G>A is a frequent cause of heart disease, we genotyped it in normal controls and other disease cohorts (type 2 diabetes, heart failure, ventricular tachycardia, atrial fibrillation and coronary artery disease). Normal controls and diabetes patients carrying the variant were evaluated for their cardiac condition. Minigene constructs were used to study GLA splicing patterns in different cell lines., Results: GLA IVS4+919A was found in 4/1634 males (0.245%) and 2/1634 females (0.123%) in normal controls and in 4/2133 males (0.188%) and 7/1816 females (0.385%) in the type 2 diabetes cohort. Of all the 17 IVS4+919A carriers in these two groups, only two males reported heart-related disease (myocardial infarction and hypertensive heart disease). Furthermore, in the heart disease cohort (n=649), only one male carried the variant. Minigene constructs showed that the AGS (stomach) cell line showed a distinct GLA splicing pattern., Conclusion: Most subjects carrying GLA IVS4+919A did not show abnormal cardiac phenotypes. The near-absence of GLA IVS4+919A in heart disease cohort suggested that this variant is not a frequent cause of overt heart diseases in Taiwan and that the genotype-phenotype correlation and natural course of the disease need further investigation. We also showed that the GLA IVS4+919G>A nucleotide change did influence alternative splicing in a tissue-specific manner., Synopsis: The GLA IVS4+919G>A variant is not a frequent cause of overt heart disease in Taiwan., (Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.)