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This essay examines how the triadic conflict between the U.S., China, and technology companies is shaping the governance of cyberspace.

The Japanese legal system has been based on the German legal system since the mid-nineteenth century, but the American legal system was grafted onto it following Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945. The postwar Constitution contained an article regarding the secrecy of communications and protected privacy in terms of respect of individuals. Now, as the Personal Information Protection Law in the Executive Branch, which was enacted in 1988, and the Personal Information Protection Law, which was enacted in 2003, strictly regulate privacy, there have been fewer problematic cases regarding governmental access to private-sector data. Data gathering for law enforcement or intelligence activities has also been weaker following World War II. Private-sector corporations/organizations might share data with government agencies, but based on voluntary arrangements, not by any mandatory system. More focus is being cast not on governmental access to private-sector data, but on citizen’s access to data.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene, the most frequent of which is F508del-CFTR. CF is characterized by excessive secretion of pro-inflammatory mediators into the airway lumen, inducing a highly inflammatory cellular phenotype. This process triggers fibrosis, causing airway destruction and leading to high morbidity and mortality. We previously reported that miR-155 is upregulated in CF lung epithelial cells, but the molecular mechanisms by which miR-155 affects the disease phenotype is not understood. Here we report that RPTOR (regulatory associated protein of mTOR, complex 1) is a novel target of miR-155 in CF lung epithelial cells. The suppression of RPTOR expression and subsequent activation of TGF-β signaling resulted in the induction of fibrosis by elevating connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) abundance in CF lung epithelial cells. Thus, we propose that miR-155 might regulate fibrosis of CF lungs through the increased CTGF expression, highlighting its potential value in CF therapy.

National legal context and fundamental principles After the Meiji Restoration in 1867, Japan started adopting Western-style legal systems, especially from Germany, or Prussia. Japan needed to place the reins of government back in the hands of the Emperor from the rule of the Shoguns of the Tokugawas. However, the Emperor was not to become an absolute ruler but the head of a constitutional monarchy comprising independent legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Leaders of the Meiji Restoration needed the Emperor as a symbol of a new political system, but tried to retain actual power in their own hands. Prussia was an example of such a system. Other social systems were mixtures of other Western traditions. For example, the road system was adopted from the United Kingdom. Japan still drives on the left. The attempt of the Empire of Japan to become a regional hegemon was defeated by Japan’s losing of the Second World War, which ended in 1945. The General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Allied Forces occupied the main four islands of Japan until 1952, while Okinawa was kept under the military administration of the United States until 1972. GHQ broke down many of the extant political, economic, and social systems in order to transform Japan to a more peaceful and democratic state. However, GHQ did not abolish the imperial system. This means that Japan’s current legal system retains elements of the prewar systems.

To better understand the rapidly changing and deepening cooperation between the United States and Japan, as well as the prospects for the future evolution of their partnership (including with regional states in South and Southeast Asia, as well as Oceania), the RAND Corporation commissioned a series of papers by leading experts and hosted a two-day conference in Santa Monica, California, in March 2016.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is due to mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene, which cause a massively proinflammatory phenotype in the CF airway. The chemical basis of the inflammation is hyperproduction of interleukin-8 (IL-8) by CF airway epithelial cells, based on both an intrinsic mutation-dependent mechanism and by infection. In infection-free, cultured CF lung epithelial cells, high levels of the microRNA (miR), miR-155, is responsible for hyperexpression of IL-8. However, whether infection-induced IL-8 expression in CF cells is also mediated by miR-155 is not known. We have hypothesized that miR-155 might be a general mediator of enhanced IL-8 expression in CF cells, either in response to other cytokine/chemokine mediators of inflammation, or after exposure to infectious agents. Here we find that a reduction in miR-155 accompanies suppression of IL-8 by either the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 or by inhibition of ambient IL-1β with a neutralizing antibody. However, attempts to elevate IL-8 levels with either intact bacteria [viz. a mucoid strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA)], or lipopolysaccharide were unable to elevate miR-155 above its intrinsically high level in the absence of these agents. Instead, in response to PA infection, the CF cells modestly suppress the expression of miR-155, and express a novel set of miRs, including miR-215. We find that ex vivo CF lung epithelial cells also express high levels of both miR-155 and miR-215. The predicted module of infection-induced mRNA targets focuses on activation of the NFκB-signaling pathway, and on the proapoptotic p53-signaling pathway. We interpret these data to suggest that that CF lung epithelial cells respond to PA or bacterial cell products with a novel miR program that may carry with it serious challenges to survival.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). The most common mutation, F508del, is associated with failure of the mutant CFTR to traffic to the plasma membrane, with concomitant loss of cAMP-activated chloride conductance, and hypersecretion of pro-inflammatory IL-8. Our data indicate that the mis-expression of microRNAs (miRNAs, miRs) in CF cells, both in culture and in ex vivo bronchial biopsies, contribute to the inflammatory disease phenotype of CF. Our studies have demonstrated that the aberrant up-regulation of miR-155, in CF cells compared to CFTR-repaired control cells, induces hyper-expression of IL-8 through reduction in AKT1 activation. Our data indicate that, in addition to regulation of IL-8 mRNA stability by targeting SHIP1 gene, miR-155 also promotes increased translation of IL-8 mRNA. Therefore, we have analyzed the role of pro-inflammatory RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and RNAs in miR-155-mediated regulation of IL-8 expression in CF lung epithelial cells. We have employed an in vivo cross-linking and affinity purification strategy to isolate and identify proteins and RNA in the miR-155-induced IL-8-mRNP complexes that regulate IL-8 expression in CF cells. We have thus identified the antagonistic role of HuR and miR-16 in the regulation of IL-8 expression in CF. Additionally, we have also identified CF disease-specific inflammatory target genes of miR-155, viz. RPTOR, SIRT1 and NR2F2, in CF lung epithelial cells that regulate the CF disease phenotype. Understanding these mechanisms will ultimately lead to the development of novel miR-based anti-inflammatory therapeutics for CF and other pulmonary disorders.

The recent development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enables new ways of "democratic" decision-making such as a page-ranking system, which estimates the importance of a web page based on indirect trust on that page shared by diverse group of unorganized individuals. These kinds of "democracy" have not been acclaimed yet in the world of real politics. On the other hand, a large amount of data about personal relations including trust, norms of reciprocity, and networks of civic engagement has been accumulated in a computer-readable form by computer systems (e.g., social networking systems). We can use these relations as a new type of social capital to construct a new democratic decision-making system based on a delegation network. In this paper, we propose an effective decision-making support system, which is based on empowering someone's vote whom you trust. For this purpose, we propose two new techniques: the first is for estimating entire vote distribution from a small number of votes, and the second is for estimating active voter choice to promote voting using a delegation network. We show that these techniques could increase the voting ratio and credibility of the whole decision by agent-based simulations., {"references":["R. D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern\nItaly, Princeton: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.","K. Minetaki, and M. Yoshida, \"Service Innovation Generated by\nInnovation in ICT --- Blogs/SNSs and Innovation ---The Effect of\nBlogs/SNSs as seen from a Survey of Employees,\" Fujitsu Research\nInstitute Research Paper, No. 282, 2006.","K. Krippendorff, Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its\nMethodology, Sage Pubns, 1980.","M. G. Sirken, \"A Short History of Network Sampling,\" in Proc. SRMS,\n1998.","S. K. Thompson, \"Adaptive Web Sampling,\" Biometrics, vol.62, no.4,\npp.1224--1234, 2006."]}