To identify new genetic risk factors for cervical cancer, we conducted a genome-wide association study in the Han Chinese population. The initial discovery set included 1,364 individuals with cervical cancer (cases) and 3,028 female controls, and we selected a 'stringently matched samples' subset (829 cases and 990 controls) from the discovery set on the basis of principal component analysis; the follow-up stages included two independent sample sets (1,824 cases and 3,808 controls for follow-up 1 and 2,343 cases and 3,388 controls for follow-up 2). We identified strong evidence of associations between cervical cancer and two new loci: 4q12 (rs13117307, Pcombined, stringently matched=9.69×10(-9), per-allele odds ratio (OR)stringently matched=1.26) and 17q12 (rs8067378, Pcombined, stringently matched=2.00×10(-8), per-allele ORstringently matched=1.18). We additionally replicated an association between HLA-DPB1 and HLA-DPB2 (HLA-DPB1/2) at 6p21.32 and cervical cancer (rs4282438, Pcombined, stringently matched=4.52×10(-27), per-allele ORstringently matched=0.75). Our findings provide new insights into the genetic etiology of cervical cancer.

Amazon and Apple, which sell tablet devices, have adopted different implicit information policies and developed distinct “reputations” about their tablets’ sales volume release. With Amazon, “even a number as basic, and presumably impressive, as how many Kindle e-readers the company sells is never released.” With Apple, iPhone and iPad sales numbers are always released, even if they are disappointing. In the paper “Information Disclosure and Pricing Policies for Sales of Network Goods,” the authors study the sales information release policy, disclosure versus nondisclosure, for selling network goods subject to market size uncertainty. They identify two countervailing effects, a prodisclosure “Matthew effect” and an antidisclosure saturation effect, that drive the firms’ sales information disclosure policies. In addition, the authors also study the situation where the firm can decide on an all-or-nothing information disclosure policy together with endogenized prices, including state-independent pricing, contingent preannounced pricing, and contingent pricing without commitment.

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We provide a theory unifying the long tail and blockbuster phenomenon. Specifically, we analyze a threestage game where the firms first make entry decisions, then decide on the investment in its product and lastly customers sequentially arrive to make purchase decisions based on product quality and historic sales under the network effect. We analytically show that a growing network effect always contributes to the demand concentration on a small number of products. However, product variety and quality investments, as an outcome of firms' ex-ante competitive decisions, may increase or decrease, as the network effect grows.When the network effect parameter is smaller than a threshold, the increasing network effect would shift more demand towards the products with higher qualities, preempting more products from entering the market ex ante and inducing firms to adopt the blockbuster equilibrium strategy by making larger quality investment.When the network effect is stronger than the threshold, the increasing network effect would make the market easily concentrated to a few products. Even some low quality ones may have chances to become a "hit." Interestingly, in this case, the ex-ante equilibrium product variety would be broader and firms adopt the niche equilibrium strategy by maker smaller quality investment. We empirically test the theory with the movie box office data and find strong supporting evidence.