Acidic and neutral drugs screen in blood with quantitation using microbore high-performance liquid chromatography–diode array detection and capillary gas chromatography–flame ionization detection

Blood previously acidified with aqueous saturated ammonium chloride solution was extracted with ethyl acetate. The dried extract was subjected to acetonitrile–hexane partition. The acetonitrile portion was analysed for the presence of acidic and neutral drugs by HPLC–DAD (200 mm×2.1 mm I.D. microbore ODS-Hypersil column) and GC–FID (25 m narrow-bore×0.25 mm I.D. HP-5 column with 0.33 μm film thickness). The protocol was found to be suitable for both clinical toxicology (including emergency toxicology) and postmortem toxicology. At least 66 drugs of interest were unequivocally identified by RRTs (HPLC) and UV spectra (DAD) match while another 12 were unequivocally identified by double RRTs match (HPLC and GC). Quantitation was facilitated by incorporating calibration blood standards in each assay batch. The five drugs most commonly encountered in clinical blood specimens (1150 cases) were: paracetamol (47.4% of the cases); chlormezanone (6.6%), theophylline (1.74%), naproxen (1.65%) and mefenamic acid (1.56%). The following drugs were detected in toxicologically significant quantities in postmortem blood specimens (245 cases): phenobarbitone (1.22% of the cases), naproxen (0.82%), chlormezanone (0.82%), theophylline (0.82%), carbamazepine (0.41%) and paracetamol (0.41%).     

Reviews

Wing Thye Woo, Stephen Parker & Jeffrey D. Sachs (eds), Economies in Transition: Comparing Asia and Eastern Europe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997, xiv + 412 pp., £33.95 h/b, £16.95 p/b.

Guy Standing, Russian Unemployment and Enterprise Restructuring: Reviving Dead Souls. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, xxix + 404 pp., £45.00.

Ellen Mickiewicz, Changing Channels: Television and the Struggle for Power in Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, xiii + 340 pp., $35.00.

Naum Nim (ed.), Dos'e na tsenzuru, No. 1. Moscow: Fond zashchity glasnosti, 1997, 208 pp.

Taras Kuzio, Ukraine under Kuchma: Political Reform, Economic Transformation and Security Policy in Independent Ukraine. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xxiii + 281 pp., £50.00.

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Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe. Enemies, Neighbours, Friends. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, xii + 339 pp., £15.99.

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Vladimir N. Brovkin (ed.), The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars. London: Yale University Press, 1997, vi + 333 pp., £21.00.

Carl Van Dyke, The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939–40. London: Frank Cass, 1997, xiv + 288 pp., £35.00.

Maurice Friedberg, Literary Translation in Russia: A Cultural History, University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1997, viii + 224 pp.     

关于部门利益的若干理论思考

部门利益是法治社会的一颗毒瘤。它与我们依法行政,打造责任政府、服务型政府的理念完全是背道而驰的。部门利益的存在,与我国现行管理体制,如财政体制和行政体制等的不健全有着直接的因果关系,也与部门立法机制的不完善密切相关。而要有效制约部门利益的膨胀,必须实现阳光立法,加快行政体制改革,深化财政体制改革,完善社会监督体系。     

Casino Politics,Organized Crime and the Post-Colonial State in Macau

Organized crime and politics have been traditionally intertwined in Macau. During the colonial era, the Portuguese administration was characterized by bureaucratic corruption and a cozy relationship with casino capitalists. The colonial state had limited autonomy vis-à-vis the casino capitalists. With the growth of tourism and the associated casino industry in Macau during the 1990s, organized crime groups penetrated various casinos and emerged as a baffling problem. Yet, neither the Portuguese administration nor the casino capitalists had the capability to contain the use of violence by organized crime groups. As Macau approached the end of the Portuguese colonial rule, the People's Republic of China (PRC) decided to intervene in the rapidly deteriorating law and order. The Chinese intervention took the forms of stationing the People's Liberation Army in the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR), penalizing the triad boss Wan Kuok-kuoi, and supporting the new Edmund Ho Government's attempts at civil service reforms. The SAR Government also liberalized the casino industry by embracing American investment. Due to market competition, the local casino capitalists have been forced to improve the management of casinos and to minimize the infiltration of triads. Unlike the colonial state, the post-colonial state in the Macau SAR has enhanced its relative autonomy vis-à-vis the local casino capitalists, directly or indirectly curbing the detrimental impact of organized crime. The case study of Macau is illustrative of the critical role of state autonomy vis-à-vis casino capitalists, whose previous monopoly over casino management encountered the infiltration of organized crime that grasped the opportunities for maximizing profits in the era of the rapidly expanding casino industry. The Macau example also demonstrates the city-state's use of market competition as a means to improve casino management and to contain the spread of organized crime at least in the short run.     

Comparative grand corruption and protection pacts among elites: the cases of Ao Man Long in Macao and Hui Si-Yan in Hong Kong

Although Transparency International has consistently ranked the governments of both the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR), both under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), much higher on the clean governance scale than the PRC itself, the reality is that the two special administrative regions witnessed two prominent cases of political corruption comparable to the mainland corruption. These were the Ao Man Long case in Macao and the Rafael Hui Si-yan scandal in Hong Kong. This paper examines the two cases of political corruption in both Macao and Hong Kong and makes comparisons and contrasts between them. It argues that individual greed contributed to the two cases of high-level bureaucratic (grand) corruption in Macao and Hong Kong, implying that institutional safeguards against corruption, such as the establishment of anti-corruption commissions, and the scrutiny of the mass media, are by no means adequate. In other words, institutional mechanisms against corruption in the HKSAR and MSAR do have loopholes that need to be plugged. Moreover, protection pacts between a minority of government officials and the business elites can be formed because of their close personal connections, strengthening the possibility of grand corruption.     

Between Government and Governance: Opening the Black Box of the Transformation Thesis

The notion of going from government to governance, known as the transformation thesis, as depicted in early Governance Theory has been subjected to substantive critique. This paper explores two different stances of such critique. The first critical stance is represented by Jonathan S. Davies’ 2011 book “Challenging Governance Theory: From networks to hegemony” and entails a radical rejection of the transformation thesis. The second stance offers a more moderate reconfiguration of the transformation thesis and is represented by the recently co-authored work of several prominent governance theorists titled “Interactive Governance: Advancing the paradigm”. While both aspire to set new agendas for governance research, this paper argues that the latter reconfiguration carries a problematic preposition towards overemphasizing the separation between government and governance practices.     

略论商业贿赂

商业贿赂是贿赂的一种形式,是随着商品经济的发展而逐步产生和发展起来的经济现象。近年来商业贿赂在一些地区和行业中不断地滋生繁衍,影响面越来越宽,对我国市场经济健康发展的急害十分严重。运用法律手段有效制裁商业贿赂行为,维护党的形象,保障经济健康发展,是非常必要的和迫切的。     

Drinking and driving in Singapore, 1987 to 1989.

Between 1987 and 1989 there were approximately 5,000 cases of fatal and injury-sustained road traffic accidents, of which 2.3-3.0% were alcohol related (blood alcohol levels greater than the legal limit of 80 mg% ethanol). The offenders of alcohol-related accidents are mostly Chinese (> 79%), male (> 98%), and more often 30-40 years old. The majority of the alcohol-related accidents (> 74%) took place between 8 P.M. and 4 A.M. in fine weather and light traffic. Rear-end, head-on, and side-on collisions comprised > 60% of all the alcohol-related accidents, and losing control of vehicles approximately 30%. Drunken driving cases for the same period that were not accidents showed a number of characteristics similar to those for accidents. In Singapore, motorcycle riders and pedestrians are more prone to road fatality than other road-user groups. International comparisons of road fatalities per 100,000 population gave Singapore one of the lowest accident rates (8.1-8.4) as compared with countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, and Japan.