Introduction

The seemingly disparate aspects of long-term care (LTC) exist in a broader context of concern for the ability of disabled and chronically ill individuals of all ages to function in everyday life. A focus in LTC, therefore, is on the types of services and products needed for an individual to perform basic activities of daily living.

A primary emphasis in LTC is on the individual who is in need of assistance. Related questions include: What impact will the receipt of LTC have on the autonomy of the individual? How will the care, which may extend over a period of years or decades, be funded? How will the various payment mechanisms affect an individual's access to care? What are potential solutions to the problems encountered as the individual and his or her family deal with the fragmentation and other problems of the LTC system? Such questions are addressed in the articles in this symposium, “Issues in Long-Term Care.” This paper provides a context for the symposium.     

Allegories of Venice: Singapore’s Vague Concept of a Global City

This paper argues that although the state elites of Singapore use “Venice” as an image to legitimate the People’s Action Party’s continuous rule and unpopular immigration policies, the image has both empowered and constrained the state. To the state, Venice serves as a keyword that conjures up dynamism, progress, and continuity; to its critics, however, Venice signals the state’s willingness to focus on the intangible elements of nationhood, namely culture and the arts. These critics use the ambiguities of the Venice rhetoric to legitimate their own appeals for change, especially after discovering that the “shared vision” of Venice is mainly in economic terms. By so doing, detractors of the state contest the centrality of economics in the making of modern—and future—Singapore, rendering the use of “Venice” as an image to promote the concept of a Global City problematic.     

ANALYZING EXPLOITATION

The codes of conduct of Western brand-name corporations normally require supplier factories in the Global South to comply with the local country’s minimum legal wage; the codes also often stipulate a maximum sixty-hour work week. But the problems of illegally low wages and overtime violations in supplier factories remain unresolved. This article uses survey data collected in a city in South China on workers’ wages and work hours to show how legal minimum wage rates, which normally are expressed in developing countries as a monthly wage, obfuscate the level of wages paid to workers. This will be demonstrated by comparing two different payment systems: time rates (which predominate in the toy industry) and piece rates (which predominate in garment manufacturing). The differences in the compensation rates and work hours resulting from the two systems lead the authors to contend that countries in the Global South and the implementers of corporate codes should calculate minimum wages in terms of hourly earnings in order to make wage payments more transparent and help reduce exploitative practices.     

Towards an integrated model of corruption: opportunities and control in China

This article uses a transaction costs approach to synthesize micro- and macro-theories of corruption in an analysis of corruption in post-Mao China. Macro-theories of corruption include functional, political-institutional, revised modernization, and cultural approaches. These approaches are integrated through a micro-model developed from the principal-agent model and a rational choice model of crime. The micro-model focuses on: the frequency of corrupt opportunities and the stakes involved, external control such as legal sanctions, and internal control or moral constraints. Within this context, this study reveals that corruption during the post-Mao China period was caused by the surge of such opportunities and the failure of internal and external control.     

鸡毒支原体醛缩酶的原核表达及膜定位鉴定

为了探明醛缩酶在支原体中的定位,根据已发表的鸡毒支原体醛缩酶(fba)基因序列设计特异性的引物,以鸡毒支原体Rlow株基因组为模板,通过Overlap PCR点突变扩增鸡毒支原体醛缩酶fba基因,将fba克隆至pET-28a(+)载体后进行序列测定和分析。结果表明,fba基因全长873bp,编码290个氨基酸。将构建的重组表达质粒pET28a-fba转化至大肠杆菌BL21(DE3),在IPTG诱导下成功获得表达融合蛋白rMGfba,大小约为33ku。纯化蛋白并对蛋白进行酶活性检测,结果显示该酶在体外具有与阳性对照醛缩酶相同的催化功能。用该蛋白免疫小鼠制备多克隆抗体,提取鸡毒支原体膜蛋白,Western-blot分析结果显示FBA多抗可与疏水性膜蛋白特异性结合,说明FBA位于鸡毒支原体膜表面。     

Sexual Homicide by Older Male Offenders

Recent research has expanded our understanding of sexual homicide offenders (SHOs). However, little exists beyond case reports for older SHOs. We characterized male SHOs ≥ 55 years, comparing them to typical adult male SHOs who are in their 20s. Analysis of 37 years (1976–2012) of US Supplementary Homicide Reports data provided a large SHO sample (N = 3453). Three case reports provide clinical context for the diverse nature and patterns of older SHOs. Only 32 older male SHOs and no older female SHOs were identified. Murders by older SHOs accounted for only 0.5% of US sexual homicides. Unlike typical SHOs that generally target young adult females, over two‐thirds of older SHO victims were ≥40 years, and one‐third were ≥55 years. Sexual homicides by older SHOs, like sexual homicide in general, decreased over the study period. These crimes, while exceedingly rare, do occur, warranting special consideration.     

China’s response to the global financial crisis and its regional leadership in East Asia

This paper examines the role of China in the G20 and in East Asia in crafting appropriate responses and policies to the global financial crisis. Did China play an important part in the multilateralisation of the Chiang Mai Initiative, and how did China work with other players in East Asia to ‘inoculate’ East Asia against contagion and fallout from the crisis? The paper evaluates the type of leadership displayed by China and the decisions taken during the crisis. It assesses how the Chinese role in its own region and within global institutions such as the G20 would change in the aftermath of these crises.     

牛型布鲁氏菌铁离子转运蛋白基因的克隆及其表达蛋白的生物学特性

将通过PCR技术扩增的牛型布鲁氏菌铁离子转运蛋白(Brucellaferric uptake,BfuA)基因克隆至表达载体pCold TF中,构建重组表达质粒pCold TF-BfuA,转化大肠杆菌BL21(DE3)后,在IPTG诱导下表达出大小约为100ku的融合蛋白His-BfuA。Western-blot分析表明,His-BfuA能与布鲁氏菌阳性牛血清发生特异性反应,表明BfuA具有免疫原性。用His-BfuA作为包被抗原,对35份布鲁氏菌阳性牛血清进行ELISA检测,结果所有被检血清均为阳性反应,表明BfuA为潜在的可用于牛型布鲁氏菌诊断的靶蛋白。此外,对BfuA的亚定位结果表明,BfuA为膜蛋白;对His-BfuA的纤连蛋白结合活性及纤连蛋白溶酶原结合活性的试验结果表明,His-BfuA不具有上述2种活性。上述结果为牛型布鲁氏菌病诊断方法的建立及亚单位疫苗的研制奠定了基础。     

The application of capillary electrophoresis for enantiomeric separation of N,N-dimethylamphetamine and its related analogs: intelligence study on N,N-dimethylamphetamine samples in crystalline and tablet forms

This paper reports a new capillary zone electrophoresis method for the simultaneous chiral determination of the enantiomers of N,N-dimethylamphetamine (DMA), methamphetamine (MA), ephedrine (E), pseudoephedrine (PE) and methylephedrine (Me-E). In this study, a number of electophoretic parameters were examined and optimized including the choice of chiral selectors, the use of short-chain tetraalkylammonium cations, the effect of chiral selector concentration, buffer concentration, applied voltage and capillary temperature. Heptakis(2,6-di-O-methyl)-beta-cyclodextrin (DM-beta-CD) and tetrabutylammonium (TBA) being the best chiral selector and buffer cation, respectively, the optimized electrophoretic conditions were found to be: 20 mM DM-beta-CD, 50 mM TBAPO(4) at pH 2.5, applied voltage at 30 kV and temperature at 25 degrees C. Under the optimized conditions, all analytes were well separated with resolution factors between 3.3 and 24.0 achieved. Using phentermine as an internal standard, the intra-day (n=8) precisions for the relative migration times and peak areas of all analytes were below 1.09%, while the inter-day precisions (n=12, 6 days) for the relative migration times and peak areas of all analytes were under 3.77%. This method has been applied to the measurement of the enantiomeric purities of the seized DMA samples. The result of the measurement could provide important clues about the possible synthetic pathways of these samples.