China has experimented with two strategies of reform of its state-owned enterprises (SOE). One is diversification of SOEs’ ownership through introducing non-state sources of investment. Another is to improve the management of SOEs by granting SOEs’ managers autonomy and their employees profit incentives. Utilising a data set on 680 SOEs over 1980-94, we tested the relative effectiveness of two ...

Aberrant CpG island hypermethylation in gene promoter regions may be an important epigenetic event in human neoplasias, including breast cancer. Dietary and genetic factors that alter DNA methylation levels in normal and tumour tissues could therefore influence both the susceptibility to this disease and tumour phenotype, respectively. In the present study of 227 breast cancers, we investigated...

GIST tumors are the most frequent mesenchymal tumors in the gastrointestinal tract (1,2). There are between 10 and 20 cases per million in developed countries, and between 20 and 45% of them are malignant (3-5). These tumors are characterized by the expression of the membrane receptor c-KIT/CD 117 with tyrosine-kinase activity, synthesized from proto-oncogene c-KIT (1-6). The cKIT and CD 34 exp...

A review of species of the genus Neopsocopsis Badonnel, 1936 is presented. Four species are redescribed, viz. Neopsocopsis hirticornis (Reuter, 1893), Neopsocopsis quinquedentata (Li & Yang, 1988), Neopsocopsis profunda (Li, 1995), and Neopsocopsis flavida (Li, 1989), as well as the description of one new species, Neopsocopsis convexasp. n. Seven new synonymies are proposed as follows: Pentabla...

The title compound, poly[μ-aqua-aqua-μ(6)-(1,1-dioxo-1λ(6),2,5-thia-diazo-lidine-3,4-diolato)-dilithium], [Li(2)(C(2)N(2)O(4)S)(H(2)O)(2)](n) or (H(2)O)(2):Li(2)TDD, forms an infinite three-dimensional structure containing five-coordinate (Li/5) and six-coordinate (Li/6) Li(+) cations. Li/5 is coordinated by three water mol-ecules, one carbonyl O atom and one sulfuryl O atom while Li/6 is coord...

Latent inhibition (LI) manifests as poorer conditioning to a stimulus that has previously been experienced without consequence. There is good evidence of dopaminergic modulation of LI, as the effect is reliably disrupted by the indirect dopamine (DA) agonist amphetamine. The disruptive effects of amphetamine on LI are reversed by both typical and atypical antipsychotics, which on their own are ...

BACKGROUND Neuroprotective effects of lithium (Li) have been well documented in tissue cultures and animal models, whereas human data continue to be limited. Previous studies investigating the association between Li treatment and brain N-acetylaspartate (NAA), a putative neuronal marker, showed mixed results because of methodological heterogeneity. METHODS To investigate the effects of Li on ...

Very high-quality spectra of 24 metal-poor halo dwarfs and subgiants have been acquired with ESO’s VLT/UVES for the purpose of determining Li isotopic abundances. The derived 1D, nonLTE Li abundances from the Li i 670.8 nm line reveal a pronounced dependence on metallicity but with negligible scatter around this trend. Very good agreement is found between the abundances from the Li i 670.8 nm l...