Embedded Interests and the Managerial Local State: Methanol Fuel-Switching in China

This paper analyzes the determinants of alternative automobile fuel regulation and development support with a particular focus on methanol fuel. We find that embedded interests, bureaucratic reforms, and political circumstances in the Chinese national, provincial, and municipal governments have all shaped policy outcomes in this area. The paper seeks to explain why at, the national level, support for alternative fuels has waned and finds that the concerns of state oil majors and disorganization during the process of national bureaucratic restructuring have been the deciding factors. Interestingly, at the sub-national level promotion of methanol continues unabated in some places. At the local level, business relationships as well as the embedded economic and personal interests of local leaders help to explain managerial local government behavior and sheds light on why government officials actively create and manage methanol fuel business opportunities through local standardization, subsidies, and hands-on management of SOE opposition. The switch towards methanol fuel was more successful in localities where individuals, either government officials or enterprise managers, formed an alliance and made this their 'pet projects'. The analysis draws on 55 interviews conducted between June and October 2010 in Shanxi, a major coal-producing province which has supported methanol fuel-switching programs for over ten years. The findings contribute to debates about the condition of the local state in China. The argument put forward in this paper is that because of limited state capacity at the central level and insufficient concerns for the development of alternative fuels in the short-term, some sub-national governments with strong embedded interests promote certain alternative fuels by taking on active managerial roles, adopting creative and ad-hoc strategies to fill in the national level policy gap at the local level

A Spatial Interpretation of the Persistency of China's Provincial Inequality

China's rapid economic growth in recent decades has not led to balanced income distribution: inter- and intra-provincial income inequality have been increasing and their respective contribution to the total income inequality remains relatively stable. Based on a new set of prefectural database during a relatively longer period from 1994 to 2008 on Chinese economic development, this paper investigates the nexus between the spatial dependence and income inequality in China on a prefectural level. Using the decomposition results of the inequality and spatial dependence of inter- and intra-provincial groups, and also the choropleth maps of clusters in China, this paper reaches the conclusion that clusters of prefectures and provinces with high positive spatial association are persistent over years in China, and the resulting highly correlated income disparity on both inter- and intra-provincial levels might be lasting for a relatively longer period, implying that spatial dependence is a contributing factor to the regional income inequality in a spatial context

Freeze-drying as a preserving preparation technique for in vitro testing of human skin.

In vitro testing of drugs with excised human skin is a valuable prerequisite for clinical studies. However, the analysis of excised human skin presents several obstacles. Ongoing drug diffusion, microbial growth and changes in hydration state influence the results of drug penetration studies. In this work, we evaluate freeze-drying as a preserving preparation method for skin samples to overcome these obstacles. We analyse excised human skin before and after freeze-drying and compare these results with human skin in vivo. Based on comprehensive thermal and spectroscopic analysis, we demonstrate comparability to in vivo conditions and exclude significant changes within the skin samples due to freeze-drying. Furthermore, we show that freeze-drying after skin incubation with drugs prevents growth of drug crystals on the skin surface due to drying effects. In conclusion, we introduce freeze-drying as a preserving preparation technique for in vitro testing of human skin

A strategy for in-silico prediction of skin absorption in man.

For some time, in-silico models to address substance transport into and through the skin are gaining more and more importance in different fields of science and industry. In particular, the mathematical prediction of in-vivo skin absorption is of great interest to overcome ethical and economical issues. The presented work outlines a strategy to address this problem and in particular, investigates in-vitro and in-vivo skin penetration experiments of the model compound flufenamic acid solved in an ointment by means of a mathematical model. Experimental stratum corneum concentration-depth profiles (SC-CDP) for various time intervals using two different in-vitro systems (Franz diffusion cell, Saarbruecken penetration model) were examined and simulated with the help of a highly optimized three compartment numerical diffusion model and compared to the findings of SC-CDPs of the in-vivo scenario. Fitted model input parameters (diffusion coefficient and partition coefficient with respect to the stratum corneum) for the in-vitro infinite dose case could be used to predict the in-use conditions in-vitro. Despite apparent differences in calculated partition coefficients between in-vivo and in-vitro studies, prediction of in-vivo scenarios from input parameters calculated from the in-vitro case yielded reasonable results