Attorney on trial: When lawyers met phony lawyers in republican Beijing

China underwent tremendous changes in social systems during the Republican period. Among these changes was the government’s introduction into Chinese society of a new legal profession based on Western ideology. Relying mainly on Shanghai archival records, previous scholarship has suggested that, unlike the traditional litigation masters who had always been despised by the authorities, the new Chinese lawyers quickly rose to respectable social and economic status. However, the historical findings presented in the current article challenge this perception by showing that in a city with a more deeply rooted indigenous legal tradition and less influence from Western lawyers, as in Beijing, the new Chinese lawyers faced resistance from the legacy of the old legal culture that permeated the new system. For a considerable period of time after the establishment of the Republic, the people of Beijing still continued to hire unqualified, “phony” lawyers in lawsuits, and some of these phony lawyers had previously been litigation masters under the Qing dynasty. Although legal reform was instigated by the central government as a unified policy, its implementation was bound to vary in different regions according to the influence of the traditional legal culture. It is clear that the situation in Shanghai and other treaty ports does not represent the situation throughout the entire country, nor even in other coastal regions. Therefore, to make more sense of legal reform in China, one should evaluate the development of legal reform in a particular city or region against its social and ideological backdrop. This approach may provide insights not only into the legal reform of the Republican period, but also into the post-Mao era when once again a modern legal system based on the Western model has been introduced, this time within a socialist system.published_or_final_versio

Non-Diversifiable Volatility Risk and Risk Premiums at Earnings Announcements

This study seeks to determine whether earnings announcements pose non-diversifiable volatility risk that commands a risk premium. We find that investors anticipate some earnings announcements to convey news that increases market return volatility and pay a premium to hedge this non-diversifiable risk. In particular, we find evidence of risk premiums embedded in prices of firms' traded options that are significantly positively associated with the extent to which the firms' earnings announcements pose non-diversifiable volatility risk. In addition, we find that volatility risk premiums are concentrated among bellwether firms and result in predictable variation in option straddle returns around earnings announcements. Taken together, our findings show that some earnings announcements pose non-diversifiable volatility risk that commands a risk premium

A composite immune signature parallels disease progression across T1D subjects

At diagnosis, most people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) produce measurable levels of endogenous insulin, but the rate at which insulin secretion declines is heterogeneous. To explain this heterogeneity, we sought to identify a composite signature predictive of insulin secretion, using a collaborative assay evaluation and analysis pipeline that incorporated multiple cellular and serum measures reflecting beta cell health and immune system activity. The ability to predict decline in insulin secretion would be useful for patient stratification for clinical trial enrollment or therapeutic selection. Analytes from 12 qualified assays were measured in shared samples from subjects newly diagnosed with T1D. We developed a computational tool to identify a composite panel associated with decline in insulin secretion over 2 years after diagnosis. The tool employs multiple filtering steps to reduce data dimensionality, incorporates error-estimation techniques including cross-validation and sensitivity analysis, and is flexible to assay type, clinical outcome and disease setting. Using this novel analytical tool, we identified a panel of immune markers that, in combination, are highly associated with loss of insulin secretion. The methods used here represent a novel process for identifying combined immune signatures that predict outcomes relevant for complex and heterogeneous diseases like T1D

Association between Alcoholism and the Genetic Polymorphisms of the GABAA Receptor Genes on Chromosome 5q33-34 in Korean Population

Family, twin, and adoption studies have demonstrated that genes play an important role in the development of alcoholism. We investigated the association between alcoholism and the genetic polymorphisms of the GABAA receptor genes on chromosome 5q33-34 in Korean population. The genotype of the GABAA receptor gene polymorphisms were determined by performing polymerase chain reaction genotyping for 172 normal controls and 162 male alcoholics who are hospitalized in alcoholism treatment institute. We found a significant association between the genetic polymorphisms of the GABAA α1 and GABAA α6 receptor gene and alcoholism. The GG genotype of the GABAA α1 receptor gene was associated with the onset age of alcoholism and alcohol withdrawal symptoms, and a high score on the Korean version of the ADS. However, there was no association between the genetic polymorphisms of the GABAA β2 and γ2 receptor gene and alcoholisms. Our finding suggest that genetic polymorphisms of the GABAA α1 and GABAA α6 receptor gene may be associated with the development of alcoholism and that the GG genotype of the GABAA α1 receptor gene play an important role in the development of the early onset and the severe type of alcoholism

Clinical Features of Re-Emerging Hepatitis A: An Analysis of Patients Hospitalized during an Urban Epidemic in Korea

From April 2008 to November 2008, many cases of hepatitis A were reported in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province in Korea. Furthermore, the rate of severe or fulminant hepatitis have significantly increased during the latest epidemic (13.4% vs. 5.2%, p=0.044). Therefore, widespread use of vaccine is warranted to reduce the burden of hepatitis A in Korea

Not Perfect, but Better: Primary Care Providers’ Experiences with Electronic Referrals in a Safety Net Health System

BackgroundElectronic referrals can improve access to subspecialty care in safety net settings. In January 2007, San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) launched an electronic referral portal that incorporated subspecialist triage, iterative communication with referring providers, and existing electronic health record data to improve access to subspecialty care.ObjectiveWe surveyed primary care providers (PCPs) to assess the impact of electronic referrals on workflow and clinical care.DesignWe administered an 18-item, web-based questionnaire to all 368 PCPs who had the option of referring to SFGH.MeasurementsWe asked participants to rate time spent submitting a referral, guidance of workup, wait times, and change in overall clinical care compared to prior referral methods using 5-point Likert scales. We used multivariate logistic regression to identify variables associated with perceived improvement in overall clinical care.ResultsTwo hundred ninety-eight PCPs (81.0%) from 24 clinics participated. Over half (55.4%) worked at hospital-based clinics, 27.9% at county-funded community clinics, and 17.1% at non-county-funded community clinics. Most (71.9%) reported that electronic referrals had improved overall clinical care. Providers from non-county-funded clinics (AOR 0.40, 95% CI 0.14-0.79) and those who spent > or =6 min submitting an electronic referral (AOR 0.33, 95%CI 0.18-0.61) were significantly less likely than other participants to report that electronic referrals had improved clinical care.ConclusionsPCPs felt electronic referrals improved health-care access and quality; those who reported a negative impact on workflow were less likely to agree. While electronic referrals hold promise as a tool to improve clinical care, their impact on workflow should be considered

The route to transcription initiation determines the mode of transcriptional bursting in E. coli

Transcription is fundamentally noisy, leading to significant heterogeneity across bacterial populations. Noise is often attributed to burstiness, but the underlying mechanisms and their dependence on the mode of promotor regulation remain unclear. Here, we measure E. coli single cell mRNA levels for two stress responses that depend on bacterial sigma factors with different mode of transcription initiation (σ70 and σ54). By fitting a stochastic model to the observed mRNA distributions, we show that the transition from low to high expression of the σ70-controlled stress response is regulated via the burst size, while that of the σ54-controlled stress response is regulated via the burst frequency. Therefore, transcription initiation involving σ54 differs from other bacterial systems, and yields bursting kinetics characteristic of eukaryotic systems

mRNA localization, reaction centre biogenesis and thylakoid membrane targeting in cyanobacteria

The thylakoid membranes of cyanobacteria form a complex intracellular membrane system with a distinctive proteome. The sites of biogenesis of thylakoid proteins remain uncertain, as do the signals that direct thylakoid membrane-integral proteins to the thylakoids rather than to the plasma membrane. Here, we address these questions by using fluorescence in situ hybridization to probe the subcellular location of messenger RNA molecules encoding core subunits of the photosystems in two cyanobacterial species. These mRNAs cluster at thylakoid surfaces mainly adjacent to the central cytoplasm and the nucleoid, in contrast to mRNAs encoding proteins with other locations. Ribosome association influences the distribution of the photosynthetic mRNAs on the thylakoid surface, but thylakoid affinity is retained in the absence of ribosome association. However, thylakoid association is disrupted in a mutant lacking two mRNA-binding proteins, which probably play roles in targeting photosynthetic proteins to the thylakoid membrane

Teaching About Health Care Disparities in the Clinical Setting

Clinical teachers often observe interactions that may contribute to health care disparities, yet may hesitate to teach about them. A pedagogical model could help faculty structure teaching about health care disparities in the clinical setting, but to our knowledge, none have been adapted for this purpose. In this paper, we adapt an established model, Time-Effective Strategies for Teaching (TEST), to the teaching of health care disparities. We use several case scenarios to illustrate the core components of the model: diagnose the learner, teach rapidly to the learner’s need, and provide feedback. The TEST model is straightforward, easy to use, and enables the incorporation of teaching about health care disparities into routine clinical teaching