China’s National Security Review: a tit-for-tat response?

China is gradually taking its place as a major regulator, exercising concurrent jurisdiction of the national security review along with the US and EU over high-profile cross-border mergers and acquisitions. The National Security Review (NSR) regulatory regime of foreign acquisitions has attracted significant attention recently with the establishment of China's counterpart to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Due to the intensified activities of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) that are closely linked with states, CFIUS's broad discretion to deal with China's SWF-based investment may have a far-reaching impact on China's implementation of the newly enacted NSR regime. It is essential to design a mechanism that allows SWFs to maximise their positive attributes while safeguarding the apolitical integrity of the marketplace. Any disproportionate use of the NSR regime would inevitably bring about more unintended consequences, such as tit-for-tat protectionism. This represents an imminent threat to the tenuous recovery from the recent economic crisis, largely because of the increasingly intertwined and interdependent nature of the global financial markets. It is of utmost significance to evaluate the extent to which the updated legislation strikes a reasonable balance between preserving genuine national security interests and maintaining an open environment for investment.

Is the public healthcare sector a more strenuous working environment than the private sector for a physician?

Aims: The present study examined the differences between physicians working in public and private health care in strenuous working environments (presence of occupational hazards, physical violence, and presenteeism) and health behaviours (alcohol consumption, body mass index, and physical activity). In addition, we examined whether gender or age moderated these potential differences. Methods: Cross-sectional survey data were compiled on 1422 female and 948 male randomly selected physicians aged 25-65 years from The Finnish Health Care Professionals Study. Logistic regression and linear regression analyses were used with adjustment for gender, age, specialisation status, working time, managerial position, and on-call duty. Results: Occupational hazards, physical violence, and presenteeism were more commonly reported by physicians working in the public sector than by their counterparts in the private sector. Among physicians aged 50 years or younger, those who worked in the public sector consumed more alcohol than those who worked in the private sector, whereas in those aged 50 or more the reverse was true. In addition, working in the private sector was most strongly associated with lower levels of physical violence in those who were older than 50 years, and with lower levels of presenteeism among those aged 40-50 years. Conclusions: The present study found evidence for the public sector being a more strenuous work environment for physicians than the private sector. Our results suggest that public healthcare organisations should pay more attention to the working conditions of their employees.

The City as Laboratory and the Urban-Rural Divide: the Revival of Private Property and its Limits in Post-Mao China

This paper focuses on the revival of private property and its limits in urban China. It explores the emergence of urban property markets; urban property-holding in relation to the complexity of urban governance; “minor property rights apartments” that form a de facto real estate market and cross over the urban-rural divide; the “grey areas” of blurring legal and administrative boundaries in modern China; and recent changes to the rural land system and the rural-urban divide. The conclusion flags the theme of the city as laboratory with regard to the blurring legal and governmental urban-rural distinction.

Design and analysis of dual-rail circuits for security applications

Dual-rail encoding, return-to-spacer protocol, and hazard-free logic can be used to resist power analysis attacks by making energy consumed per clock cycle independent of processed data. Standard dual-rail logic uses a protocol with a single spacer, e.g., all-zeros, which gives rise to energy balancing problems. We address these problems by incorporating two spacers; the spacers alternate between adjacent clock cycles. This guarantees that all gates switch in every clock cycle regardless of the transmitted data values. To generate these dual-rail circuits, an automated tool has been developed. It is capable of converting synchronous netlists into dual-rail circuits and it is interfaced to industry CAD tools. Dual-rail and single-rail benchmarks based upon the advanced encryption standard (AES) have been simulated and compared in order to evaluate the method and the tool.

Maternal Religiosity, Family Resources and Stressors, and Parent-Child Attachment Security in Northern Ireland

This study explores the associations between mothers' religiosity, and families' and children's functioning in a stratified random sample of 695 Catholic and Protestant motherchild dyads in socially deprived areas in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a region which has experienced centuries of sectarian conflict between Protestant Unionists and Catholics Nationalists. Findings based on mother and child surveys indicated that even in this context of historical political violence associated with religious affiliation, mothers' religiosity played a consistently positive role, including associations with multiple indicators of better family functioning (i.e., more cohesion and behavioral control and less conflict, psychological distress, and adjustment problems) and greater parentchild attachment security. Mothers' religiosity also moderated the association between parentchild attachment security and family resources and family stressors, enhancing positive effects of cohesion and mother behavioral control on motherchild attachment security, and providing protection against risks associated with mothers' psychological distress. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for understanding the role of religiosity in serving as a protective or risk factor for children and families.

Equal Security: Europe and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, 1968-1976

SALT threatened to institutionalize a bipolar world order. NWS and NNWS alike feared that the US and SU will prioritize global security principles such as systemic stability and conflict stability to Atlantic and European security. Endangered was Europe’s security and position in the future world order. Parity in strategic weapons invalidated the US nuclear umbrella. An ABM deployment and a non-transfer regime threatened Europe’s nuclear defence options. The danger of a Limited War or a denuclearization of Central Europe led to a European co-ordination on nuclear arms control to assure the preservation of the West and the future of Europe.