No abstract

Acupuncture and sham acupuncture have relatively different clinical efficacy and brain responses. Acupuncture treatment more significantly improves the symptoms and quality of life of FD patients. The more remarkable modulation on the homeostatic afferent network, including the insula, ACC, and hypothalamus, might be the specific mechanism of acupuncture.

Research Question/Issue: We investigate the effect of insider control from the managerial power perspective and the global\ud pay benchmarks from the behavioral approach on Chinese executive compensation.\ud Research Findings: Based on a balanced panel sample of 502 Chinese listed firms between 2001 and 2006, we find that both\ud CEO duality and CEO ownership exert significant influence on Chinese executive compensation contracting and they\ud contribute to the high level of executive compensation. We support the managerial power hypothesis by arguing that CEO\ud duality and CEO shareholding tend to entrench insider managers further to collude with government officials and extract\ud a firm’s assets. Shareholdings appear to actively restrain managers from serving their self-interests as to their pay levels,\ud including on the board independence and the supervisory board levels. However, private institutional shareholdings\ud perform actively in restraining managerial influence on the executive pay setting. There is an upward increase in the\ud executive pay levels due to the global pay benchmark effects introduced by foreign investment. The compensation committees’\ud decisions on executive pay levels are largely influenced by the global peer group’s pay levels, rather than linking\ud to firm performance as predicted by the optimal contracting model.\ud Theoretical Implications: We extend the optimal contracting model by incorporating the managerial power hypothesis to\ud demonstrate how insider control affects the Chinese executive pay setting. We also add a behavioral approach to reflect how\ud the global pay benchmarks affect the Chinese executive compensation setting via the negotiation between a firm’s compensation\ud committee and its managers.\ud Practitioner/Policy Implications: The Chinese government should consider exerting rigorous restrictions on executive\ud shareholding and management buy-out as an incentive for managers. In addition, the Chinese Code of Corporate Governance\ud should explicitly restrict CEO duality. The government should be aware of the potential influence of behavioral bias\ud in human decisions departing from rational economical criteria, and set policies to balance the benefits of introduction of\ud foreign investment against the costs of resultant excessive executive compensation, and the benefits of setting a compensation\ud committee as a corporate governance control device against the costs of the compensation committees working with\ud the executives together to increase the executive pay level

In this study, we quantify the severity of drug-induced dyskinesias in the arms of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients using digitised spiral-drawing tasks. Two spiral drawings, namely a circular and a square spiral, are designed to, respectively, represent the continuous and discrete arm motions, and the size of the spiral is decided so that both the distal and proximal arm joints are involved. Fifteen PD patients, average disease duration 14.4+/-7.4 years, were assessed 30 min after a levodopa challenge whilst performing circular and square spiral-drawing tasks. The velocity of drawing movements was computed and the amplitude of the involuntary dyskinetic movements was measured as the standard deviation of the drawing velocity (SD-DV). The mean amplitude of dyskinetic movements was compared between arms and tasks and was correlated with clinical measures including the Bain dyskinesia scale and the total unified Parkinson's disease rating scale (UPDRS) score. The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference in the amplitude of dyskinesias either between the arms or between the continuous (circular) and discrete (square) spiral drawings in this group of PD patients, but interestingly the interaction between arm and drawing pattern was significant. Significant correlations were found between the magnitude of dyskinesia measured from the spiral-drawing tasks and both the 'on' or 'off' UPDRS and also the Bain dyskinesia scale. We conclude that the drawing tasks may be used to provide an objective method of quantifying the severity of drug-induced dyskinesias in the arm in PD patients.