Richard O. Sinnott

The Determinants of Individual Trade Policy Preferences: International Survey Evidence

What determines trade policy? While this may seem to be mainly a question for political scientists, it is of increasing concern to international trade theorists, faced with the obvious disjunction between the free trade prescriptions of standard trade models and the protectionist policies pursued by so many governments.1 The intellectual stakes for economists have increased further with the advent of endogenous growth models, which predict that policies can have important, long-run growth effects, as opposed to the fairly trivial deadweight losses implied by static constant returns models. Clearly it is not sufficient to take these policies as exogenous and examine their implications. To understand growth, the theory seems to be telling us, we need to understand why some countries pursue appropriate policies and others inappropriate ones. When faced with such questions, the instinct of economists is to eschew state-centered or cognitive theories and to reach for the rational choice approach: politicians supply policies; voters and interest groups demand them; the institutional environment helps determine the ways in which these demands

Public opinion and internationalized governance

PART I: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES PART II: SUPPORT FOR EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PART III: LEVELS OF LEGITIMACY PART IV: ENALARGING THE SCOPE OF INTERNATIONALIZED GOVERNANCE

‘Second-order’ versus ‘Issue-voting’ Effects in EU Referendums Evidence from the Irish Nice Treaty Referendums

Are referendums on EU treaties decided by voters’ attitudes to Europe (the ‘issue-voting’ explanation) or by voters’ attitudes to their national political parties and incumbent national government (the ‘second-order election model’ explanation)? In one scenario, these referendums will approximate to deliberative processes that will be decided by people’s views of the merits of European integration. In the other scenario, they will be plebiscites on the performance of national governments. We test the two competing explanations of the determinants of voting in EU referendums using evidence from the two Irish referendums on the Nice Treaty. We find that the issue-voting model outperforms the second-order model in both referendums. However, we also find that issue-voting was particularly important in the more salient and more intense second referendum. Most strikingly, attitudes to EU enlargement were much stronger predictors of vote at Nice 2 than at Nice 1. This finding about the rise in importance of attitudes to the EU points to the importance of campaigning in EU referendums.

Representation and voter participation

This paper presents results from a study of turnout in the 1994 European Parliament elections which inserted several new questions into the post-election Eurobarometer, including some open-ended questions. It distinguishes between circumstantial and voluntary abstention and shows how each type varies depending on the institutional arrangements for the election. Using both the subjective reasons given for abstention and a range of more objective measures of attitudes, it makes the case that conventional views as to the impact of Sunday-voting and the proportionality of the electoral system and as to the non-impact of attitudes to the European Union need to be modified. It concludes by identifying some practical institutional and political measures that could encourage higher levels of participation.

Changes Over Time in Sex Assignment for Disorders of Sex Development

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: It is unclear whether the proportion of infants with a disorder of sex development who are raised as male or female has changed over time. The temporal trends in sex assignment of affected cases entered in the International Disorder of Sex Development (I-DSD) Registry were studied. METHODS: Cases of disorders of sex development reported as partial androgen insensitivity syndrome (PAIS; n = 118), disorder of gonadal development (DGD; n = 232), and disorder of androgen synthesis (DAS; n = 104) were divided into those who were born before 1990, 1990–1999, and after 1999. External appearance of the genitalia was described by the external masculinization score. RESULTS: The median (5th–95th percentile) external masculinization scores of those infants with PAIS, DGD, and DAS who were raised as boys were 6 (2–9), 6 (3–9), and 6 (1–12), respectively, and were significantly higher than in those raised as girls (2 [0–6], 2 [0–7], and 0 [0–5], respectively); this difference was maintained in the 3 temporal birth cohorts (P < .01). Of the 118 cases in the pre-1990 cohort, 41 (35%) were raised as boys; of the 148 cases in the 1990–1999 cohort, 60 (41%) were raised as boys; and of the 188 cases in the post-1999 cohort, 128 (68%) were raised as boys. CONCLUSIONS: Although there is an association between the external appearance of the genitalia and the choice of sex assignment, there are clear temporal trends in this practice pointing toward an increased likelihood of affected infants being raised as boys. The impact of this change in practice on long-term health outcomes requires additional focus.

Biochemical diagnosis of phaeochromocytoma using plasma-free normetanephrine, metanephrine and methoxytyramine: importance of supine sampling under fasting conditions.

To document the influences of blood sampling under supine fasting versus seated nonfasting conditions on diagnosis of phaeochromocytomas and paragangliomas (PPGL) using plasma concentrations of normetanephrine, metanephrine and methoxytyramine.

Novel associations in disorders of sex development: Findings from the I-DSD registry

Context: The focus of care in disorders of sex development (DSD) is often directed to issues related to sex and gender development. In addition, the molecular etiology remains unclear in the majority of cases. Objective: To report the range of associated conditions identified in the international DSD (I-DSD) Registry. Design, Setting, and Patients: Anonymized data were extracted from the I-DSD Registry for diagnosis, karyotype, sex of rearing, genetic investigations, and associated anomalies. If necessary, clarification was sought from the reporting clinician. Results: Of 649 accessible cases, associated conditions occurred in 168 (26%); 103 (61%) cases had one condition, 31 (18%) had two conditions, 20 (12%) had three conditions, and 14 (8%) had four or more conditions. Karyotypes with most frequently reported associations included 45,X with 6 of 8 affected cases (75%), 45,X/46,XY with 19 of 42 cases (45%), 46,XY with 112 of 460 cases (24%), and 46,XX with 27 of 121 cases (22%). In the 112 cases of 46,XY DSD, the commonest conditions included small for gestational age in 26 (23%), cardiac anomalies in 22 (20%), and central nervous system disorders in 22 (20%), whereas in the 27 cases of 46,XX DSD, skeletal and renal anomalies were commonest at 12 (44%) and 8 (30%), respectively. Of 170 cases of suspected androgen insensitivity syndrome, 19 (11%) had reported anomalies and 9 of these had confirmed androgen receptor mutations. Conclusions: Over a quarter of the cases in the I-DSD Registry have an additional condition. These associations can direct investigators toward novel genetic etiology and also highlight the need for more holistic care of the affected person.

Shibboleth-based Access to and Usage of Grid Resources

Security underpins grids and e-research. Without a robust, reliable and simple grid security infrastructure combined with commonly accepted security practices, large portions of the research community and wider industry will not engage. The predominant way in which security is currently addressed in the grid community is through public key infrastructures (PKI) based upon X.509 certificates to support authentication. Whilst PKIs address user identity issues, authentication does not provide fine grained control over what users are allowed to do on remote resources (authorization). In this paper we outline how we have successfully combined Shibboleth and advanced authorization technologies to provide simplified (from the user perspective) but fine grained security for access to and usage of grid resources. We demonstrate this approach through different security focused e-science projects being conducted at the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) at the University of Glasgow. We believe that this model is widely applicable and encourage the further uptake of e-science by non-IT specialists in the research communities

Comparison of advanced authorisation infrastructures for grid computing

The widespread use of grid technology and distributed compute power, with all its inherent benefits, will only be established if the use of that technology can be guaranteed efficient and secure. The predominant method for currently enforcing security is through the use of public key infrastructures (PKI) to support authentication and the use of access control lists (ACL) to support authorisation. These systems alone do not provide enough fine-grained control over the restriction of user rights, necessary in a dynamic grid environment. This paper compares the implementation and experiences of using the current standard for grid authorisation with Globus - the grid security infrastructure (GSI) - with the role-based access control (RBAC) authorisation infrastructure PERMIS. The suitability of these security infrastructures for integration with regard to existing grid technology is presented based upon experiences within the JISC-funded DyVOSE project.

Index-based symmetric DNA encryption algorithm

In this paper, a new index-based symmetric DNA encryption algorithm has been proposed. Adopting the methods of Block-Cipher and Index of string, the algorithm encrypts the DNA-sequence-based plaintext. First, the algorithm encodes each character into ASCII codes. And then, according to the nucleotide sequence, the researcher should convert it to the DNA coding. Besides, the researcher selects the special DNA sequence as the encryption index, and likewise, the pretreated plaintext will be divided into different groups. Next, the key created by the Chaos Key Generator based on the Logistic Mapping and initialized by the number x0 and μ, will take XOR operation with the block-plaintext. The type of number x0 and μ, which is selected by the researcher, is double. Then, the result of these processes will be translated on the DNA sequence. In addition, compared to special DNA sequence, the algorithm finds the sequence which has no difference with it. Then, the algorithm will store the position as the Cipher-text. The researcher proves the validity of the algorithm through simulation and the theoretical analysis, including bio-security and math-security. The algorithm has a huge key space, high sensitivity to plaintext, and an extremely great effect on encryption. Also, it has been proved that the algorithm has achieved the computing-security level in the encryption security estimating system.