Trade and Foreign Policy Attitudes

Does trade influence whether individuals view other states as friendly or threatening? Liberal theory implies that it should, but the individual-level implications of the liberal argument are rarely tested. Trade should influence individual attitudes more strongly where trade is more economically important. International trade also creates both winners and losers within the trading states, and the foreign policy attitudes of these winners and losers should differ. The authors test hypotheses drawn from this line of argument using a forty-seven-country survey conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes project. They find some evidence that exports but not imports reduce hostile foreign policy attitudes. They find little support for the claim that the trade interests indicated by factor ownership influence attitudes toward trading partners in this broad cross-national sample. On the other hand, attitudes toward trade and foreign direct investment are correlated with broader foreign policy attitudes in the way liberal theory suggests. The authors conclude that there is reason to believe that trade influences individual foreign policy attitudes but that factor ownership does not provide an adequate account of individual interests in international trade in most cases.trade and conflict; public opinion; liberalism

The Influence of Age and Sex on Genetic Associations with Adult Body Size and Shape: A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Interaction Study.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 100 genetic variants contributing to BMI, a measure of body size, or waist-to-hip ratio (adjusted for BMI, WHRadjBMI), a measure of body shape. Body size and shape change as people grow older and these changes differ substantially between men and women. To systematically screen for age- and/or sex-specific effects of genetic variants on BMI and WHRadjBMI, we performed meta-analyses of 114 studies (up to 320,485 individuals of European descent) with genome-wide chip and/or Metabochip data by the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) Consortium. Each study tested the association of up to ~2.8M SNPs with BMI and WHRadjBMI in four strata (men ≤50y, men >50y, women ≤50y, women >50y) and summary statistics were combined in stratum-specific meta-analyses. We then screened for variants that showed age-specific effects (G x AGE), sex-specific effects (G x SEX) or age-specific effects that differed between men and women (G x AGE x SEX). For BMI, we identified 15 loci (11 previously established for main effects, four novel) that showed significant (FDR<5%) age-specific effects, of which 11 had larger effects in younger (<50y) than in older adults (≥50y). No sex-dependent effects were identified for BMI. For WHRadjBMI, we identified 44 loci (27 previously established for main effects, 17 novel) with sex-specific effects, of which 28 showed larger effects in women than in men, five showed larger effects in men than in women, and 11 showed opposite effects between sexes. No age-dependent effects were identified for WHRadjBMI. This is the first genome-wide interaction meta-analysis to report convincing evidence of age-dependent genetic effects on BMI. In addition, we confirm the sex-specificity of genetic effects on WHRadjBMI. These results may provide further insights into the biology that underlies weight change with age or the sexually dimorphism of body shape

Comparison of runaway electron generation parameters in small, medium-sized and large tokamaks - A survey of experiments in COMPASS, TCV, ASDEX-Upgrade and JET

This paper presents a survey of the experiments on runaway electrons (RE) carried out recently in frames of EUROFusion Consortium in different tokamaks: COMPASS, ASDEX-Upgrade, TCV and JET. Massive gas injection (MGI) has been used in different scenarios for RE generation in small and medium-sized tokamaks to elaborate the most efficient and reliable ones for future RE experiments. New data on RE generated at disruptions in COMPASS and ASDEX-Upgrade was collected and added to the JET database. Different accessible parameters of disruptions, such as current quench rate, conversion rate of plasma current into runaways, etc have been analysed for each tokamak and compared to JET data. It was shown, that tokamaks with larger geometrical sizes provide the wider limits for spatial and temporal variation of plasma parameters during disruptions, thus extending the parameter space for RE generation. The second part of experiments was dedicated to study of RE generation in stationary discharges in COMPASS, TCV and JET. Injection of Ne/Ar have been used to mock-up the JET MGI runaway suppression experiments. Secondary RE avalanching was identified and quantified for the first time in the TCV tokamak in RE generating discharges after massive Ne injection. Simulations of the primary RE generation and secondary avalanching dynamics in stationary discharges has demonstrated that RE current fraction created via avalanching could achieve up to 70-75% of the total plasma current in TCV. Relaxations which are reminiscent the phenomena associated to the kinetic instability driven by RE have been detected in RE discharges in TCV. Macroscopic parameters of RE dominating discharges in TCV before and after onset of the instability fit well to the empirical instability criterion, which was established in the early tokamaks and examined by results of recent numerical simulations

Correction: The Influence of Age and Sex on Genetic Associations with Adult Body Size and Shape: A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Interaction Study

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005378.].status: publishe

Age-dependent BMI loci.

<p>Effect estimates (beta ±95CI) per standard deviation in BMI and risk allele for loci showing age-differences in men & women ≤50y compared to men & women >50y. Loci are ordered by greater magnitude of effect in men & women ≤50y compared to men & women >50y. (95%CI: 95% confidence interval; BMI: body mass index; SD: standard deviation, *Newly identified loci).</p

Forty-four WHR_adjBMI loci showing significant sex-differences.

<p>Chr: Chromosome; Pos: position; EAF: Effect Allele Frequency; EA: Effect allele; OA: Other allele</p><p>^a ‘Yes’ if the locus is mentioned as WHR_adjBMI locus for the first time</p><p>^b ‘Yes’ if the sex-difference in the effect on WHR_adjBMI is reported for the first time</p><p>^c Effect allele is according to the WHR_adjBMI increasing allele according to the associated sex.</p><p>The table shows the sex-specific (age-group combined) results, ordered by largest, positive effect in women to largest, negative effect in women. The age- and sex-specific results (four strata), more detailed information on the loci and on the screens for which they were detected are given in <b><a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1005378#pgen.1005378.s021" target="_blank">S5 Table</a></b>.</p

Fifteen BMI loci showing significant age-differences in adults ≤50y compared to adults >50y.

<p>Chr: Chromosome; Pos: position; EAF: Effect Allele Frequency; EA: Effect allele; OA: Other allele</p><p>^a ‘Yes’ if the locus is mentioned as BMI locus for the first time</p><p>^b Effect allele is according to the BMI increasing allele according to the associated sex.</p><p>The table shows the age-group specific (sex-combined) results, ordered by largest to smallest effect in adults ≤50y. All loci were detected by the screen on age-difference that included the a-priori filter on <i>P</i>_{<i>Overall</i>} < 10⁻⁵. The age- and sex-specific results (four strata) and more detailed information on the loci are given in <b><a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1005378#pgen.1005378.s020" target="_blank">S4 Table</a></b>.</p

Power heatplots.

<p>Power for the combination of screens and gain through a priori filtering for varying configurations of effect sizes across the 4 strata. The figures illustrate (A) the power to detect age-difference, sex-difference or age-sex-difference in at least one of our scans (on <i>P</i>_{<i>agediff</i>}, <i>P</i>_{<i>sexdiff</i>} and <i>P</i>_{<i>agesexdiff</i>}, with and without a priori filtering); and (B) a power comparison, comparing approaches with and without a priori filtering on <i>P</i>_{<i>Overall</i>} < 1x10^-5. We here assume four equally sized strata and a total sample size of N = 300,000 (comparable to the sample size in our BMI analyses). We set b_F≤50y = 0.033 (corresponding to a known and mean BMI effect in <i>MAP2K5</i> region with R² = 0.037%), b_M>50y = 0, and vary b_F>50y and b_M≤50 on the axes. This strategy allows us to cover the most interesting and plausible interaction effects: Two-way interactions, such as (i) pure age-difference (b_≤50y = 0.033, b_>50y = 0) and (ii) pure sex-difference (b_F = 0.033, b_M = 0); and three-way interactions, such as (iii) extreme three-way interaction with opposite direction across AGE and SEX, (iv) 1-strata interaction (b_F≤50y = 0.033, b_F>50y = b_M≤50y = b_M>50y = 0), and (v) 3-strata interaction (b_F≤50y = b_F>50y = b_M≤50y = 0.033, b_M>50y = 0).</p