The maternal experience of stressful events during pregnancy has been associated with a number of adverse consequences for behavioral development in offspring, but the measurement and interpretation of prenatal stress varies among reported studies. The Raine Study recruited 2900 pregnancies and recorded life stress events experienced by 18 and 34 weeks' gestation along with numerous sociodemographic data. The mother's exposure to life stress events was further documented when the children were followed-up in conjunction with behavioral assessments at ages 2, 5, 8, 10, and 14 years using the Child Behavior Checklist. The maternal experience of multiple stressful events during pregnancy was associated with subsequent behavioral problems for offspring. Independent (e.g., death of a relative, job loss) and dependent stress events (e.g., financial problems, marital problems) were both significantly associated with a greater incidence of mental health morbidity between age 2 and 14 years. Exposure to stressful events in the first 18 weeks of pregnancy showed similar associations with subsequent total and externalizing morbidity to events reported at 34 weeks of gestation. These results were independent of postnatal stress exposure. Improved support for women with chronic stress exposure during pregnancy may improve the mental health of their offspring in later life.

Human Rights in the ‘War on Terror’, Richard Ashby Wilson, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. xv, 347.

Given this book's title, I assumed that it would consist mainly of elaborations of already over-rehearsed debates about the “trade-offs” between “liberty” and “security.” And while it does include plenty of this, several chapters in this volume offer thoughtful, nuanced analyses which challenge the dichotomous rhetoric of the day, and force the reader to rethink not just the future, but also the nature, of contemporary human rights and security.

Talk of human rights is, currently, nearly as ubiquitous as talk of globalisation. While globalisation has been described as ‘the most over used and under specified term in the international policy sciences since the end of the Cold War’, the same could reasonably be said of ‘human rights’. Human rights are a product of the immediate aftermath of World War II, and thus they developed, in their contemporary form, in the context of the Cold War. The philosophical and political roots of human rights, of course, date back at least to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and some would say even further, to the Stoics of Ancient Greece. Globalisation, too, has unfolded mainly in the late twentieth-century and has reached a position of prominence in the post-Cold War context; at this juncture, and according to popular perception, the spread of market capitalism, Western culture and modern technology fit comfortably with the death of socialism and the ‘end of history’. But globalisation too has roots that date back much earlier – as early as, it has been argued, the fourteenth century.

Polypyrimidine tract binding protein (PTB) is an RNA-binding protein that regulates splicing by repressing specific splicing events. It also has roles in 3′-end processing, internal initiation of translation, and RNA localization. PTB exists in three alternatively spliced isoforms, PTB1, PTB2, and PTB4, which differ by the insertion of 19 or 26 amino acids, respectively, between the second and third RNA recognition motif domains. Here we show that the PTB isoforms have distinct activities upon α-tropomyosin (TM) alternative splicing. PTB1 reduced the repression of TM exon 3 in transfected smooth muscle cells, whereas PTB4 enhanced TM exon 3 skipping in vivo and in vitro. PTB2 had an intermediate effect. The PTB4 > PTB2 > PTB1 repressive hierarchy was observed in all in vivo and in vitro assays with TM, but the isoforms were equally active in inducing skipping of α-actinin exons and showed the opposite hierarchy of activity when tested for activation of IRES-driven translation. These findings establish that the ratio of PTB isoforms could form part of a cellular code that in turn controls the splicing of various other pre-mRNAs.

It is difficult to argue with Diana Zoelle's claim that liberal democracy, as conceived and developed in the United States, is a problematic model in globalizing concern for women's human rights. Moreover, when she suggests that U.S. ratifi- cation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), although not a panacea for the attainment of full equality, would constitute an important step toward alleviating wom- en's oppression, she is probably correct. Finally, although her claim that the potential currently exists to accord human rights to all people in a world community that is less torn apart by bipolar enmity, less subverted by ideological ten- sions, and less compromised by the economic priorities of multinational corporations is probably not correct, one can- not help wishing that it were.

The breeding season of mature Mule (Bluefaced Leicester X Scottish Blackface) ewes at 57°N extends from September to April (King et al, 1995). Previous studies have shown that ewe lambs which become reproductively active in their first year of life have a shorter breeding season than mature ewes with both fewer and less regular oestrous cycles (Dyrmundsson, 1978a). The aim of the present study was to determine (i) whether ewes lambing in the autumn (i.e. during their natural mating season) would subsequently experience oestrous cycles and (ii) whether age has an effect on the pattern and duration of cyclicity and on ovulation rate.