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The number of fortified borders around the world has risen precipitously. This surge in walls is an important part of the larger globalization "backlash," as countries react to the unwanted consequences of economic openness and globalization, with a rise in illicit trade and smuggling being a prominent example. Despite the prominence of the idea that walls are built to combat illicit flows, no research systematically explores how walls generally affect illicit trade. This is a notable omission for at least two reasons. First, the most prominent explanations for wall construction put combating illicit trade front and center. Second, recent work that finds walls significantly reduce legal trade argues that this finding derives from border fortifications diverting illegal trade to ports of entry, which leads to more inspection, security, and transaction costs. We develop a new measure of illicit trade flows using over five decades of product-level data and provide a battery of evidence that shows border barriers increase illicit flows at ports of entry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on separatist groups has paid relatively little attention to groups' exact territorial claims and their influence on strategies. We explain the geographic distribution of separatist violence using new geospatial data on the location and extent of groups' territorial claims. We argue that variation in where separatists attack stems from variation in how groups allocate effort across two main objectives: control in the claimed region and the coercion of policy concessions from the center. We hypothesize that the relative importance of these objectives derives from features of the claim, the claimed region, and the separatist movement. We show that groups with "fuzzy" claims that do not follow administrative boundaries or clear geographic features attack more around their envisioned state's border, violence tends to concentrate within the claimed region when it is ethnically heterogeneous or the movement is fragmented, while relatively unified movements attack more in the national capital. La bibliografía sobre grupos separatistas ha pasado casi por alto los reclamos territoriales exactos y su repercusión en las estrategias que utilizan. Explicamos la distribución geográfica de la violencia separatista con información geoespacial nueva sobre la ubicación y la dimensión de los reclamos territoriales de los grupos. Sostenemos que la variación en los lugares donde atacan los grupos separatistas se debe a la variación en la forma en que los grupos distribuyen sus esfuerzos en base a dos objetivos principales: el control de la región reclamada y la coerción de las concesiones de política del centro. Nuestra hipótesis es que la importancia relativa de estos objetivos deriva de las características del reclamo, de la región reclamada y del movimiento separatista dado. Demostramos que los grupos con reclamos «difusos» que no siguen los límites administrativos o las características geográficas claras atacan más alrededor de su frontera de estado visualizada y que la violencia tiende a concentrarse dentro de la región reclamada cuando hay heterogeneidad étnica o cuando el movimiento está fragmentado, mientras que los movimientos relativamente unidos atacan más en la capital nacional. La littérature sur les groupes séparatistes a accordé relativement peu d'attention aux revendications territoriales précises de ces groupes et à leur influence sur les stratégies. Nous expliquons la répartition géographique de la violence séparatiste en nous appuyant sur de nouvelles données géospatiales sur la localisation et l'étendue des revendications territoriales des groupes. Nous soutenons que la variation des lieux d'attaque des séparatistes découle de la variation de la manière dont les groupes allouent leurs efforts entre deux objectifs principaux : le contrôle dans la région revendiquée et la coercition de concessions politiques de la part du pouvoir central. Nous émettons l'hypothèse que l'importance relative de ces objectifs découle des caractéristiques de la revendication, de la région revendiquée et du mouvement séparatiste. Nous montrons que les groupes dont les revendications sont « floues », c'est-à-dire qui ne suivent pas les frontières administratives ou de caractéristiques géographiques claires, attaquent davantage autour 'e la frontière de l'État qu'ils envisagent et que la violence tend à se concentrer dans la région revendiquée lorsqu'elle est ethniquement hétérogène ou que le mouvement est fragmenté, alors que les mouvements relativement unifiés attaquent davantage dans la capitale nationale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperacute rejection of porcine organs by old world primate recipients is mediated through preformed antibodies against galactosyl-[alpha]-1,3-galactose (Gal[alpha]-1,3-Gal) epitopes expressed on the pig cell surface. Previously, we generated inbred miniature swine with a null allele of the [alpha]-1,3-galactosyltransferase locus (GGTA1) by nuclear transfer (NT) with gene-targeted fibroblasts. To expedite the generation of GGTA1 null pigs, we selected spontaneous null mutant cells from fibroblast cultures of heterozygous animals for use in another round of NT. An unexpectedly high rate of spontaneous loss of GGTA1 function was observed, with the vast majority of null cells resulting from loss of the WT allele. Healthy piglets, hemizygous and homozygous for the gene-targeted allele, were produced by NT by using fibroblasts that had undergone deletional and crossover/gene conversion events, respectively. Aside from loss of Gal[alpha]-1,3-Gal epitopes, there were no obvious phenotypic differences between these null piglets and WT piglets from the same inbred lines. In fact, congenital abnormalities observed in the heterozygous NT animals did not reappear in the serially produced null animals.

Interest in authoritarian politics and democratic breakdown has fueled a revival in scholarship on coups d'état. However, this research is held back by the fact that no global coup dataset captures theoretically salient information on the identity of coup-makers, their goals, and the relationship between the coup leaders and the ruling regime. We introduce the Colpus dataset, new global data on coup types and characteristics in the post–World War II era. These data introduce a typology of coups, measurement strategy, and coding procedures to differentiate between whether coups seek to preserve existing ruling coalitions (leader reshuffling coups) or significantly alter ruling coalitions (regime change coups). We show trends in coup types across time and space. Finally, we demonstrate that poverty—an established determinant of coups—only predicts regime change coups. Colpus data will be of use to scholars of political instability and conflict, regime change, leadership accountability, the political economy of democracy and dictatorship, and related topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational terrorism is an inherently international phenomenon as it involves attacks where the perpetrators are from a different country than the victims. Accordingly, a growing literature explains patterns in transnational attacks with a focus on international variables, for example, the presence of a border wall or alliance patterns. Despite the importance of the topic, no common empirical framework with theoretical basis has emerged to analyze the flows of transnational attacks. We propose that recent versions of the structural gravity model of transnational flows, long the workhorse model in trade economics, can be modified to provide a theoretically motivated model of the flows of transnational terrorist attacks among countries. The gravity model provides several empirical advantages for the study of international variables and transnational terrorism, for example, recent specifications allow the researcher to estimate count models that condition out all time-varying country-level confounders with fixed effects. This facilitates sidestepping the typical problem that any international variables associated with transnational flows are often correlated with omitted or imprecisely measured domestic factors, which draws their estimates into question. Moreover, we demonstrate that the structural gravity model does a much better job in predicting outcomes, particularly when multiple attacks flow across borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]