Voters in a referendum obtain information and derive voting cues from a variety of sources. Some of these, such as political parties or ideological orientations, are similar to those also found to be influential in elections. Others can be quite different. In some referendums, the issue may be entirely new and unfamiliar to many voters, initiating a 'learning' or 'cue-taking' process specific to the campaign itself. In referendum campaigns, parties may be internally divided and sometimes send conflicting signals to their electorates. As a result, voting behaviour in referendums often exhibits greater volatility than is found in elections. In the ten papers included in this Special Issue of EJPR, we focus on the process of opinion formation and change which occurred in a number of European, North American and Australia/New Zealand referendums held under a variety of different institutional and political conditions. In this essay, I argue that there are three distinctive patterns of opinion formation and reversal that tend to occur in referendum campaigns, each of which has significant consequences both for voting choice and for referendum outcomes.A referendum presents different sets of choices to the voter than an election. In a referendum, unlike in an election, no political parties or candidate names appear on the ballot. Voters must choose among alternatives that are sometimes unfamiliar and perhaps lacking in reliable voting cues. Yet some referendums are highly partisan contests, even without the appearance of party or candidate names on the ballot. Where the positions of parties on an issue are well known, or where a referendum debate follows clearly understood ideological lines, voting behaviour may tend to conform to familiar and relatively predictable patterns. In such situations, the voting choice may be driven by partisan or ideological cues, or by familiarity with one or more of the issues in a longstanding political debate. Scottish voters entered the 1997 referendum strongly predisposed toward a YES vote (see the Denver article in this issue). In Quebec, strong supporters of the Parti québécois likewise needed little additional information in order to make up their minds how to vote in the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum, given both the longstanding public debate on the issue and the reinforcing effects of partisanship. By contrast, in the 1992 Canadian constitutional referendum, party positions were not readily distinguishable because all the mainstream political parties campaigned on the

Prevalence, symptoms, and treatment of depression suggest that major depressive disorders (MDD) present sex differences. Social stress-induced neurovascular pathology is associated with depressive symptoms in male mice; however, this association is unclear in females. Here, we report that chronic social and subchronic variable stress promotes blood-brain barrier (BBB) alterations in mood-related brain regions of female mice. Targeted disruption of the BBB in the female prefrontal cortex (PFC) induces anxiety- and depression-like behaviours. By comparing the endothelium cell-specific transcriptomic profiling of the mouse male and female PFC, we identify several pathways and genes involved in maladaptive stress responses and resilience to stress. Furthermore, we confirm that the BBB in the PFC of stressed female mice is leaky. Then, we identify circulating vascular biomarkers of chronic stress, such as soluble E-selectin. Similar changes in circulating soluble E-selectin, BBB gene expression and morphology can be found in blood serum and postmortem brain samples from women diagnosed with MDD. Altogether, we propose that BBB dysfunction plays an important role in modulating stress responses in female mice and possibly MDD.

Because the task of choosing a candidate for a country's highest office is so important, political parties seek to devise more inclusive processes of selection, processes that are commensurate with the party's electoral goals. Often this has involved reforming an existing process in ways that open up the mechanisms of leadership choice to a wider `selectorate'. In such a process parties sometimes undergo changes well beyond what may have been anticipated when the reforms were first introduced. This article examines the process of leadership selection in three political parties that have undertaken major reforms in the process of leadership selection in recent years - the Democratic Party in the United States, the Labour Party in Britain and the Progressive-Conservative Party in Canada. In each instance, it is possible to demonstrate that the method chosen has had significant consequences for the parties themselves and for the party system as a whole, in part because of variations in the inclusiveness of the selectorates created, and also through effects on candidate recruitment.

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We propose to consider SWS as a cause of apparently isolated hemiplegic migraine and lamotrigine as a preventive medication in HM-like attacks.