Linking democratic preferences and political participation: evidence from Germany

An extensive body of literature discusses the disaffection of citizens with representative democracy and highlights increasing citizens’ preferences for political decision-makers beyond elected politicians. But so far, little research has been conducted to analyse the relations between citizens’ respective preferences and their political behaviour. To address this void in the literature, our article investigates the extent to which citizens’ preferences for certain political decision-makers (politicians, citizens or expert) have an impact on their retrospective and prospective political participation. Our analysis draws on data from a survey conducted in autumn of 2014 on a probability representative sample in Germany. Results indicate that respondents favouring politicians as decision-makers focus mainly on voting. Those who favour citizens as decision-makers are more willing to get involved in participatory procedures, while those inclined towards expert decision-making show mixed participation

Can Hyperfine Excitation explain the Observed Oscillation-Puzzle of Nuclear Orbital Electron Capture of Hydrogen-like Ions?

Modulated in time orbital electron capture (EC) decays have been observed recently in stored H-like $^{140}$Pr$^{58+}$ and $^{142}$Pm$^{60+}$ ions. Although, the experimental results are extensively discussed in literature, a firm interpretation has still to be established. Periodic transitions between the hyperfine states could possible lead to the observed effect. Both selected nuclides decay to stable daughter nuclei via allowed Gamow-Teller transitions. Due to the conservation of total angular momentum, the allowed EC decay can only proceed from the hyperfine ground state of parent ions. In this work we argue that periodic transitions to the excited hyperfine state (sterile) in respect to the allowed EC decay ground state cannot explain the observed decay pattern

A simple functional form for proton-nucleus total reaction cross sections

A simple functional form has been found that gives a good representation of the total reaction cross sections for the scattering of protons from (15) nuclei spanning the mass range ${}^{9}$Be to ${}^{238}$U and for proton energies ranging from 20 to 300 MeV.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, bib fil

In-medium modification of the isovector pion-nucleon amplitude

We study the in-medium modification of the isovector pi N amplitude using a non-linear representation of the sigma model but keeping the scalar degree of freedom. We check that our result does not depend on the representation. We discuss the connection with other approaches based on chiral perturbation theory.Comment: 7 page

Renormalization of the isovector πN\pi N amplitude in pionic atoms

The extraction of the isovector s-wave pi N amplitude from pionic atoms is studied with special emphasis on uncertainties and their dependence on the assumptions made regarding the neutron density distributions in nuclei and on the size of the data base used . Only `global' analyses of pionic-atom data reveal a discrepancy between the extracted isovector s-wave pi N amplitude b_1=-0.108\pm0.007 m_\pi^{-1} and its free pi N counterpart b_1^{free}=-0.0885^{+0.0010}_{-0.0021} m_\pi ^{-1}, where the uncertainty in the neutron densities is included in the error analysis. The role of `deeply bound' pionic atom states is discussed and the reason for failure of these states to provide new information is explained.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, slightly extended, accepted by NP

Chiral dynamics and pionic 1s states of Pb and Sn isotopes

We calculate shifts and width of 1s and 2p states of pions bound to heavy nuclei, using an optical potential with its s-wave interaction part based on chiral symmetry. This potential is constructed systematically in two-loop approximation of chiral perturbation theory. A proper treatment of the explicit energy dependence of this potential in conjunction with gauge invariance turns out to be very important. Results are reported for deeply bound pionic states in Pb and Sn isotopes in comparison with the GSI dataComment: 4 pages, contribution to PANIC02, Osaka, Japan, September 30 - October 4, 200