Revisiting democracy : Canada's quest for a more participatory form of representative government

This treatise is a political exploration of Canadian legislative and representational institutions and why they are not performing in the way they should be. In an effort to promote a citizen based democracy and avoid the further deterioration in relations between government and the citizens they claim to represent, four institutional and legislative reforms are suggested in an effort to reconcile basic democratic principles with realities of Canadian political life. These reforms are: (1) recall, (2) loosening party discipline and introducing more votes, (3) referendums, and (4) electoral reform. Although it is hypothesized that all four reforms would provide Canadians with a more participatory form of representative government, empirical and qualitative evidence reveals that these hopes are certainly delusive and must be re-examined. Instead, it is concluded that loosening party discipline and introducing more votes coupled with reforming the electoral system have the greatest chance of creating a more vibrant democracy in which governments would still exert necessary leadership on policy issues while citizens would be given necessary opportunities to participate in the political process. Unfortunately, as positive as this form of inclusionary politics sounds, reality dictates that unless both sides adopt different attitudes as to the true meaning of representative democracy, Canada's quest for a more participatory form of representative government will fail

Estrogen-Receptor Expression and Function in Thymocytes in Relation to Gender and Age

The expression of estrogen receptor (ER) in thymocytes was studied in young, middle-aged, and old (2, 12, and 24 months, respectively) female and male C57BL/6J mice. Western immunoblots prepared from the thymocytes of females of all age groups showed the presence of a 67-kD protein band, which has been associated with the apparent MW of denatured ER. Flow cytometry analysis o,f cells stained with a monoclonal anti-ER antibody (clone 13H2) disclosed ER expression in both females and males of all age groups. In vivo treatment with estradiol (E2) led to an increase in the specific activity of thymic creatine kinase (CK) in the female mice, whereas the male thymocytes responded with an increase in CK activity only on treatment with dihydrotestosterone (DHT). The data show no differences in ER expression between male and females, but the receptor appears not to be functional in males. Interestingly, when estradiol was applied to co-cultures of lymphoid-depleted fetal thymus (FT) explants and bone-marrow cells, or thymocytes, from young and old females, it resulted in increased cellularity of cultures containing cells of the young, and not those of the old. The proportion of CD4/CD8 phenotypes of the developing cells in these cultures was not affected by E2 treatment. These observations provide a new insight into ER expression and function in T-cell development in relation to gender and age

Circadian fluctuations in the activity of phagocytic cells in blood, spleen, and peritoneal cavity of mice as measured by zymosan-induced chemiluminescence.

Abstract Circadian variations in the phagocytic activity of mouse whole blood, spleen, and peritoneal cells were studied using the zymosan-induced chemiluminescence assay as a measure of phagocytosis. On a regimen providing for light from 7:00 to 19:00 alternating with darkness, the phagocytic activity of mouse blood, spleen, and peritoneal cells was high around 10:00 and low around 22:00, the integrated counts of chemiluminescence being 82.33 x 10(5) and 52.76 x 10(5) for peritoneal cells, 83.3 x 10(5) and 32.2 x 10(5) for spleen cells, and 12.33 x 10(5) and 3.99 x 10(5) for blood cells. Variations of a similar tendency were also found in blood leukocyte and granulocyte counts, the counts being again higher at 10:00 compared with the blood samples withdrawn at 22:00. In contrast to the differences in the intensity of the zymosan-induced chemiluminescence, the shapes of the curves (Fig. 6) of each cell preparation were similar, irrespective of the time period of the day the cells were prepared. Comparison of the zymosan-induced chemiluminescence curves of the 3 cell suspensions studied, prepared at the same period of the day, revealed some similarity between the kinetics of blood and spleen samples; the intensity, however, of zymosan-induced chemiluminescence emitted by spleen cells was much higher. The kinetics of zymosan-induced chemiluminescence curves of peritoneal cells differed from the other 2, being slower at the onset, the chemiluminescence lasting for a longer time and declining more slowly. We have shown here circadian variations in the activity of mouse phagocytic cells. The simple and rapid method of chemiluminescence measurements used in this study appears to be a powerful tool for the further investigation of such circadian variations.</jats:p