There are many indicators that the representative democratic system is currently facing serious legitimacy challenges. Two central indicators of these challenges are changing patterns of political participation and a decline in system support. Against this backdrop, a growing number of governments claim that democratic innovations (DIs) could reconnect institutions with citizens. This thesis focus

STUDY QUESTION: Does chemotherapy exposure (with or without alkylating agents) or primary diagnosis affect spermatogonial quantity in human prepubertal testicular tissue? SUMMARY ANSWER: Spermatogonial quantity is significantly reduced in testes of prepubertal boys treated with alkylating agent therapies or with hydroxyurea for sickle cell disease. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Cryopreservation of sperma

The Estonian Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) was initiated in late 2012 as a direct consequence of a legitimacy crisis of Estonian political parties and representative institutions. The spark igniting this crisis was the unravelling of a scheme of illegal party financing. The response from the governmental institutions took the form of a democratic innovation drawing on public crowd-sourcing and delibera

We demonstrate covariant beam-physics simulation through multipole magnets using Hamiltonians relying on canonical momentum. Space-charge interaction using the Lienard-Wiechert potentials is also discussed. This method is compared with conventional nonlinear Lie-operator tracking and the TraceWin software package.

Background: High-circulating level of parathyroid hormone (PTH) is associated with elevated mortality in dialysis patients. The Japanese Society for Dialysis Therapy guideline suggests a lower PTH target than other international guidelines; thus, PTH control may differ in Japan compared with other regions, and be associated with mortality. Methods: We analyzed data from hemodialysis patients with

Background: An increased Head Shaft Angle (HSA) has been reported as a risk factor for hip displacement in children with cerebral palsy (CP) but opinions differ in the literature. The purpose of this study was to re-evaluate the relationship between HSA and hip displacement in a different population of children with CP. Methods: The Cerebral Palsy Integrated Pathway Scotland surveillance programme

The derivation of dopamine neurons from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) now offers a promising alternative to fetal tissue for cell replacement therapy (CRT) in Parkinson´s disease (PD). Using the appropriate chemical cues in vitro, hESCs can be patterned towards bona-fide ventral midbrain (VM) DA neurons that survive, reinnervate, release DA and provide functional recovery when transplanted in

Background: Worsening heart failure complicated by congestion, hypotension, and renal dysfunction is difficult to manage, increasingly common and predicts a poor outcome. Novel therapies are required to facilitate diuresis and implementation of disease-modifying interventions in preparation for hospital discharge. Accordingly, we investigated the haemodynamic and renal effects of the Reitan Cathet

Anisotropy of gravitational wave (GW) emission results in a net momentum gained by the black hole (BH) merger product, leading to a recoil velocity up to ∼103 km s−1, which may kick it out of a globular cluster (GC). We estimate GW kick retention fractions of merger products assuming different models for BH spin magnitude and orientation. We check how they depend on BH–BH merger time and propertie

In this paper, we discuss how the structural and observational properties of globular clusters (GCs) can be used to infer the presence of a black hole system (BHS) inhabiting their inner regions. We propose a novel way to define the BHS size as the radius from the GC centre within which half of the mass is in stellar mass BHs and the remaining half is in other stars. Using this definition, similar

The first neutron star-neutron star (NS-NS) merger was discovered on August 17, 2017 through gravitational waves (GW170817) and followed with electromagnetic observations. This merger was detected in an old elliptical galaxy with no recent star formation. We perform a suite of numerical calculations to understand the formation mechanism of this merger. We probe three leading formation mechanisms o

There have been increasing theoretical speculations and observational indications that certain globular clusters (GCs) could contain a sizeable population of stellar mass black holes (BHs). In this paper, we shortlist at least 29 Galactic GCs that could be hosting a subsystem of BHs (BHS). In a companion paper, we analysed results from a wide array of GC models (simulated with the MOCCA code for c

We estimate the population of eccentric gravitational wave (GW) binary black hole (BBH) mergers forming during binary–single interactions in globular clusters (GCs), using ~800 GC models that were evolved using the MOCCA code for star cluster simulations as part of the MOCCA-Survey Database I project. By re-simulating BH binary–single interactions extracted from this set of GC models using an N-bo

We introduce and present results from the cocoa (Cluster simulatiOn Comparison with ObservAtions) code that has been developed to create idealized mock photometric observations using results from numerical simulations of star cluster evolution. cocoa is able to present the output of realistic numerical simulations of star clusters carried out using Monte Carlo or N-body codes in a way that is usef

Colour–magnitude diagrams (CMDs) are powerful tools that might be used to infer stellar properties in globular clusters (GCs), for example, the binary fraction and their mass ratio (q) distribution. In the past few years, observations have revealed that q distributions of GC main-sequence binaries are generally flat, and a distribution characterized by a strong increase towards q ≈ 1 is not typica

In this third of a series of papers related to cataclysmic variables (CVs) and related objects, we analyse the population of CVs in a set of 12 globular cluster models evolved with the MOCCA Monte Carlo code, for two initial binary populations (IBPs), two choices of common-envelope phase (CEP) parameters, and three different models for the evolution of CVs and the treatment of angular momentum los