Are Canadians Stealth Democrats? An American Idea Comes North

ABSTRACT: In an influential 2002 study, John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse make the provocative argument that high numbers of Americans seek “stealth democracy,” that is, processes that discover the will of the people without requiring substantial citizen effort. This article applies the concept in a Canadian province and argues that the stealth democracy measure represents an ambiguous amalgam of attitudes that are only loosely related to one another, and which do not appear to represent a single, underlying concept. We draw on 2011 Saskatchewan Election Study data and find that Saskatchewan responses to the stealth democracy items generally parallel the responses gathered in previous studies conducted in the United States, Finland, Britain, and Australia. We move beyond these studies by examining the components of the stealth democracy index. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of stealth democracy be rebuilt to better distinguish among attitudes toward democracy, politics, and governing

Public Policies toward Aboriginal Peoples: Attitudinal Obstacles and Uphill Battles

This paper examines public attitudes towards aboriginal policy in Canada, focusing on evidence from two surveys conducted in Saskatchewan, a province with a large and growing Aboriginal population. We show that although non-Aboriginals are collectively divided on Aboriginal public policies, expressing considerable support for some, but strong reservations when it comes to others; the individual-level evidence indicates that there is a single Aboriginal policy agenda in the minds of non-Aboriginal Canadians. Support for, and opposition to, the privileging of Aboriginal claims is structured in part by prejudice toward outgroups but also by non-Aboriginal people's more general position on the role of government in society. Moreover, the impact of positions about the role of government in society on attitudes toward Aboriginal policies is moderated by people's level of political sophistication: the more educated and politically interested they are, the greater the impact of those ideological views

The Differentiation of Hepatocyte-Like Cells from Monkey Embryonic Stem Cells

Embryonic stem cells (ESC) hold great potential for the treatment of liver diseases. Here, we report the differentiation of rhesus macaque ESC along a hepatocyte lineage. The undifferentiated monkey ESC line, ORMES-6, was cultured in an optimal culture condition in an effort to differentiate them into hepatocyte-like cells in vitro. The functional efficacy of the differentiated hepatic cells was evaluated using RT-PCR for the expression of hepatocyte specific genes, and Western blot analysis and immunocytochemistry for hepatic proteins such as α-fetoprotein (AFP), albumin and α1-antitrypsin (α1-AT). Functional assays were performed using the periodic acid schiff (PAS) reaction and ELISA. The final yield of ESC-derived hepatocyte-like cells was measured by flow cytometry for cells that were transduced with a liver-specific lentivirus vector containing the α1-AT promoter driving the expression of green fluorescence protein (GFP). The treatment of monkey ESC with an optimal culture condition yielded hepatocyte-like cells that expressed albumin, α1-AT, AFP, hepatocyte nuclear factor 3β, glucose-6-phophatase, and cytochrome P450 genes and proteins as determined by RT-PCR and Western blot analysis. Immunofluorescent staining showed the cells positive for albumin, AFP, and α1-AT. PAS staining demonstrated that the differentiated cells showed hepatocyte functional activity. Albumin could be detected in the medium after 20 days of differentiation. Flow cytometry data showed that 6.5 ± 1.0% of the total differentiated cells were positive for GFP. These results suggest that by using a specific, empirically determined, culture condition, we were able to direct monkey ESC toward a hepatocyte lineage