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This research is an empirical study of the legitimacy of economic inequality with a focus on the case of Chile. Chile is an appealing case study in this regard because it has been one of the countries with the highest indexes of economic inequality over the past several decades. Theoretical perspectives based on the rational interest of the median voter have pointed out a negative association between high levels of inequality and legitimacy. Nevertheless, empirical evidence indicates that an unequal distribution of income is not necessarily challenged by the majority of a society, a phenomenon...

The Lisbon Treaty is the latest and most crucial reform to the European Union. As the successor to the much-debated and innovative Constitution, it represents the culmination of the unification process, for it aims to simultaneously enhance efficiency and cover the democratic deficit inherent in the outdated decisionmaking mechanisms of the past, as a consequence of excessive enlargement and deepened integration. Thus, the first question is the extent to which the Lisbon Treaty renders the Union more democratic and according to what criteria that may be evaluated. Another question is relate...

Multi-Agent Geo-Simulation (MAGS) is a modelling paradigm which has attracted a growing interest from researchers and practitioners for the study of various phenomena in a variety of domains such as traffic simulation, urban dynamics, environment monitoring, as well as changes of land use and cover, to name a few. These phenomena usually involve a large number of simulated actors (implemented as software agents) evolving in, and interacting with, an explicit spatial environment representation commonly called Virtual Geographic Environment (VGE). Since a geographic environment may be complex an...

The thesis explores the syntactic and semantic dimensions of four linguistic elements that appear in Modern Greek arguably as quantifiers and modifiers, i.e., in the form of Quantificational Modifiers (QMods) olos 'all, whole, overall' and its extension olikos 'total', merikos 'some, a few, partial', ligos 'some, few, little, insignificant' and polis 'many, great, considerable'. Such QMods are analyzed as 'measure' quantifiers of scalar semantics that appear in a syntactic position common to adjectival modifiers. The thesis explores specific sets of reading and their interpretations. Such a ph...

I. Introduction The actuality of the abortion issue is explained in this chapter. The author expresses his determination to explore philosophical and historical background of this problem in the United States and Germany emphasising the legal development of abortion regulations. The comparative legal method was used as a proper means to illuminate Croatian controversial situation concerning the termination of pregnancy and to contribute in a modest way to probable law reforms. The objective of this thesis is to prove, despite very different substantive rules of abortion regulations in these ...

Vertical and horizontal expansion of irrigated agriculture to feed the increasing population has contributed to excessive groundwater withdrawal and affected the availability of water in terms of both quality and quantity. To sustain agricultural growth, strategic measures should be adopted to reduce water consumption while minimizing adverse effect on yield. The effect of deficit irrigation on wheat yield was studied in three consecutive years (2002-03 to 2004-05) in field and pot. Ten irrigation treatments were imposed in a randomized complete block (RCB) design covering full deficit, no def...

Six Sigma is a quality improvement initiative that has evolved over 20 years and is utilized in organizations around the world. The initiative is deployed by a variety of personnel, with Six Sigma Black Belts facilitating the individual projects that serve to reduce waste and enhance customer value throughout all departments within organizations. Extensive education and training is required to become a Six Sigma Black Belt; however, this training rarely, if ever, contains leadership training. As leadership is important to the overall success of the Six Sigma projects and thus, the overall i...

The purpose of this study was to examine the perception of the registered nurses' knowledge in managing the non-diabetic patient with hyperglycemia in the acute care setting. The evidence that has been identified to keep tight glycemic control has demonstrated better outcomes for this population of patients. A non-experimental, quantitative approach was used in this study. Data was obtained based on a descriptive design, using a survey to collect information from an identified population. A convenience sample of 298 registered nurses, who worked as staff nurses at a small community hospital, ...

We study the spatially resolved properties of star-forming galaxies at redshift z ~ 2 - 3 on scales ~ 1 kpc using a combination of morphological and kinematic analyses in an effort to characterize the major mechanisms of galaxy formation in the young universe. Using a sample of 216 galaxies which have been spectroscopically confirmed to lie between redshifts z = 1.8 - 3.4 in the GOODS-N field we demonstrate that rest-UV morphology (as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope) is statistically uncorrelated with physical properties such as star formation rate and is therefore unable to support the hy...

148 undergraduate students acted as mock jurors in a study that manipulated the following variables to assess their influence on Subjects’ determination of guilt and sentencing severity of a criminal defendant: race of defendant, social economic status (SES) of defendant, race of victim, and credibility of defense attorney. A chi square analysis of the relationship between the four independent variables and verdict found defendant SES and attorney quality/credibility to be significant. A 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 anova for sentence length found a main effect of attorney quality and a significant interact...