Remote Internet voting places the control and secrecy of the immediate voting environment on the shoulder of the individual voter but it also turns voting into yet another on-line activity thus endangering the well-known social nature of voting and possibly reducing the crucial sense of civic duty that is important for a healthy democracy. There is however a complete lack of evidence to what de...

We compare voluntary and compulsory voting in a Condorcet-type model in which voters have identical preferences but differential information. With voluntary voting, all equilibria involve sincere voting and positive participation. Thus, in contrast to situations with compulsory voting, there is no conflict between strategic and sincere behavior. When voting is costless, voluntary voting is welf...

The Borda count is a positional voting system that favors ‘consensual’ candidates with broad support while plurality instead biased towards ‘polarizing’ ones strong support. Our article focusses first on developing indices for quantifying bias and then vector analysis design, seeking to find an intermediate evenly balanced between consensus polarization. are based the preference weightings of n...

the present paper deals with the results of the foresight analysis concerning the development of energy technologies in upper silesia. twelve experts representing science, industry and independent authoritieswere involved in these investigations. upper silesia is a specific region in poland, characterized by coal energy technologies. as 9 result of steep and swot analyses several scenarios of e...

Using a conditioning paradigm, the olfactory sensitivity of four spider monkeys, three squirrel monkeys and three pigtail macaques to four thiols and two indols, substances characteristic of putrefaction processes and faecal odours, was assessed. With all odorants, the animals significantly discriminated concentrations below 1 p.p.m. (part per million) from the odourless solvent, and in several...

The claim is made that as science moves increasingly closer to the human limits of perceptibility, nnt ordy the fmsrrcisi, rnarrpwer, and epistemologicat factors present problems (ss discussed in an eartier article), hut that the seierrtific method itself atse deteriorates. In particular, the interaction between theory and experiment weakens and beeonrcs very slow, because experiments rakealong...