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This article discusses how the election of Sebastián Piñera as Chile's president on January 17, 2010 has pointed out that democracy has been restored and now has new opportunities to reenergize Chilean politics. The authors discuss the accomplishments of the previous government which controlled Chile for four terms. Although the the Concertación Party governments undid the authoritarian legacy of dictator Augusto Pinochet, there were still many changes required to improve the democracy. These changes were slow in coming with one party having too much control for too long.

This article explains why legislators in a centralized polity support decentralizing laws. Using Chile as a case study, it assesses two standard explanations for this support: party nomination procedures, which is disregarded; and electoral strategies, which is accepted. A novel finding is that party ideology is also a predictor of support for decentralization, with parties of the Right less likely to offer it. The author also argues that a legislator with a sub-national rather than national background is more likely to back such reforms in an attempt to enhance his or her reputation within the constituency. The author tests these and other hypotheses by combining qualitative arguments and regression analysis. The latter is performed on an original database of legislator biographical information, party electoral performance, regional GDP figures, and individual legislator support for 46 decentralizing laws approved in Chile between 1990 and 2006. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work analyses the Chilean decentralization process by performing a thorough revision of press sources regarding the political debate revolving on decentralizing bills passed between 1991 and 2005. The study describes both the actors and the context in which reforms were approved in Chilean congress. In discussing the literature on the politics of decentralization, this paper confirms the relevance of two existing hypotheses: the effects of democratization, and the prospects of electoral performance. At the same time, it reassesses a third theory concerning decentralization as a topdown process by stressing the mayors' increasing power in Chilean politics. In addition, this paper provides a novel systematization of municipal and regional electoral results, by party and by coalition, for the period under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can trans/differentiate to neural precursors and/or mature neurons and promote neuroprotection and neurogenesis. The above could greatly benefit neurodegenerative disorders as well as in the treatment of post-traumatic and hereditary diseases of the central nervous system (CNS). In order to attain an ideal source of adult MSCs for the treatment of CNS diseases, adipose tissue, bone marrow, skin and umbilical cord derived MSCs were isolated and studied to explore differences with regard to neural differentiation capacity. In this study, we demonstrated that MSCs from several tissues can differentiate into neuron-like cells and differentially express progenitors and mature neural markers. Adipose tissue MSCs exhibited significantly higher expression of neural markers and had a faster proliferation rate. Our results suggest that adipose tissue MSCs are the best candidates for the use in neurological diseases., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.