From the first night in the emergency room unexpectedly diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, it has never been the same for Luis Medina. When the doctor informed him that unless he got a transplant, he would die a slow and painful death, Luis fell into a pit. Carrying up to 20 lbs of water every week left him desperate. Over the next 18-months in a battle to live, God began to do a work in Luis and something amazing happened while waiting for his healing.
Did you ever find yourself in a blind corner in life where you felt stuck and didn't know which direction to take? Have you ever struggled with what your purpose in life might be? Did you know that enthusiasm has it's root "in God?" Have you ever considered your gifts and talents to be God's investments so you can be content and successful with your career path? Is it possible that God could bring hurt and betrayal into our lives in order to mold us into what He wants us to be? Did you know that for the sovereignty of God to work in our life, we must give Him that rightful place? Addressing these questions, Rene Luis Medina illustrates the importance of knowing who God has created you to be in order to synchronize your life with his plan. With humor and wit, he describes heart-wrenching lessons learned through his success and failure. Based on Romans 8:28-29, 'Life Has Ups and Life Has Dips' is a dramatic story of faith and trust in the faithfulness and trustworthiness of God. This one of a kind book will captivate your attention and inspire you to look beyond any negative circumstance and lean on the Unchanging God of the Bible. Rene Luis Medina is a preacher, teacher and story teller. With a heart of a pastor, his passion is to discover what God wants him to be rather than being the captain of his own soul. A former ordained minister and administrative bishop, his journey and decision to leave the professional clergy life and thrive within the secular world were not an easy task. Because of his willingness to allow the Unchanging God to define him, Rene found success and contentment in the midst of a challenging economy. Recognizing his God-given gifts and talents, Rene redefined himself in the charity and medical-legal sector. Although he is a seasoned professional with more than twenty years of business experience with proven background in management and administration, Rene is a man after the heart of God. He is married to Charo, his wife of thirty years, and father to his son, Carlos, who just turned eighteen and has entered university in the fall.
We all have a past and coming to Jesus and being born again doesn’t mean you don’t have baggage to deal with. This book deals with a systematic approach to letting go of the past and moving forward toward the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus. It also goes on to show you what transpires in the new birth, what must be done in order for you to grow effectually in Christ and build a prosperous life while living in love, peace and joy of the Holy Ghost. It also outlines three things the church must be willing to do in order to enjoy the manifestations of God through the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
In The Conspiracy of the Ninth Duke of Medina Sidonia, Luis Salas offers a penetrating analysis of a plot to incite rebellion in the region of Andalusia in 1641. Had it succeeded, the plan could have caused the collapse of the Spanish Monarchy. Salas leaves no doubt that the conspiracy indeed occurred; he analyzes the plan in depth, its architects, its supporters — both in Andalusia and abroad — how it unraveled, and how the government of Philip IV of Spain managed to survive the most dramatic months of his tumultuous reign. Salas also delves into the consequences of the subsequent punishments, which affected Portugal, the balance of power in Andalusia, and Spain’s entire colonial trade.
The notion that groups form and act in ways that respond to objective, external costs and benefits has long been the key to accounting for social change processes driven by collective action. Yet this same notion seems to fall apart when we try to explain how collectivities emerge out of the choices of individuals. This book overcomes that dilemma by offering an analysis of collective action that, while rooted in individual decision making, also brings out the way in which objective costs and benefits can impede or foster social coordination. The resulting approach enables us to address the causes and consequences of collective action with the help of the tools of modern economic theory. To illustrate this, the book applies the tools it develops to the study of specific collective action problems such as clientelism, focusing on its connections with economic development and political redistribution; and wage bargaining, showing its economic determinants and its relevance for the political economy of the welfare state. "Medina's study is a great step forward in the analytics of collective action. He shows the inadequacies of currently standard models and shows that straightforward revisions reconcile rational-choice and structural viewpoints. It will influence all future work." -Kenneth Arrow, Stanford University "Olson, Schelling, and now Medina. A Unified Theory deepens our understanding of collective action and contributes to the foundations of our field. A major work." -Robert H. Bates, Harvard University "Medina thinks that the main problem of social action is not whether or not to cooperate but how to do it. To this end he has produced an imaginative approach to analyzing strategic coordination problems that produces plausible predictions in a range of circumstances." -John Ferejohn, Stanford University Luis Fernando Medina is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia.
This paper studies the potential for the export sector to play a more important role in promoting growth in Central America, Panama, and the Dominican Republic (CAPDR) through deeper intra-regional and global trade integration. CAPDR countries have enacted many free trade agreements and other regional integration initiatives in recent years, but this paper finds that their exports remain below the norm for countries of their size. Several indexes of outward orientation are constructed and suggest that the breadth of geographic trading relationships, depth of integration into global production chains, and degree of technological sophistication of exports in CAPDR are less conducive to higher exports and growth than in fast-growing, export-oriented economies. To boost exports and growth, CAPDR should implement policies to facilitate economic integration, particularly building a customs union, harmonizing trade rules, improving logistics and infrastructure, and enhancing regional cordination.
This book outlines the transitions between cultured and natural land cover/vegetation types and their implications in the search for alternatives to reverse the trend of anthropogenic environmental degradation. It also elaborates on the proposed “standardized hierarchical Mexican vegetation classification system” and geobotanical mapping, a critical transversal environmental issue. The first chapter consists of an historical review of the common approaches to the study of vegetation both in Mexico and in other regions of the world. The second chapter concisely analyzes the existing schools of thought that have led to the development of vegetation classification systems based on physiognomic, structural and floristic approaches. The focal point of the book is the “standardized hierarchical Mexican vegetation classification system” (SECLAVEMEX – “Sistema jerárquico estandarizado para la clasificación de la vegetación de México”). Chapter 3 describes the system’s organizational levels along with the criteria defining them and the nomenclatural basis for the denomination of each type of vegetation. It also includes a series of tables explaining and precisely defining the meaning of each concept, criterion, character and element used to help readers successfully identify the type of vegetation in a determined area. The fourth chapter highlights SECLAVEMEX's inclusive character as evidenced through its compatibility with other systems currently used around the globe. Three concepts are critically reviewed: land cover, land use and vegetation. These are often the study subject of the contrasting disciplines geography, agronomy and ecology, which all rely upon plant species assemblages. As such, the final chapter focuses on a critical transversal environmental issue – geobotanical mapping. Geobotanical mapping offers a baseline for land cover/use planning and provides critical information on ecological, economic and cultural attributes, which can be used as a basis for environmental-policy decisions. The proposed SECLAVEMEX was applied to Mexico as an example of land cover, land use and vegetation patterns intermingling as the result of a long human influence. SECLAVEMEX, however, can be adapted and hopefully adopted globally as a baseline for consistently comparing geobotanical patterns and their transitions.
Death comes for us all. As we say goodbye to our loved ones- we mourn, we question our existence, and deal with a loss that can be painful to overcome... but what do the dead feel? A man will come face to face with Death, and discover that the dead can also mourn the loss of the living.
This book shows a solved problems collection with the aim of covering the knowledge requirements of the students of Chemical Engineering. The book begins with feedback systems, after having seen the block diagrams, until the study of stability using the frequency response. Some problems about control systems that are not based on feedback systems, always applied on Chemical Processes (Chapters 1, 2 and 3). The second part of the book is focused on applying in a practical way the concepts of Automation and Control. The chapter 4 solves discrete systems using pneumatic elements and programmable logic devices (PLCs). Finally, chapter 5 deals with the control of continuous processes using a PLC.
An intriguing examination of one of the most important unresolved problems in social choice theory: how do we best understand people's decision to pay the cost of a public good?
This Brief uses game-theoretic analysis to debunk the turnout paradox and offers an alternative economic model to elucidate the patterns behind the socioeconomic bias in turnout. The author argues that the turnout paradox—the idea that rational, strategic actors would not vote in an election—is an overstated problem, and that, contrary to widespread belief, game-theoretic models of elections with highly realistic parameters are compatible with high turnout. The author applies the method of stability sets to the study of voting games so as to characterize the behavior of electoral turnout in response to the game’s structural parameters. To illustrate the power and potential of this framework, the author then develops a politico-economic model that generates testable theories about the way in which the modern welfare state and redistribution of wealth can shape the patterns of biased turnout that exist in most democracies. By turning a classic problem of rational choice into a source of new methods of analysis this Brief allows game theory to intervene in relevant conversations about the political economy of electoral participation, creating an opportunity for formal methods to make a welcome contribution to the discipline. As such, this Brief will be of use to scholars and student of political science, economics, political economy, and public policy, especially those who work in the tradition of formal methods.
This is a joint publication of Floricanto and Berkeley Presses. In his first book, Emotions, Culture And Mental Illness: A Short History Of My Father, the author takes the reader on a poignant journey of self-discovery when he decides to go to Puerto Rico in search of "Monchito," his psychopathic father whom he had not seen in nearly three decades. He explores the subject of emotions-primarily from the perspective of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)-and debunks the widely held notion that psychopaths are "emotionless" beings. What exactly are emotions? How do we learn to feel anything? As he examines these issues, the author takes us on an anthropological field trip deep into the harsh realities of Puerto Rico's island culture, both past and present; he tells us the story of how he learned to become an Americano through his immersion in books, movies, and the English language. He also discusses the ambiguous political status of Puerto Ricans referring to them as a "different kind of American," who are "neither here nor there." Throughout the narrative, we come face-to-face with the book's chief subject: Monchito, his life and his times. His story is presented with brutal candor, submerging us into the depths of human suffering and the devastating effects of poverty and mental illness. Monchito's story-told in parallel to that of the author's-challenges the reader to explore the inseparable relationship between emotions and ideas and question our notions of American identity in a fundamentally new light. Luis R. Medina was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico and raised in Lorain, Ohio. He lived and worked in New York City for many years where he earned his B.A. from Queens College and an M.A. from Columbia University in Cultural Anthropology. He currently lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado and owns an impressive collection of hats. Floricanto Press
Based on the simulations developed in research groups over the past years, Introduction to Quasi-dimensional Simulation of Spark Ignition Engines provides a compilation of the main ingredients necessary to build up a quasi-dimensional computer simulation scheme. Quasi-dimensional computer simulation of spark ignition engines is a powerful but affordable tool which obtains realistic estimations of a wide variety of variables for a simulated engine keeping insight the basic physical and chemical processes involved in the real evolution of an automotive engine. With low computational costs, it can optimize the design and operation of spark ignition engines as well as it allows to analyze cycle-to-cycle fluctuations. Including details about the structure of a complete simulation scheme, information about what kind of information can be obtained, and comparisons of the simulation results with experiments, Introduction to Quasi-dimensional Simulation of Spark Ignition Engines offers a thorough guide of this technique. Advanced undergraduates and postgraduates as well as researchers in government and industry in all areas related to applied physics and mechanical and automotive engineering can apply these tools to simulate cyclic variability, potentially leading to new design and control alternatives for lowering emissions and expanding the actual operation limits of spark ignition engines
De la misma manera que en el nuevo mileniolos géneros sexuales languidecen, por fortuna,lo mismo ocurre con los literarios. Esta antología incluye cuento, poesía, crónica, ensayo personal y novela. Muchos de los textos están felizmente contaminados de uno y otro estilo.Toda literatura es una experiencia. Salvo un par que publicó en los 90, este trabajo reúne autores que en casi dos décadas hicieron una obraen tierra norteamericana: algunos describen la relación con el país extranjero en el que viven;a la vez, los escenarios se extienden por el resto del mundo. Es decir: los escritores que ya están afincados no siguen necesariamente hablando de inmigración, indocumentados, etc. Ya lo hicieron y ahora tienen nuevas obsesiones.
This volume comprises 16 chapters – both research papers and theoretical contributions – grouped in three thematic sections. The chapters in the first part, entitled "Discourse Communities: Languages in Contact," adopt a social and/or historical perspective on bi-/multilingualism. The contributions in the second part, entitled "Languages in the Mind: Language Development and Language Use," view issues related to bi- and multilingualism from psycholinguistic and psychological perspectives. The chapters comprising the third part, "Language Education: Supporting Multilingual Development," adopt a broadly understood didactic perspective on bi-/multilingualism.
A Perception From The South -Security Issues And Challenges To Regional Security Cooperation: A Brazilian Perspective -Ideas For Constructing A New Framework Of Hemispheric Security
A Perception From The South -Security Issues And Challenges To Regional Security Cooperation: A Brazilian Perspective -Ideas For Constructing A New Framework Of Hemispheric Security
This monograph in our series on "Building Regional Security in the Western Hemisphere" includes three presentations that were made at the March 2003 conference in Miami. They include a high ranking Argentine diplomat, a leading Brazilian scholar, and a retired Colombian general officer. As might be expected, these individuals perceive the need for regional security cooperation from somewhat different perspectives. Yet, despite their differences, these writers express some significant common perceptions. First, none of them offers a panacea or quick fix solution to the regional stability-security issue--or even suggests that any short-term solution is possible. That judgment is important as the United States focuses on the need to develop a realistic ends, ways, and means stability strategy to begin the implementation of a viable Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) by the year 2005.
“A frequently fascinating and probably fairly accurate insight into the most controversial character of the Mexican Revolution.” —Time Martín Luis Guzmán, eminent historian of Mexico, knew and traveled with Pancho Villa at various times during the Revolution. When many years later some of Villa’s private papers, records, and what was apparently the beginning of an autobiography came into Guzmán’s hands, he was ideally suited to blend all these into an authentic account of the Revolution as Pancho Villa saw it, and of the General’s life as known only to Villa himself. This is Villa’s story, his account of how it all began when as a peasant boy of sixteen he shot a rich landowner threatening the honor of his sister. This lone, starved refugee hiding out in the mountains became the scourge of the Mexican Revolution, the leader of thousands of men, and the hero of the masses of the poor. The assault on Ciudad Juárez in 1911, the battles of Tierra Blanca, of Torreón, of Zacatecas, of Celaya, all are here, told with a feeling of great immediacy. This volume ends as Villa and Obregón prepare to engage each other in the war between victorious generals into which the Revolution degenerated before it finally ended. The Memoirs were first published in Mexico in 1951, where they were extremely popular. This volume—translated by Virginia H. Taylor—was the first English publication. “This biographical history presents as revealing a historical portrait of the Revolution as the author’s earlier historical novel, The Eagle and the Serpent.” —The Hispanic American Historical Review
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