The study of institutions, a core concept in comparative politics, has produced many rich and influential theories on the economic and political effects of institutions, yet it has been less successful at theorizing their origins. In Fixing Democracy, Javier Corrales develops a theory of institutional origins that concentrates on constitutions and levels of power within them. He reviews numerous Latin American constituent assemblies and constitutional amendments to explore why some democracies expand rather than restrict presidential powers and why this heightened presidentialism discourages democracy. His signal theoretical contribution is his elaboration on power asymmetries. Corrales determines that conditions of reduced power asymmetry make constituent assemblies more likely to curtail presidential powers, while weaker opposition and heightened power asymmetry is an indicator that presidential powers will expand. The bargain-based theory that he uses focuses on power distribution and provides a more accurate variable in predicting actual constitutional outcomes than other approaches based on functionalism or ideology. While the empirical focus is Latin America, Fixing Democracy contributes a broadly applicable theory to the scholarship both institutions and democracy.

In Muslims in Spain, 1492-1814: Living and Negotiating in the Land of the Infidel, Eloy Martin-Corrales surveys Hispano-Muslim relations from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, a period of chronic hostilities. Nonetheless there were thousands of Muslims in Spain at that time: ambassadors, exiles, merchants, converts, and travelers. Their negotiating strategies, and the necessary support they found on both shores of the Mediterranean prove that relations between Spaniards and Muslims were based on reasons of state and on a pragmatism that generated intense political and economic ties.These increased enormously after the peace treaties that Spain signed with Muslim countries between 1767 and 1791.

There is a broad consensus amongst law firms and in-house legal departments that next generation "Legal Tech" - particularly in the form of Blockchain-based technologies and Smart Contracts - will have a profound impact on the future operations of all legal service providers. Legal Tech startups are already revolutionizing the legal industry by increasing the speed and efficiency of traditional legal services or replacing them altogether with new technologies. This on-going process of disruption within the legal profession offers significant opportunities for all business. However, it also poses a number of challenges for practitioners, trade associations, technology vendors, and regulators who often struggle to keep up with the technologies, resulting in a widening regulatory "gap." Many uncertainties remain regarding the scope, direction, and effects of these new technologies and their integration with existing practices and legacy systems. Adding to the challenges is the growing need for easy-to-use contracting solutions, on the one hand, and for protecting the users of such solutions, on the other. To respond to the challenges and to provide better legal communications, systems, and services Legal Tech scholars and practitioners have found allies in the emerging field of Legal Design. This collection brings together leading scholars and practitioners working on these issues from diverse jurisdictions. The aim is to introduce Blockchain and Smart Contract technologies, and to examine their on-going impact on the legal profession, business and regulators.

Fragility and conflict pose a critical threat to the global goal of ending extreme poverty. Between 1990 and 2015, successful development strategies reduced the proportion of the world's people living in extreme poverty from 36 to 10 percent. But in many fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS), poverty is stagnating or getting worse. The number of people living in proximity to conflict has nearly doubled worldwide since 2007. In the Middle East and North Africa, one in five people now lives in such conditions. The number of forcibly displaced persons worldwide has also more than doubled in the same period, exceeding 70 million in 2017. If current trends continue, by the end of 2020, the number of extremely poor people living in economies affected by fragility and conflict will exceed the number of poor people in all other settings combined. This book shows why addressing fragility and conflict is vital for poverty goals and charts directions for action. It presents new estimates of welfare in FCS, filling gaps in previous knowledge, and analyzes the multidimensional nature of poverty in these settings. It shows that data deprivation in FCS has prevented an accurate global picture of fragility, poverty, and their interactions, and it explains how innovative new measurement strategies are tackling these challenges. The book discusses the long-term consequences of conflict and introduces a data-driven classification of countries by fragility profile, showing opportunities for tailored policy interventions and the need for monitoring multiple markers of fragility. The book strengthens understanding of what poverty reduction in FCS will require and what it can achieve.

The production of wastewater from various human and industrial activities has a harsh impact on the environment. Without adequate treatment, the disposal of this wastewater poses a threat to the quality of water globally. Technologies for the Treatment and Recovery of Nutrients from Industrial Wastewater investigates emergent research and best practices within the field of wastewater management. Highlighting novel technological tools in wastewater treatment, effective nutrient removal technologies, and innovative solutions to quality water preservation practices, this book is a critical reference source for professionals, scientists, academics, and students.

Lucifer tells tales of his times and talks with his brothers, Michael the Archangel, and Jesus Christ. Over the eons, they have met upon the surface of earth and also in his throne room below. Lucifer (Lucy, as he is called by his brethren and even his big kahuna, GOD . . . He really, really hates it.) relates some of his recollections of things told to him and those that he himself experienced while spending time with Mike and JC. In doing so, his understanding of humans caused him to like them and respect their difficult walk through time. This did not, of course, in any way change his God assigned, none union, job with mortals. He goes on to tell of an evolutionary occurrence that resulted in the birth of an extraordinary being that earned his respect and admiration.

En una forma particular de observar la vida, de apreciar a las personas y sus cualidades; en momentos especiales de inspiraci n; han surgido estos bellos poemas y pensamientos, que nos dan una visi n de la riqueza humana con que el Creador nos ha dotado, cualidades que est n en todas las personas y que pueden ser estimuladas a trav?'s de las palabras, del amor y del enfoque en lo positivo que cada ser humano tiene. Estos poemas te inspiraran para ver a los tuyos y aquellos con los que tratas desde una nueva perspectiva encontrando lo bueno de cada persona que est a tu lado, llenando tu vida de amor gozo y paz.

Fiction Crown of the Nazarene: A Carmela Buenasuerte Case Jesse Edward Corralez Pre-publication The Crown is the third installment in the Carmela Buenasuerte mystery series by Jesse Edward Corralez. In this book, Carmela and friends are called on to find an ancient relic the Vatican wishes to preserve for all of humankind regardless of religious affiliation. But the item's elusiveness suggests that its purpose does not include being housed in a museum. Archbishop Nicolas Rand, head of the Holy Antiquities Museum, is called on by the pope to authenticate a relic that is believed to be the crown of thorns that was worn by Jesus Christ during his crucifixion. The archbishop is given the directive to go to a museum in Switzerland and negotiate the purchase of the crown from the curator if he determines that it is the real thing. Money is no obstacle. Once in Switzerland, the archbishop is shown pictures of the thorny wreath that a former visitor to the Switzerland museum sent to the curator. The archbishop and the curator travel to Portland, Oregon, to authenticate the wreath. When they arrive, they are informed that the wreath was taken during a robbery of the owner's condo. Enter Carmela Buenasuerte, the crack private investigator who solved the curbside recycling and warehouse robbery mysteries. When her husband, police officer Shawn Sparrow, takes on the case of the stolen wreath with few results, Carmela's services are retained. As the couple begins to acquire bits of information about the location of the wreath, first at a pawnshop and then across the country in New York City, they recruit their friends Abraham Joseph Dooley and Gideon Nathan Blaze, owners of a special security and transport business, to help with the search. The jaunt to New York to recover the wreath from a couple who'd been visiting Portland leads the group all over the globe including Italy, Israel, Syria, and Iraq. With each attempt to retrieve the wreath, the foursome encounters people who have experienced a miracle after coming in contact with the crown: a child blind from birth can suddenly see and recognize her surroundings; a woman disfigured and crippled in a car accident as a child becomes beautiful and all her physical deformities are corrected; and a man who was positive for AIDS shows absolutely no signs of the disease after coming in contact with the wreath. Corralez achieves in this book what he does best as a writer: the combination of action with a focus on human behavior-the good and the bad-to weave a tale that not only entertains, but feeds the spirit. While the search for the crown of thorns is endless, one can determine that the wreath is not supposed to be found and possessed by one person or institution. The crown appears to belong to everyone, and as a result, it should be free to circulate among the masses. Crown of the Nazarene is a strong addition to the Carmela Buenasuerte series. I highly recommend it. Melissa Levine for Independent Professional Book Reviewers www.bookreviewers.org

The application of auto-repeat facilities in telephone systems, as well as the use of random access protocols in computer networks, have led to growing interest in retrial queueing models. Since much of the theory of retrial queues is complex from an analytical viewpoint, with this book the authors give a comprehensive and updated text focusing on approximate techniques and algorithmic methods for solving the analytically intractable models.

Retrial Queueing Systems: A Computational Approach also

• Presents motivating examples in telephone and computer networks.
• Establishes a comparative analysis of the retrial queues versus standard queues with waiting lines and queues with losses.
• Integrates a wide range of techniques applied to the main M/G/1 and M/M/c retrial queues, and variants with general retrial times, finite population and the discrete-time case.
• Surveys basic results of the matrix-analytic formalism and emphasizes the related tools employed in retrial queues.
• Discusses a few selected retrial queues with QBD, GI/M/1 and M/G/1 structures.
• Features an abundance of numerical examples, and updates the existing literature.

The book is intended for an audience ranging from advanced undergraduates to researchers interested not only in queueing theory, but also in applied probability, stochastic models of the operations research, and engineering. The prerequisite is a graduate course in stochastic processes, and a positive attitude to the algorithmic probability.