Reference offers engineers a comprehensive understanding of radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) design. Covers the full range of RFICs, including more than 400 equations and more than 300 illustrations. DLC: Radio frequency integrated circuits — Design and construction.

Contemporary accounts of what’s “natural” for human society still cite the thirteenth-century system of Thomas Aquinas – even on the Supreme Court. But those accounts ignore his biblical commentaries, which reveal something much stranger. Against the reigning impression, the commentaries embed all law, even the law of nature, in a sexually charged story of decline by specific ethnic groups – Jews and Gentiles – gendered in changing ways and redeemed by the reinsemination of divine grace. This book uses accounts of ethnicity and gender, nature and grace in Aquinas’s biblical commentaries to reframe the systematic works (especially his Summa theologiae) still quoted in court. The whole advantage of natural law is supposed to lie in its independence from any particular group, history, or religion. That is why rival views of gender and sexuality both appeal to “nature” and cite Aquinas. But Aquinas’s Summa ties natural law to specific biblical passages, where his commentary describes a nature that differs by ethnicity, varies over time, and changes sexuality by God’s decree. This destabilizes turn-of-the-twenty-first-century uses, liberal or conservative.

In a region of violent physical and cultural contrasts, Costa Rica is often easy to overlook. Among the six small countries of Central America, it tends not to make the news very often. Costa Rica is not the Central American country with the famous U.S.-built canal and the corrupt military dictator overthrown by U.S. armed forces in 1991. It is not the one ruled by Marxists for most of the 1980s and with whom the U.S. waged a small proxy war. It is not the one that suffered through nearly 35 years of a civil war that has only recently ended. The natural disasters associated with Central America–hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions–also seem to happen elsewhere in the region, just across the border in Nicaragua or to the south in Panama. In 2000, Hurricane Mitch, for example, killed thousands of people in Central America and devastated much of the banana industry in Guatemala,Honduras, and Nicaragua, but it spared Costa Rica. Is Costa Rica lucky? In part, this may be the case. Major tropical storms and hurricanes in the Caribbean Basin usually strike just to the north of Costa Rica. The country’s history certainly reveals some lucky decision-making. For instance, the first Spanish colonists avoided settlement close to the country’s active volcanoes; this was not the case in other parts of the region. It is also true that Costa Rica has worked to avoid the mistakes made by its neighbors. While international attention has focused on the plight and misery of its neighbors,Costa Rica has quietly worked to develop democratic institutions and a sense of national identity that makes it exceptional, not just in the context of Central America but throughout the world. As the civil wars and political problems of the region seem to be coming to an end in the twenty-first century (due in part to efforts that began in Costa Rica), the country is emerging from the shadow of its violent neighbors. The world is finally recognizing Costa Rica as a natural wonderland and as a political model for stability and peace.

“The land where the rainbow begins.” This is how the traditional Mayan people of Guatemala describe their country. A land of striking and sometimes violent contrasts,Guatemala’s vivid colors reflect a varied land and a people with ancient roots. The colors of this land are echoed in the hues of traje, the traditional costume of the Mayans. Ancient and contemporary weavers dye their hand-woven cotton the same dark orange and red tones as molten lava from the country’s volcanoes. Luxuriant greens of the rain forest are duplicated in depictions of the Resplendent Quetzal. The iridescent green, red, and white feathers of this tropical bird have symbolized the land since ancient times. Other depictions of ancient life and symbols use the blue of Lake Atitlán, a mountain lake that English author Aldous Huxley called the most beautiful place in the world. Outside the spectrum of rainbow colors are found the black volcanic sands of the Pacific coast and the bleached chalk white colors of the lost cities of the Maya. So close to North America, yet so distant in many ways, Guatemala is home both to modern culture and to one of the world’s most ancient civilizations. The effects of globalization and reverence for the ancient god Quetzalcoatl coexist somewhat uncomfortably here. Its natural beauty and cultural richness are appealing, but Guatemala has another face as well. It is a place of recent civil war and ongoing political and economic turmoil. Ethnic bitterness and social inequality are not uncommon. Ruled by military dictatorships for most of the past hundred years, the country only now is transitioning from repressive tyranny to uneasy democracy. Guatemala is one of the original “banana republics,” a derisive term for Central American countries long dependent on agricultural exports to the United States. It is a fact that much of the country’s infrastructure—its railroad, telegraph lines, and ports—was built and controlled by U.S. interests, principally the United Fruit Company. Like its Mayan heritage, this aspect of the country’s past is still alive as well. Despite economic advances of the last five years, Guatemala is still dependent on banana, coffee, and sugarcane production for most of its export revenue.

Although Parliament is constantly in the news and televised daily, much of its work remains a mystery to outsiders and is sometimes perplexing even to its own members. This book provides a unique insight into the work and daily life of Parliament. It sets out plainly and intelligibly what goes on and why things happen, but it also analyses the pressures within the institution, its strengths and weaknesses, and ways in which it might change. Covering every aspect of the work, membership, and structures of both Houses, this book also reflects the profound changes that have taken place in Parliament over the years.