En este artículo, se podrá conocer acerca del concurso Solar Decathlon que se desarrolla desde el 2002. Se trata de un concurso pensado para iniciativas de viviendas sostenibles de universidades de todo el mundo. Además, el presente artículo permite conocer la forma de calificación, información acerca de la última edición de este concurso, así como el ganador de la mejor vivienda sostenible y demás categorías. Asimismo, se trata de motivar a los estudiantes a desarrollar este tipo de proyectos interdisciplinarios, con el fin de aportar en la conservación del medioambiente y el desarrollo óptimo de la sociedad.

This is the collection of a novel, Cuban Jam Sessions in Miniature: A Novel in Tracks, and an embedded short story, "Shred Me Like the Cheese You Use to Make Buñuelos." The novel tells the story of Palomino Mondragón, a Colombian mercenary who has arrived in New York after losing his leg to a mortar in Korea. Reclusive, obsessive and passionate, Palomino has reinvented himself as a mambo musician and has fallen in love with Etiwanda, a dancer at the nightclub in which he plays—but he cannot bring himself to declare his love to her. His life changes when he is deported from the United States at the height of the Cuban Missile crisis without having declared his love. Through the thirty years chronicled in the novel, Palomino does all possible in his quest to return to the United States to find Etiwanda despite the fact that he knows she has grown to be a fantasy, an obsession of his imagination. Palomino’s quest takes him to the United States and back three times, as he becomes more and more desperate, as he becomes involved with drug traffickers and for-hire murderers like Polo Norte, as he loses track of what it means to feel alive. Palomino is trapped in a tug-of-war between his rational desire for a normal existence and his irrational but inescapable longing for Etiwanda. In the end, his desperation to get to Etiwanda brings the underworld of Polo Norte to her doorstep. "Shred Me Like the Cheese You Use to Make Buñuelos" tells the story of Polo Norte, Palomino’s antagonist, on his last day on earth, as he is followed by a writer who has agreed to watch him commit suicide. Together, the stories explore the history and nature of the Colombian Diaspora in the United States, and the violent circumstances surrounding the relationship between both countries and the migrants stuck in the middle of it.

Les problèmes de santé mentale représentent un pourcentage important du fardeau de morbidité mondiale. Cela, ajouté aux ressources limitées disponibles pour le fonctionnement des établissements, encourage l’intérêt pour l’évaluation de leur performance. Ce projet propose d’utiliser le modèle ÉGIPSS pour évaluer la performance de deux hôpitaux psychiatriques dans deux systèmes de santé différents, le « Hospital Psiquiátrico Universitario del Valle » (HPUV) situé en Colombie et l’Institut universitaire en santé mentale Douglas au Québec. Le modèle a été choisi en raison de la richesse des dimensions qu’il comprend et son caractère global. Les données ont été recueillies à travers des entrevues et de la documentation disponible dans les établissements. L’analyse des résultats montre que le Douglas a une meilleure performance générale, même tenant compte qu’il se trouve dans un pays à haut revenu avec des standards d’évaluation supérieures. De vingt-et-une sous-dimensions évaluées, l’HPUV a présente six avec un état préoccupante et le Douglas aucune. L’analyse des résultats a aussi servi pour identifier des facteurs de causalité critiques des problèmes de performance, soit l’organisation à l’intérieur des établissements, la communication interne, les plans de santé mentale et la disponibilité des professionnels. La comparaison a permis apprécier l’influence de ces éléments dans les deux contextes. / Mental health problems account for a significant percentage of the global disease burden. This, coupled with the limited resources available for the functioning of health institutions, impulse the interest in evaluating the performance of such organizations. This project proposes the use of the EGIPSS model to evaluate the performance of two psychiatric hospitals in two different healthcare systems, the « Hospital Psiquiátrico Universitario del Valle » (HPUV) in Colombia and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Quebec. The model was chosen because of the richness of dimensions it offers and its comprehensiveness. Data were collected through interviews and documentation available at the institutions. Analysis of the results shows that the Douglas Institute has a better general performance, even when considering that it is located in a high revenue region with highest standards of evaluation. Out of twenty-one evaluated sub-dimensions, six were classified as concerning for the HPUV and none for the Douglas. The analysis of results was also used to identify critical causal factors of problems in the performance, which are organization and communication within the institutions, mental health plans and availability of professionals. Benchmarks were established to assess the influence of these factors in both contexts.