Addressing Burnout in Outdoor Education

The role of instructors in the field of outdoor education is crucial, and those who aspire to spend their life teaching and helping others experience growth are incredibly drawn to this line of work. According to Two Factor Theory, this industry is rich in growth factors, hence the strong allure, but severely lacks in hygiene factors, causing a high rate of burnout in the industry. For the betterment of both the instructor experience and the industry itself, an emphasis must be paced on providing more of those hygiene factors in order to retain experienced and enthusiastic outdoor educators

Modeling and Control of a Flexible Structure Incorporating Inertial Slip-Stick Actuators

Shape and vibration control of a linear flexible structure by means of a new type of inertial slip-stick actuator are investigated. A nonlinear model representing the interaction between the structure and a six-degree-of-freedom Stewart platform system containing six actuators is derived, and closed-loop stability and performance of the controlled systems are investigated. A linearized model is also derived for design purposes. Quasistatic alignment of a payload attached to the platform is solved simply by using a proportional controller based on a linear kinematic model. The stability of this controller is examined using a dynamic model of the complete system and is validated experimentally by introducing random thermal elongations of several structural members. Vibration control is solved using an H∞ loop-shaping controller and, although its performance is found to be less satisfactory than desired, the nonlinear model gives good predictions of the performance and stability of the closed-loop system

Wages, Productivity and Work Intensity in the Great Depression

We show that U.S. manufacturing wages during the Great Depression were importantly determined by forces on firms' intensive margins. Short-run changes in work intensity and the longer-term goal of restoring full potential productivity combined to influence real wage growth. By contrast, the external effects of unemployment and replacement rates had much less impact. Empirical work is undertaken against the background of an efficient bargaining model that embraces employment, hours of work and work intensity.

Labour Force Participation and the Business Cycle: A Comparative Analysis of Europe, Japan and the United States

Using OECD data from 1970 until 1995, we estimate systems of labour force participation equations, disaggregated by age and sex, for the United States, Japan, France and Sweden. We simulate the path of participation rates following shocks to GDP and also test for asymmetric responses to shocks occurring in upward and downward phases of the cycle. Our methodology is especially pertinent to the issue of hidden unemployment and the "discouraged worker effect". We find that this effect is essentially a female phenomenon with a particular concentration among 45 to 54 year olds.Participation rates; business cycle; asymmetric responses; discouraged worker effects

Constructive Heuristics for the Minimum Labelling Spanning Tree Problem: a preliminary comparison

This report studies constructive heuristics for the minimum labelling spanning tree (MLST) problem. The purpose is to find a spanning tree that uses edges that are as similar as possible. Given an undirected labeled connected graph (i.e., with a label or color for each edge), the minimum labeling spanning tree problem seeks a spanning tree whose edges have the smallest possible number of distinct labels. The model can represent many real-world problems in telecommunication networks, electric networks, and multimodal transportation networks, among others, and the problem has been shown to be NP-complete even for complete graphs. A primary heuristic, named the maximum vertex covering algorithm has been proposed. Several versions of this constructive heuristic have been proposed to improve its efficiency. Here we describe the problem, review the literature and compare some variants of this algorithm

Sources of Sediment Found in Sea Ice From the Western Arctic Ocean, New Insights Into Processes of Entrainment and Drift Patterns

The geochemical fingerprint of entrained Fe oxide mineral grains in Arctic Ocean sea ice is used to determine precise sources of this sediment. This approach substantiates the importance of the Laptev Sea as a source of sea ice and even the presence of Russian ice in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska. Fe oxide grains from the Laptev Sea were found in floes in the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Borderland, and central Arctic Ocean, demonstrating the importance of sea ice in distributing itself throughout the Arctic Ocean and the potential of transporting sediment from Russian rivers to North American shelves. Banks Island shelf is the most important source of sediment sampled from ice floes in the Beaufort Sea, northern Chukchi Sea, and Chukchi Borderland area. Although most of the entrained sediment fits the criteria for suspension freezing in shallow water, the presence of winter polynyas with offshore winds and not the size of shallow areas appears to be the critical factor for sea ice entrainment. Seven of the 18 ice floes sampled contained Fe oxide grains from more than one source area. The two most common sources that are found in the same ice floes are Banks Island and the Laptev Sea. Multiple sources in ice floes suggest that either mingling of fragmented ice floes occurs or that a source area containing grains from both these sources has yet to be located. The addition of fine, sand-sized, windblown sediment is not thought to be significant