Brain Resilience: Shedding Light into the Black Box of Adventure Processes

Understanding of the active beneficial processes of adventure learning remains elusive. Resilience may provide one foundation for understanding the positive adaptation derived from Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) and Adventure Therapy (AT) programming. From a neurological perspective, resilience may be explained by the brain’s innate capability to adapt its structure (growth of new cells) and function (re-wiring of existing cells) directly in response to environmental exposure. This paper explores the role of known brain responses to experiences analogous to adventure programming based on themes from a key literature review. The fundamental paradigm of ‘stress and recovery’ contends that a balance of neurobiological processes help realign psychosocial equilibrium in the short term and over time. Through progressive, repeated exposure to custom-built outdoor challenges, the concept of brain resilience may provide a scientific platform for understanding the mechanisms of achieving meaningful, authentic and healthy outcomes. It could also help to begin to illuminate a section of the black box of adventure processes

Foreign aid, women in parliament and corruption: empirical evidence from the 2000s

Using data for the 2000s, this paper explores the impact of foreign aid and the percentage of women in parliament on corruption. In doing so, it combines the aid – corruption literature with the literature that addresses the impact of gender on corruption. We also inquire if aid is more effective in countries with a larger participation of women in parliament. We find that neither aid nor the percentage of women in parliament affects perceived corruption in a significant way. Moreover, the impact of aid on corruption does not seem to be affected by the share of women in parliament.On the other hand,a long-established democracy is consistently found to be significant in affecting corruption.Our results are robust to various specifications, alternative measures of corruption and use of estimation techniques.Foreign aid, women in parliament, corruption

Impeller-Induced Rotor-Dynamic Forces

The flow through and around the rotor of a turbomachine exerts a force on the rotor and, hence, rotor shaft and bearing system. In some circumstances this force may lead to excitation of shaft whirl in the direction of impeller rotation. Recent international research of this phenomenon is briefly reviewed; these findings suggest that turbomachines intended to operate well above the first critical speed should take the effect into account

Cooling of 2 kW H subscript 2-O subscript 2 fuel cell

An extensive research and development program has been carried out to devise an improved method of removing waste heat of reaction from a developmental 2 kW hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell

Principal-Agent Relationships in Agricultural Cooperatives: An Empirical Analysis from Rural Alberta

Cooperatives throughout North America are consolidating at an increasing rate and for a variety of reasons. While many cooperatives merge with others or are acquired to achieve greater economies of scale, several fail due to changes in the external economy, which make them redundant. Often, such redundancy is reflected in a heightened sense of member dissatisfaction. Many argue that such dissatisfaction is likely to arise in cooperatives as a result of principal-agent problems. In order to determine whether or not cooperative managers maintain the same goals as their owners, this study uses data from a member-survey to compare Alberta cooperative members' objectives with those they believe to be held by their cooperatives' managers. An econometric model of the difference between members' expectations and perceptions shows how various socioeconomic variables affect the extent to which these objectives are aligned. The results of this analysis can help cooperative boards design managerial incentive programs to better align their goals with those of the cooperative membership.Agribusiness,

The Influence of Swirl Brakes on the Rotordynamic Forces Generated by Discharge-to-Suction Leakage Flows in Centrifugal Pumps

Increasing interest has been give to swirl brakes as a means of reducing destabilizing rotordynamic forces due to leakage flows in new high speed rocket turbopumps. Although swirl brakes have been used successfully in practice (such as with the Space Shuttle HPOTP), no experimental test until now have been performed to demonstrate their beneficial effect over a range of leakage flow rates. The present study investigates the effect of swirl brakes on rotordynamic forces generated by discharge-to-suction leakage flows in the annulus of shrouded centrifugal pumps over a range of subsynchronous whirl ratios and various leakage flow rates. In addition, the effectiveness of swirl brakes in the presence of leakage inlet (pump discharge) swirl is also demonstrated. The experimental data demonstrates that with the addition of swirl brakes a significant reduction in the destabilizing tangential force for lower flow rates is achieved. At higher flow rates, the brakes are detrimental. In the presence of leakage inlet swirl, brakes were effective over all leakage flow rates tested in reducing the range of whirl frequency ratio for which the tangential force is destabilizing

Direct Evidence for a Magnetic f-electron Mediated Cooper Pairing Mechanism of Heavy Fermion Superconductivity in CeCoIn5

To identify the microscopic mechanism of heavy-fermion Cooper pairing is an unresolved challenge in quantum matter studies; it may also relate closely to finding the pairing mechanism of high temperature superconductivity. Magnetically mediated Cooper pairing has long been the conjectured basis of heavy-fermion superconductivity but no direct verification of this hypothesis was achievable. Here, we use a novel approach based on precision measurements of the heavy-fermion band structure using quasiparticle interference (QPI) imaging, to reveal quantitatively the momentum-space (k-space) structure of the f-electron magnetic interactions of CeCoIn5. Then, by solving the superconducting gap equations on the two heavy-fermion bands $E_k^{\alpha,\beta}$ with these magnetic interactions as mediators of the Cooper pairing, we derive a series of quantitative predictions about the superconductive state. The agreement found between these diverse predictions and the measured characteristics of superconducting CeCoIn5, then provides direct evidence that the heavy-fermion Cooper pairing is indeed mediated by the f-electron magnetism.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, Supplementary Information: 31 pages, 5 figure