Maverick Mothers and Mercy Flights: Canada’s Controversial Introduction to International Adoption

In the 1970s, two private adoption agencies faced state and public scrutiny over their ‘rescue’ of orphans from Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia. The organizations were run by four Canadian mothers who themselves adopted over fifty children and placed hundreds more with other Canadian families. Inspired by a sense of maternal internationalism, these ‘maverick mothers’ were convinced that removing the children from their war torn nations and bringing them to Canada was in each child’s best interest. According to professional social workers and diplomats, a strong commitment to maternalism and internationalism were not valid enough to trust the complicated operation of international adoption to amateur humanitarians. The mothers’ lack of professional accreditation, their bleeding heart mentality, and examples of radical behavior at home and abroad were seen to threaten international adoption as a legitimate form of child saving. Yet concurrently, the authority and respect granted by the women’s identity as mothers marinated their cause with a certain creditability or at least admiration for their efforts, which gave them a sense of empowerment to challenge and for most of them, to ultimately cooperate with their critics.Au cours des années 1970, deux agences d’adoption privées ont attiré l’attention du public lorsqu’elles ont commencé à « secourir » des orphelins du Bangladesh, du Vietnam et du Cambodge. Ces organisations étaient dirigées par quatre mères canadiennes, qui avaient adopté plus de cinquante enfants entre elles, et en avaient placé des centaines d’autres dans des familles canadiennes. Mues par une sorte d’internationalisme maternel, ces femmes non conformistes étaient persuadées qu’il y allait de l’intérêt de chacun de ces enfants de les retirer d’un pays d’origine déchiré par la guerre pour les amener au Canada. Des travailleurs sociaux professionnels et des diplomates contemporains les critiquèrent, qui croyaient que leur seul engagement maternel et internationaliste, malgré son intensité, ne préparait pas ces humanitaires en herbe à assumer la responsabilité du mécanisme complexe de l’adoption internationale. À leurs yeux, le manque d’accréditation professionnelle de ces mères, leur sentimentalisme, et certaines instances de comportements radicaux de leur part, au pays et à l’étranger, menaçaient la légitimité même de l’adoption internationale comme forme de secours. Pourtant, en parallèle, l’autorité et le respect attribués à ces femmes en tant que mères donnaient crédibilité à leurs efforts, et provoquaient une certaine admiration à leur égard. Ces encouragements les habilitèrent à revendiquer la capacité d’intervenir dans le processus d’adoption. En conséquence, la plupart d’entre d’elles finirent par coopérer avec leurs détracteurs

Astrophysical Configurations with Background Cosmology: Probing Dark Energy at Astrophysical Scales

We explore the effects of a positive cosmological constant on astrophysical and cosmological configurations described by a polytropic equation of state. We derive the conditions for equilibrium and stability of such configurations and consider some astrophysical examples where our analysis may be relevant. We show that in the presence of the cosmological constant the isothermal sphere is not a viable astrophysical model since the density in this model does not go asymptotically to zero. The cosmological constant implies that, for polytropic index smaller than five, the central density has to exceed a certain minimal value in terms of the vacuum density in order to guarantee the existence of a finite size object. We examine such configurations together with effects of $\Lambda$ in other exotic possibilities, such as neutrino and boson stars, and we compare our results to N-body simulations. The astrophysical properties and configurations found in this article are specific features resulting from the existence of a dark energy component. Hence, if found in nature would be an independent probe of a cosmological constant, complementary to other observations.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables. Reference added. Mon. Not. Roy. Astro. Soc in prin

Preliminary design of the Shuttle-C avionics recovery system

The analysis done in developing a recovery system for the Shuttle-C cargo vehicle is presented. This recovery system is comprised of a reentry capsule which houses the vehicles avionics. The avionics are contained in a single package which is extracted from the capsule by the parachute recovery system. The Shuttle-C will be able to satisfy NASA's design and mission requirements. Included, is an analysis of the structural, thermal protection, and parachute recovery systems. A discussion of the merits of the proposed system is also included

New interactions in the dark sector mediated by dark energy

Cosmological observations have revealed the existence of a dark matter sector, which is commonly assumed to be made up of one particle species only. However, this sector might be more complicated than we currently believe: there might be more than one dark matter species (for example, two components of cold dark matter or a mixture of hot and cold dark matter) and there may be new interactions between these particles. In this paper we study the possibility of multiple dark matter species and interactions mediated by a dark energy field. We study both the background and the perturbation evolution in these scenarios. We find that the background evolution of a system of multiple dark matter particles (with constant couplings) mimics a single fluid with a time-varying coupling parameter. However, this is no longer true on the perturbative level. We study the case of attractive and repulsive forces as well as a mixture of cold and hot dark matter particles

Dynamical neutrino masses in the generalized Chaplygin gas scenario with mass varying CDM

Neutrinos coupled to an underlying scalar field in the scenario for unification of mass varying dark matter and cosmon-{\em like} dark energy is examined. In the presence of a tiny component of mass varying neutrinos, the conditions for the present cosmic acceleration and for the stability issue are reproduced. It is assumed that {\em sterile} neutrinos behave like mass varying dark matter coupled to mass varying {\em active} neutrinos through the {\em seesaw} mechanism, in a kind of {\em mixed} dark matter sector. The crucial point is that the dark matter mass may also exhibit a dynamical behavior driven by the scalar field. The scalar field mediates the nontrivial coupling between the mixed dark matter and the dark energy responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. The equation of state of perturbations reproduce the generalized Chaplygin gas (GCG) cosmology so that all the effective results from the GCG paradigm are maintained, being perturbatively modified by neutrinos.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure