Counseling Trainees’ Advocacy: Investigating the Role of Race, Gender Beliefs, Exposure to Injustice, and Diversity Experiences

Although some efforts have been made to understand counseling trainees’ characteristics and environmental factors that are associated with trainees’ social justice advocacy beliefs and behaviors, little research has explored the combined effect of counseling trainees’ demographic characteristics, their beliefs, experiences of oppression, and their participation in diversity activities on their advocacy behaviors. Applying the Resource Model of Political Participation (Brady, Verba, & Schlozman, 1995), the present study aimed to extend the emerging research on counselor trainees’ advocacy by examining trainees’ race and gender differences in advocacy among 281 graduate counselor trainees. Although no racial and gender differences were found in regard to trainees’ social justice advocacy, the study found significant race and gender differences in trainees’ levels of awareness of modern racism and sexism. Moreover, Structural Equation Modeling revealed that trainees’ exposure to racist and sexist events, as well as participation in formal diversity experiences had significant links to trainees’ social justice advocacy behaviors. Additionally, trainees’ experiences and witnessing of racist events, their participation in formal diversity experiences, and having close interracial friendship were found to have negative association with trainees’ color-blind racial attitudes. Trainees’ experiences and witnessing of sexist events were negatively linked to trainees’ modern sexist beliefs. Implications for theory, training programs, and research are addressed

Extracting Scattering Phase-Shifts in Higher Partial-Waves from Lattice QCD Calculations

L\"uscher's method is routinely used to determine meson-meson, meson-baryon and baryon-baryon s-wave scattering amplitudes below inelastic thresholds from Lattice QCD calculations - presently at unphysical light-quark masses. In this work we review the formalism and develop the requisite expressions to extract phase-shifts describing meson-meson scattering in partial-waves with angular-momentum l<=6 and l=9. The implications of the underlying cubic symmetry, and strategies for extracting the phase-shifts from Lattice QCD calculations, are presented, along with a discussion of the signal-to-noise problem that afflicts the higher partial-waves.Comment: 79 pages, 41 figure

Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering in a Harmonic Potential

The discrete energy-eigenvalues of two nucleons interacting with a finite-range nuclear force and confined to a harmonic potential are used to numerically reconstruct the free-space scattering phase shifts. The extracted phase shifts are compared to those obtained from the exact continuum scattering solution and agree within the uncertainties of the calculations. Our results suggest that it might be possible to determine the amplitudes for the scattering of complex systems, such as n-d, n-t or n-alpha, from the energy-eigenvalues confined to finite volumes using ab-initio bound-state techniques.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figure

The Impact of Exchange Rate and Unemployment Rate on the Real Gross Domestic Product Growth Rate in Ghana

Unemployment Rate and Exchange Rate are perhaps the two most important challenges that face the Ghanaian economy in recent time. This study seeks to examine the effect of the Exchange Rate and Unemployment Rate on the Real Gross Domestic Product Growth Rate in Ghana. The study used secondary data collected from World Bank, International Labour Organization and International Monetary Fund covering the period 1999–2018. Real Exchange Rate and Unemployment Rate were the independent variables whilst Real Gross Domestic Product Growth Rate was the dependent variable. The findings of the study were arrived at using the quantitative research method. The extent and nature of relationship between the various variables under study were identified using Pearson correlation, regression and hypotheses. The study found out that Unemployment Rate exhibited insignificant negative relationship towards Real Gross Domestic Product Growth Rate, while Real Exchange Rate was positive and also insignificant relationship on Real Gross Domestic Product Growth Rate. Based on the linearity of the multiple linear regression model, the independent variables contribute to 15.0% of the overall LN_GDP. The study then concludes that based on the effect of Exchange Rate and Unemployment Rate on RGDPGR in the findings, Government and other stakeholders should take steps such as creating new local industries and factories, and invest in existing ones to increase domestic produce which will in turn decrease Unemployment Rate and increase Exchange Rate. Keywords: Gross Domestic Product, Unemployment Rate, Exchange Rate, Pearson correlation, Linear Regression. DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-18-15 Publication date:September 30th 201

Multi-Pion Systems in Lattice QCD and the Three-Pion Interaction

The ground-state energies of 2, 3, 4 and 5 \pi^+'s in a spatial volume V (2.5 fm)^3 are computed with lattice QCD. By eliminating the leading contribution from three-\pi^+ interactions, particular combinations of these n-\pi^+ ground-state energies provide precise extractions of the \pi^+\pi^+ scattering length in agreement with that obtained from calculations involving only two \pi^+'s. The three-\pi^+ interaction can be isolated by forming other combinations of the n-\pi^+ ground-state energies. We find a result that is consistent with a repulsive three-\pi^+ interaction for m_\pi < 352 MeV.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Glutamatergic transmission in the central nucleus of the amygdala is selectively altered in Marchigian Sardinian alcohol-preferring rats: Alcohol and CRF effects

The CRF system of the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) is important for the processing of anxiety, stress, and effects of acute and chronic ethanol. We previously reported that ethanol decreases evoked glutamate transmission in the CeA of Sprague Dawley rats and that ethanol dependence alters glutamate release in the CeA. Here, we examined the effects of ethanol, CRF and a CRF1 receptor antagonist on spontaneous and evoked glutamatergic transmission in CeA neurons from Wistar and Marchigian Sardinian Preferring (msP) rats, a rodent line genetically selected for excessive alcohol drinking and characterized by heightened activity of the CRF1 system. Basal spontaneous and evoked glutamate transmission in CeA neurons from msP rats was increased compared to Wistar rats. Ethanol had divergent effects, either increasing or decreasing spontaneous glutamate release in the CeA of Wistar rats. This bidirectional effect was retained in msP rats, but the magnitude of the ethanol-induced increase in glutamate release was significantly smaller. The inhibitory effect of ethanol on evoked glutamatergic transmission was similar in both strains. CRF also either increased or decreased spontaneous glutamate release in CeA neurons of Wistar rats, however, in msP rats CRF only increased glutamate release. The inhibitory effect of CRF on evoked glutamatergic transmission was also lost in neurons from msP rats. A CRF1 antagonist produced only minor effects on spontaneous glutamate transmission, which were consistent across strains, and no effects on evoked glutamate transmission. These results demonstrate that the genetically altered CRF system of msP rats results in alterations in spontaneous and stimulated glutamate signaling in the CeA that may contribute to both the anxiety and drinking behavioral phenotypes

Promoting sustainable agri-food production to achieve food and nutrition security: The role of soil conservation practices

This study examines the role of soil conservation practices (SCPs) in promoting sustainable agri-food production to achieve food and nutrition security. It uses the endogenous treatment regression model to address the selection bias associated with SCP adoption. We examine the data sourced from the 2020 China Land Economic Survey, collected by Nanjing Agricultural University, China. First, we analyze the association between the adoption of SCPs and rice yield; we focus on rice as it is the most common food staple globally. Then we examine the links between the SCPs and the consumption of ten specific foods (rice, pork, beef, poultry, fish, egg, bean products, vegetables, fruits, and vegetable oil). This allows us to glean insights into how SCPs may affect changes in dietary patterns in rural communities. The findings show that adopting SCPs is associated with a 7% increase in rice yield. We find that education, farm size, the slope of the farm, and owning real estate are positively associated with the adoption of SCPs, whereas encountering pest infestations reduces one’s likelihood of adopting them. As for rice yields, they are positively associated with household size, economic status, soil fertility, plot slope, and having a higher percentage of adults over 65. The findings also show that adopting SCPs can influence the dietary patterns of farming households. Specifically, those who adopt SCPs increase their consumption of fruits and protein-rich food such as pork and fish; however, adopting SCPs is associated with lower consumption of vegetables

Person-Context Influences on Educational Involvement in Rural Cambodian Schools

Based on Bronfenbrenner’s Process-Person-Context-Time model, this study explored the attitudes and potential factors affecting children’s educational participation in two non-governmental organization-sponsored rural schools in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with students (female and male), teachers, principals, and parents. A discovery-oriented qualitative analytical approach revealed that at the individual level, truancy and student respect for school regulations impacted school participation. At the family level, parental support and family difficulties influenced school participation. At the school level, teacher ability, teacher-parent interactions, and adequate resources either facilitated or hindered student success. At the socio-cultural level, socioeconomic conditions, communal supports, and traditional gendered expectations created gender disparities in school involvement. Policy implications include a nation-wide comprehensive professional development program targeting teacher training (structural level), a strong teacher-counselor partnership to facilitate the development of literacy campaigns (community level), and increasing female mentors and counselors to increase gender parity (cultural level)

Bank performance and executive pay: tournament or teamwork

We investigate the relationship between the dispersion of executive pay and bank performance/valuation by examining two competing theories, the tournament theory (hierarchical wage structure) and the equity fairness theory (compressed wage structure). The key variable of executive pay dispersion is measured using a hand-collected dataset composed of 63 banks from OECD countries and 29 banks from developing countries. The dataset covers the period 2004 to 2012. By combining and modifying a translog profit function and a pay-dispersion model, we are able to address the potential problems of relying on reduced-form estimation. In our subsample of developed and civil law countries, where bank performance is measured by either Tobin’s Q or by the price-to-book ratio, the overall impact of executive pay dispersion is mostly negative, and we find supporting evidence for the equity fairness theory, except for very high levels of dispersion. There is a non-linear effect, as banks perform best when there is either very low or very high executive pay dispersion. For developing country sample banks, greater executive pay dispersion has a negative impact on bank profit. In our subsample of common law countries, however, we find no evidence of a significant impact of executive pay dispersion on bank performance. We conclude that lower executive pay dispersion, a proxy for teamwork, is mostly effective in enhancing bank performance in a significant section of sample banks, i.e., civil law and developing countries