The present qualitative, phenomenological study investigated why persons with disabilities turn to specifically snow sports and the role that snow sports play in achieving self-actualization. A content analysis was performed on every available online Team USA Paralympic athlete biography (N = 69) gathering data on general information, prior involvement in sports, type/classification of impairment, year of injury, and rationale for choosing snow sports. Adaptive snow sport organizations across the United States of America were contacted (N = 30) and athletes of these organizations were surveyed regarding the impact that snow sports had on their psychological difficulties. Two narrative interviews were held survey questions to triangulate and to gain real life accounts in a more personal manner. Through researching the question “What role does self-actualization play in the motivation of the persons with physical disability in participating in snow sports?”, it is still fair to say persons with physical disabilities view snow sports as a means of asserting competence and to focus on one’s own ability rather than their disability. Snow sports are, therefore, a viable source of psychological rehabilitation for persons with physical disabilities, like popular sport alternatives such as wheelchair basketball. More research is needed to better observe a cause-and-effect relationship between psychological state of mind and participating in snow sports.
Currently, hydrazine fuels are grossly inefficient in terms of environmentally friendliness and handling costs. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and kerosene bipropellants have recently shown promise as a fuel that is similar in efficiency to hydrazine yet superior in cost and environmentally friendliness. Previous research on H2O2/kerosene bipropellants view environmentally friendliness, cost effectiveness, and fuel efficiency separately, making comparison between these properties difficult. This research uses calorimetry to provide a new method of quickly and precisely finding optimal ratios of fuels in bipropellants. For different ratios of fuel, efficiency was measured by finding the fuel mixture’s specific energy, environmentally friendliness was measured by finding the fuel mixture’s efficiency per carbon released into the atmosphere, and cost effectiveness was measured by finding the fuel mixture’s efficiency per unit fuel cost. The Cobb-Douglas function was used to optimize for multiple fuel properties at the same time: environmentally friendliness and efficiency, cost effectiveness and efficiency, and environmentally friendliness and cost effectiveness. These double optimizations brought new properties of H2O2/kerosene bipropellant fuels to light, notably that the optimal ratio of fuel for environmentally friendliness coincides with the optimal ratio for fuel efficiency, and the bipropellant remains efficacious in terms of efficiency even while operating at the optimal quantity for cost effectiveness. In short, these findings reaffirm H2O2 and kerosene bipropellants as great potential candidates for an eco-friendly and cost effective replacement of hydrazine because of their unique potential to remain environmentally friendly even at optimally efficient ratios.
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