A 576‐Year Weber River Streamflow Reconstruction from Tree Rings for Water Resource Risk Assessment in the Wasatch Front,Utah

We present a 576‐year tree‐ring‐based reconstruction of streamflow for northern Utah's Weber River that exhibits considerable interannual and decadal‐scale variability. While the 20th Century instrumental period includes several extreme individual dry years, it was the century with the fewest such years of the entire reconstruction. Extended droughts were more severe in duration, magnitude, and intensity prior to the instrumental record, including the most protracted drought of the record, which spanned 16 years from 1703 to 1718. Extreme wet years and periods are also a regular feature of the reconstruction. A strong early 17th Century pluvial exceeds the early 20th Century pluvial in magnitude, duration, and intensity, and dwarfs the 1980s wet period that caused significant flooding along the Wasatch Front. The long‐term hydroclimatology of northern Utah is marked by considerable uncertainty; hence, our reconstruction provides water managers with a more complete record of water resource variability for assessment of the risk of droughts and floods for one of the largest and most rapidly growing population centers in the Intermountain West.     

Weekly work–school conflict,sleep quality,and fatigue: Recovery self‐efficacy as a cross‐level moderator

This study employed a weekly diary method among a sample of 74 Midwestern college student workers in order to examine the within‐person relationships between work–school conflict, sleep quality, and fatigue over five weeks. Further, recovery self‐efficacy was proposed as a cross‐level moderator of the relation between sleep quality and fatigue. Results from multilevel analyses demonstrated that weekly work–school conflict was negatively related to weekly sleep quality and positively related to end‐of‐week fatigue, with sleep quality partially mediating the relation between work–school conflict and fatigue. These findings enhance understanding of the process by which work–school conflict contributes to college student workers' strain on a weekly basis. Additionally, student workers with low recovery self‐efficacy demonstrated a negative relation between sleep quality and fatigue; however, this relation did not exist for student workers with high recovery self‐efficacy. This finding suggests recovery self‐efficacy as an important resource that may reduce the association between poor sleep quality (as a result of work–school conflict) and fatigue. The current findings provide important theoretical and practical implications for researchers, organizations, and college institutions as a whole. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Incremental effects of reward on experienced performance pressure: positive outcomes for intrinsic interest and creativity

Two field studies and a laboratory study examined the influence of reward for high performance on experienced performance pressure, intrinsic interest and creativity. Study 1 found that employees' expected reward for high performance was positively related to performance pressure which, in turn, was positively associated with the employees' interest in their jobs. Study 2 replicated this finding and showed that intrinsic interest, produced by performance pressure, was positively related to supervisors' ratings of creative performance. Study 3 found that college students' receipt of reward for high performance increased their experienced performance pressure which, in turn, was positively related to intrinsic interest and creativity. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in roasted coffee

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are suspected to be carcinogenic and mutagenic. This study describes the presence of PAHs in light, medium and dark roasted coffee including instant and decaffeinated brands. Total PAHs concentration was related to the degree of roasting with light roasted coffee showing the least and dark roasted coffee showing the highest level. Both instant and decaffeinated coffee brand showed lower levels of PAHs. Naphthalene, acenaphthylene, pyrene and chrysene were the most abundant individual isomers. The concentrations ranged from 0 to 561 ng g^?1 for naphthalene, 0 to 512 ng g^?1 for acenaphthylene, 60 to 459 ng g^?1 for pyrene and 56 to 371 ng g^?1 for chrysene. Thus, roasting conditions should be controlled to avoid the formation of PAHs due to their suspected carcinogenic and mutagenic properties.     

Automated Calibration of the METRIC‐Landsat Evapotranspiration Process

A remaining challenge to applying satellite‐based energy‐balance algorithms for operational estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) is the calibration of the energy‐balance model. Customized calibration for each image date is generally required to overcome biases associated with radiometric accuracy of the image, uncertainties in aerodynamic features of the landscape, background thermal conditions, and model assumptions. The CIMEC process (calibration using inverse modeling at extreme conditions) is an endpoint calibration procedure where near extreme conditions in the image are identified where the ET can be estimated and assigned. In the Mapping EvapoTranspiration at high Resolution with Internalized Calibration (METRIC?) energy‐balance model, two endpoints represent the dry and wet ends of the ET spectrum. Generally, user‐intervention is required to select locations in the image to produce best accuracy. To bring the METRIC and similar processes into the domain of less experienced operators, a consistent, reproducible, and dependable statistics‐based procedure is introduced where relationships between vegetation amount and surface temperature are used to identify a subpopulation of locations (pixels) in an image that may best represent the calibration endpoints. This article describes the background and logic for the statistical approach, how the statistics were developed, area of interest requirements and assumptions, adjustment for dry conditions in desert climates, and implementation in a common image processing environment (ERDAS Imagine).     

Case study analysis of the financial impact of catastrophic safety events

Several catastrophic events in the process industry have caused extensive damage to life and property and have forever changed the process safety landscape. Despite the commitment from the industry, incidents still occur with similar root causes, impacting major companies in various ways. This work examines the financial impact of such incidents on the stability and future of affected companies in different industries. Several devastating incidents were analyzed to evaluate the direct impact in the short- and long-term and to discuss factors influencing the ability of affected companies to withstand the consequence of catastrophic events.     

Correlational evidence of a sexually-selected handicap

Handicap models of sexual selection predict that ornaments must be costly to produce and/or to wear and maintain; only then can they evolve as reliable signals of genetic quality. We investigated in the laboratory one potential cost of possessing ornaments, using the viviparous fish Girardinichthys multiradiatus and its natural predator, the snake Thamnophis melanogaster. We found that female G. multiradiatus show preferences for males with larger fins, as measured from body correlates. Males with a morphology attractive to females, however, were more likely to be captured by snakes than were other males (Fig. 5). Greater vulnerability to snakes cannot be explained as a result of snake visual preferences, because snakes responded similarly to males and females (Fig. 6). Finally, males, particularly dominant ones, were more likely to inspect foraging snakes than were females (Fig. 7). We conclude that male Girardinichthys multiradiatus experience a sexually-selected handicap due to reduced mobility resulting from having enlarged fins.