Learning and development factors related to perceptions of job content and hierarchical plateauing

This study applied theory from the employee learning and development literature to examine factors related to employees' perceptions of being job content plateaued and hierarchically plateaued. Results indicated that both types of plateauing were related to support from top management, career planning, job involvement, and education level. Furthermore, career exploration, motivation to learn, organizational tenure, and job tenure were related to perceptions of hierarchical plateauing, while supervisor support was related to job content plateauing. Additionally, the two types of plateauing differed in the relative strength of their relationship with the variables studied. Implications and future research suggestions are provided. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Successful full‐scale enhanced anaerobic dechlorination at a NAPL strength 1,1,1‐TCA source area

Bioremediation of 1,1,1‐trichloroethane (TCA) is more challenging than bioremediation of other chlorinated solvents, such as tetrachloroethene (PCE) and trichloroethene (TCE). TCA transformation often occurs under methanogenic and sulfate‐reducing conditions and is mediated by Dehalobacter. The source area at the project site contains moderately permeable medium sand with a low hydraulic gradient and is approximately 0.5 acre. TCA contamination generally extended to 35 feet, with the highest concentrations at approximately 20 feet. The concentrations then decreased with depth; several wells contained 300 to 600 mg/L of TCA prior to bioremediation. The area of treatment also contained 2 to 30 mg/L of TCE from an upgradient source. Initial site groundwater conditions indicated minimal biotic dechlorination and the presence of up to 20 mg/L of nitrate and 90 mg/L of sulfate. Microcosm testing indicated that TCA dechlorination was inhibited by the site's relatively low pH (5 to 5.5) and high TCA concentration. After the pH was adjusted and TCA concentrations were reduced to less than 35 mg/L (by dilution with site water), dechlorination proceeded rapidly using whey (or slower with sodium lactate) as an electron donor. Throughout the remediation program, increased resistance to TCA inhibition (from 35 to 200 mg/L) was observed as the microbes adapted to the elevated TCA concentrations. The article presents the results of a full‐scale enhanced anaerobic dechlorination recirculation system and the successful efforts to eliminate TCA‐ and pH‐related inhibition. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Intra-group relatedness affects parental and helper investment rules in offspring care

In any system where multiple individuals jointly contribute to rearing offspring, conflict is expected to arise over the relative contributions of each carer. Existing theoretical work on the conflict over care has: (a) rarely considered the influence of tactical investment during offspring production on later contributions to offspring rearing; (b) concentrated mainly on biparental care, rather than cooperatively caring groups comprising both parents and helpers; and (c) typically ignored relatedness between carers as a potential influence on investment behavior. We use a game-theoretical approach to explore the effects of female production tactics and differing group relatedness structures on the expected rearing investment contributed by breeding females, breeding males, and helpers in cooperative groups. Our results suggest that the breeding female should pay higher costs overall when helpful helpers are present, as she produces additional offspring to take advantage of the available care. We find that helpers related to offspring through the breeding female rather than the breeding male should contribute less to care, and decrease their contribution as group size increases, because the female refrains from producing additional offspring to exploit them. Finally, within-group variation in helper relatedness also affects individual helper investment rules by inflating the differences between the contributions to care of dissimilar helpers. Our findings underline the importance of considering maternal investment decisions during offspring production to understand investment across the entire breeding attempt, and provide empirically testable predictions concerning the interplay between maternal, paternal and helper investment and how these are modified by different relatedness structures.     

Organic and Inorganic Characterization of Marine Colloids

Abstract

Isolates of the organic matter in the particulate, colloidal and dissolved states were obtained by tangential flow ultrafiltration through 0.40 μm polycarbonate and ～ 1 nm (1000 NMWL?) regenerated cellulose membranes and by solid-liquid reverse phase extraction techniques. the material was analyzed qualitatively by mass spectroscopy, proton nuclear magnetic resonance, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection of labelled primary amines and amino acids, and inductively coupled plasma/mass spectroscopy. All three states are characterized by similar organic chemistries. the marine colloidal state in coastal waters off the Californian coast contains primarily carbohydrates, fatty acids, minor amounts of proteinaceous compounds and electropositive elements including aluminium and iron. Aromatic molecules and olefinic functional groups are in low concentration. the colloidal state differs qualitatively from the particulate and dissolved states. Yet all three could be derived, with degradation, from algal or macroalgal surface components.     

Facilitating resilient rural-to-urban sustainable agriculture and rural communities

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to efforts to validate a common set of parameters and principles of sustainable agriculture. Comparisons between alternative forms of sustainable agriculture and rural-to-urban community resilience are investigated. Conclusions are drawn between multiple sustainable/alternative agriculture systems and evaluated. A set of common baseline parameters and principles is proposed as a method of evolving a common structural framework for strengthening sustainability of agriculture and rural contexts. Concepts of rural-to-urban community sustainability are proposed, supporting sustainable agriculture contexts as rural and urban. In the twenty-first century, agriculture is becoming more diversified and less typified as a rural occupation. Urban agriculture is expanding as the need for fresh, affordable, accessible agriculture produce increases in urban areas. Evidence supports symbiotic relationships between sustainable agriculture and rural/urban communities, although some claim this relationship has not been clearly defined.

This article investigates sustainable agriculture from two perspectives. We ask ‘what are common parameters and principles of the various forms of sustainable agriculture,’ and ‘why urban-to-rural context.’ Organic agriculture parameters and principles are proposed as a conceptual framework toward establishing baseline parameters and principles for sustainable agriculture. Best management parameters of urban and rural sustainable agriculture in the United States and the United Kingdom are examined for their potential to develop a strengthening framework of parameters and principles of agriculture and rural-to-urban sustainability. These results are compared and evaluated for their effectiveness in redefining current sustainable agriculture practices, and their value in strengthening sustainable agriculture symbiosis with rural-to-urban community systems.     

Promising the moon? Evaluation of indigenous and lunar fishing calendars using semiparametric generalized mixed models of recreational catch data

Previous studies that have investigated relationships between the lunar cycle and recreational fishing success have all suffered from various problems—most notably, the failure to account for potential confounders in a statistically rigorous manner. We propose methods to account for season, fisher identity, fishing effort, day, and variation in biomass, all of which have previously either been omitted or handled in an ad hoc way. These are applied to two sets of data on recreational fishing of the snapper Pagrus auratus in New Zealand. In addition to estimating effects due to lunar phase, we also implement these methods to analyse the performance of a lunar-based indigenous M ${{\bar{\mathrm{a}}}}$ ori fishing calendar. Recreational fishers in New Zealand often make use of such calendars in order to predict fishing success on specific days, however little is known about the performance of such predictions or whether they hold any practical use to the everyday angler. A relationship between lunar phase and fishing success is identified, as well as support for some aspects of the M ${{\bar{\mathrm{a}}}}$ ori fishing calendar predictions. The magnitudes of these effects are small, however, casting doubt on the practical relevance of lunar based fishing predictions. In addition to the known seasonal trend associated with annual migration, an unexpected second trend is detected, and postulated to be associated with intense local fishing pressure over the summer vacation period.     

Space-time stick-breaking processes for small area disease cluster estimation

We propose a space-time stick-breaking process for the disease cluster estimation. The dependencies for spatial and temporal effects are introduced by using space-time covariate dependent kernel stick-breaking processes. We compared this model with the space-time standard random effect model by checking each model’s ability in terms of cluster detection of various shapes and sizes. This comparison was made for simulated data where the true risks were known. For the simulated data, we have observed that space-time stick-breaking process performs better in detecting medium- and high-risk clusters. For the real data, county specific low birth weight incidences for the state of South Carolina for the years 1997–2007, we have illustrated how the proposed model can be used to find grouping of counties of higher incidence rate.     

Inadvertent advocacy

Policy advocacy is an issue regularly debated among conservation scientists. These debates have focused on intentional policy advocacy by scientists, but advocacy can also be unintentional. I define inadvertent policy advocacy as the act of unintentionally expressing personal policy preferences or ethical judgments in a way that is nearly indistinguishable from scientific judgments. A scientist may be well intentioned and intellectually honest but still inadvertently engage in policy advocacy. There are two ways to inadvertently engage in policy advocacy. First, a scientist expresses an opinion that she or he believes is a scientific judgment but it is actually an ethical judgment or personal policy preference. Second, a scientist expresses an opinion that he or she knows is an ethical judgment or personal policy preference but inadvertently fails to effectively communicate the nature of the opinion to policy makers or the public. I illustrate inadvertent advocacy with three examples: recovery criteria in recovery plans for species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, a scientific peer review of a recovery plan for the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature's definition of threatened. In each example, scientists expressed ethical judgments or policy preferences, but their value judgments were not identified as such, and, hence, their value judgments were opaque to policy makers and the public. Circumstances suggest their advocacy was inadvertent. I believe conservation scientists must become acutely aware of the line between science and policy and avoid inadvertent policy advocacy because it is professional negligence, erodes trust in scientists and science, and perpetuates an ethical vacuum that undermines the rational political discourse necessary for the evolution of society's values. The principal remedy for inadvertent advocacy is education of conservation scientists in an effort to help them understand how science and values interact to fulfill the mission of conservation science.     

Copepodid and adult Argestidae Por, 1986 (Copepoda: Harpacticoida) in the southeastern Atlantic deep sea: diversity and community structure at the species level

Drawing on the example of Argestidae Por, 1986b, community structure and large-scale distribution patterns of harpacticoid copepods at species level were examined in the three southeastern Atlantic deep-sea basins. The study was based on 30 multicorer deployments at depths from 5,035 to 5,655 m during the DIVA-2 expedition. The 1,176 adult and copepodid Argestidae from CIII onwards belong to 114 species. Some species occurred at all five stations; others appeared to be exclusive for single stations. Inclusion of copepodids revealed a higher similarity in species composition among the five stations than consideration of just adults and caused a slight shift toward dominance of single species in the sediments at most locations.