A longitudinal study of the relationship between career management and organizational commitment among graduates in the first ten years at work

This paper reports the findings of a two‐wave longitudinal study investigating relationships between organizational and individual career management activities and organizational commitment in the early years of graduate careers. Several hypotheses are tested and receive mixed support. High organizational commitment predicts the practice of career management activities by graduates to further their career within the organization while low commitment is closely associated with behaviour aimed at furthering the career outside the organization. Graduates who manage their own careers also receive more career management help from their employer. This suggests that there may be the potential for employers to create a ‘virtuous circle’ of career management in which individual and organizational activities complement each other. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Local agenda 21, compulsory competitive tendering and local environmental practices

This paper focuses on the issues arising from Local Agenda 21 where the role of local authorities is seen as vital in promoting and achieving sustainable development. The implications of the current forms of public sector restructuring for local authorities, and in particular the consequences of the requirement to contract out the delivery and management of traditional environmental services such as grounds maintenance are considered. The paper concludes that the ongoing processes of local government restructuring, together with the removal of many functions from local democratic control, are reducing the capacity of local communities to respond positively to the demands of Local Agenda 21.     

Stainless steel corrosion scale formed in reclaimed water: Characteristics, model for scale growth and metal element release

Stainless steels generally have extremely good corrosion resistance, but are still susceptible to pitting corrosion. As a result, corrosion scales can form on the surface of stainless steel after extended exposure to aggressive aqueous environments. Corrosion scales play an important role in affecting water quality. These research results showed that interior regions of stainless steel corrosion scales have a high percentage of chromium phases. We reveal the morphology, micro-structure and physicochemical characteristics of stainless steel corrosion scales. Stainless steel corrosion scale is identified as a podiform chromite deposit according to these characteristics, which is unlike deposit formed during iron corrosion. A conceptual model to explain the formation and growth of stainless steel corrosion scale is proposed based on its composition and structure. The scale growth process involves pitting corrosion on the stainless steel surface and the consecutive generation and homogeneous deposition of corrosion products, which is governed by a series of chemical and electrochemical reactions. This model shows the role of corrosion scales in the mechanism of iron and chromium release from pitting corroded stainless steel materials. The formation of corrosion scale is strongly related to water quality parameters. The presence of HClO results in higher ferric content inside the scales. Cl⁻ and SO₄^2 − ions in reclaimed water play an important role in corrosion pitting of stainless steel and promote the formation of scales.     

Spatial organization and behaviour of badgers <Emphasis Type="Italic">(Meles meles)</Emphasis> in a moderate-density population

Badgers are carnivores that show considerable variation in their social and spatial organization. At the westernmost part of their range, in Britain and Ireland, variation in spatial organization appears to be determined by the availability of resources. However, the majority of studies has focussed at one end of the social/spatial spectrum, where population densities are high and adjacent territories are contiguous and non-overlapping. To examine whether the same limiting factors appear to apply across a wider range of badger densities, we established a study site in a predominantly coniferous habitat within an upland area of northeast England, where population densities were predicted to be low. Seasonal home ranges of individual badgers were largest in autumn, followed by summer and spring, then winter. This pattern is reflective of the likely seasonal changes in food availability within the area, as opposed to being related to breeding patterns. There were also significant correlations between territory size and the number of grassland patches (positive) and the proportion of grassland (negative), which are consistent with predictions from the Resource Dispersion Hypothesis. Although badgers at the site were living at low to moderate densities relative to many other studied populations in Britain, they showed patterns of spatial organization that were close to those of high-density populations. The nature of the relationship between resource availability and abundance patterns is likely to have important consequences for the conservation and management of badgers and other species that show flexible spatial organization.     

Addressing analytical uncertainties in the determination of trichloroacetic acid in soil

Soil is an important compartment in the environmental cycling of trichloroacetic acid (TCA), but soil TCA concentration is a methodologically defined quantity; analytical methods either quantify TCA in an aqueous extract of the soil, or thermally decarboxylate TCA to chloroform in the whole soil sample. The former may underestimate the total soil TCA, whereas the latter may overestimate TCA if other soil components (e.g. humic material) liberate chloroform under the decarboxylation conditions. The aim of this work was to show that extraction and decarboxylation methods yield different TCA concentrations because the decarboxylation method can also determine "bound" TCA. Experiments with commercial humic acid solutions showed there was no additional chloroform formation under decarboxylation conditions, and that all TCA in a TCA-humic acid mixture could be quantitatively determined (108 +/- 13%). Anion exchange resin was used as a provider of solid-phase TCA binding; only 5 +/- 1% of a TCA solution mixed with the resin was present in the aqueous extract subsequently separated from the resin, yet the decarboxylation method yielded mass balance (123 +/- 22%) with TCA remaining in the resin. In aqueous extraction of a range of soil samples (with or without added TCA spike), the decarboxylation method was able to satisfactorily account for TCA in the extractant + residue post-extraction, compared with whole-soil TCA (+ spike) pre-extraction: e.g. mass balances for unspiked soil from Sikta spruce and larch forest were 99 +/- 8% and 93 +/- 6%, respectively, and for TCA-spiked forest and agricultural soils were 114 +/- 13% and 102 +/- 2%. In each case recovery of TCA in the extractant was substantially less than 100%(<20% for unspiked soils, <55% for spiked soils). Extraction efficiencies were generally lower in more organic soils. The results suggest that analytical methods which utilise aqueous extraction may underestimate whole-soil TCA concentrations. Application of both methodologies together may enhance insight into TCA behaviour in soil.     

Predator diversity and ecosystem functioning: density modifies the effect of resource partitioning

The link between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is now well established, but the challenge remains to develop a mechanistic understanding of observed effects. Predator-prey interactions provide an opportunity to examine the role of resource partitioning, thought to be a principal mediator of biodiversity-function relationships. To date, interactions between multiple predators and their prey have typically been investigated in simplified agricultural systems with limited scope for resource partitioning. Thus there remains a dearth of studies examining the functional consequences of predator richness in diverse food webs. Here, we manipulated a species-rich intertidal food web, crossing predator diversity with total predator density, to simultaneously examine the independent and interactive effects of diversity and density on the efficiency of secondary resource capture. The effect of predator diversity was only detectable at high predator densities where competitive interactions between individual predators were magnified; the rate of resource capture within the species mixture more than doubled that of the best-performing single species. Direct observation of species-specific resource use in monoculture, as quantified by patterns of prey consumption, provided clear evidence that species occupied distinct functional niches, suggesting a mechanistic explanation of the observed diversity effect.     

A forest monkey’s alarm call series to predator models

Some non-human primates produce acoustically distinct alarm calls to different predators, such as eagles or leopards. Recipients respond to these calls as if they have seen the actual predator, which has led to the notion of functionally referential alarm calls. However, in a previous study with free-ranging putty-nosed monkeys (Cercopithecus nictitans martini), we demonstrated that callers produced two acoustically distinct alarm calls to eagle shrieks and leopard growls, but both alarm calls were given to both predators. We can think of two basic explanations for this surprising result, a methodological and theoretical one. Firstly, acoustic predator models may not always be suitable to test alarm call behaviour in primates, sometimes causing uncharacteristic behaviour. Secondly, referential alarm calling may not be a universal feature of primate alarm call systems. Considering the methodological and theoretical importance of these possibilities, we conducted a follow-up study using life-sized leopard, eagle, and human models on the same population and compared the resulting vocal responses to those given to acoustic predator models. We compared the alarm call series given to each of these predator model types and found a considerable degree of consistency suggesting that the mode of presentation did not affect anti-predator calling strategies. However, evidence for audience effects on calling behaviour was inconclusive. While it appears that predator class is reliably encoded by different call series types irrespective of the mode of presentation, observations of these same call series given in non-predatory contexts indicate that predator class is unlikely to be the relevant organising principle underlying the alarm-calling behaviour in this species. We conclude by offering an alternative, non-referential, account of the alarm-calling system exhibited by this species. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Vivid birds respond more to acoustic signals of predators

Because conspicuous morphology such as colorful plumage may increase predation risk, we aimed to see if variation in plumage coloration could explain variation in avian anti-predator behavior. We included several measures of plumage coloration: human perception of vividness from images in field guides, total intensity from reflectance spectra of museum skins, contrasts calculated from physiological models of these spectra parameterized for both raptors and humans, chroma, and spectral saturation. We investigated how well these measurements predicted risk assessment in ten species of birds in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. We quantified how each species responded to playbacks of a predator’s calls and compared this response to that elicited by songs from a non-predatory, sympatric bird. We found that human-determined measures of vividness best predicted anti-predator responses of birds—more vividly colored species responded more to predators than duller species. No spectrophotometric variable explained variation in species reactions to a predator call. Our results suggest that vivid birds may compensate for their conspicuousness by being more responsive to the sound of predators and that more work is needed to better evaluate how animal coloration is quantified in comparative studies.