7,723 research outputs found
Psychological Climate and Work Attitudes: The Importance of Telling the Right Story
In this field study, the authors explore how choosing one context over another influences both research results and implications. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, the authors examine context from both an organizational and a business-unit perspective by studying relationships between five psychological climate variables and outcomes of job satisfaction, affective commitment, and intent to leave. Results show different contextual influences between the organization and two business units, suggesting that different bundles of psychological climate variables yield similar outcomes depending on the context studied. These results bolster the contention that researchers need to identify the right context in field research
Volume Changes Of Alaska Glaciers: Contributions To Rising Sea Level And Links To Changing Climate
Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2006We have used airborne altimetry to measure surface elevations along the central flowline of 86 glaciers in Alaska, Yukon Territory and northwestern British Columbia (northwestern North America). Comparison of these elevations with contours on maps derived from 1950s to 1970s aerial photography yields elevation and volume changes over a 30 to 45 year period. Approximately one-third of glaciers have been re-profiled 3 to 5 years after the earlier profile, providing a measure of short-timescale elevation and volume changes for comparison with the earlier period. We have used these measurements to estimate the total contribution of glaciers in northwestern North America to rising sea level, and to quantify the magnitude of climate changes in these regions. We found that glaciers in northwestern North America have contributed to about 10% of the rate of global sea level rise during the last half-century and that the rate of mass loss has approximately doubled during the past decade. During this time, summer and winter air temperatures at low elevation climate stations increased by 0.2+/-0.1 and 0.4+/-0.2�C (decade)-1 respectively. There was also a weak trend of increasing precipitation and an overall lengthening of the summer melt season. We modeled regional changes in glacier mass balance with climate station data and were able to reproduce altimetry measurements to within reported errors. We conclude that summer temperature increases have been the main driver of the increased rates of glacier mass loss, but winter warming might also be affecting the glaciers through enhanced melt at low elevations and a change in precipitation from snow to rain, especially in maritime regions. Uncertainties in our calculations are large, owing to the inaccuracies of the maps used to provide baseline elevations, the sparsity of accurate climate data, and the complex and dynamic nature of glaciers in these regions. Tidewater, surging, and lake-terminating glaciers have dynamical cycles that are not linked in a simple way to climate variability. We found that regional volume losses can depend on one or several large and dynamic glaciers. These glaciers should be treated separately when extrapolating altimetry data to an entire region
New measurements of cosmic infrared background fluctuations from early epochs
Cosmic infrared background fluctuations may contain measurable contribution
from objects inaccessible to current telescopic studies, such as the first
stars and other luminous objects in the first Gyr of the Universe's evolution.
In an attempt to uncover this contribution we have analyzed the GOODS data
obtained with the Spitzer IRAC instrument, which are deeper and cover larger
scales than the Spitzer data we have previously analyzed. Here we report these
new measurements of the cosmic infrared background (CIB) fluctuations remaining
after removing cosmic sources to fainter levels than before. The remaining
anisotropies on scales > 0.5 arcmin have a significant clustering component
with a low shot-noise contribution. We show that these fluctuations cannot be
accounted for by instrumental effects, nor by the Solar system and Galactic
foreground emissions and must arise from extragalactic sources.Comment: Ap.J.Letters, in pres
Looking at cosmic near-infrared background radiation anisotropies
The cosmic infrared background (CIB) contains emissions accumulated over the
entire history of the Universe, including from objects inaccessible to
individual telescopic studies. The near-IR (~1-10 mic) part of the CIB, and its
fluctuations, reflects emissions from nucleosynthetic sources and
gravitationally accreting black holes (BHs). If known galaxies are removed to
sufficient depths the source-subtracted CIB fluctuations at near-IR can reveal
sources present in the first-stars-era and possibly new stellar populations at
more recent times. This review discusses the recent progress in this newly
emerging field which identified, with new data and methodology, significant
source-subtracted CIB fluctuations substantially in excess of what can be
produced by remaining known galaxies. The CIB fluctuations further appear
coherent with unresolved cosmic X-ray background (CXB) indicating a very high
fraction of BHs among the new sources producing the CIB fluctuations. These
observations have led to intensive theoretical efforts to explain the
measurements and their properties. While current experimental configurations
have limitations in decisively probing these theories, their potentially
remarkable implications will be tested in the upcoming CIB measurements with
the ESA's Euclid dark energy mission. We describe the goals and methodologies
of LIBRAE (Looking at Infrared Background Radiation with Euclid), a
NASA-selected project for CIB science with Euclid, which has the potential for
transforming the field into a new area of precision cosmology.Comment: Reviews of Modern Physics, to appea
Lyman-tomography of cosmic infrared background fluctuations with Euclid: probing emissions and baryonic acoustic oscillations at z>10
The Euclid space mission, designed to probe evolution of the Dark Energy,
will map a large area of the sky at three adjacent near-IR filters, Y, J and H.
This coverage will also enable mapping source-subtracted cosmic infrared
background (CIB) fluctuations with unprecedented accuracy on sub-degree angular
scales. Here we propose methodology, using the Lyman-break tomography applied
to the Euclid-based CIB maps, to accurately isolate the history of CIB
emissions as a function of redshift from 10 < z < 20, and to identify the
baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAOs) at those epochs. To identify the BAO
signature, we would assemble individual CIB maps over conservatively large
contiguous areas of >~ 400 sq deg. The method can isolate the CIB spatial
spectrum by z to sub-percent statistical accuracy. We illustrate this with a
specific model of CIB production at high z normalized to reproduce the measured
Spitzer-based CIB fluctuation. We show that even if the latter contain only a
small component from high-z sources, the amplitude of that component can be
accurately isolated with the methodology proposed here and the BAO signatures
at z>~ 10 are recovered well from the CIB fluctuation spatial spectrum. Probing
the BAO at those redshifts will be an important test of the underlying
cosmological paradigm, and would narrow the overall uncertainties on the
evolution of cosmological parameters, including the Dark Energy. Similar
methodology is applicable to the planned WFIRST mission, where we show that a
possible fourth near-IR channel at > 2 micron would be beneficial.Comment: comments welcom
Cosmic Infrared Background Fluctuations and Zodiacal Light
We have performed a specific observational test to measure the effect that
the zodiacal light can have on measurements of the spatial fluctuations of the
near-IR background. Previous estimates of possible fluctuations caused by
zodiacal light have often been extrapolated from observations of the thermal
emission at longer wavelengths and low angular resolution, or from IRAC
observations of high latitude fields where zodiacal light is faint and not
strongly varying with time. The new observations analyzed here target the
COSMOS field, at low ecliptic latitude where the zodiacal light intensity
varies by factors of over the range of solar elongations at which the
field can be observed. We find that the white noise component of the spatial
power spectrum of the background is correlated with the modeled zodiacal light
intensity. Roughly half of the measured white noise is correlated with the
zodiacal light, but a more detailed interpretation of the white noise is
hampered by systematic uncertainties that are evident in the zodiacal light
model. At large angular scales () where excess power above the
white noise is observed, we find no correlation of the power with the modeled
intensity of the zodiacal light. This test clearly indicates that the large
scale power in the infrared background is not being caused by the zodiacal
light.Comment: 17 pp. Accepted for publication in the Ap
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