Daytime site characterisation of La Palma, and its relation to night-time conditions

This paper presents preliminary daytime profiles taken using a Wide-Field Shack-Hartmann Sensor at the Swedish Solar Telescope (SST), La Palma. These are contrasted against Stereo-SCIDAR data from corresponding nights to assess the validity of the assumptions currently used for simulating the performances of possible Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) systems for future solar telescopes, especially the assumption that the structure of the high altitude turbulence is mostly similar between the day and the night. We find that for our data both the altitude and the strength of the turbulence differ between the day and the night, although more data is required to draw any conclusions about typical behaviour and conditions

Technology and Discourse: A Comparison of Face-to-face and Telephone Employment Interviews

Very little research has investigated the comparability of telephone and face-to-face employment interviews. This exploratory study investigated interviewers' questioning strategies and applicants' causal attributions produced during semi structured telephone and face-to-face graduate recruitment interviews (N=62). A total of 2044 causal attributions were extracted from verbatim transcripts of these 62 interviews. It was predicted that an absence of visual cues would lead applicants to produce, and interviewers to focus on, information that might reduce the comparative anonymity of telephone interviews. Results indicate that applicants produce more personal causal attributions in telephone interviews. Personal attributions are also associated with higher ratings in telephone, but not face-to-face interviews. In face-to-face interviews, applicants who attributed outcomes to more global causes received lower ratings. There was also a non-significant tendency for interviewers to ask more closed questions in telephone interviews. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed

What is the impact of systematically missing exposure data on air pollution health effect estimates?

Time-series studies reporting associations between daily air pollution and health use pollution data from monitoring stations that vary in the frequency of recording. Within the Air Pollution and Health: A European and North American Approach (APHENA) project, we evaluated the impact of systematically missing daily measurements on the estimated effects of PM10 and ozone on daily mortality. For four cities with complete time-series data, we created patterns of systematically missing exposure measurements by deleting observations. Poisson regression-derived city-specific estimates were combined to produce overall effect estimates. Analyses based on incomplete time series gave considerably lower pooled PM10 and ozone health effects compared to those from complete data. City-specific estimates were generally lower although more variable. Systematically missing exposure data for air pollutants appears to lead to underestimation of associated health effects. Our findings indicate that the use of evidence from studies with incomplete exposure data may underestimate the impact of air pollution and highlight the advantage of having complete daily data in time-series studies. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht