Being Different Yet Feeling Similar: The Influence Of Demographic Composition And Organizational Culture On Work Processes And Outcomes

Drawing from self-categorization theory, we tested hypotheses on the effects of an organization's demographic composition and cultural emphasis on work processes and outcomes. Using an organizational simulation, we found that the extent to which an organization emphasized individualistic or collectivistic values interacted with demographic composition to influence social interaction, conflict, productivity, and perceptions of creativity among 258 MBA students. Our findings suggest that the purported benefits of demographic diversity are more likely to emerge in organizations that, through their culture, make organizational membership salient and encourage people to categorize one another as having the organization's interests in common, rather than those that emphasize individualism and distinctiveness among members.(.)Managemen

A Spatially Distributed Water Balance Based on Physical, Isotropic and Airborne Remotely Sensed Data

Introduction: The objective of this research to develop a spatially distributed water balance model based on the integration of spatially distributed data. Progress this year has consisted of model development, instrument acquisition, installation and development of experimental procedures, and baseline data collection. The original research plan called for detailed observations related to the water balance over the year September 1991 to August 1992. The detailed measurements were to start with accumulation of the snowpack followed by melt and evapotranspiration measurements from March to August. The objective was to measure the energy balance parameters starting with the peak accumulation, through the melt and infiltration phases, the greenup of vegetation, the peak evapotranspiration period and the dry-down and senescence of grasses and other species in the upper Sheep Creek sub-basin of the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed. Groundwater depths as well as run-off in the stream were to be measured and samples of the snowpack water, soil water, groundwater and run-off water were to be taken for isotopic tracing. Unfortunately, average snow accumulation was well below average last winter. April 1st, snow course measurement indicated that the snowpack at the Reynolds mountain sub-basin was only 30% of normal. In the Upper Sheep Creek sub-basin, which usually has a 10-m high drift during this time of the year there was less than 0.5 m of snow. After consultation with the USDA scientists from the Northwest Watershed Research Center, we decided in February to postpone the field campaign for one year. In retrospect this was wise because there was no runoff reponse from Upper Sheep Creek (the basin where we plan to do our detailed model development) and few of the groundwater wells had measureable response, we would have had nothing to measure. The intensive field campaign will be conducted in Spring 1993. Although a repeat of last year\u27s condition is possible, the chances are very low and we are hopeful of better snowfall. A revised project time schedule is shown on the next page. This has us finished the field measurement in August 1993. Given this it is unlikely that all data reduction and modeling will be complete by August 15, 1993 so we will need until May 1993, a 9-month no-cost extention to complete the data analysis. In this report we describe our progress in terms of data base development, model development, and modeling based on data from earlier years. Some of this will be presented at the AGU Fall meeting in San Francisco in Devember (see abstract on page 3). We also developed snow-isotope fractionation studies, evapotranspiration model development, installation of soil moisture measurement equipment, and database development. Abstract: A distributed mass balance appraoch is being developed to model spatially variable hydrologic processes in an arid mountain watershed. The model will be applied to Upper Sheep Creek, a 26 ha catchment within the Reynolds Creek ARS Experimental Watershed, near Boise, ID. The model is based on a DEM representation of basin topography. A mass balance equation relating moisture inflow, outflow, and the change in storage is resolved to give the moisture defecit in each DEM cell. Moisture input is subsurface flow from up-gradient DEM cells and surface influx from rain or a spatially distributed energy-balance snowmelt model. Subsurface outlfow is determined from topographic slope and transmissivity, which is a function of moisture content. We illustrate the effects of topography on the areal distribution of soil moisture and the time variation of streamflow in Upper Sheep Creek and compare our results with field observations and streamflow measurements

Events, processes, and the time of a killing

The paper proposes a novel solution to the problem of the time of a killing (ToK), which persistently besets theories of act-individuation. The solution proposed claims to expose a crucial wrong-headed assumption in the debate, according to which ToK is essentially a problem of locating some event that corresponds to the killing. The alternative proposal put forward here turns on recognizing a separate category of dynamic occurents, viz. processes. The paper does not aim to mount a comprehensive defense of process ontology, relying instead on extant defenses. The primary aim is rather to put process ontology to work in diagnosing the current state of play over ToK, and indeed in solving it

Extended twin study of alcohol use in Virginia and Australia

Drinking alcohol is a normal behavior in many societies, and prior studies have demonstrated it has both genetic and environmental sources of variation. Using two very large samples of twins and their first-degree relatives (Australia ≈ 20,000 individuals from 8,019 families; Virginia ≈ 23,000 from 6,042 families), we examine whether there are differences: (1) in the genetic and environmental factors that influence four interrelated drinking behaviors (quantity, frequency, age of initiation, and number of drinks in the last week), (2) between the twin-only design and the extended twin design, and (3) the Australian and Virginia samples. We find that while drinking behaviors are interrelated, there are substantial differences in the genetic and environmental architectures across phenotypes. Specifically, drinking quantity, frequency, and number of drinks in the past week have large broad genetic variance components, and smaller but significant environmental variance components, while age of onset is driven exclusively by environmental factors. Further, the twin-only design and the extended twin design come to similar conclusions regarding broad-sense heritability and environmental transmission, but the extended twin models provide a more nuanced perspective. Finally, we find a high level of similarity between the Australian and Virginian samples, especially for the genetic factors. The observed differences, when present, tend to be at the environmental level. Implications for the extended twin model and future directions are discussed

Cross-cultural comparison of genetic and cultural transmission of smoking initiation using an extended twin kinship model

Background: Considerable evidence from twin and adoption studies indicates that genetic and shared environmental factors play a role in the initiation of smoking behavior. Although twin and adoption designs are powerful to detect genetic and environmental influences, they do not provide information on the processes of assortative mating and parent–offspring transmission and their contribution to the variability explained by genetic and/or environmental factors. Methods: We examined the role of genetic and environmental factors in individual differences for smoking initiation (SI) using an extended kinship design. This design allows the simultaneous testing of additive and non-additive genetic, shared and individual-specific environmental factors, as well as sex differences in the expression of genes and environment in the presence of assortative mating and combined genetic and cultural transmission, while also estimating the regression of the prevalence of SI on age. A dichotomous lifetime ‘ever’ smoking measure was obtained from twins and relatives in the ‘Virginia 30,000’ sample and the ‘Australian 25,000’. Results: Results demonstrate that both genetic and environmental factors play a significant role in the liability to SI. Major influences on individual differences appeared to be additive genetic and unique environmental effects, with smaller contributions from assortative mating, shared sibling environment, twin environment, cultural transmission, and resulting genotype-environment covariance. Age regression of the prevalence of SI was significant. The finding of negative cultural transmission without dominance led us to investigate more closely two possible mechanisms for the lower parent–offspring correlations compared to the sibling and DZ twin correlations in subsets of the data: (1) age × gene interaction, and (2) social homogamy. Neither of the mechanism provided a significantly better explanation of the data. Conclusions: This study showed significant heritability, partly due to assortment, and significant effects of primarily non-parental shared environment on liability to SI

Guidelines for validating Bowen ratio data

For a variety of reasons, the measurement of latent heat flux using the Bowen ratio method can sometimes result in erroneous data. This study provides guidelines for detecting erroneous Bowen ratio data and illustrates the application of these guidelines by comparing Bowen ratio and lysimeter data collected over grass and alfalfa in southern Idaho. Errors in net radiation were detected by comparing measured with theoretical values. However, it was found that good theoretical procedures to validate soil heat flux data are lacking. Only empirical equations mainly used for remote sensing applications to obtain estimates close to noontime are available. Extremely inaccurate latent heat fluxes were easily filtered out by rejecting data when the calculated Bowen ratio (β) values were close to -1. A simplified procedure was proposed to reject fluxes with the wrong sign, and three different equations were used successfully to detect the occurrence of condensation inside the type of measurement system used in the study. Guidelines to assure adequate fetch are provided. Fetch did not affect the measured fluxes in this study, which may have been due to the similarity in surface properties between the crops under study and those in the surrounding fields

Scale interactions on diurnal toseasonal timescales and their relevanceto model systematic errors

Examples of current research into systematic errors in climate models are used to demonstrate the importance of scale interactions on diurnal,intraseasonal and seasonal timescales for the mean and variability of the tropical climate system. It has enabled some conclusions to be drawn about possible processes that may need to be represented, and some recommendations to be made regarding model improvements. It has been shown that the Maritime Continent heat source is a major driver of the global circulation but yet is poorly represented in GCMs. A new climatology of the diurnal cycle has been used to provide compelling evidence of important land-sea breeze and gravity wave effects, which may play a crucial role in the heat and moisture budget of this key region for the tropical and global circulation. The role of the diurnal cycle has also been emphasized for intraseasonal variability associated with the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO). It is suggested that the diurnal cycle in Sea Surface Temperature (SST) during the suppressed phase of the MJO leads to a triggering of cumulus congestus clouds, which serve to moisten the free troposphere and hence precondition the atmosphere for the next active phase. It has been further shown that coupling between the ocean and atmosphere on intraseasonal timescales leads to a more realistic simulation of the MJO. These results stress the need for models to be able to simulate firstly, the observed tri-modal distribution of convection, and secondly, the coupling between the ocean and atmosphere on diurnal to intraseasonal timescales. It is argued, however, that the current representation of the ocean mixed layer in coupled models is not adequate to represent the complex structure of the observed mixed layer, in particular the formation of salinity barrier layers which can potentially provide much stronger local coupling between the atmosphere and ocean on diurnal to intraseasonal timescales

The Effects of Fatigue on Driver Performance for Single and Team Long-Haul Truck Drivers

Driver fatigue is an important safety issue for long-haul truck drivers. To provide an efficient means of obtaining sleep, long-haul truck drivers often use tractors equipped with sleeper berth units. Depending on the type of cargo and distances traveled, long-haul truck drivers either drive in teams or alone as single drivers. Team drivers, therefore, typically sleep in a moving truck whereas single drivers sleep in a stationary truck. It has been hypothesized that sleeping in a moving truck could adversely affect the sleep quality and, therefore, the alertness level of team drivers. A naturalistic data collection system was developed and installed in two Class 8 heavy trucks. This trigger-based system consisted of vehicle sensors and cameras that allowed the experimenters to obtain the driving performance and driver alertness data for analysis of fatigue. Fatigue was measured using both objective and subjective measures that were recorded before and after sleep and while driving. Fatigue and driving performance were compared for single versus team drivers to determine which driver type acquired the greatest sleep deficit during a trip. Results suggest that single drivers were more frequently involved in critical incidents while exhibiting extreme drowsiness than were team drivers by a factor of 4 to 1. These results will be discussed in relation to the general safety of single versus team trucking operations

The Effects of Fatigue on Driver Performance for Single and Team Long-Haul Truck Drivers

Driver fatigue is an important safety issue for long-haul truck drivers. To provide an efficient means of obtaining sleep, long-haul truck drivers often use tractors equipped with sleeper berth units. Depending on the type of cargo and distances traveled, long-haul truck drivers either drive in teams or alone as single drivers. Team drivers, therefore, typically sleep in a moving truck whereas single drivers sleep in a stationary truck. It has been hypothesized that sleeping in a moving truck could adversely affect the sleep quality and, therefore, the alertness level of team drivers. A naturalistic data collection system was developed and installed in two Class 8 heavy trucks. This trigger-based system consisted of vehicle sensors and cameras that allowed the experimenters to obtain the driving performance and driver alertness data for analysis of fatigue. Fatigue was measured using both objective and subjective measures that were recorded before and after sleep and while driving. Fatigue and driving performance were compared for single versus team drivers to determine which driver type acquired the greatest sleep deficit during a trip. Results suggest that single drivers were more frequently involved in critical incidents while exhibiting extreme drowsiness than were team drivers by a factor of 4 to 1. These results will be discussed in relation to the general safety of single versus team trucking operations

An interface design for a shock-tube system

A linear display of lights and a mimic diagram arrangement of switches are suggested for the proposed high pressure shock tube control panel to enable the operator to follow a safe and reliable operating procedure