Multiple Time Zones Research Articles

Advances in Highly Virtual Teams:Key Composition, Leadership, and Shared Process Components

Although the notion of virtual as applied to teams is increasingly viewed as a continuum, teams characterized by high virtuality continue to constitute a special challenge. While such teams offer many advantages, such as allowing the assembling of the best expertise regardless of geographical location and allowing the handoff of work across multiple time zones, evidence indicates that highly virtual teams are susceptible to significant process losses that can undermine their sizable advantages. The overall purpose of this symposium is to present research that points to key advances in understanding how critical compositional and leadership components may affect highly virtual team processes and effectiveness and to stimulate audience thinking in critical new directions. Specifically, the papers in the symposium point to critical compositional and leadership components that can positively influence important shared processes, such as knowledge sharing and shared leadership, and ultimately impact the effectiveness of highly virtual teams. The papers provide both unique and important extensions to existing research and theory regarding the challenges of designing effective highly virtual teams, while also providing important and needed guidance to managers seeking to harness the vast potential of highly virtual teams.Leading from Afar: Directive vs. Empowering Leadership in Virtual TeamsPresenter: Elizabeth Margaret Campbell-Bush; U. of MarylandPresenter: Kathryn M. Bartol; U. of Maryland, College ParkPresenter: Michael R. Parke; U. of MarylandKnowledge Sharing in Global Virtual Teams: Effects on Performance and the Role of Team FamiliarityPresenter: Travis Maynard; Colorado State U.Presenter: Lucy L. Gilson; U. of ConnecticutLeading Distributed Teams: The Influence of Composition and Virtual ToolsPresenter: Marissa Shuffler; Institute for Simulation & Training, UCFPresenter: Shawn Burke; U. of Central FloridaPresenter: Stephen Fiore; U. of Central FloridaStructural Supports, Kickoff-meetings, and Shared Leadership in Virtual TeamsPresenter: Julia E. Hoch; Michigan State U.Presenter: Steve W. J. Kozlowski; Michigan State U.Presenter: James Hamilton Dulebohn; Michigan State U.Emergent Leadership Network Structures in Global Virtual Teams: Impact on Innovation Presenter: Dorothy R Carter; Georgia Institute of TechnologyPresenter: Leslie A. DeChurch; Georgia Institute of TechnologyPresenter: Stephen J. Zaccaro; George Mason U.

Synchronizing computer clocks: The challenge of multiple time zones in teleradiology

Synchronizing computer clocks: The challenge of multiple time zones in teleradiology

Cancer incidence among Nordic airline cabin crew

Airline cabin crew are occupationally exposed to cosmic radiation and jet lag with potential disruption of circadian rhythms. This study assesses the influence of work-related factors in cancer incidence of cabin crew members. A cohort of 8,507 female and 1,559 male airline cabin attendants from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden was followed for cancer incidence for a mean follow-up time of 23.6 years through the national cancer registries. Standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) were defined as ratios of observed and expected numbers of cases. A case-control study nested in the cohort (excluding Norway) was conducted to assess the relation between the estimated cumulative cosmic radiation dose and cumulative number of flights crossing six time zones (indicator of circadian disruption) and cancer risk. Analysis of breast cancer was adjusted for parity and age at first live birth. Among female cabin crew, a significantly increased incidence was observed for breast cancer [SIR 1.50, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.32-1.69], leukemia (1.89, 95% CI 1.03-3.17) and skin melanoma (1.85, 95% CI 1.41-2.38). Among men, significant excesses in skin melanoma (3.00, 95% CI 1.78-4.74), nonmelanoma skin cancer (2.47, 95% CI 1.18-4.53), Kaposi sarcoma (86.0, 95% CI 41.2-158) and alcohol-related cancers (combined SIR 3.12, 95% CI 1.95-4.72) were found. This large study with complete follow-up and comprehensive cancer incidence data shows an increased incidence of several cancers, but according to the case-control analysis, excesses appear not to be related to the cosmic radiation or circadian disruptions from crossing multiple time zones.

Towards Standardised Summative Assessment in a Neonatal Online Training Programme

An international online postgraduate programme (NOTE.) for doctors training in neonatology has been developed to provide four educational modules delivered over one year. The assessment strategy used and the outcomes for the first module are presented. Assessment methods: Three assessment strands were developed to provide an objective, reliable and valid process, delivering online summative assessment to participants. 1. Contribution to online discussions boards: participants analysed and evaluated information presented as case studies, synthesised a critical response and reflected on the comments of others. Postings over 10 weeks were assessed using a standardised rubric. 2. A collaborative project: participants in small multi-cultural groups composed a “white paper”. This assessed higher learning skills of analysis and synthesis as defined by Bloom's Taxonomy. Two examiners marked 38 collaborative projects. 3. An online multiple-choice question (MCQ) examination comprised 20 “best-of-five” questions. There were 12 sittings of the examination on two days to allow parity of access across multiple time zones and to accommodate doctors working shifts. Results: 170 doctors from 20 countries participated in the first module. 163 contributed to online discussions, 68% passing. 129 completed a collaborative project and 54% passed. Correlation between markers was satisfactory - Intraclass Correlation Coefficient of 0.78. 133 sat the MCQ and 91% passed. In total 121 participants (72%) completed all aspects of the summative assessment. Of those 78% passed. Conclusion: We have developed and delivered an online assessment package which allows standardised summative assessment of a diverse international group of doctors in training.

The Effect of E-mailing on Vocabulary Retention of Iranian Lower Intermediate EFL Learners

Technologies have been enhancing education all the time and new technologies have always been utilized firstly by education, especially with the emergence of computer related information technology (Devedzic, 2000). E-learning provides faster and greater access to information for education (Hamilton et al., 2001). Online training also creates a personalized learning experience and reduces costs. In addition, e-learning is ideal for global corporations with people in multiple time zones, there is no need to coordinate travel and delivery schedules. Electronic mail (e-mail) is an asynchronous medium, which allows participants to control their own timetables and fit learning around their other commitments. The present study aimed to examine the effect of e-mailing on vocabulary retention of Iranian EFL learners. Forty participants were assigned into experimental and control groups. The participants received English words as well as definitions and example sentences either on paper or through e-mail messages in a spaced and scheduled pattern of delivery three times a week throughout 10 sessions. Students' statues in retention of vocabulary were compared at the end of the study. The obtained results showed that the use of e-mail technology can enhance the retention of vocabulary. This study also provides pedagogical implications for utilizing e-mail as an effective and flexible learning tool.

Briefing: Globalisation, innovation and collaboration

Globalisation has revolutionised the methods of conducting business; creating new challenges in effectively operating across multiple cultures and time zones to serve a global customer base on a 24 h basis. This has acted as a catalyst for the development of distributed and dynamic agile working teams; the equivalent of corporate ‘special forces’, that can react immediately to customer demands to deliver specific projects anywhere in the world, and at any time in order to meet the demands of globalisation. The author explains his organisation’s approach to operating in today’s global marketplace.

Creating global networks through an online engineering graduate programme

Internationally, the railway industry is facing a severe shortage of engineers with high-level, relevant, professional and technical knowledge and abilities, in particular amongst engineers involved in the design, construction and maintenance of railway infrastructure. A unique graduate level programme has been created to meet that global need via a fully online, distance education format. The development and operation of this Master of Engineering degree is proposed as a model of the process needed for industry-relevance, flexible delivery, international networking and professional development required for a successful graduate engineering programme in the twenty-first century. In particular, this paper demonstrates how a mix of new and more familiar technologies are utilised through a variety of tasks to overcome the huge distances and multiple time zones that separate the participants across a growing number of countries, successfully achieving close and sustained interaction amongst the participants and railway experts.

Learn How to Enjoy Every Moment in Paris

Resetting the biological clock prior to a flight across multiple time zones can eliminate or reduce symptoms of jet lag, chronobiologists report.

Treatment of Shift Work Disorder and Jet Lag

With the growth of the 24-hour global marketplace, a substantial proportion of workers are engaged in nontraditional work schedules and frequent jet travel across multiple time zones. Thus, shift work disorder and jet lag are prevalent in our 24/7 society and have been associated with significant health and safety repercussions. In both disorders, treatment strategies are based on promoting good sleep hygiene, improving circadian alignment, and targeting specific symptoms.Treatment of shift work must be tailored to the type of shift. For a night worker, circadian alignment can be achieved with bright light exposure during the shift and avoidance of bright light (with dark or amber sunglasses) toward the latter portion of the work period and during the morning commute home. If insomnia and/or excessive sleepiness are prominent complaints despite behavioral approaches and adequate opportunity for sleep, melatonin may be administered prior to the day sleep period to improve sleep, and alertness during work can be augmented by caffeine and wake-promoting agents.For jet lag, circadian adaptation is suggested only for travel greater than 48h, with travel east more challenging than travel west. Although advancing sleep and wake times and circadian timing for eastward travel with evening melatonin and morning bright light several days prior to departure can help avoid jet lag at the new destination, this approach may be impractical for many people, Therefore, strategies for treatment at the destination, such as avoidance of early morning light and exposure to late-morning and afternoon light alone or in conjunction with bedtime melatonin, can accelerate re-entrainment following eastward travel. For westward travel, a circadian delay can be achieved after arrival with afternoon and early-evening light with bedtime melatonin.Good sleep hygiene practices, together with the application of circadian principles, can improve sleep quality, alertness, performance, and safety in shift workers and jet travelers. However, definitive multicenter randomized controlled clinical trials are still needed, using traditional efficacy outcomes such as sleep and performance as well as novel biomarkers of health.

A Phase 3, Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Study of Armodafinil for Excessive Sleepiness Associated With Jet Lag Disorder

To assess the effect of armodafinil, the longer-lasting isomer of modafinil, on jet lag disorder. This double-blind, randomized, parallel-group, multicenter study was conducted between September 18, 2008, and February 9, 2009. Adults with a history of jet lag symptoms on previous flights through multiple time zones flew from the United States to France (a 6-hour time zone change) for a 3-day laboratory-based study period. Participants received armodafinil (50 or 150 mg/d) or placebo each morning. Wakefulness was assessed by the coprimary outcomes, mean sleep latency on the Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) (average of all MSLT sessions across days 1 and 2) and Patient Global Impression of Severity in relation to jet lag symptoms (averaged across days 1 and 2). A total of 427 participants received armodafinil at 50 mg/d (n=142), armodafinil at 150 mg/d (n=143), or placebo (n=142). Armodafinil at 150 mg/d provided a significant benefit in sleep latency on the MSLT (days 1-2: mean, 11.7 minutes vs 4.8 minutes for placebo; P<.001) and participants' perception of their overall condition in relation to jet lag symptoms (Patient Global Impression of Severity, days 1-2: mean, 1.6 vs 1.9 for placebo; P<.05). The most frequently reported adverse events for armodafinil at 150 mg/d were headache (27%), nausea (13%), diarrhea (5%), circadian rhythm sleep disorder (5%), and palpitations (5%). Armodafinil increased wakefulness after eastward travel through 6 time zones. clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT00758498.

Predicting Sleep/Wake Behavior for Model-Based Fatigue Risk Management

Predicting Sleep/Wake Behavior for Model-Based Fatigue Risk Management

Prediction of Probabilistic Sleep Distributions Following Travel Across Multiple Time Zones

To parameterize and validate a model to estimate average sleep times for long-haul aviation pilots during layovers following travel across multiple time zones. The model equations were based on a weighted distribution of domicile- and local-time sleepers, and included algorithms to account for sleep loss and circadian re-synchronization. Sleep times were collected from participants under normal commercial operating conditions using diaries and wrist activity monitors. Participants included a total of 306 long-haul pilots (113 captains, 120 first officers, and 73 second officers). The model was parameterized based on the average sleep/wake times observed during international flight patterns from Australia to London and Los Angeles (global R2 = 0.72). The parameterized model was validated against the average sleep/wake times observed during flight patterns from Australia to London (r2 = 0.85), Los Angeles (r2 = 0.79), New York (r2 = 0.80), and Johannesburg (r2 = 0.73). Goodness-of-fit was poorer when the parameterized model equations were used to predict the variance across the sleep/wake cycles of individual pilots (R2 = 0.42, 0.35, 0.31, and 0.28 for the validation flight patterns, respectively), in part because of substantial inter-individual variability in sleep timing and duration. It is possible to estimate average sleep times during layovers in international patterns with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Models of this type could form the basis of a stand-alone application to estimate the likelihood that a given duty schedule provides pilots, on average, with an adequate opportunity to sleep.

The Gorgon Project: bringing Australia's largest single resource development to life

The Chevron-operated Gorgon Project is located off the northwest coast of Western Australia and encompasses a number of mega-projects including an all-subsea upstream development of the Greater Gorgon gas fields, a greenfield gas processing facility including a 15MTPA liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant and a 300TJ/d domestic gas plant, and the world’s largest commercial scale carbon dioxide injection project. Due to its sheer size, scale and complexity, in addition to a number of unique characteristics, the Gorgon Project has required an extraordinary level of project execution planning. One aspect is the processing plant’s location on Barrow Island—a remote Class A nature reserve. Core to the project’s planning and success is a meticulous and robust environmental management system designed to protect Barrow Island’s unique flora and fauna. This includes stringent environmental measures such as limits on worker population and movement, quarantine requirements for all personnel, and materials and work adjustments for seasonal flora and fauna life cycles. The project’s scope of work is also being executed from three centres: LNG facilities centered in London, infrastructure centered in Perth and construction operations centered in London, Perth and Barrow Island (according to the phase and priorities of the project). This paper explores the following factors: the remote location of the gas fields; cohabiting industry with Barrow Island; minimising environmental impacts using efficient construction management methods such as modularisation; and working together as one team across multiple locations and time zones to demonstrate how the extraordinary can be achieved.

Development of historical exposure estimates of cosmic radiation and circadian rhythm disruption for cohort studies of Pan Am flight attendants

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is conducting cohort studies of flight crew employed by the former Pan American World Airways company (Pan Am) as part of an effort to examine flight crew workplace exposures and health effects. Flight crew are exposed to elevated levels of cosmic radiation and to disruption of circadian rhythm when flying across multiple time zones. Methods exist to calculate cosmic radiation effective doses on individual flights; however, only work histories which provided an employee's domicile (home base) history rather than a record of every flight flown were available. We developed a method for estimating individual cumulative domicile-based cosmic radiation effective doses and two metrics for circadian rhythm disruption for each flight attendant: cumulative times zones crossed and cumulative travel time during the standard sleep interval. The domicile-exposure matrix developed was used to calculate exposure estimates for a cohort mortality study of former Pan Am flight attendants.

Taking the Lag out of Jet Lag through Model-Based Schedule Design

Travel across multiple time zones results in desynchronization of environmental time cues and the sleep–wake schedule from their normal phase relationships with the endogenous circadian system. Circadian misalignment can result in poor neurobehavioral performance, decreased sleep efficiency, and inappropriately timed physiological signals including gastrointestinal activity and hormone release. Frequent and repeated transmeridian travel is associated with long-term cognitive deficits, and rodents experimentally exposed to repeated schedule shifts have increased death rates. One approach to reduce the short-term circadian, sleep–wake, and performance problems is to use mathematical models of the circadian pacemaker to design countermeasures that rapidly shift the circadian pacemaker to align with the new schedule. In this paper, the use of mathematical models to design sleep–wake and countermeasure schedules for improved performance is demonstrated. We present an approach to designing interventions that combines an algorithm for optimal placement of countermeasures with a novel mode of schedule representation. With these methods, rapid circadian resynchrony and the resulting improvement in neurobehavioral performance can be quickly achieved even after moderate to large shifts in the sleep–wake schedule. The key schedule design inputs are endogenous circadian period length, desired sleep–wake schedule, length of intervention, background light level, and countermeasure strength. The new schedule representation facilitates schedule design, simulation studies, and experiment design and significantly decreases the amount of time to design an appropriate intervention. The method presented in this paper has direct implications for designing jet lag, shift-work, and non-24-hour schedules, including scheduling for extreme environments, such as in space, undersea, or in polar regions.

Leveraging Knowledge Reuse and System Agility in the Outsourcing Era

Collaborative work groups that span multiple locations and time zones, or follow the sun, create a growing demand for creating new technologies and methodologies that enable traditional spatial and temporal separations to be surmounted in an effective and productive manner. The hurdles faced by members of such virtual teams are in three key areas: differences in concepts and terminologies used by the different teams, differences in understanding the problem domain under consideration, and differences in training, knowledge, and skills that exist across the teams. These reasons provide some of the basis for the delineation of new architectural approaches that can normalize knowledge and provide reusable artifacts in a knowledge repository.

Russian eruption warning systems for aviation

More than 65 potentially active volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kurile Islands pose a substantial threat to aircraft on the Northern Pacific (NOPAC), Russian Trans-East (RTE), and Pacific Organized Track System (PACOTS) air routes. The Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT) monitors and reports on volcanic hazards to aviation for Kamchatka and the north Kuriles. KVERT scientists utilize real-time seismic data, daily satellite views of the region, real-time video, and pilot and field reports of activity to track and alert the aviation industry of hazardous activity. Most Kurile Island volcanoes are monitored by the Sakhalin Volcanic Eruption Response Team (SVERT) based in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. SVERT uses daily moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite images to look for volcanic activity along this 1,250-km chain of islands. Neither operation is staffed 24 h per day. In addition, the vast majority of Russian volcanoes are not monitored seismically in real-time. Other challenges include multiple time-zones and language differences that hamper communication among volcanologists and meteorologists in the US, Japan, and Russia who share the responsibility to issue official warnings. Rapid, consistent verification of explosive eruptions and determination of cloud heights remain significant technical challenges. Despite these difficulties, in more than a decade of frequent eruptive activity in Kamchatka and the northern Kuriles, no damaging encounters with volcanic ash from Russian eruptions have been recorded.

The body clock and athletic performance

Athletes train and compete at different times of the day according to personal preferences, schedule of team training or timing of competition. Many human performance variables follow the circadian rhythm in physiological measures, in phase with the rhythm in core body temperature. This correspondence applies to components of performance, physiological determinants of performance with high power output, psychophysical loading and competitive time trials. There is evidence that circadian rhythms in exercise performance are, in part, endogenously driven. Human performance rhythms are disrupted when athletes travel rapidly across multiple meridians, or are engaged in nocturnal shift-work. Few sports participants maintain high-performance standards when operating shift-work regimens. In contrast, travelling across time-zones is a contemporary feature of competitive sport for sojourns and training camps and participating in international contests. Athletes like all travellers experience jet lag symptoms when crossing multiple time-zones. Symptoms are worse and last longer following flights to the east compared to flying westwards. Performance rhythms re-adjust to the new local time at about the same time as that of core temperature. Experience with Olympic athletes travelling between Europe and Australia is that adjustment may be by phase advance or phase delay depending on timing of departure and disembarkation, time of arrival and exposure or avoidance of natural light, and activity in the early days in the new time-zone. Adjustment can be assisted by means of a behavioural strategy that combines the body clock and the homeostatic drive to sleep. Exclusion of long naps, the diurnal timing of physical training and social events form part of this strategy, as do eating and drinking behaviour. Exercise is a potential resynchronising agent when utilised at the correct time of day. Pharmacological treatments, including use of melatonin, have found favour in some contexts but their phase response curves pose difficulties for their administration in athletes travelling on long-haul flights. In view of the national governing bodies' stances on use of pharmacological agents and supplements by athletes, the behavioural strategy to cope with jet lag has been advocated.

One Time Fits All: The Campaigns for Global Uniformity (review)

Reviewed by: One Time Fits All: The Campaigns for Global Uniformity Alexis McCrossen (bio) One Time Fits All: The Campaigns for Global Uniformity. By Ian R. Bartky. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007. Pp. xxv+292. $49.95. To start with a personal aside: In the mid-1970s, when National Bureau of Standards employee Ian Bartky was preparing a report for the U.S. Congress about whether year-round daylight saving time would save energy, it happens that I was often poolside at the only hotel in the kingdom of Tonga; it was called the International Dateline Hotel. Retiring from the NBS in 1992 after thirty-one years of service, Bartky turned to publishing about nineteenth-century timekeeping. His first book, Selling the True Time: Nineteenth-Century Timekeeping in America (2000), explained how astronomical observatories developed commercial time services. His second he finished shortly before his death in 2007. It is titled One Time Fits All: The Campaign for Global Uniformity, and it clarifies the shared historical roots of daylight saving, the international date line, and world time zones. It makes a solid contribution to the history of timekeeping in North America and western Europe through detailed accounting of conventions, meetings, hearings, and agreements resulting in Greenwich as the prime meridian, an international dateline, twenty-four world time zones, and daylight saving. One Time Fits All stands in contrast to the work of social and cultural historians, like myself, about the lived experience of new (and old) temporal regimes. The International Dateline Hotel, in my view, is an important artifact in the lived experience of modern time. We need to know about both origins and experiences, and it is thanks to Bartky that we now know [End Page 252] about the origins of contemporary timekeeping conventions that extend throughout much of the world. The book opens with an elegant overview of how the loss of a day while sailing from west to east troubled navigators, sailors, and, chroniclers; not knowing the correct day or date threw off religious rhythms and observances, particularly Sunday observance, while also interfering with accurate account keeping. The informal establishment of the international date line, a “conventional line” where oceangoing travelers change the day so as to create a continuous and uniform sense of time and history, solved this discomfiting calendrical confusion. Chapters 2 through 9 follow scientists imbued with various measures of nationalism, pragmatism, and utopianism as they sought to hammer out an agreement about where to initiate the numbering of the earth’s longitudinal division. The highlight of the story comes in 1912 when, soon before sinking, the crew of the Titanic received a warning from a French steamship about a colossal iceberg: the wireless telegram used the Greenwich meridian to indicate the time, but the Paris Observatory meridian for its longitude. After the disaster, the previously recalcitrant French government decreed that all French nautical documents would use the English prime meridian. And thus it was not conventions of scientists engaged in reasonable debate and exchange that brought the world around to using a single prime meridian, but a senseless disaster that Bartky tells us had nothing to do with the warning’s use of two different meridians. What of the world’s time zones? In 1925, England, France, and the United States officially agreed to divide the world into twenty-four time zones that corresponded to longitude, which Bartky assures readers “undoubtedly provided the impetus for other countries to adopt zone time as their legal time on land” (p. 157). But not all countries did adopt zone time, a point Bartky passes over. The Anglophone tendency to divide territory into arbitrary spatial and temporal units is clear: the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia all have multiple time zones. Russia’s whopping eleven time zones are also of note, as is Brazil’s recent decision to cut back to three time zones from four. In contrast, China and India each have a single national time. The global history of time zones is waiting for investigation, as are contemporary computer networks, the internet, and radio and wireless technology, all of which subscribe to the fiction (or convention) of worldwide uniform time. The tale...

Continuum-based model for analysing efficiency of supply chain interfaces

Here we develop a Partial Differential Equations (PDE) based model describing the dynamic behaviour of strongly time-critical orders with multiple priorities of a process chain in an aeronautical supplier which is spread out over several time zones. The simulation results help us to understand the efficiency loss originating from the dynamics resulting from the interaction of priority orders with multiple time zones.