Preservation Potential of Permian Gypsum Beds, Nippewalla Group, USA

ABSTRACT During the Permian, what is now southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma was a drying inhospitable environment, as evidenced by the extensive red-beds and evaporites of the Nippewalla Group. Due to the fact that animals could not live in much of this extreme environment, there is a lack of a traditional fossil record in these units. Thus, this study focuses on detecting biomarkers, the chemical traces of organisms. The red-beds and gypsum were analyzed in order to assess their biomarker contents. Geochemistry similar to that found in the Nippewalla Group has been hypothesized to prevent the preservation of biomarkers due to the presence of hematite, which indicates oxidizing conditions. Due to these circumstances, a series of methods were used to investigate the detection of biomarkers. Thin sections of each rock and mineral sample, as well as two thick sections, were prepared in order to investigate the presence of fluid inclusions and any preserved organic matter through the use of fluorescence microscopy. The extractable organic matter and the total organic carbon (TOC) were also analyzed, allowing for the identification of n-alkanes, hopanes, methyl-hopanes, nor-hopanes, and isoprenoids, pristane and phytane, mostly within the gypsum. The presence of these biomarkers indicate that they can be preserved in oxidizing conditions, at least in the presence of gypsum, as it is likely the key factor to the biomarkers sustainability. The gypsum contained a number of fluid inclusions where organic material could be preserved. Also, the gypsum could create microenvironments and provide a barrier between the surrounding oxic environment and the inner anoxic environment. Understanding the preservation potential of gypsum is important as biomarkers can provide paleoenvironmental insight into the environmental conditions of the Permian. They can also provide clues to possible preservation pathways within the gypsum on Mars as the paleoenvironment of the Nippewalla Group was similar to the environment on Mars based on mineralogy and sedimentology

NQSI: Quality Schools Come From Quality People

Since the time of the now fabled one room schoolhouse, American schools have undergone tremendous change socially, structurally, and instructionally. Our public schools are under the microscope like never before. Charter schools and tuition vouchers circle above public education like vultures. New special education regulations loom menacingly on the horizon. Prophets of doom are on every street comer and in every Internet chat room. The Virginia General Assembly has mandated higher standards and tougher discipline. Innumerable publications document both technology\u27s explosion and the American family\u27s implosion. Against this seemingly foreboding backdrop, a school district in Southeastern Virginia researched, designed, and implemented the Norfolk Quality Schools Initiative (NQSI). Ever since the days of the old one room school house with its slate chalkboards and pot-bellied stove there have been scores and scores of movements to improve American education. Some have stressed the product while others have emphasized the process. The NQSI is not just another attempt at educational reform; it is a focused, inclusive and comprehensive plan for school revitalization and renewal. NQSI is unique in the fact that it employs a very specific process designed to develop a very specific product. Simply put, it is a systematic, outcome-based process

NQSI: Quality Schools Come From Quality People

Since the time of the now fabled one room schoolhouse, American schools have undergone tremendous change socially, structurally, and instructionally. Our public schools are under the microscope like never before. Charter schools and tuition vouchers circle above public education like vultures. New special education regulations loom menacingly on the horizon. Prophets of doom are on every street comer and in every Internet chat room. The Virginia General Assembly has mandated higher standards and tougher discipline. Innumerable publications document both technology\u27s explosion and the American family\u27s implosion. Against this seemingly foreboding backdrop, a school district in Southeastern Virginia researched, designed, and implemented the Norfolk Quality Schools Initiative (NQSI). Ever since the days of the old one room school house with its slate chalkboards and pot-bellied stove there have been scores and scores of movements to improve American education. Some have stressed the product while others have emphasized the process. The NQSI is not just another attempt at educational reform; it is a focused, inclusive and comprehensive plan for school revitalization and renewal. NQSI is unique in the fact that it employs a very specific process designed to develop a very specific product. Simply put, it is a systematic, outcome-based process

Understanding Supply Chain Complexity with Performance Measurement

Abstract: Despite the great number of complex systems existing in the real world, complexity is currently a poorly explored topic. In organizational settings, managers regularly apply to complex contexts classical approaches developed for simple systems, just because they do not know how to take into account companies' internal and external complexity. Nevertheless, before developing new managerial models, a deep knowledge about drivers and effects of complexity is needed. After defining the characteristics making supply chains complex systems, this paper discusses performance measurement as a methodology to analyze the effects of complexity on supply chain behavior. The results of a survey highlight that manufacturing companies usually evaluate isolated aspects of their supply chains, without considering the relationships between different performance indicators or dimensions. This work suggests System Dynamics as a valuable approach to understand the cause and effect connections among metrics and system elements affecting their values, thus clarifying the structure leading to a complex behavior. This research is the first step of a larger project aimed at providing companies with innovative tools to understand and manage supply chain complexit

An Overview of Academic Stress on College Athletes

Mental health is an important topic that has attracted more attention in recent years,especially in the athletic community due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Suicide cases have risenamong student athletes, placing it as the fourth leading cause of deaths among college athletes.Athletes face an extreme level of stress because of sports, academics, and their day-to-day life.This study was designed to evaluate those stress levels in athletes and identify whether men orwomen faced more academic stress during the school year. There were 130 college athletes,ranging from 18 to 25 years of age (89 men; 40 women; 1 preferred not to say), who participated.Participants were recruited face to face or by social media. Participants completed a survey thatincluded biographic questions, the WHO-5 Well-Being Index questionnaire, and the PerceptionAcademic Stress Scale (PASS). Results showed that there was a weak correlation betweenacademic stress and the well-being of college athletes. The men college athletes, however,reported a better well-being and less academic stress levels when compared to women collegeathletes. Overall, the perceptions of workload and exams caused the most academic stress withinboth genders

A new modelling approach of evaluating preventive and reactive strategies for mitigating supply chain risks

Supply chains are becoming more complex and vulnerable due to globalization and interdependency between different risks. Existing studies have focused on identifying different preventive and reactive strategies for mitigating supply chain risks and advocating the need for adopting specific strategy under a particular situation. However, current research has not addressed the issue of evaluating an optimal mix of preventive and reactive strategies taking into account their relative costs and benefits within the supply network setting of interconnected firms and organizations. We propose a new modelling approach of evaluating different combinations of such strategies using Bayesian belief networks. This technique helps in determining an optimal solution on the basis of maximum improvement in the network expected loss. We have demonstrated our approach through a simulation study and discussed practical and managerial implications

Continuity Culture: A Key Factor for Building Resilience and Sound Recovery Capabilities

This article investigates the extent to which Jordanian service organizations seek to establish continuity culture through testing, training, and updating of their business continuity plans. A survey strategy was adopted in this research. Primary and secondary data were used. Semistructured interviews were conducted with five senior managers from five large Jordanian service organizations registered with the Amman Stock Exchange. The selection of organizations was made on the basis of simple random sampling. Interviews targeted the headquarters only in order to obtain a homogenous sample. Three out of five organizations could be regarded as crisis prepared and have better chances for recovery. The other two organizations exhibited characteristics of standard practice that only emphasizes the recovery aspect of business continuity management (BCM), while paying less attention to establishing resilient cultures and embedding BCM. The findings reveal that the ability to recover following major incidents can be improved by embedding BCM in the culture of the organization and by making BCM an enterprise-wide process. This is one of few meticulous studies that have been undertaken in the Middle East and the first in Jordan to investigate the extent to which service organizations focus on embedding BCM in the organizational culture

Performance measurement : challenges for tomorrow

This paper demonstrates that the context within which performance measurement is used is changing. The key questions posed are: Is performance measurement ready for the emerging context? What are the gaps in our knowledge? and Which lines of enquiry do we need to pursue? A literature synthesis conducted by a team of multidisciplinary researchers charts the evolution of the performance-measurement literature and identifies that the literature largely follows the emerging business and global trends. The ensuing discussion introduces the currently emerging and predicted future trends and explores how current knowledge on performance measurement may deal with the emerging context. This results in identification of specific challenges for performance measurement within a holistic systems-based framework. The principle limitation of the paper is that it covers a broad literature base without in-depth analysis of a particular aspect of performance measurement. However, this weakness is also the strength of the paper. What is perhaps most significant is that there is a need for rethinking how we research the field of performance measurement by taking a holistic systems-based approach, recognizing the integrated and concurrent nature of challenges that the practitioners, and consequently the field, face