A NEW OIL SEEPAGE IN THE OMAN MOUNTAINS AND ITS GEOLOGICAL,GEOCHEMICAL AND PETROLEUM SYSTEMS CONTEXT

A minor natural oil seepage is described from an unlikely setting in the Oman Mountains. The host rocks are fractured pelagic limestones of the lower member of the Triassic – Lower Jurassic Matbat Formation of the Hamrat Duru Group in the lower part of the allochthonous Hawasina Complex. This paper summarises Oman's established oil families and documents previously recorded oil seepages as context for describing the new seepage, its geochemistry, and possible source rock. The seep oil is different to those known from Oman's oil fields and probably derived from a poor quality, Mesozoic clastic source rock containing a mix of terrigenous and marine organic matter. The most likely source appears to be the Toarcian turbiditic upper member of the Matbat Formation, equivalent to the clastic Mafraq Formation of the Arabian Platform. The occurrence of source rocks in the allochthonous sediments of the NeoTethyan Hawasina Basin has been suspected previously, though their commercial significance remains to be established.     

Gender and support for creativity at work

Although innovation is vital for the success of organizations, many may not be capitalizing on the creativity of all workers. Gender bias in attributions of creativity may lead to an imbalance in the extent to which organizations support the creativity of men and women. Because organizational support for creativity is positively associated with creative outcomes, this may undermine the creativity of women in the workplace. To determine if gender influences creative workplace behavior through support for creativity, conditional process models were used to analyze the survey responses and external employment data of workers (N = 14,590) across industries in the US. Our analyses demonstrate that men report greater support for creativity in the workplace than women, and greater support for workplace creativity leads to more frequent creative workplace behaviors. The proportion of women employed in an industry influences this relationship, such that differences between men and women become smaller as the proportion of women in an industry increases. However, the level of creativity required in an occupation does not influence the relationship between gender and creativity. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Biomimetic Approach for the Production of 3D Woven Spherical Composite Applied in Apparel Protection and Performance

Applied Composite Materials - Current sports bras are typically manufactured via a cut and sew process resulting in a high volume of post-production material waste. Seams derived from this cut and...     

Influence of ammonia and lysine supplementation on yeast growth and fermentation with respect to gluten-free type brewing using unmalted sorghum grain

Because gluten-free type brewing with unmalted sorghum does not provide adequate nitrogen for complete fermentation, wort supplementation with ammonia (as diammonium phosphate, DAP) or lysine on yeast performance was investigated. By Phenotype Microarray, under aerobic conditions, greater yeast growth was indicated with DAP than lysine both as a single source and combined with sorghum wort amino acids. With sorghum fermentation, both DAP and lysine improved maltose and maltotriose uptake. However, DAP supplementation also maintained yeast numbers (24.0–21.3 × 10⁶ cells mL⁻¹), whereas there was a decline with lysine supplementation. Lysine supplementation also resulted in adverse effects on yeast cell morphology. Neither DAP nor lysine supplementation resulted in evident genetic change to the yeast, but the change in substrate from barley malt wort to unmalted sorghum wort slightly altered the yeast genetically. Therefore, ammonia as DAP has potential as a nitrogen supplement for improving yeast fermentation performance in sorghum gluten-free brewing.     

Static pentane extraction as a potential alternative to Soxhlet extraction for polypropylene olive oil overall migration limit measurements

Static pentane extraction of olive oil from polypropylene was evaluated as a safer, higher throughput alternative to pentane Soxhlet extraction for the recovery of olive oil from polypropylene for overall migration limit determinations. Static, ambient temperature, pentane extraction achieved quantitative recovery of olive oil from polypropylene plaques prepared by using the OM‐5 overall migration limit protocol. In addition to validation data for static extractions, a modified esterification procedure is presented as a means to accommodate the larger sample sets that are enabled with static extraction.     

Nondestructive evaluation of plasma-sprayed thermal barrier coatings

Acoustic emission has been used as a nondestructive evaluation technique to examine the thermal shock response of thermal barrier coatings. In this study, samples of partially stabilized zirconia powder were sprayed and acoustic emission (AE) data were taken in a series of thermal shock tests in an effort to correlate AE with a given failure mechanism. Microstructural evidence was examined using parallel beam x-ray diffraction and optical microscopy. The AE data are discussed in terms of cumulative amplitude distributions and the use of this technique to characterize fracture events.