Over the last few decades, sustainability has become a great focus for individuals as well as businesses globally. The focus of this study was to understand why businesses purchase certain office supplies and why they may not be choosing to purchase the most sustainable options. The research question asked, “why are certain businesses reluctant to make positive, sustainable changes to their usage of office materials in their workplace environments?” Most companies do not look for alternatives that would benefit the environment when purchasing products for their office space. The reasons behind this hesitancy to change was studied through current literature on the topic as well as interviews conducted with Office Managers of several different businesses. Comparisons were made between each businesses’ decision patterns in order to find the root cause or causes of why companies do not choose more sustainable options when purchasing products for their workspaces. The interviews revealed that cost and quality are the most important factors these businesses take into consideration when purchasing office supplies. While some companies have looked into alternative products for their supplies, they ultimately choose to still purchase the less sustainable option. This is because the less sustainable option is often cheaper, and the company knows what quality to expect for the item. Overall, all of the Office Managers who were interviewed acknowledged some sort of sustainable practice that their company was taking part in, even if it did not directly relate to the types of office supplies that they purchase. This inclusion of general sustainable practices demonstrates how businesses are making efforts one way or another towards a more sustainable future. Therefore, this awareness to sustainability suggests that most, if not all businesses will eventually end up purchasing sustainable alternatives for their office supplies. However, the timeframe for which this occurs for each company will likely vary.

Assembly theory as a way of defining the biotic/abiotic boundary has been established for molecules, but not yet for crystal structures. This is an assembly algorithm that calculates the complexity of biotic and abiotic minerals in order to constrain the quantitative fundamentals of "life". The calculation utilizes the Hermann-Mauguin space group symmetry and Wyckoff sites of mineral unit cells to calculate the path-building complexity of a crystal structure. 5,644 minerals from the American Mineralogist COD database were run through the algorithm. The five structures with the highest information complexity were a mix of biotic and abiotic minerals, indicating that further calculations on larger datasets would be pertinent. Furthermore, an expansion of the definition of mineral to include biotically synthesized solids would further research efforts aimed at using minerals as possible biomarkers.

During the Dawn mission, bright spots were discovered on the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres, which were determined to be evaporite deposits of sodium carbonate, ammonium carbonate, and hydrohalite. These deposits are significant because they indicate the presence of subsurface water and potential geologic activity on Ceres. These evaporites form from the brine-water mixture in the deep Ceres reservoir, which likely possesses the conditions ideal for forming complex organics. Here, we report the results of a suite of laboratory techniques (CHN Elemental Analyzer, Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry, Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Gas Chromatography, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller Analysis) for quantifying the likelihood of primordial carbon survival and distribution in analog materials found on Ceres, particularly in salt evaporates. We are specifically looking at if the amino acid glycine can be preserved in sodium chloride crystals. Our results conclude that if the Ceres brine reservoir is saturated with organics, and with the lower limits that we have for our instrumentation thus far, these techniques should be more than sufficient to measure glycine content should we ever receive samples from Ceres.