Noble gases in deepwater oils of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 19(11), (2018): 4218-4235. doi: 10.1029/2018GC007654Hydrocarbon migration and emplacement processes remain underconstrained despite the vast potential economic value associated with oil and gas. Noble gases provide information about hydrocarbon generation, fluid migration pathways, reservoir conditions, and the relative volumes of oil versus water in the subsurface. Produced gas He‐Ne‐Ar‐Kr‐Xe data from two distinct oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico (Genesis and Hoover‐Diana) are used to calibrate a model that takes into account both water‐oil solubility exchange and subsequent gas cap formation. Reconstructed noble gas signatures in oils reflect simple (two‐phase) oil‐water exchange imparted during migration from the source rock to the trap, which are subsequently modified by gas cap formation at current reservoir conditions. Calculated, oil to water volume ratios ( urn:x-wiley:15252027:media:ggge21714:ggge21714-math-0001) in Tertiary‐sourced oils from the Hoover‐Diana system are 2–3 times greater on average than those in the Jurassic sourced oils from the Genesis reservoirs. Higher urn:x-wiley:15252027:media:ggge21714:ggge21714-math-0002 in Hoover‐Diana versus Genesis can be interpreted in two ways: either (1) the Hoover reservoir interval has 2–3 times more oil than any of the individual Genesis reservoirs, which is consistent with independent estimates of oil in place for the respective reservoirs, or (2) Genesis oils have experienced longer migration pathways than Hoover‐Diana oils and thus have interacted with more water. The ability to determine a robust urn:x-wiley:15252027:media:ggge21714:ggge21714-math-0003, despite gas cap formation and possible gas cap loss, is extremely powerful. For example, when volumetric hydrocarbon ratios are combined with independent estimates of hydrocarbon migration distance and/or formation fluid volumes, this technique has the potential to differentiate between large and small oil accumulations.We thank ExxonMobil for funding and providing the samples. In addition, we thank James Scott and two anonymous reviewers for their comprehensive and constructive reviews, as well as Janne Blichert‐Toft for editorial handling.2019-04-1

Basin architecture controls on the chemical evolution and 4He distribution of groundwater in the Paradox Basin

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Tyne, R., Barry, P., Cheng, A., Hillegonds, D., Kim, J.-H., McIntosh, J., & Ballentine, C. Basin architecture controls on the chemical evolution and 4He distribution of groundwater in the Paradox Basin. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 589, (2022):117580, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2022.117580.Fluids such as 4He, H2, CO2 and hydrocarbons accumulate within Earth's crust. Crustal reservoirs also have potential to store anthropogenic waste (e.g., CO2, spent nuclear fuel). Understanding fluid migration and how this is impacted by basin stratigraphy and evolution is key to exploiting fluid accumulations and identifying viable storage sites. Noble gases are powerful tracers of fluid migration and chemical evolution, as they are inert and only fractionate by physical processes. The distribution of 4He, in particular, is an important tool for understanding diffusion within basins and for groundwater dating. Here, we report noble gas isotope and abundance data from 36 wells across the Paradox Basin, Colorado Plateau, USA, which has abundant hydrocarbon, 4He and CO2 accumulations. Both groundwater and hydrocarbon samples were collected from 7 stratigraphic units, including within, above and below the Paradox Formation (P.Fm) evaporites. Air-corrected helium isotope ratios (0.0046 - 0.127 RA) are consistent with radiogenic overprinting of predominantly groundwater-derived noble gases. The highest radiogenic noble gas concentrations are found in formations below the P.Fm. Atmosphere-derived noble gas signatures are consistent with meteoric recharge and multi-phase interactions both above and below the P.Fm, with greater groundwater-gas interactions in the shallower formations. Vertical diffusion models, used to reconstruct observed groundwater helium concentrations, show the P.Fm evaporite layer to be effectively impermeable to helium diffusion and a regional barrier for mobile elements but, similar to other basins, a basement 4He flux is required to accumulate the 4He concentrations observed beneath the P.Fm. The verification that evaporites are regionally impermeable to diffusion, of even the most diffusive elements, is important for sub-salt helium and hydrogen exploration and storage, and a critical parameter in determining 4He-derived mean groundwater ages. This is critical to understanding the role of basin stratigraphy and deformation on fluid flow and gas accumulation.This work was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship to R.L. Tyne (Grant ref. NE/L002612/1). We gratefully acknowledge the William F. Keck Foundation for support of this research, and the National Science Foundation (NSF EAR #2120733). J.C. McIntosh and C.J. Ballentine are fellows of the CIFAR Earth4D Subsurface Science and Exploration Program. The authors would like to acknowledge the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Paradox Resources, Navajo Petroleum, US Oil and Gas INC, Anson Resources, Lantz Indergard (Lisbon Valley Mining Co.), Ambria Dell'Oro and Mohammad Marza for help with sampling

DCQA: Document-Level Chart Question Answering towards Complex Reasoning and Common-Sense Understanding

Visually-situated languages such as charts and plots are omnipresent in real-world documents. These graphical depictions are human-readable and are often analyzed in visually-rich documents to address a variety of questions that necessitate complex reasoning and common-sense responses. Despite the growing number of datasets that aim to answer questions over charts, most only address this task in isolation, without considering the broader context of document-level question answering. Moreover, such datasets lack adequate common-sense reasoning information in their questions. In this work, we introduce a novel task named document-level chart question answering (DCQA). The goal of this task is to conduct document-level question answering, extracting charts or plots in the document via document layout analysis (DLA) first and subsequently performing chart question answering (CQA). The newly developed benchmark dataset comprises 50,010 synthetic documents integrating charts in a wide range of styles (6 styles in contrast to 3 for PlotQA and ChartQA) and includes 699,051 questions that demand a high degree of reasoning ability and common-sense understanding. Besides, we present the development of a potent question-answer generation engine that employs table data, a rich color set, and basic question templates to produce a vast array of reasoning question-answer pairs automatically. Based on DCQA, we devise an OCR-free transformer for document-level chart-oriented understanding, capable of DLA and answering complex reasoning and common-sense questions over charts in an OCR-free manner. Our DCQA dataset is expected to foster research on understanding visualizations in documents, especially for scenarios that require complex reasoning for charts in the visually-rich document. We implement and evaluate a set of baselines, and our proposed method achieves comparable results

Investigating arsenic contents in surface and drinking water by voltammetry and the method of standard additions

Testing water samples for arsenic (As) contamination has become an important water quality issue worldwide. Arsenic usually occurs in very small concentrations and a sensitive analytical method is needed. We present here a 1-day laboratory module developed to introduce Earth Sciences and/or Chemistry student undergraduates to key aspects of this topical issue. In this practical session, students were first introduced to the worldwide problems of arsenic contamination in groundwaters as a motivation of the experimental work. This latter consisted in the quantification of As levels in surface and drinking water at the trace level (nM - ppb) using the electroanalytical technique of anodic stripping voltammetry and the method of standard addition. Results were then discussed with respect to water quality guidelines and geology. The complexity of data interpretation in this exercise can be tailored to a range of abilities and subject areas suited to the students and the course

Mechanistic study of endothelium independent vasodilation effects of wogonin

34-40Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, locally known as HuangQin, and commonly as Baikal or Chinese skullcap, is an important herb in Chinese traditional medicine. The flavonoids from this plant are main active substances responsible for its medicinal applications. Wogonin is one such active ingredient derived from this plant. Here, we investigated the mechanism of the vasodilation effect of wogonin on isolated rat thoracic aortas. For this study, endothelium intact and endothelium removed thoracic aortic rings were prepared from rats. Using a tension transducer, the tension of the rat thoracic aortic rings was recorded. Results showed that wogonin is able to relax the endothelium-intact aortic rings, but L-NAME, indomethacin (Indo), and methylene blue (MB) could not reduce the tension in these rings. Wogonin was also able to relax endotheliumremoved rings. However, treatment with tetraethylammonium (TEA), BaCl2, glibenclamide (Gly), 4-aminopyridine (4-AP), and verapamil (Ver) had no effect on vasodilation induced by wogonin. Using wogonin to pre-treat endothelium-removed aortic rings reduced the contraction induced by K+. Pre-treatment of endothelium-removed aortic rings with wogonin markedly reduced the contraction induced by 10-6 M PE in Ca2+-free solution. It could be concluded that L-type calcium channels and intracellular Ca2+ release is inhibited by wogonin

Mechanistic study of endothelium independent vasodilation effects of wogonin

Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, locally known as HuangQin, and commonly as Baikal or Chinese skullcap, is an important herb in Chinese traditional medicine. The flavonoids from this plant are main active substances responsible for its medicinal applications. Wogonin is one such active ingredient derived from this plant. Here, we investigated the mechanism of the vasodilation effect of wogonin on isolated rat thoracic aortas. For this study, endothelium intact and endothelium removed thoracic aortic rings were prepared from rats. Using a tension transducer, the tension of the rat thoracic aortic rings was recorded. Results showed that wogonin is able to relax the endothelium-intact aortic rings, but L-NAME, indomethacin (Indo), and methylene blue (MB) could not reduce the tension in these rings. Wogonin was also able to relax endotheliumremoved rings. However, treatment with tetraethylammonium (TEA), BaCl2, glibenclamide (Gly), 4-aminopyridine (4-AP), and verapamil (Ver) had no effect on vasodilation induced by wogonin. Using wogonin to pre-treat endothelium-removed aortic rings reduced the contraction induced by K+. Pre-treatment of endothelium-removed aortic rings with wogonin markedly reduced the contraction induced by 10-6 M PE in Ca2+-free solution. It could be concluded that L-type calcium channels and intracellular Ca2+ release is inhibited by wogonin

A Magnetic Flux Leakage and Magnetostrictive Guided Wave Hybrid Transducer for Detecting Bridge Cables

Condition assessment of cables has gained considerable attention for the bridge safety. A magnetic flux leakage and magnetostrictive guided wave hybrid transducer is provided to inspect bridge cables. The similarities and differences between the two methods are investigated. The hybrid transducer for bridge cables consists of an aluminum framework, climbing modules, embedded magnetizers and a ribbon coil. The static axial magnetic field provided by the magnetizers meets the needs of the magnetic flux leakage testing and the magnetostrictive guided wave testing. The magnetizers also provide the attraction for the climbing modules. In the magnetic flux leakage testing for the free length of cable, the coil induces the axial leakage magnetic field. In the magnetostrictive guided wave testing for the anchorage zone, the coil provides a pulse high power variational magnetic field for generating guided waves; the coil induces the magnetic field variation for receiving guided waves. The experimental results show that the transducer with the corresponding inspection system could be applied to detect the broken wires in the free length and in the anchorage zone of bridge cables

The interfacial engineering of metal electrodes for high-specific-energy and long-lifespan batteries

High-specific-energy batteries with long-lifespan are the development aspiration for energy storage applications. Metal electrodes with high specific capacity and low reduction potential are potential candidates for next-generation high-specific-energy batteries. Nevertheless, the stability of the metal electrode batteries is constantly suffered from the unstable interface issue during the plating/stripping process, such as dendrite formation, dynamic evolution of solid electrolyte interphase, and other accompanied side reactions. To solve these challenges, numerous researches have been intensively studied based on the interfacial engineering of metal electrodes, including electrode configuration optimization, interfacial chemistry regulation and solid–solid interface construction, and the recent progress is elaborately introduced in this paper. Nevertheless, the dendrite issues cannot be entirely prohibited in solid metal electrodes, which motivate the search for potential alternatives. Liquid-metal electrodes with completely reversible structural changes and high mass transfer rate are rendered as an effective approach to solve the dendrite problem. Therefore, the development of liquid metal electrode batteries is reviewed in this paper, in which the interfacial issues are explicated and some commendable achievements are summarized. In the end, the implementation of interfacial engineering and the development roadmap of the metal electrode batteries are prospected

Coupling PLUS–InVEST Model for Ecosystem Service Research in Yunnan Province, China

In efforts to improve regional ecosystem service functions, coordinate land development and ecological conservation, and establish a reference for optimizing land resource allocation and policy formulation to cope with climate change, it is critical to investigate the spatial distribution of land use/cover change (LUCC) and ecosystem services (ESs) under future climate change. This study proposes a framework based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway and Representative Concentration Pathway (SSP-RCP), integrating the patch-generating land use simulation (PLUS) model and the integrated valuation of ecosystem services and tradeoffs (InVEST) model to analyze the spatial agglomeration of ESs, to analyze the importance of each driving factors. The results of the study show as follows: (1) the combination of CMIP6 and PLUS models can effectively simulate land use with an overall accuracy of 0.9379. (2) In spatial correlation, ESs show good clustering in all three future scenarios, with similar distribution of cold hotspots in the SSP126 and SSP245 scenarios. Hotspots are more dispersed and cold spots are shifted to the west in the SSP585 scenario. (3) GDP is an important factor in carbon storage and habitat quality, and precipitation has a greater impact on soil retention and water production. Overall, ESs can be increased by appropriately controlling population and economic development, balancing economic development and ecological protection, promoting energy transition, maintaining ecological hotspot areas, and improving cold spot areas

MOESM1 of Dual-drug loaded nanoneedles with targeting property for efficient cancer therapy

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Standard curves of MTX in DMF via ultraviolet spectroscopy. Figure S2. Standard curves of HCPT in DMF via fluorescence spectroscopy