Nanopore structures of isolated kerogen and bulk shale in Bakken Formation

Pores that exist within the organic matter can affect the total pore system of bulk shale samples and, as a result, need to be studied and analyzed carefully. In this study, samples from the Bakken Formation, in conjunction with the kerogen that was isolated from them, were studied and compared through a set of analytical techniques: X-ray diffraction (XRD), Rock-Eval pyrolysis, Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and gas adsorption (CO 2 and N 2 ). The results can be summarized as follows: 1) quartz and clays are two major minerals in the Bakken samples; 2) the samples have rich organic matter content with TOC greater than 10 wt%; 3) kerogen is marine type II; 4) gas adsorption showed that isolated kerogen compared to the bulk sample has larger micropore volume and surface area, meso- and macropore volume, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area; 5) deconvolution of pore size distribution (PSD) curves demonstrated that pores in the isolated kerogen could be separated into five distinct clusters, whereas bulk shale samples exhibited one additional pore cluster with an average pore size of 4 nm hosted in the minerals. The comparison of PSD curves obtained from isolated kerogen and bulk shale samples proved that most of the micropores in the shale are hosted within the organic matter while the mesopores with a size ranging between 2 and 10 nm are mainly hosted by minerals. The overall results demonstrated that organic matter-hosted pores make a significant contribution to the total porosity of the Bakken shale samples

Interleukin 15 Levels in Serum May Predict a Severe Disease Course in Patients with Early Arthritis

Background: Interleukin-15 (IL-15) is thought to be involved in the physiopathological mechanisms of RA and it can be detected in the serum and the synovial fluid of inflamed joints in patients with RA but not in patients with osteoarthritis or other inflammatory joint diseases. Therefore, the objective of this work is to analyse whether serum IL-15 (sIL-15) levels serve as a biomarker of disease severity in patients with early arthritis (EA). Methodology and Results: Data from 190 patients in an EA register were analysed (77.2% female; median age 53 years; 6-month median disease duration at entry). Clinical and treatment information was recorded systematically, especially the prescription of disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs. Two multivariate longitudinal analyses were performed with different dependent variables: 1) DAS28 and 2) a variable reflecting intensive treatment. Both included sIL-15 as predictive variable and other variables associated with disease severity, including rheumatoid factor (RF) and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies (ACPA). Of the 171 patients (638 visits analysed) completing the follow-up, 71% suffered rheumatoid arthritis and 29% were considered as undifferentiated arthritis. Elevated sIL-15 was detected in 29% of this population and this biomarker did not overlap extensively with RF or ACPA. High sIL-15 levels (β Coefficient [95% confidence interval]: 0.12 [0.06-0.18]; p&0.001) or ACPA (0.34 [0.01-0.67]; p = 0.044) were significantly and independently associated with a higher DAS28 during follow-up, after adjusting for confounding variables such as gender, age and treatment. In addition, those patients with elevated sIL-15 had a significantly higher risk of receiving intensive treatment (RR 1.78, 95% confidence interval 1.18-2.7; p = 0.007). Conclusions: Patients with EA displaying high baseline sIL-15 suffered a more severe disease and received more intensive treatment. Thus, sIL-15 may be a biomarker for patients that are candidates for early and more intensive treatmentThe work of Belen Díaz-Sánchez was supported by the RETICS Programme (Programa de Redes Temáticas de Investigación Colaborativa [Colaborative Research Thematic Network Programme]; RD08/0075 - RIER [Red de Inflamación y Enfermedades Reumáticas; Inflammation and Rheumatic Diseases Network]) from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain (URL: www.isciii.es) within the VI National Plan for I+D+I 2008–2011 (FEDER). The work of Isidoro González-Álvaro was in part supported by a grant for the Intensification of the Research Tasks in the National Health Care System from Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain. The consumables for measurements and data analysis were supported by a Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria grant (08/0754) from the Instituto de Salud Carlos II

Compressibility systematics of calcite-type borates : An experimental and theoretical structural study on ABO3 (A = Al, Sc, Fe and In)

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Journal of Physical Chemistry C , copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jp4124259The structural properties of calcite-type orthoborates ABO(3) (A = Al, Fe, Sc, and In) have been investigated at high pressures up to 32 GPa. They were studied experimentally using synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction and theoretically by means of ab initio total-energy calculations. We found that the calcite-type structure remains stable up to the highest pressure explored in the four studied compounds. Experimental and calculated static geometries (unit-cell parameters and internal coordinates), bulk moduli, and their pressure derivatives are in good agreement. The compressibility along the c axis is roughly three times that along the a axis. Our data clearly indicate that the compressibility of borates is dominated by that of the [AO(6)] octahedral group and depends on the size of the trivalent A cations. An analysis of the relationship between isomorphic borates and carbonates is also presented, which points to the potentiality of considering borates as chemical analogues of the carbonate mineral family.This study was supported by the Spanish government MEC under Grant Nos.: MAT2010-21270-C04-01/03/04 and CTQ2009-14596-C02-01, by MALTA Consolider Ingenio 2010 Project (CSD2007-00045), by Generalitat Valenciana (GVA-ACOMP-2013-1012), and by the Vicerrectorado de Investigacion y Desarrollo of the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (UPV2011-0914 PAID-05-11 and UPV2011-0966 PAID-06-11). We thank ALBA and Diamond synchrotrons for providing beamtime for the XRD experiments. A.M. and P.R-H. acknowledge computing time provided by Red Espanola de Supercomputacion (RES) and MALTA-Cluster. J.A.S. and B.G.-D. acknowledge Juan de la Cierva fellowship and FPI programs for financial support. We are gratefully indebted to Dr. Capponi and Dr. Diehl for supplying us single crystals of AlBO3 and FeBO3, respectively.Santamaría Pérez, D.; Gomis Hilario, O.; Sans, JÁ.; Ortiz, HM.; Vegas, Á.; Errandonea, D.; Ruiz-Fuertes, J.... (2014). Compressibility systematics of calcite-type borates : An experimental and theoretical structural study on ABO3 (A = Al, Sc, Fe and In). Journal of Physical Chemistry C. 118(8):4354-4361. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp4124259S43544361118

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Ecos de la academia: Revista de la Facultad de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología - FECYT Nro 6

Ecos de la academia, Revista de la Facultad de Educación Ciencia y Tecnología es una publicación científica de la Universidad Técnica del Norte, con revisión por pares a doble ciego que publica artículos en idioma español, quichua, portugués e inglés. Se edita con una frecuencia semestral con dos números por año.En ella se divulgan trabajos originales e inéditos generados por los investigadores, docentes y estudiantes de la FECYT, y contribuciones de profesionales de instituciones docentes e investigativas dentro y fuera del país, con calidad, originalidad y relevancia en las áreas de ciencias sociales y tecnología aplicada.Modelos multidimensionales del bienestar en contextos de enseñanza- aprendizaje: una revisión sistemática. Nuevas tendencias para el área académica de la Publicidad en la zona 1 del Ecuador. Propuesta de un curso de escritura académica bajo la base de modelos experienciales. Aproximación al estudio de las emociones. Seguimiento a egresados y graduados para actualizar el perfil de egreso y profesional. Impacto de la Gerencia de Calidad en el clima organizacional en Educación Básica. Comunicación efectiva del gerente educativo orientada al manejo de conflictos en el personal docente. Meritocracia: Democratización o exclusión en el acceso a la educación superior en Ecuador. Asertividad y desempeño académico en estudiantes universitarios. La creatividad en la formación profesional. Aspectos metodológicos en el proceso de enseñanza- aprendizaje de la gimnasia en estudiantes de Educación Física. English Language Learning Interaction through Web 2.0 Technologies. La sistematización de la práctica educativa y su relación con la metodología de la investigación. El ozono y la oxigenación hiperbárica: una vía para mejorar la recuperación en lesiones deportivas. La labor tutorial: Independencia del aprendizaje en el contexto universitario. Motivación hacia la profesión docente en la Enseñanza Secundaria. El uso académico de Facebook y WhatsApp en estudiantes universitarios... La educación superior en Ecuador: situación actual y factores de mejora de la calidad. El Proyecto de Investigación “Imbabura Étnica”

Global age-sex-specific mortality, life expectancy, and population estimates in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1950–2021, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

Background Estimates of demographic metrics are crucial to assess levels and trends of population health outcomes. The profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on populations worldwide has underscored the need for timely estimates to understand this unprecedented event within the context of long-term population health trends. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 provides new demographic estimates for 204 countries and territories and 811 additional subnational locations from 1950 to 2021, with a particular emphasis on changes in mortality and life expectancy that occurred during the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic period. Methods 22 223 data sources from vital registration, sample registration, surveys, censuses, and other sources were used to estimate mortality, with a subset of these sources used exclusively to estimate excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2026 data sources were used for population estimation. Additional sources were used to estimate migration; the effects of the HIV epidemic; and demographic discontinuities due to conflicts, famines, natural disasters, and pandemics, which are used as inputs for estimating mortality and population. Spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression (ST-GPR) was used to generate under-5 mortality rates, which synthesised 30 763 location-years of vital registration and sample registration data, 1365 surveys and censuses, and 80 other sources. ST-GPR was also used to estimate adult mortality (between ages 15 and 59 years) based on information from 31 642 location-years of vital registration and sample registration data, 355 surveys and censuses, and 24 other sources. Estimates of child and adult mortality rates were then used to generate life tables with a relational model life table system. For countries with large HIV epidemics, life tables were adjusted using independent estimates of HIV-specific mortality generated via an epidemiological analysis of HIV prevalence surveys, antenatal clinic serosurveillance, and other data sources. Excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 was determined by subtracting observed all-cause mortality (adjusted for late registration and mortality anomalies) from the mortality expected in the absence of the pandemic. Expected mortality was calculated based on historical trends using an ensemble of models. In location-years where all-cause mortality data were unavailable, we estimated excess mortality rates using a regression model with covariates pertaining to the pandemic. Population size was computed using a Bayesian hierarchical cohort component model. Life expectancy was calculated using age-specific mortality rates and standard demographic methods. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were calculated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered values from a 1000-draw posterior distribution. Findings Global all-cause mortality followed two distinct patterns over the study period: age-standardised mortality rates declined between 1950 and 2019 (a 62·8% [95% UI 60·5–65·1] decline), and increased during the COVID-19 pandemic period (2020–21; 5·1% [0·9–9·6] increase). In contrast with the overall reverse in mortality trends during the pandemic period, child mortality continued to decline, with 4·66 million (3·98–5·50) global deaths in children younger than 5 years in 2021 compared with 5·21 million (4·50–6·01) in 2019. An estimated 131 million (126–137) people died globally from all causes in 2020 and 2021 combined, of which 15·9 million (14·7–17·2) were due to the COVID-19 pandemic (measured by excess mortality, which includes deaths directly due to SARS-CoV-2 infection and those indirectly due to other social, economic, or behavioural changes associated with the pandemic). Excess mortality rates exceeded 150 deaths per 100 000 population during at least one year of the pandemic in 80 countries and territories, whereas 20 nations had a negative excess mortality rate in 2020 or 2021, indicating that all-cause mortality in these countries was lower during the pandemic than expected based on historical trends. Between 1950 and 2021, global life expectancy at birth increased by 22·7 years (20·8–24·8), from 49·0 years (46·7–51·3) to 71·7 years (70·9–72·5). Global life expectancy at birth declined by 1·6 years (1·0–2·2) between 2019 and 2021, reversing historical trends. An increase in life expectancy was only observed in 32 (15·7%) of 204 countries and territories between 2019 and 2021. The global population reached 7·89 billion (7·67–8·13) people in 2021, by which time 56 of 204 countries and territories had peaked and subsequently populations have declined. The largest proportion of population growth between 2020 and 2021 was in sub-Saharan Africa (39·5% [28·4–52·7]) and south Asia (26·3% [9·0–44·7]). From 2000 to 2021, the ratio of the population aged 65 years and older to the population aged younger than 15 years increased in 188 (92·2%) of 204 nations. Interpretation Global adult mortality rates markedly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, reversing past decreasing trends, while child mortality rates continued to decline, albeit more slowly than in earlier years. Although COVID-19 had a substantial impact on many demographic indicators during the first 2 years of the pandemic, overall global health progress over the 72 years evaluated has been profound, with considerable improvements in mortality and life expectancy. Additionally, we observed a deceleration of global population growth since 2017, despite steady or increasing growth in lower-income countries, combined with a continued global shift of population age structures towards older ages. These demographic changes will likely present future challenges to health systems, economies, and societies. The comprehensive demographic estimates reported here will enable researchers, policy makers, health practitioners, and other key stakeholders to better understand and address the profound changes that have occurred in the global health landscape following the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and longer-term trends beyond the pandemic

Multifractal analysis of gas adsorption isotherms for pore structure characterization of the Bakken Shale

Understanding pore heterogeneity can enable us to obtain a deeper insight into the flow and transport processes in any porous medium. In this study, multifractal analysis was employed to analyze gas adsorption isotherms (CO 2 and N 2 ) for pore structure characterization in both a source (Upper-Lower Bakken) and a reservoir rock (Middle Bakken). For this purpose, detected micropores from CO 2 adsorption isotherms and meso-macropores from N 2 adsorption isotherms were analyzed separately. The results showed that the generalized dimensions derived from CO 2 and the N 2 adsorption isotherms decrease as q increases, demonstrating a multifractal behavior followed by f(a) curves of all pores exhibiting a very strong asymmetry shape. Samples from the Middle Bakken demonstrated the smallest average H value and largest average a 10- -a 10+ for micropores while samples from the Upper Bakken depicted the highest average a 10- -a 10+ for the meso-macropores. This indicated that the Middle Bakken and the Upper Bakken have the largest micropore and meso-macropore heterogeneity, respectively. The impact of rock composition on pore structures showed that organic matter could increase the micropore connectivity and reduce micropore heterogeneity. Also, organic matter will reduce meso-macropore connectivity and increase meso-macropore heterogeneity. We were not able to establish a robust relationship between maturity and pore heterogeneity of the source rock samples from the Bakken

A comprehensive pore structure study of the Bakken Shale with SANS, N<inf>2</inf> adsorption and mercury intrusion

Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) analysis was performed on six Bakken Shale samples with different maturities to reveal the complexities in the pore structure. Pore size distribution (PSD), porosity and specific surface area (SSA) were calculated from SANS data via the Polydisperse Spherical Pore (PDSP) model and compared with the data from N2 adsorption and mercury intrusion. The results showed that the Bakken samples have a very small porosity value (less than 1%) and a very larger specific surface area (larger than 180995 cm−1) in the measuring pore size range (pore diameter: 1–200 nm). SANS and N2 adsorption can detect pores in the similar size range (2–200 nm). The SSA measured by SANS and mercury intrusion was found larger than the one detected by N2 adsorption. Pore structure information that is obtained from SANS, N2 adsorption, and mercury intrusion methods exhibited a fractal and multifractal behavior. Moreover, the pore size distribution that is calculated from SANS data was the most heterogeneous. Finally, the effects of rock composition on pore structures demonstrated that organic matter hosts some isolated pores while clay minerals do not host a large quantity of pores that are either connected or isolated

Experimental Study on the Impact of Thermal Maturity on Shale Microstructures Using Hydrous Pyrolysis

Hydrous pyrolysis was applied to four low-maturity aliquots from the Utica, Excello, Monterey, and Niobrara Shale Formations in North America to create artificial maturation sequences, which could be used to study the impact of maturation on geochemical and microstructural properties. Modified Rock-Eval pyrolysis, reflectance, organic petrology, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were employed to analyze their geochemical properties, while gas adsorption (CO2 and N2) was used to characterize their pore structures (pores < 200 nm). Organic petrography using white and blue light (fluorescence) before and after hydrous pyrolysis showed that amorphous organic matter cracked into solid bitumen, oil, and gas during hydrous pyrolysis. A reduction of the CH2/CH3 ratio in hydrous pyrolysis residues was observed from FTIR analysis. Rock-Eval pyrolysis showed that kerogens in the four samples were dissimilar, and hydrous pyrolysis residues showed smaller hydrogen index and Sh2 values than starting materials. Results from CO2 and N2 gas adsorption analysis showed that pore structures (micropore volume, micropore surface area, meso-macropore volume, and meso-macropore surface area) changed significantly during hydrous pyrolysis. However, changes in pore structure were dissimilar among the four samples, which was attributed to different activation energies of organic matter. A thermodynamic fractal model showed a decrease in fractal dimensions of Utica, Monterey, and Excello after hydrous pyrolysis, indicating a decrease in surface roughness. The pore size heterogeneity in the Utica sample increased as hydrous pyrolysis temperature increased, whereas the pore size heterogeneity distributions in the Monterey and Excello decreased based on the N2 adsorption data