Combination of sonic wave velocity, density and electrical resistivity for joint estimation of gas-hydrate reservoir parameters and their uncertainties

Gas-hydrate saturation and porosity are the most crucial reservoir parameters for gas-hydrate resource assessment. Numerous academics have put forward elastic and electrical petrophysical models for calculating the saturation and porosity of gas-hydrate. However, owing to the limitations of a single petrophysical model, the estimation of gas-hydrate saturation and porosity using single elastic or electrical measurement data appears to be inconsistent and uncertain. In this study, the sonic wave velocity, density and resistivity well log data are combined with a Bayesian linear inversion method for the simultaneous estimation of gas-hydrate saturation and porosity. The sonic wave velocity, density and resistivity data of the Shenhu area in the South China Sea are used to estimate the gas-hydrate saturation and porosity. To validate the accuracy of this method, the estimation results are compared with the saturation obtained from pore water chemistry and porosity obtained from density logs. The well log data examples show that the joint estimation method not only provides a rapid estimation of the gas-hydrate reservoir parameters but also improves the accuracy of results and determines their uncertainty.Document Type: Original articleCited as: Zhang, X., Li, Q., Li, L., Fan, Q., Geng, J. Combination of sonic wave velocity, density and electrical resistivity for joint estimation of gas-hydrate reservoir parameters and their uncertainties. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2023, 10(2): 133-140. https://doi.org/10.46690/ager.2023.11.0

Characterization and mechanism of simultaneous degradation of aflatoxin B1 and zearalenone by an edible fungus of Agrocybe cylindracea GC-Ac2

Contamination with multiple mycotoxins is a major issue for global food safety and trade. This study focused on the degradation of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and zearalenone (ZEN) by 8 types of edible fungi belonging to 6 species, inclulding Agaricus bisporus, Agrocybe cylindracea, Cyclocybe cylindracea, Cyclocybe aegerita, Hypsizygus marmoreus and Lentinula edodes. Among these fungi, Agrocybe cylindracea strain GC-Ac2 was shown to be the most efficient in the degradation of AFB1 and ZEN. Under optimal degradation conditions (pH 6.0 and 37.4°C for 37.9 h), the degradation rate of both AFB1 and ZEN reached over 96%. Through the analysis of functional detoxification components, it was found that the removal of AFB1 and ZEN was primarily degraded by the culture supernatant of the fungus. The culture supernatant exhibited a maximum manganese peroxidase (MnP) activity of 2.37 U/mL. Interestingly, Agrocybe cylindracea strain GC-Ac2 also showed the capability to degrade other mycotoxins in laboratory-scale mushroom substrates, including 15A-deoxynivalenol, fumonisin B1, B2, B3, T-2 toxin, ochratoxin A, and sterigmatocystin. The mechanism of degradation of these mycotoxins was speculated to be catalyzed by a complex enzyme system, which include MnP and other ligninolytic enzymes. It is worth noting that Agrocybe cylindracea can degrade multiple mycotoxins and produce MnP, which is a novel and significant discovery. These results suggest that this candidate strain and its enzyme system are expected to become valuable biomaterials for the simultaneous degradation of multiple mycotoxins

Electrophysiological correlates of emotional source memory in high-trait-anxiety individuals

The interaction between recognition memory and emotion has become a research hotspot in recent years. Dual process theory posits that familiarity and recollection are two separate processes contributing to recognition memory, but further experimental evidence is needed. The present study explored the emotional context effects on successful and unsuccessful source retrieval amongst 15 high-trait-anxiety college students by using event-related potentials (ERPs) measurement. During study, a happy, fearful, or neutral face picture first was displayed, then a Chinese word was superimposed centrally on the picture and subjects were asked to remember the word and the corresponding type of picture. During the test participants were instructed to press one of four buttons to indicate whether the displayed word was an old or new word. And then, for the old word, indicate whether it had been shown with a fearful, happy, or neutral face during the study. ERPs were generally more positive for remembered words than for new words and the ERP difference was termed as an old/new effect. It was found that, for successful source retrieval (it meant both the item and the source were remembered accurately) between 500 and 700 ms (corresponding to a late positive component, LPC), there were significant old/new effects in all contexts. However, for unsuccessful source retrieval (it meant the correct recognition of old items matched with incorrect source attribution), there were no significant old/new effects in happy and neutral contexts, though significant old/new effects were observed in the fearful context. Between 700 and 1200 ms (corresponding to a late slow wave, LSW), there were significant old/new effects for successful source retrieval in happy and neutral contexts. However, in the fearful context, the old/new effects were reversed, ERPs were more negative for successful source retrieval compared to correct rejections. Moreover, there were significant emotion effects for successful source retrieval at this time window. Further analysis showed ERPs of old items were more negative in fearful context than in neutral context. The results showed that early unsuccessful fearful source retrieval processes (related to familiarity) were enhanced, but late successful fearful source retrieval processes during source retrieval monitoring (related to recollection) were weakened. This provided preliminary evidence for the dual processing theory

Monocular vision ranging and camera focal length calibration

The camera calibration in monocular vision represents the relationship between the pixels’ units which is obtained from a camera and the object in the real world. As an essential procedure, camera calibration calculates the three-dimensional geometric information from the captured two-dimensional images. Therefore, a modified camera calibration method based on polynomial regression is proposed to simplify. In this method, a parameter vector is obtained by pixel coordinates of obstacles and corresponding distance values using polynomial regression. The set of parameter’s vectors can measure the distance between the camera and the ground object in the field of vision under the camera’s posture and position. The experimental results show that the lowest accuracy of this focal length calibration method for measurement is 97.09%, and the average accuracy was 99.02%

Clustering and Sharing Incentives in BitTorrent Systems

Peer-to-peer protocols play an increasingly instrumental role in Internet content distribution. Consequently, it is important to gain a full understanding of how these protocols behave in practice and how their parameters impact overall performance. We present the first experimental investigation of the peer selection strategy of the popular BitTorrent protocol in an instrumented private torrent. By observing the decisions of more than 40 nodes, we validate three BitTorrent properties that, though widely believed to hold, have not been demonstrated experimentally. These include the clustering of similar-bandwidth peers, the effectiveness of BitTorrent's sharing incentives, and the peers' high average upload utilization. In addition, our results show that BitTorrent's new choking algorithm in seed state provides uniform service to all peers, and that an underprovisioned initial seed leads to the absence of peer clustering and less effective sharing incentives. Based on our observations, we provide guidelines for seed provisioning by content providers, and discuss a tracker protocol extension that addresses an identified limitation of the protocol

VvBAP1 Is Involved in Cold Tolerance in Vitis vinifera L.

The majority of commercial grape cultivars originate from the European grape. While these cultivars have excellent organoleptic qualities, they suffer from a relatively poor tolerance to the cold experienced during winter, resulting in significant damage to grapevines. Thus, low temperature is one of the bottlenecks that restrict the further growth of the grape industry. Research on the mechanism of cold tolerance in grapes is therefore very important. BON association protein 1 (BAP1) is a recently discovered phospholipid-binding protein. In Arabidopsis, the expression of AtBAP1 can be regulated via low temperature; however, the function of BAP1 in the grapevine has not been reported. The VvBAP1 gene was cloned in our previous studies in grapes, and bioinformatics analysis showed that it harbors the conservative calcium-dependent C2 protein domain. However, little is known about its function and underlying mechanism. In this study, cold treatment was applied to the cold-resistant grape varieties ‘F-242’ and ‘Zuoyouhong’ as well as to the cold-sensitive grape varieties ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ and ‘Chardonnay.’ The expression level of VvBAP1 in the cold-resistant varieties was significantly higher than in the cold-sensitive varieties, indicating that VvBAP1 could be associated with the cold response processes in the grapevine. Using the cold-resistant grape variety ‘F-242’ as material, with the 4°C and CaCl2 treatment, the relative expression of VvBAP1 was determined via qRT-PCR. Both low temperature and low-temperature signal Ca2+ induced VvBAP1 expression. In addition, the VvBAP1 gene was cloned and transferred into Arabidopsis to generate VvBAP1 overexpressing plants. Biochemical assays and gene expression analyses were conducted on plants subjected to low temperature treatments (4 and -8°C). The obtained results showed that the activities of superoxide dismutase and peroxidase in these transgenic plants were higher than those in wild type (WT) plants, and that cell membrane permeability and malondialdehyde content were both lower compared to WT plants. Furthermore, the content of soluble sugars and the expression levels of sugar-metabolizing related genes, such as BAM4-7, SS4, and G6PD5, were significantly higher than those of WT plants. Furthermore, the expression of low temperature response signal genes, including CBF1, CBF3, COR15a, COR6.6, COR27, and KIN1, were also enhanced. In summary, these results showed that VvBAP1 could strengthen the cold resistance in the grapevine through adjusting and controlling the sugar content and activating antioxidant enzyme activity

INO80 governs superenhancer-mediated oncogenic transcription and tumor growth in melanoma

Superenhancers (SEs) are large genomic regions with a high density of enhancer marks. In cancer, SEs are found near oncogenes and dictate cancer gene expression. However, how oncogenic SEs are regulated remains poorly understood. Here, we show that INO80, a chromatin remodeling complex, is required for SE-mediated oncogenic transcription and tumor growth in melanoma. The expression of Ino80, the SWI/SNF ATPase, is elevated in melanoma cells and patient melanomas compared with normal melanocytes and benign nevi. Furthermore, Ino80 silencing selectively inhibits melanoma cell proliferation, anchorage-independent growth, tumorigenesis, and tumor maintenance in mouse xenografts. Mechanistically, Ino80 occupies >90% of SEs, and its occupancy is dependent on transcription factors such as MITF and Sox9. Ino80 binding reduces nucleosome occupancy and facilitates Mediator recruitment, thus promoting oncogenic transcription. Consistently, genes co-occupied by Ino80 and Med1 are selectively expressed in melanomas compared with melanocytes. Together, our results reveal an essential role of INO80-dependent chromatin remodeling in SE function and suggest a novel strategy for disrupting SEs in cancer treatment