The CO2 SINK Boreholes for Geological Storage Testing

Europe’s first onshore scientific carbon dioxide storage testing project CO2SINK (CO2 Storage by Injection into a Natural saline aquifer at Ketzin) is performed in a saline aquifer in NE Germany. The major objectives of CO2SINK are the advancement of the science and practical processes for underground storage of carbon dioxide, and the provision of operational field results to aid in the development of standards for CO2 geological storage. Three boreholes (one injection well and two observation wells) have been drilled in2007, each to a depth of about 800 m. The wells are completed as “smart” wells containing a variety of permanent downhole sensing equipment, which has proven its functionality during its baseline surveys. The injection of CO2 is scheduled for spring 2008 and is intended to last up to two years to allow for monitoring of migration and fate of the injected gas through a combination of downhole monitoring with surface geophysical surveys. This report summarizeswell design, drilling, coring, and completion operations

InnovaRig—The New Scientific Land Drilling Facitlity

Deep drilling is becoming an increasingly important tool to study fundamental processes at depth, such as earthquake nucleation in fault zones or volcanic structures and eruption mechanisms or other basic Earth science research topics. At the same time, there are growing demands for new sustainable energy sources (e.g., geothermal energy) and for underground storage of carbon dioxide. Drilling for such missions often takes place in unexplored, structurally or geotechnically difficult environments that require special drilling,coring, and testing capabilities. Furthermore, continuous coring, deviated drilling, and complex testing are frequently required within these kinds of research projects. However, the worldwide market for drilling devices appropriate for this is small and currently is stressed by very high hydrocarbon exploration activity. Accordingly, scientific projects are often unable to contract the right drilling rig and service, or cannot get it for the planned timeframe or at an affordable price

Predictive Bcl-2 Family Binding Models Rooted in Experiment or Structure

Proteins of the Bcl-2 family either enhance or suppress programmed cell death and are centrally involved in cancer development and resistance to chemotherapy. BH3 (Bcl-2 homology 3)-only Bcl-2 proteins promote cell death by docking an α-helix into a hydrophobic groove on the surface of one or more of five pro-survival Bcl-2 receptor proteins. There is high structural homology within the pro-death and pro-survival families, yet a high degree of interaction specificity is nevertheless encoded, posing an interesting and important molecular recognition problem. Understanding protein features that dictate Bcl-2 interaction specificity is critical for designing peptide-based cancer therapeutics and diagnostics. In this study, we present peptide SPOT arrays and deep sequencing data from yeast display screening experiments that significantly expand the BH3 sequence space that has been experimentally tested for interaction with five human anti-apoptotic receptors. These data provide rich information about the determinants of Bcl-2 family specificity. To interpret and use the information, we constructed two simple data-based models that can predict affinity and specificity when evaluated on independent data sets within a limited sequence space. We also constructed a novel structure-based statistical potential, called STATIUM, which is remarkably good at predicting Bcl-2 affinity and specificity, especially considering it is not trained on experimental data. We compare the performance of our three models to each other and to alternative structure-based methods and discuss how such tools can guide prediction and design of new Bcl-2 family complexes.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Award GM067681)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0821391