Assessing impacts to groundwater from CO2-flooding of SACROC and Claytonville oil fields in West Texas

Comparison of groundwater above two Permian Basin oil fields (SACROC Unit and Claytonville Field) near Snyder, Texas should allow us to assess potential impacts of 30 years of CO2-injection. CO2-flooding for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has been active at SACROC in Scurry County since 1972. Approximately 13.5 million tons per year (MtCO2/yr) are injected with withdrawal/recycling amounting to ~7MtCO2/yr. It is estimated that the site has accumulated more than 55MtCO2; however, no rigorous investigation of overlying groundwater has demonstrated that CO2 is trapped in the subsurface. Mineralogy of reservoir rocks at the Claytonville field in southwestern Fisher County is similar to SACROC. CO2-EOR is scheduled to begin at Claytonville Field in Fisher County in early 2007. Here we have the opportunity to characterize groundwater prior to CO2-injection and establish baseline conditions at Claytonville. Methods of this study will include: (1) examination of existing analyses of saline to fresh water samples collected within an eight-county area encompassing SACROC and Claytonville, (2) additional groundwater sampling for analysis of general chemistry plus field-measured pH, alkalinity, and temperature, stable isotopic ratios of hydrogen (D/H), oxygen (18O/16O), and carbon (13C/12C), and (3) geochemical equilibrium and flowpath modeling. Existing groundwater data are available from previous BEG studies, Texas Water Development Board, Kinder Morgan CO2 Company, and the U. S. Geological Survey. By examining these data we will identify regional groundwater variability and focus additional sampling efforts. The objective of this study is to look for potential impacts to shallow groundwater from deep CO2-injection. In the absence of conduit flow from depth, we don’t expect to see impacts to shallow groundwater, but methodology to demonstrate this to regulators needs to be established. This work is a subset of the Southwest Regional Partnership on Carbon Sequestration Phase 2studies funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) in cooperation with industry and government partners.Bureau of Economic Geolog

MUC16 Mutations and Prognosis in Gastric Cancer: A Little Goes a Long Way.

Gastric cancer is a global health problem; although incidence rates are declining, it remains the third most common cause of cancer death worldwide. Patients with advanced disease have limited treatment options, and most will live for less than 2 years. Therefore, exploration of gastric cancer disease biology is warranted to identify new targets for treatment. Recent comprehensive molecular analyses have identified distinct subgroups of gastric cancer that may have therapeutic relevance. With the exception of microsatellite-unstable tumors, however, the potential for genomically guided therapy has not been realized

Gender and Justice in International Human Rights Law: The Need for an Intersectional Feminist Approach to Advance Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

While the concept of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs) has grown in legitimacy at the regional and international levels of the human rights system in recent decades, it continues to face significant challenges. Not least among these is that liberal, masculinist understandings of human rights continue to inform and limit the legal reasoning of the UN, inter-American and European human rights systems, often inadvertently perpetuating the very stereotypes of the female legal subject that they need to challenge in order to prevent violations of women’s human rights. As a result of these problematic conceptual underpinnings, these institutions often take an inconsistent, flawed approach to cases that do not fit comfortably into androcentric understandings of rights violations. This chapter will provide an overview of the origins and evolution of SRHRs, emphasising the centrality of intersectional, transnational feminist activism to its development. It will then undertake a close reading of sample cases from the UN treaty monitoring bodies, inter-American system and European system to highlight the limits of the current approach, and in doing so will propose an alternative, explicitly intersectional feminist approach to legal reasoning that can contribute to jurisprudence that better represents and responds to the lived experiences, needs and realities of women and gender-diverse people, and that better aligns with the original understanding of SRHRs articulated by feminist activists

Abortion in International Human Rights Law: Missed Opportunities in Manuela v El Salvador

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ judgment in Manuela and Others v El Salvador represents a missed opportunity for advancing abortion access and sexual and reproductive health and rights in international human rights law (IHRL). Even though this case is representative of the multiple human right violations arising from El Salvador’s complete criminalisation of abortion and active prosecution of those suspected of having had the procedure, the Court shied away from engaging in a critique of El Salvador’s abortion legislation. Instead, it focused on issues relating to pre-trial detention, due process, and medical confidentiality. Despite growing consensus in IHRL that abortion must be decriminalised at a minimum in certain circumstances; indications that the inter-American human rights system subscribes to this position; and extensive evidence that El Salvador’s abortion legislation is resulting in human rights violations, the Court failed to use this judgment to articulate a clear and assertive position on the need for abortion access to realise sexual and reproductive health and rights

A system at the vanguard: the evolution of women’s human rights in the inter-American human rights system, 1948-present

The inter-American human rights system (IAHRS) has made considerable contributions to advancing women’s human rights in both conceptual and practical terms. This article will provide an overview of key developments in this area of IAHRS jurisprudence over the past seven decades. While attention to women’s human rights was limited in the early years of the system’s operation, since the 1990s it has arguably been at the vanguard of advancing an intersectional feminist approach to international human rights law (IHRL). It will be argued that the IAHRS has taken such an approach to women’s human rights for three main, interrelated reasons: the presence of a dedicated women’s rights body within the IAHRS; the particular socio-political context in which the IARHS has evolved; and the system’s responsiveness to Latin American feminist praxis

Contesting citizenship: an intersectional feminist approach to abortion in international human rights law, with a focus on El Salvador and Ireland

In October 2012, the death of Savita Halappanavar reignited the abortion debate in the Republic of Ireland. In March 2013, ‘el caso Beatriz’ drew international attention to the complete criminalisation of abortion in El Salvador. Making sense of the parallels between these two tragedies was the starting point for this thesis: how did the social, political, and legal context resulting in these harms come to be, and how could it be transformed? To explore these questions, this thesis undertakes an intersectional feminist analysis of citizenship and international human rights law (IHRL) in relation to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs), specifically abortion. Focusing on El Salvador and Ireland, and undertaking a critical reading of abortion jurisprudence by the UN, European, and interAmerican human rights systems, this thesis argues that feminist campaigns for the decriminalisation of abortion at the national level and the advancement of SRHRs within IHRL at the regional and international levels are best understood as interconnected, and as part of a broader, longstanding, and ongoing struggle for feminists to realise women’s full citizenship and human rights. This struggle takes place through feminist engagement with the language and mechanisms of IHRL at the interconnected national, regional, international, and transnational levels of the human rights system, and as such it represents a multilevel feminist citizenship project: the contestation of women’s exclusion from and oppression by traditional understandings of citizenship that deny them the right to have rights and determine the scope of those rights

Assessing risk to fresh water resources from long term CO2 injection- laboratory and field studies

In developing a site for geologic sequestration, one must assess potential consequences of failure to adequately contain injected carbon dioxide (CO2). Upward migration of CO2 or displacement of saline water because of increased pressure might impact protected water resources 100s to 1000s of meters above a sequestration interval. Questions posed are: (1) Can changes in chemistry of fresh water aquifers provide evidence of CO2 leakage from deep injection/sequestration reservoirs containing brine and or hydrocarbons? (2) What parameters can we use to assess potential impacts to water quality? (3) If CO2 leakage to freshwater aquifers occurs, will groundwater quality be degraded and if so, over what time period? Modeling and reaction experiments plus known occurrences of naturally CO2-charged potable water show that the common chemical reaction products from dissolution of CO2 into freshwater include rapid buffering of acidity by dissolution of calcite and slower equilibrium by reaction with clays and feldspars. Results from a series of laboratory batch reactions of CO2 with diverse aquifer rocks show geochemical response within hours to days after introduction of CO2. Results included decreased pH and increased concentrations of cations in CO2 experimental runs relative to control runs using argon (Ar). Some cation (Ba, Ca, Fe, Mg, Mn, and Sr) concentrations increased over and an order of magnitude during CO2 runs. Results are aquifer dependant in that experimental vessels containing different aquifer rocks showed different magnitudes of increase in cation concentrations. Field studies designed to improve understanding of risk to fresh water are underway in the vicinity of (1) SACROC oilfield in Scurry County, Texas, USA where CO2 has been injected for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) since 1972 and (2) the Cranfield unit in Adams County, Mississippi, USA where CO2 EOR is currently underway. Both field studies are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) regional carbon sequestration partnership programs and industrial sponsors. Preliminary results of groundwater monitoring are currently available for the SACROC field study where researchers investigated 68 water wells and one spring during five field excursions between June 2006 and July 2008. Results to date show no trend of preferential degradation below drinking water standards in areas of CO2 injection (inside SACROC) as compared to areas outside of the SACROC oil field.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Larval Performance in Relation to Labile Oviposition Preference of Crocidolomia pavonana [F.] (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) Among Phenological Stages of Cabbage

Crocidolomia pavonana (=binotalis) [F.] demonstrates oviposition peaks in the field that we believe to be correlated with host plant phenology. In previous two-choice laboratory experiments, we found the highest relative proportion of oviposition on cabbage to correspond either to plant growth stages ≈7–8 wk or ≈9–11 wk old, depending on the alternate host plant with which it was presented. In cabbage-only trials, leaves from 7- to 8-wk-old plants were preferred. Inconsistency in preference led to the question of whether oviposition on either cabbage growth stage would confer adaptive advantages in offspring performance. We simulated oviposition on four phenological stages of cabbage in two ways. In a study of complete immature development, growth rate, pupal weight, and survivorship were measured. We also compared food utilization efficiency during the fourth larval instar by analyzing growth rate, efficiency of biomass accumulation, and frass production by analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). For both experiments, cabbage plants of defined phenological stages were designated at the time of oviposition, and larvae were fed from these as plants continued to grow throughout larval development. Our data indicate adaptive advantages in larval growth rate and food conversion efficiency to oviposition on cabbage at ≈7–8 wk from planting. Oviposition on later cabbage growth stages resulted in comparatively poor larval performance. Possible explanations for C. pavonana oviposition behavior in light of these results are discusse

Potential Sinks for Geologic Storage of CO2 Generated in the Carolinas

This document summarizes a scoping study of the current state of knowledge of carbon storage options for our geographic area. The focus is on one aspect of carbon capture and storage—identification of deep saline aquifers in which carbon dioxide (CO2 ) generated in the Carolinas might be stored. The study does not address other aspects of CO2 storage projects, such as capture and compression of the gas, well construction and development, or injection. Transport of CO2 is touched upon in this study but has not been fully addressed. The information contained in this document is primarily from review of published geologic literature and unpublished data. No field data collection has been completed as part of this study. Further work will be necessary to increase confidence in the suitability of the potential CO2 storage sites identified in this report. This study does not address the regulatory, environmental, or public policy issues associated with carbon storage, which are under development at this time.Duke Energy, Progress Energy, Santee Cooper Power, South Carolina Electric and Gas, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Southern States Energy Board (SSEB)Bureau of Economic Geolog