A simulation-based method to determine the coefficient of hyperbolic decline curve for tight oil production

 Tight oil reservoirs are characterized by the ultra low porosity and permeability, making it a great challenge to enhance oil production. Owing to the fast development in hydraulic fracturing technology of horizontal wells, tight oil has been widely explored in North America. Individual wells have a long term of low production after a rapid production decline. This causes low cumulative production in tight oil reservoirs. A rate decline curve is the most common method to forecast their production rates. The forecast can provide useful information during decision making on future development of production wells. In this paper, a relationship is developed between the parameters of a hyperbolic decline curve and the reservoir/fracture properties when a reservoir simulation model is used based on the data from a real field. Understanding of this relationship improves the application of the hyperbolic decline curve and provides a useful reference to forecast production performance in a more convenient and efficient way.Cited as: Yu, Y., Chen, Z., Xu, J. A simulation-based method to determine the coefficient of hyperbolic decline curve for tight oil production. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2019, 3(4): 375-380, doi: 10.26804/ager.2019.04.0

A risk signature based on endoplasmic reticulum stress-associated genes predicts prognosis and immunity in pancreatic cancer

Introduction: The involvement of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in cancer biology is increasingly recognized, yet its role in pancreatic cancer (PC) remains unclear. This study aims to elucidate the impact of ER stress on prognosis and biological characteristics in PC patients.Methods: A bioinformatic analysis was conducted using RNA-seq data and clinicopathological information from PC patients in the TCGA and ICGC databases. The ER stress-associated gene sets were extracted from MSigDB. ER stress-associated genes closely linked with overall survival (OS) of PC patients were identified via log-rank test and univariate Cox analysis, and further narrowed by LASSO method. A risk signature associated with ER stress was formulated using multivariate Cox regression and assessed through Kaplan-Meier curves, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses, and Harrell’s concordance index. External validation was performed with the ICGC cohort. The single-sample gene-set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) algorithm appraised the immune cell infiltration landscape.Results: Worse OS in PC patients with high-risk signature score was observed. Multivariate analysis underscored our ER stress-associated signature as a valuable and independent predictor of prognosis. Importantly, these results based on TCGA were further validated in ICGC dataset. In addition, our risk signature was closely associated with homeostasis, protein secretion, and immune regulation in PC patients. In particular, PC microenvironment in the high-risk cluster exhibited a more immunosuppressive status. At last, we established a nomogram model by incorporating the risk signature and clinicopathological parameters, which behaves better in predicting prognosis of PC patients.Discussion: This comprehensive molecular analysis presents a new predictive model for the prognosis of PC patients, highlighting ER stress as a potential therapeutic target. Besides, the findings indicate that ER stress can have effect modulating PC immune responses

Short-term caloric restriction, resveratrol, or combined treatment regimens initiated in late-life alter mitochondrial protein expression profiles in a fiber-type specific manner in aged animals

AbstractAging is associated with a loss in muscle known as sarcopenia that is partially attributed to apoptosis. In aging rodents, caloric restriction (CR) increases health and longevity by improving mitochondrial function and the polyphenol resveratrol (RSV) has been reported to have similar benefits. In the present study, we investigated the potential efficacy of using short-term (6weeks) CR (20%), RSV (50mg/kg/day), or combined CR+RSV (20% CR and 50mg/kg/day RSV), initiated at late-life (27months) to protect muscle against sarcopenia by altering mitochondrial function, biogenesis, content, and apoptotic signaling in both glycolytic white and oxidative red gastrocnemius muscle (WG and RG, respectively) of male Fischer 344×Brown Norway rats. CR but not RSV attenuated the age-associated loss of muscle mass in both mixed gastrocnemius and soleus muscle, while combined treatment (CR+RSV) paradigms showed a protective effect in the soleus and plantaris muscle (P<0.05). Sirt1 protein content was increased by 2.6-fold (P<0.05) in WG but not RG muscle with RSV treatment, while CR or CR+RSV had no effect. PGC-1α levels were higher (2-fold) in the WG from CR-treated animals (P<0.05) when compared to ad-libitum (AL) animals but no differences were observed in the RG with any treatment. Levels of the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 were significantly higher (1.6-fold) in the WG muscle of RSV and CR+RSV groups compared to AL (P<0.05) but tended to occur coincident with elevations in the pro-apoptotic protein Bax so that the apoptotic susceptibility as indicated by the Bax to Bcl-2 ratio was unchanged. There were no alterations in DNA fragmentation with any treatment in muscle from older animals. Additionally, mitochondrial respiration measured in permeabilized muscle fibers was unchanged in any treatment group and this paralleled the lack of change in cytochrome c oxidase (COX) activity. These data suggest that short-term moderate CR, RSV, or CR+RSV tended to modestly alter key mitochondrial regulatory and apoptotic signaling pathways in glycolytic muscle and this might contribute to the moderate protective effects against aging-induced muscle loss observed in this study

Qwen Technical Report

Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the field of artificial intelligence, enabling natural language processing tasks that were previously thought to be exclusive to humans. In this work, we introduce Qwen, the first installment of our large language model series. Qwen is a comprehensive language model series that encompasses distinct models with varying parameter counts. It includes Qwen, the base pretrained language models, and Qwen-Chat, the chat models finetuned with human alignment techniques. The base language models consistently demonstrate superior performance across a multitude of downstream tasks, and the chat models, particularly those trained using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), are highly competitive. The chat models possess advanced tool-use and planning capabilities for creating agent applications, showcasing impressive performance even when compared to bigger models on complex tasks like utilizing a code interpreter. Furthermore, we have developed coding-specialized models, Code-Qwen and Code-Qwen-Chat, as well as mathematics-focused models, Math-Qwen-Chat, which are built upon base language models. These models demonstrate significantly improved performance in comparison with open-source models, and slightly fall behind the proprietary models.Comment: 59 pages, 5 figure

Impaired Iron Status in Aging Research

Aging is associated with disturbances in iron metabolism and storage. During the last decade, remarkable progress has been made toward understanding their cellular and molecular mechanisms in aging and age-associated diseases using both cultured cells and animal models. The field has moved beyond descriptive studies to potential intervention studies focusing on iron chelation and removal. However, some findings remain controversial and inconsistent. This review summarizes important features of iron dyshomeostasis in aging research with a particular emphasis on current knowledge of the mechanisms underlying age-associated disorders in rodent models

Iron Accumulation with Age, Oxidative Stress and Functional Decline

Identification of biological mediators in sarcopenia is pertinent to the development of targeted interventions to alleviate this condition. Iron is recognized as a potent pro-oxidant and a catalyst for the formation of reactive oxygen species in biological systems. It is well accepted that iron accumulates with senescence in several organs, but little is known about iron accumulation in muscle and how it may affect muscle function. In addition, it is unclear if interventions which reduced age-related loss of muscle quality, such as calorie restriction, impact iron accumulation. We investigated non-heme iron concentration, oxidative stress to nucleic acids in gastrocnemius muscle and key indices of sarcopenia (muscle mass and grip strength) in male Fischer 344 X Brown Norway rats fed ad libitum (AL) or a calorie restricted diet (60% of ad libitum food intake starting at 4 months of age) at 8, 18, 29 and 37 months of age. Total non-heme iron levels in the gastrocnemius muscle of AL rats increased progressively with age. Between 29 and 37 months of age, the non-heme iron concentration increased by approximately 200% in AL-fed rats. Most importantly, the levels of oxidized RNA in gastrocnemius muscle of AL rats were significantly increased as well. The striking age-associated increase in non-heme iron and oxidized RNA levels and decrease in sarcopenia indices were all attenuated in the calorie restriction (CR) rats. These findings strongly suggest that the age-related iron accumulation in muscle contributes to increased oxidative damage and sarcopenia, and that CR effectively attenuates these negative effects

Beneficial Effects of a Q-ter® Based Nutritional Mixture on Functional Performance, Mitochondrial Function, and Oxidative Stress in Rats

Mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress are central mechanisms underlying the aging process and the pathogenesis of many age-related diseases. Selected antioxidants and specific combinations of nutritional compounds could target many biochemical pathways that affect both oxidative stress and mitochondrial function and, thereby, preserve or enhance physical performance. supplementation in rats at 29 months of age. supplementation may be particularly beneficial when initiated prior to major biological and functional declines that appear to occur with advancing age