Survey and data analysis of polymer flooding pilot and field applications in China

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes are regarded as important methods to recovery remaining oil after primary and secondary recovery. It is significant to select the most appropriate EOR process among the possible techniques for a candidate reservoir. EOR screening criteria has been created using available EOR datasets and served as the first step to compare the suitability of each EOR method for a particular reservoir. Most of these datasets are collected from EOR surveys published by Oil & Gas Journal. This study proposes a comprehensive study of a dataset including 55 pilot and field polymer flooding applications in China. Statistical analysis has been used to analyze the data collected. Histograms and box plots combined with violin plots are used to show the distribution of each parameter and present the range of the data. Scatter plots are constructed to compare relationships between different polymer properties and reservoir properties. Screening criteria for polymer flooding has been updated by real pilot and field polymer flooding data. Multiple imputation method is also proposed and implemented on the original dataset and a predicting model to predict incremental oil recovery using reservoir and polymer properties is constructed in steps --Abstract, page iii

Pim kinases phosphorylate p21 CiP1/WAF1 and c-Myc

Pim protein kinases are a distinct class of Serine/Threonine protein kinases whichplay very important roles in growth factor signaling. They have been shown to be highlyexpressed in a variety of primary tumors, especially associated with the development ofleukemia and prostate cancer. Transgenic mice with knockdown of Pim kinases havebeen shown to have a dramatic reduced body size while overexpression of Pim kinaseshas been shown to promote cancer development. In order to better address the possible mechanism in tumorigenesis caused by Pim kinases, p21Cip1/WAF was studied as one of the prominent substrates of Pim kinases. As a continuation of previous results, the thesis mainly tries to explore the functional consequences after Pim kinases phosphorylate p21Cip1/WAF1. In a non-small cell lung carcinoma cell line, H1299, overexpression of Pim-1 has been shown to influence the stability, cellular localization of p21 and subsequently promotes cell proliferation. While in a human colon cancer cell line, HCT116, enforced expression of Pim-2 kinase causes the stabilization of p21Cip1/WAF1 in the nucleus which promotes cell survival after cells have been sensitized to apoptosis by simultaneous overexpression of c-myc during DNA damage. In addition, the thesis provides preliminary evidence that Pim kinases phosphorylate c-Myc and stabilize it. These results may partially explain the synergistic activity between c-Myc and Pim kinases in tumorigenesis

Fabrication of micro-/nanofluidic models and their applications for enhanced oil recovery mechanism study

”Micro-/nanofluidic model, as a potential powerful tool, has been used for decades for investigating fluid flow at pore-scale in energy field. It is still increasingly imperative nowadays to use different micromodels to direct observe pore-level fluid flow and analyze mechanisms of different enhanced oil recovery methods. In this work, three main tasks including three dimensional micromodels (1D,2D,3D) are proposed to fabricate and use for investigating different mechanisms of different enhanced oil recovery methods. For 1D capillary tube micromodel, we fabricate and use it to investigate the dynamics of a trapped oil droplet under seismic vibration. Seismic stimulation is a promising technology aimed to mobilize the entrapped non-wetting fluids in the subsurface. The applications include enhanced oil recovery or CO2 sequestration. For 2D micromodel, we fabricate to mimic unconventional dual-porosity shale-like tight porous media and investigate the fluid flow behavior under such conditions. Unconventional oil reservoirs have become significant sources of petroleum production and have even better potential in the future. Many shale oil systems consist of nanoscale pores and micro-scale fractures that are significantly smaller than those from conventional reservoirs. Therefore, it is increasingly important to investigate fluid flow behaviors in nanoscale channels. For 3D micromodel, we packed and sintered glass beads into quartz tubes to mimic 3D porous media. Because of difficulties for direct visualization, almost all the micromodels available are two-dimensional models which cannot represent real interconnected pore network of a real reservoir porous media. Thus, we build fully transparent 3D models to direct visualize and investigate the in-situ emulsification mechanism for nanogel flooding”--Abstract, page iv

The Diphoton Excess, Low Energy Theorem and the 331 Model

We interpret the diphoton anomaly as a heavy scalar $H_3$ in the so-called 331 model. The scalar is responsible for breaking the $SU(3)_C\otimes SU(3)_L\otimes U(1)_X$ gauge symmetry down to the standard model electroweak gauge group. It mainly couples to the standard model gluons and photons through quantum loops involving heavy quarks and leptons. Those quarks and leptons, in together with the SM quarks and leptons, form the fundamental representation of the 331 model. We use low energy theorem to calculate effective coupling of $H_3gg$, $H_3\gamma\gamma$, $H_3ZZ$, $H_3WW$ and $H_3Z\gamma$. The analytical results can be applied to new physics models satisfying the low energy theorem. We show that the heavy quark and lepton contribution cannot produce enough diphoton pairs. It is crucial to include the contribution of charged scalars to explain the diphoton excess. The extra neutral $Z^\prime$ boson could also explain the 2 TeV diboson excess observed at the LHC Run-I.Comment: To appear in PR