Subsurface fracture surveys using a borehole television camera and acoustic televiewer

1987 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. O. Lau ◽  
L. F. Auger ◽  
J. G. Bisson

Borehole television survey and acoustic televiewer logging provide rapid, cost-effective, and accurate methods of surveying fractures and their characteristics within boreholes varying in diameter from 7.6 to 15.3 cm. In the television survey, a camera probe is used to inspect the borehole walls. Measurements of location, orientation, infilling width, and aperture of fractures are made on the television screen and recorded on computer data record sheets. All observations are recorded on video cassette tapes. With the acoustic televiewer, oriented images of fractures in the borehole walls are recorded on a strip–chart log and also on video cassette tapes. The images are displayed as if the walls were split vertically along magnetic north and spread out horizontally. Measurements of fracture characteristics are made on the strip–chart log, using a digitizing table and a microcomputer, and the data recorded on floppy diskettes. In both surveys, an inclined fracture is displayed as a sinusoidal curve, from which the apparent orientation of the fracture can be measured. Once the borehole orientation is known, the true orientation of the fracture can be computed from its apparent orientation. Computer analysis of the fracture data, provides a rapid assessment of fracture occurrence, fracture aperture, and statistically significant concentrations of fracture orientations. Key words: borehole, television survey, acoustic televiewer logging, fractures, distribution, orientation, aperture.

Biomolecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 965
Author(s):  
Tom Grunert ◽  
Rebecca Herzog ◽  
Florian M. Wiesenhofer ◽  
Andreas Vychytil ◽  
Monika Ehling-Schulz ◽  
...  

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) offers specific advantages over hemodialysis, enabling increased autonomy of patients with end-stage renal disease, but PD-related complications need to be detected in a timely manner. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy could provide rapid and essential insights into the patients’ risk profiles via molecular fingerprinting of PD effluent, an abundant waste material that is rich in biological information. In this study, we measured FTIR spectroscopic profiles in PD effluent from patients taking part in a randomized controlled trial of alanyl-glutamine addition to the PD-fluid. Principal component analysis of FTIR spectra enabled us to differentiate between effluent samples from patients immediately after completion of instillation of the PD-fluid into the patients’ cavity and 4 h later as well as between patients receiving PD-fluid supplemented with 8 mM alanyl-glutamine compared with control. Moreover, feasibility of FTIR spectroscopy coupled to supervised classification algorithms to predict patient-, PD-, as well as immune-associated parameters were investigated. PD modality (manual continuous ambulatory PD (CAPD) vs. cycler-assisted automated PD (APD)), residual urine output, ultrafiltration, transport parameters, and cytokine concentrations showed high predictive potential. This study provides proof-of-principle that molecular signatures determined by FTIR spectroscopy of PD effluent, combined with machine learning, are suitable for cost-effective, high-throughput diagnostic purposes in PD.


1999 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 789 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. W. Wrigley

The efficient use of grains for animal feed requires the use of analytical methods that can provide rapid indications of the suitability of the grain for animal nutrition. Ideally, these methods need to be applied at the site of grain receival within the tight time and cost confines of grain delivery. In addition, methods are needed in plant breeding to efficiently screen for target aspects of feed-grain quality to facilitate the development of genotypes with improved nutritional quality. This review describes a range of techniques that can fulfil these analytical requirements. These include visual examination of grain samples for species identification and for recognition of defects and contaminants. This long-standing approach is rapid, but it is subjective and dependent on the expertise of the operator. The newer technology of image analysis offers the prospect of providing similar information automatically and quantitatively, without the risk of operator bias. Near-infrared (NIR) analysis is already in general use for grain analysis at many receival depots in wheat-growing countries, mainly for the determination of moisture and protein content. There are promising indications that NIR can be extended to the determination of many other aspects of grain composition, both the positive aspects that contribute to feed quality, as well as components such as beta-glucan content that have negative contributions for non-ruminants. Furthermore, NIR is being developed to provide a direct indication of metabolisable energy for a range of grain types. Whereas NIR is primarily suited to the determination of quantitatively major components of the grain, without the requirement of significant sample preparation, immunological analyses are appropriate for the determination of specific and minor components, such as mycotoxins, lectins, alkaloids, and pesticide residues. These and other methods, suited for on-site analysis, need to be combined with effective sampling to ensure that the results of testing are representative of the whole of the grain consignment, and also integrated into a systematic strategy to ensure cost-effective testing.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 2008
Author(s):  
Salem Issa ◽  
Basam Dahy ◽  
Taoufik Ksiksi ◽  
Nazmi Saleous

Geo-spatial technologies (i.e., remote sensing (RS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)) offer the means to enable a rapid assessment of terrestrial carbon stock (CS) over large areas. The utilization of an integrated RS-GIS approach for above ground biomass (AGB) estimation and precision carbon management is a timely and cost-effective solution for implementing appropriate management strategies at a localized and regional scale. The current study reviews various RS-related techniques used in the CS assessment, with emphasis on arid lands, and provides insight into the associated challenges, opportunities and future trends. The study examines the traditional methods and highlights their limitations. It explores recent and developing techniques, and identifies the most significant RS variables in depicting biophysical predictors. It further demonstrates the usefulness of geo-spatial technologies for assessing terrestrial CS, especially in arid lands. RS of vegetation in these ecosystems is constrained by unique challenges specific to their environmental conditions, leading to high inaccuracies when applying biomass estimation techniques developed for other ecosystems. This study reviews and highlights advantages and limitations of the various techniques and sensors, including optical, RADAR and LiDAR, that have been extensively used to estimate AGB and assess CS with RS data. Other new methods are introduced and discussed as well. Finally, the study highpoints the need for further work to fill the gaps and overcome limitations in using these emerging techniques for precision carbon management. Geo-spatial technologies are shown to be a valuable tool for estimating carbon sequestered especially in difficult and remote areas such as arid land.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chai-Ann Ng ◽  
Jessica Farr ◽  
Paul Young ◽  
Monique J Windley ◽  
Matthew D Perry ◽  
...  

Abstract KCNH2 is one of the 59 medically actionable genes recommended by the American College of Medical Genetics for reporting of incidental findings from clinical genomic sequencing. However, half of the reported KCNH2 variants in the ClinVar database are classified as variants of uncertain significance. In the absence of strong clinical phenotypes, there is a need for functional phenotyping to help decipher the significance of variants identified incidentally. Here, we report detailed methods for assessing the molecular phenotype of any KCNH2 missense variant. The key components of the assay include quick and cost-effective generation of a bi-cistronic vector to co-express Wild-type (WT) and any KCNH2 variant allele, generation of stable Flp-In HEK293 cell lines and high-throughput automated patch clamp electrophysiology analysis of channel function. Stable cell lines take 3–4 weeks to produce and can be generated in bulk, which will then allow up to 30 variants to be phenotyped per week after 48 h of channel expression. This high-throughput functional genomics assay will enable a much more rapid assessment of the extent of loss of function of any KCNH2 variant.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damiano Buratto ◽  
Abhishek Saxena ◽  
Qun Ji ◽  
Guang Yang ◽  
Sergio Pantano ◽  
...  

SARS-CoV-2 infects humans and causes Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The S1 domain of the spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 binds to human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) via its receptor-binding domain, while the S2 domain facilitates fusion between the virus and the host cell membrane for entry. The spike glycoprotein of circulating SARS-CoV-2 genomes is a mutation hotspot. Some mutations may affect the binding affinity for hACE2, while others may modulate S-glycoprotein expression, or they could result in a virus that can escape from antibodies generated by infection with the original variant or by vaccination. Since a large number of variants are emerging, it is of vital importance to be able to rapidly assess their characteristics: while changes of binding affinity alone do not always cause direct advantages for the virus, they still can provide important insights on where the evolutionary pressure is directed. Here, we propose a simple and cost-effective computational protocol based on Molecular Dynamics simulations to rapidly screen the ability of mutated spike protein to bind to the hACE2 receptor and selected neutralizing biomolecules. Our results show that it is possible to achieve rapid and reliable predictions of binding affinities. A similar approach can be used to perform preliminary screenings of the potential effects of S-RBD mutations, helping to prioritize the more time-consuming and expensive experimental work.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael M. Weinstein ◽  
Aishani Prem ◽  
Mingda Jin ◽  
Shuiquan Tang ◽  
Jeffrey M. Bhasin

ABSTRACTSummaryMicrobiome studies continue to provide tremendous insight into the importance of microorganism populations to the macroscopic world. High-throughput DNA sequencing technology (i.e., Next-generation Sequencing) has enabled the cost-effective, rapid assessment of microbial populations when combined with bioinformatic tools capable of identifying microbial taxa and calculating the diversity and composition of biological and environmental samples. Ribosomal RNA gene sequencing, where 16S and 18S rRNA gene sequences are used to identify prokaryotic and eukaryotic species, respectively, is one of the most widely-used techniques currently employed in microbiome analysis. Prior to bioinformatic analysis of these sequences, trimming parameters must be set so that post-trimming sequence information is maximized while expected errors in the sequences themselves are minimized. In this application note, we present FIGARO: a Python–based application designed to maximize read retention after trimming and filtering for quality. FIGARO was designed specifically to increase reproducibility and minimize trial-and-error in trimming parameter selection for a DADA2–based pipeline and will likely be useful for optimizing trimming parameters and minimizing sequence errors in other pipelines as well where paired-end overlap is required.Availability and implementationThe FIGARO application is freely available as source code at https://github.com/Zymo-Research/figaro.


SPE Journal ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (03) ◽  
pp. 752-767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Hoang ◽  
Jagannathan Mahadevan ◽  
Henry Lopez

Summary Tight gas plays often have multiple lenses of producing formations. Multizone fracturing or limited-entry fracturing is a cost-effective method to complete and produce tight gas wells in these layered reservoirs. The rate and volume of fracturing fluid injected into the different layers have an important role in determining the fracture characteristics. However, because of the spatial restriction of downhole conditions, it is very challenging to obtain a specific injection rate for each perforated zone. Temperature variations in the wellbore, outside of the casing, are available with new technology such as distributed-temperaturesensor (DTS) fiber-optic cables. The main objective of this study is to relate the wellbore-temperature changes as measured by DTS data to the wellbore and fractured-interval injection rates during a multizone fracturing process. We develop a forward simulation model on the basis of mass and energy conservation for calculating the temperature profile and temperature history in the wellbore and in the rock surrounding the wellbore. The model allows for liquid flow into the fractured interval. Subsequently, the model is integrated with an inverse-estimation algorithm, which is used to estimate flow rates both in the wellbore and into the fractured interval. The estimation algorithm is based on a gradient search method. A distinguishing feature of this work is the development of a radial model used to represent the temperature evolution in the near-wellbore region. The higher order allows accurate calculation of the temperature in the wellbore while still capturing the fluid-flow and heat-transport aspects of the hydraulic-fracture propagation. Our estimation results show a good comparison between the calculated temperature profiles and those observed in the field with DTS. Also, the model is able to estimate a flow-rate history consistent with total field-injection volume. This work enables an accurate and quick interpretation of the wellbore DTS data to determine the interval injection rates during a hydraulic-fracturing process. Knowledge of accurate interval injection rates and the corresponding fracture characteristics can be useful in designing a better limited-entry completion that can optimize the fracture length by use of rate control and/or fluid diversion.


2008 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart S. Yeh

Analysis of the cost-effectiveness of 29 Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models suggests that all 29 models are less cost-effective than an alternative approach for raising student achievement, involving rapid assessment systems that test students 2 to 5 times per week in math and reading and provide rapid feedback of the results to students and teachers. Results suggest that reading and math achievement could increase approximately one order of magnitude greater for every dollar invested in rapid assessment rather than CSR. The results also suggest that reading and math achievement could increase two orders of magnitude for every dollar invested in rapid assessment rather than class size reduction and three orders of magnitude for every dollar invested in rapid assessment rather than high quality preschool.


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