Remote Activated Completion Technology Enhances Operational Efficiency of Offshore Wells in Middle East

To access a larger amount of pay zone, well trajectories are becoming longer and more complex, creating greater challenges for running completion liners. A liner shoe is a casing accessory tool that aids in the running of completion liners in long wells by allowing auto-filling of the liner and enabling pumping through the bottom of the liner. Upon reaching planned liner depth, the liner shoe is closed to allow for pressure testing and subsequent completion operations. Conventional methods used to close a liner shoe involve well intervention to set plugs or by dropping a ball, and there are inherent costs and risks associated with these operations. This paper presents the development and deployment of a remotely activated electronic liner shoe (ELS) for offshore applications that enables interventionless closing of the liner shoe, thereby improving operational efficiency, and reducing potential operational issues that could occur while closing the liner shoe conventionally. The ELS allows the operator to precisely control when the liner shoe closes – either based on pre-programmed pressure signals, a timer, or a combination of the two. A major operator in the Middle East required an ELS to be developed and qualified specifically for their offshore well conditions. A new technology qualification program was devised in collaboration with the operator to qualify both the electronic and mechanical functionalities of the tool. This paper documents the methods and results of the extensive qualification test program. The development and qualification process were successfully completed within 10 months at research and development facilities in Norway. Following qualification testing, the ELS was first deployed for the operator in an offshore well in Q4 of 2019. Operational considerations in programming the remote functionality of the tool is presented in this paper. After a successful field trial, the ELS has been run in more than 15 offshore wells and has become the standard option in the operator's completion program.

Videos Improve Attention and Cheap Talk in Online Surveys

Cheap Talk (CT) is a mainstay technique among stated preference practitioners to reduce Hypothetical Bias (HB). The usefulness of CT may be questionable in online surveys due to the limited control researchers have on participant engagement. In the context of an online choice experiment on hotels, we compare a control group of respondents who receives a CT script as a traditional passage of text versus a group who must answer an attention-check question to verify their comprehension of the script as well as another group who receives the CT script as a video and then answer the attention-check question. We find that compared to the control group, simply offering the attention-check question reduced willingness to pay (WTP), and those who answer the attention-check question correctly behaved differently to those who did not. Overall, video CT script is shown to improve attention and be more effective in reducing potential HB than a text-based script.

Do rules of friendship tell us what kinds of traits we value in friends?

Friendships are valuable social relationships that provide many psychological and health benefits. However, friendships can also be costly and exploitative. How do we ensure maximum benefits while reducing potential costs from friendships? One way is to have “rules” (heuristics for assessing value -- if a rule is broken, then the friendship provides less value) that allow one to keep track of the benefits in friendship and provide information about friends’ desirable traits. Across 3 studies (total N = 1,206), participants reported preferences for personality traits and rules in their friendships. Results suggest that there are 1) strong hierarchical preferences for maintenance rules in friendships that 2) predict participant preferences for traits in their friends. Future research should investigate how these factors influence maintenance and dissolution of friendships.

Phytochemical Composition, Anti-Inflammatory and ER Stress-Reducing Potential of Sambucus ebulus L. Fruit Extract

Sambucus ebulus L. (SE) fruits are used for their immunostimulation, hematopoietic and antiviral potential. Recently, we focused on analyzing the mechanism underlying SE fruit aqueous extract’s (FAE) immunomodulation and anti-inflammatory activities, with attention to its endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-reducing potential. J774A.1 macrophages were treated with SE FAE alone or in conditions of lipopolysaccharides (LPS) stimulation. Using GC–MS and LC–MS/MS, its phytochemical composition was analyzed. To measure transcription and protein levels, we used qPCR and Western blot, respectively. The prevailing phytochemicals in SE FAE were hydroxycinnamic acids, proanthocyanidins and anthocyanins. The content of some amino acids, organic acids, alcohols, fatty acids and esters were newly reported. Extracts exerted an immunostimulation potential by stimulating IL-6, TNFα, Ccl2, COX2 and iNOS transcription, without inducing ER stress. SE FAE suppressed the LPS-induced transcription of inflammation related genes (IL-1β, IL-6, TNFα, Ccl2, Icam-1, Fabp4, COX2, iNOS, Noxo1, IL-1ra, Sirt-1) and reduced the protein levels of iNOS, peIF2α, ATF6α and CHOP. The effects were comparable to that of salicylic acid. SE suppresses LPS-stimulated inflammatory markers on the transcription and translation levels. Targeting ER stress is possibly another mechanism underlying its anti-inflammatory potential. These findings reveal the potential of SE fruits as a beneficial therapeutic of inflammation and ER stress-related pathological conditions.

Solid waste characterization and reducing potential at Faculty of Engineering, University of Surabaya

Reducing solid waste generation is one of the green campus achievement programs at the University of Surabaya (Ubaya). It is essential to determine the quantity and composition of all faculty’s solid waste generation. The Faculty of Engineering significantly contributes to the amount of waste generation in Ubaya. Research related to the Faculty of Engineering solid waste characteristics needs to be conducted. The purposes of the study were estimating the quantity of solid waste generation and observing the composition of solid waste at the Faculty of Engineering. The method of this research was a survey of waste generation. The estimation of waste generation was taken for 12 (twelve) days during April 2018. The study results showed that the average solid waste generation faculty of engineering was to be 19.26 kg/day, and the percentage of solid waste was found to be food waste 27%, plastic 25.8%, food packaging 17.6%, Paper 9.8%, and Residue 19.8%.

Reuse of organic waste from Eucalyptus globulus extract with high reducing potential in the green synthesis of silver nanoparticles

The research provides a new and sustainable methodology for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles, using Eucalyptus globulus extract, this due to the fact that it presents metabolites capable of acting as a reducing potential of our silver nitrate precursor, and thus obtaining nanostructured material. This is also associated with the reuse of this type of organic material, which currently abounds as waste in the Peruvian highlands. In the specific case of this research, the effect on the stability over time of the biosynthesized silver nanoparticles was evaluated by varying the pH, with values of 4.82, 8.05 and 10.15. It was observed that as the pH increases the production of nanoparticles is higher, having a saturation threshold close to pH 8. It was also found that for alkaline pH close to 10 a more complete reaction of the reducing agent occurs, but with a high dispersion.

GAMES: A dynamic model development workflow for rigorous characterization of synthetic genetic systems

Mathematical modeling is invaluable for advancing understanding and design of synthetic biological systems. However, the model development process is complicated and often unintuitive, requiring iteration on various computational tasks and comparisons with experimental data. Ad hoc model development can pose a barrier to reproduction and critical analysis of the development process itself, reducing potential impact and inhibiting further model development and collaboration. To help practitioners manage these challenges, we introduce GAMES: a workflow for Generation and Analysis of Models for Exploring Synthetic systems that includes both automated and human-in-the-loop processes. We systematically consider the process of developing dynamic models, including model formulation, parameter estimation, parameter identifiability, experimental design, model reduction, model refinement, and model selection. We demonstrate the workflow with a case study on a chemically responsive transcription factor. The generalizable workflow presented in this tutorial can enable biologists to more readily build and analyze models for various applications.

Creation of a synthesis-friendly inflammation-inducible promoter suitable for cell therapy

The development of ‘smart’ cell-based therapeutics requires cells that first recognize conditions consistent with disease (e.g. inflammation) and then subsequently release therapeutic proteins, thereby reducing potential toxicity from otherwise continuous expression. Promoters containing NF-κB response elements are often used as reporters of inflammation; however, endogenous promoters have crosstalk with other pathways, and current synthetic promoters have many exact sequence repeats of NF-κB response elements which make them both difficult to synthesize and inherently genetically unstable. Herein, a synthesis-friendly inflammation-inducible promoter (named SFNp) was created by the packing of 14 NF-κB response elements, which have no repeats >9 bp, followed by a minimal cytomegalovirus promoter. In stably expressing human embryonic kidney 293 cells, we assessed the ability of SFNp to inducibly transcribe genes for reporting expression, changing cell morphology, and performing cell fusion. These experiments represent simple milestones for potentially using SFNp in the development of cell-based therapeutics. As strongly repeated DNA can compromise the long-term stability of genetic circuits, new designs used in ‘smart’ cell therapy will become more reliant on synthesis-friendly components like SFNp.