Search

The southern Ordos Basin has excellent petroleum exploration prospects. However, the tectono-thermal history and the controls on petroleum generation, accumulation and preservation conditions in southern basin are unclear. In this study, we analyzed the present geothermal field, paleo-geothermal gradient, maturity of the hydrocarbon source rocks, uplift and cooling process and tectono-thermal evolution history. In the study area, for the Ordovician, Permain and the Triassic strata, the present temperature is low (30-70 °C) in the southeastern area but high (80-140 °C) in the northwestern area. The paleogeothermal gradient varied from 24 °C/km to 30 °C/km with a heat flow of 58e69 mW/m2 (i.e., a medium-temperature basin). The paleo-temperatures are higher than the present temperatures and the maximum paleo-temperatures controlled the thermal maturity of the source rocks. The vitrinite reflectance (Ro) values of the Triassic strata are >0.7% and the thermal maturity reached the middlemature oil generation stage. The Ro values of the Permian-Ordovician strata are >1.8% and the thermal maturity reached the over-mature gas generation stage. The southern Ordos Basin has experienced the multiple tectonic events at the Late Ordovician Caledonian (452 Ma), Late Triassic (215 Ma), Late Jurassic (165-160 Ma), End-Early Cretaceous (110-100 Ma) and Cenozoic (since 40 Ma). A large-scale tectonothermal event occurred at the End-Early Cretaceous (110-100 Ma), which was controlled by lithospheric extension, destruction and thinning. This event led to the highest paleo-temperatures and thermal maturities and coeval with the peak period of petroleum generation and accumulation. The southern Ordos Basin has undergone rapid and large-scale uplift since the Late Cretaceous due to expansion of the northeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau, uplift of the Qinling orogenic belt and thrust faulting in the Liupanshan tectonic belt. The southern Ordos Basin experienced tectonic overprinting that was strong in the south and weak in the north. The strongest overprinting occurred in the southwestern part of the basin. The large-scale uplift, denudation and faulting led to oil and gas loss from reservoirs. The petroleum generation, accumulation and preservation in the southern Ordos Basin were affected by deep lithospheric structures and the tectono-thermal evolution. This work provides a novel tectono-thermal perspective on the petroleum generation, accumulation and preservation condition of the southern Ordos Basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Naturally occurred precore (PC, G1896A) and/or basal core promoter (BCP, A1762T/G1764A) mutations are prevalent in chronic HBV-infected patients, especially those under HBeAg-negative status. However, the replicative capacity of HBV with PC/BCP mutations remains ambiguous. Herein, meta-analysis showed that, only under HBeAg-negative status, the serum HBV DNA load in patients with PC mutation was 7.41-fold higher than those without the mutation. Both PC mutation alone and BCP + PC mutations promoted HBV replication in cell and hydrodynamic injection mouse models. In human hepatocyte chimeric mouse model, BCP + PC mutations led to elevated replicative capacity and intrahepatic core protein accumulation. Mechanistically, preC RNA harboring PC mutation could serve as mRNA to express core and P proteins, and such pgRNA-like function favored the maintenance of cccDNA pool under HBeAg-negative status. Additionally, BCP + PC mutations induced more extensive and severe human hepatocyte damage as well as activated endoplasmic reticulum stress and TNF signaling pathway in livers of chimeric mice. This study indicates that HBeAg-negative patients should be monitored on HBV mutations regularly and are expected to receive early antiviral treatment to prevent disease progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recycling precious metals with high-efficiency is undoubtedly beneficial to optimize resource utilization for environmental remediation and sustainable development. Herein, we report an efficient route to recycle the palladium (Pd) and platinum (Pt) electrocatalysts using a phase transfer method. This strategy involves acidic dissolution of deactivated precious metal (Pd/Pt) electrocatalysts from their loading substrates, mixing with an ethanolic solution of dodecylamine (DDA), subsequent extraction of metal ions into a non-polar organic phase, and final reduction by sodium borohydride to reproduce high-performance electrocatalysts towards typical electrochemical reactions, e.g., oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR). In specific, the transfer efficiencies are up to 98% and the final recovery rate is over 85% for Pd and Pt electrocatalysts in each cycle. This approach symbolizes a facile and efficient way to recover precious metals, which might be applied to recycling a wide range of metals in various realms after appropriate modifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The penetration of new energy sources such as wind power is increasing, which consequently increases the occurrence rate of subsynchronous oscillation events. However, existing subsynchronous oscillation source-identification methods primarily analyze fixed-mode oscillations and rarely consider time-varying features, such as frequency drift, caused by the random volatility of wind farms when oscillations occur. This paper proposes a subsynchronous oscillation sourcelocalization method that involves an enhanced short-time Fourier transform and a convolutional neural network (CNN). First, an enhanced STFT is performed to secure high-resolution time-frequency distribution (TFD) images from the measured data of the generation unit ports. Next, these TFD images are amalgamated to form a subsynchronous oscillation feature map that serves as input to the CNN to train the localization model. Ultimately, the trained CNN model realizes the online localization of subsynchronous oscillation sources. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method are validated via multimachine system models simulating forced and natural oscillation events using the Power Systems Computer Aided Design platform. Test results show that the proposed method can localize subsynchronous oscillation sources online while considering unpredictable fluctuations in wind farms, thus providing a foundation for oscillation suppression in practical engineering scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relatively fragile low-temperature stability of cryogen-free superconducting magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) magnets requires the careful management of exogenous heat sources. A strongly shielded gradient magnetic field is important for the optimal operation of cryogen-free MRI systems. In this study, we present an enhanced shielding method incorporating a regionalized stray field constraining strategy. By optimizing the constraint parameters, we could develop engineering-feasible gradient coil schemes without increasing system complexity but with the stray field intensity reduced by half. In real measurement in an integrated MRI system, the developed gradient assembly demonstrated good performance and supported to output images of excellent quality. Our findings suggested that the proposed method could potentially form a useful design paradigm for cryogen-free MRI magnets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]