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NNadir
NNadir's Journal
NNadir's Journal
August 8, 2022
They studied an offshore oil platform off the coast of Mexico using this technology, which is discussed in more detail in the full paper:
The, um, "good(?) stuff:"
Figure 1:
The caption:
Some more text:
Figure 2:
The caption:
More text:
Lovely, isn't it?
There's more to the paper.
Listen boys and girls and gender fluid people:
There's a widely held belief that so called "renewable energy" has something to do with stopping this stuff. This is nonsense. So called "renewable energy" depends on this kind of mining, among many other kinds of mining, this on a totally unsustainable scale. When Putin cut off Germany's gas, the so called Energiewende country which used pure dishonest marketing to declare itself "low carbon" became more dependent on burning coal, beyond the coal mined to make the steel for those fucking wind turbines that will all be trash within 20 to 30 years. This reactionary scheme was never undertaken to address climate change, which is why it is doing nothing at all with respect to climate. It was designed to attack the only viable means of addressing climate change, doing away with gas, oil and coal, nuclear energy. It's anti, as in anti-vax, rhetoric on steroids.
This has to stop. The world is literally on fire.
Lying to ourselves is making everything worse.
Have a nice workweek.
Satellites Detect a Methane Ultra-emission Event from an Offshore Platform in the Gulf of Mexico
I just came across this one: Satellites Detect a Methane Ultra-emission Event from an Offshore Platform in the Gulf of Mexico, Itziar Irakulis-Loitxate, Javier Gorroño, Daniel Zavala-Araiza, and Luis Guanter, Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2022 9 (6), 520-525
Some text:
Methane (CH4) is the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas. (1) Significantly reducing CH4 emissions has been recognized as an essential opportunity in order to reduce the rate of global warming in the short and medium terms. (2,3) However, emitting sectors have significant uncertainty about the amount, location, and duration of emissions. (4) Among them, the emissions derived from the oil and gas (O&G) sector stand out, (5,6) since a large fraction of these emissions can be reduced with currently available, highly cost-effective technologies. (7)
In order to mitigate these emissions as soon as possible, great efforts are being made to develop more efficient monitoring methods for O&G infrastructure. New methods in CH4 emission detection from high- and mid-resolution satellites have successfully demonstrated their effectiveness in numerous studies. (8?14) For example, GHGSat, Sentinel-2 (S2), Landsat, PRISMA, Gaofen5, ZY1-AHSI, and WorldView3 (WV3) satellites measuring backscattered solar radiation in the short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectral region have demonstrated a detection capability of at least ?30–1800 kg CH4/h for a range of continental O&G extraction regions. (9,12,14,15) However, at the time of this study, none of those satellite systems has been shown to be capable of detecting emissions from offshore O&G operations. This represents a strong limitation in our capability to monitor industrial CH4 emissions from space, as offshore O&G production constitutes about 28% of the world’s total O&G production. (16,17)
The satellites limitations to detect CH4 over water has led to a lower number of measurement-based, top-down studies, mostly performed from airplanes or ships, resulting in temporally constrained emission characterization and making it challenging to monitor intermittent emission events. (18?22)
The main difficulty for the detection of offshore CH4 emissions from space is the high absorption of SWIR radiation by water, which limits the amount of reflected light reaching the sensor and, subsequently, the capability of these sensors to disentangle the absorption of CH4 in the SWIR from instrument noise and sea surface roughness. However, this limitation can be overcome by satellites measuring solar radiation specularly reflected by the water surface in the so-called sun-glint observation mode (23) (Materials and Methods). For this type of observation, the sensor must point to the forward scattering direction of the Sun-target plane. This can be achieved by pointing the platform accordingly in the case of agile platforms (e.g., the case of WorldView-3, GHGSat, and PRISMA missions) or by using the part of the image located opposite to the Sun in the case of sensors without pointing ability but with relatively large fields of view (e.g., Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8)...
In order to mitigate these emissions as soon as possible, great efforts are being made to develop more efficient monitoring methods for O&G infrastructure. New methods in CH4 emission detection from high- and mid-resolution satellites have successfully demonstrated their effectiveness in numerous studies. (8?14) For example, GHGSat, Sentinel-2 (S2), Landsat, PRISMA, Gaofen5, ZY1-AHSI, and WorldView3 (WV3) satellites measuring backscattered solar radiation in the short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectral region have demonstrated a detection capability of at least ?30–1800 kg CH4/h for a range of continental O&G extraction regions. (9,12,14,15) However, at the time of this study, none of those satellite systems has been shown to be capable of detecting emissions from offshore O&G operations. This represents a strong limitation in our capability to monitor industrial CH4 emissions from space, as offshore O&G production constitutes about 28% of the world’s total O&G production. (16,17)
The satellites limitations to detect CH4 over water has led to a lower number of measurement-based, top-down studies, mostly performed from airplanes or ships, resulting in temporally constrained emission characterization and making it challenging to monitor intermittent emission events. (18?22)
The main difficulty for the detection of offshore CH4 emissions from space is the high absorption of SWIR radiation by water, which limits the amount of reflected light reaching the sensor and, subsequently, the capability of these sensors to disentangle the absorption of CH4 in the SWIR from instrument noise and sea surface roughness. However, this limitation can be overcome by satellites measuring solar radiation specularly reflected by the water surface in the so-called sun-glint observation mode (23) (Materials and Methods). For this type of observation, the sensor must point to the forward scattering direction of the Sun-target plane. This can be achieved by pointing the platform accordingly in the case of agile platforms (e.g., the case of WorldView-3, GHGSat, and PRISMA missions) or by using the part of the image located opposite to the Sun in the case of sensors without pointing ability but with relatively large fields of view (e.g., Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8)...
They studied an offshore oil platform off the coast of Mexico using this technology, which is discussed in more detail in the full paper:
...The initial objective of the study was to explore the feasibility of offshore CH4 plume detection with the WV3 satellite system. An area with potentially frequent and strong emissions was needed for this experiment. On the basis of the recent analysis of offshore emissions by Zavala-Araiza et al., (19) we selected a study site on the Mexican side of the Gulf of Mexico, near the coast of Campeche. This is the Zaap offshore field area, which is responsible for roughly 20% of Mexican oil offshore production. (24)
The site with detected emissions is the Zaap-C platform, whose main processes include O&G production through a series of wells and first stage separation, in addition to a power generation unit used for gas injection. There are two boom-type flares linked to the production and separation units, which were the sources of emissions detected in this work...
The site with detected emissions is the Zaap-C platform, whose main processes include O&G production through a series of wells and first stage separation, in addition to a power generation unit used for gas injection. There are two boom-type flares linked to the production and separation units, which were the sources of emissions detected in this work...
The, um, "good(?) stuff:"
Using WV3 and L8 multispectral satellite SWIR data, we have detected CH4 plumes at three different dates from the Zaap-C offshore platform (Figure 1 and Figure S10)...
Figure 1:
The caption:
Figure 1. Main panel shows a CH4 plume from an offshore platform as detected with the WV3 satellite on December 18, 2021. The background image is from a S2 data acquisition from a contiguous noncloudy day. The map on the left panel indicates the location of the platform in the Gulf of Mexico: latitude 19.5658°, longitude ?92.2367° (source map from Google Earth).
Some more text:
Figure 2 shows the temporal evolution of the flaring at this installation. There, we can appreciate near-constant flare activity over several weeks preceding the event, until the flare is suddenly turned off from December 8 until December 27. Nonetheless, the flare was also lit up sporadically during this switch-off period: in the daytime on the 16th and 17th of December and at night on the 17th, 24th, and 26th, which indicates short-duration, intermittent flaring activity. There is no daily information from S2 and L8, but the analysis of their fire-sensitive bands (high emissivity of fire bands B12 and B7, respectively) confirms a flaring stop from day 8 (first day without flaring) to day 28 (first day with flaring after the event).
Figure 2:
The caption:
Figure 2. Time series of flaring activity at the offshore platform responsible for the detected methane plumes. Flaring has been plotted as the average value of fire radiative power (in megawatts) detected by VIIRS/NOAA-20 and VIIRS/Suomi-NPP. The red dots represent the average value of fire radiative power during the day and the blue dots the night value. The missing data are due to cloudy dates. The vertical lines indicate the day when the emissions were detected.
More text:
Therefore, from December 8 to December 27, we have a total of 17 days (excluding days 16 and 17 and the nights of 17, 24, and 26) on which the facility kept the flaring off. The three detected plumes are especially well located within this period, covering the event’s beginning, middle, and near end (Figure 2). Considering that the three plumes have a very similar emission flux (111,000 ± 45,000 kg/h, 92,000 ± 40,000 kg/h, 94,000 ± 38,000 kg/h), we obtain an average emission flux of 99,000 ± 24,000 kg/h assuming no correlation between the estimates. If we consider that the platform was emitting during the whole event with a relatively constant flux, as the three detections suggest, we obtain an integrated total emission of 0.04 ± 0.01 Tg of CH4 in the whole event, equivalent to 3.36 million tons of carbon dioxide (using 84 as the 20 year global warming potential factor)...
...In this estimation, we consider that on the dates without flaring during the day and night, the source was emitting for 24 h, and on the days with flaring during the night but not the day, or vice versa, it emitted for 12 h.
An event of this magnitude is equivalent to roughly 3% of Mexico’s O&G emissions (1.3 Tg/yr), although the total magnitude of Mexico’s emissions would also be higher if such events happened frequently enough. This single event would have a similar magnitude to the entire measurement-based estimate of regional emissions from Mexico’s offshore region (0.044 Tg/yr), according to the Shen et al. 2021 (28) and Zavala-Araiza et al. 2021 (19) studies...
...In this estimation, we consider that on the dates without flaring during the day and night, the source was emitting for 24 h, and on the days with flaring during the night but not the day, or vice versa, it emitted for 12 h.
An event of this magnitude is equivalent to roughly 3% of Mexico’s O&G emissions (1.3 Tg/yr), although the total magnitude of Mexico’s emissions would also be higher if such events happened frequently enough. This single event would have a similar magnitude to the entire measurement-based estimate of regional emissions from Mexico’s offshore region (0.044 Tg/yr), according to the Shen et al. 2021 (28) and Zavala-Araiza et al. 2021 (19) studies...
Lovely, isn't it?
There's more to the paper.
Listen boys and girls and gender fluid people:
There's a widely held belief that so called "renewable energy" has something to do with stopping this stuff. This is nonsense. So called "renewable energy" depends on this kind of mining, among many other kinds of mining, this on a totally unsustainable scale. When Putin cut off Germany's gas, the so called Energiewende country which used pure dishonest marketing to declare itself "low carbon" became more dependent on burning coal, beyond the coal mined to make the steel for those fucking wind turbines that will all be trash within 20 to 30 years. This reactionary scheme was never undertaken to address climate change, which is why it is doing nothing at all with respect to climate. It was designed to attack the only viable means of addressing climate change, doing away with gas, oil and coal, nuclear energy. It's anti, as in anti-vax, rhetoric on steroids.
This has to stop. The world is literally on fire.
Lying to ourselves is making everything worse.
Have a nice workweek.
August 7, 2022
Drier than a bone: Platte River goes dry in wake of hot, rainless year
A paper I referenced in a recent post (A Model to Identify the Source for Contaminants Undergoing Non-Fickian Diffusion in Water) discussed an experiment conducted in 1965 by the US Geological Survey, in which sand labeled with radioactive Ir-192 was placed in the North Loup River in Nebraska in order to measure the migration of radioactive particles in stream sediments.
After accessing the description of the experiment in a report covering it, which was very detailed and had nice photographs of the scientists "dosing" the river with radioactivity, I decided to learn more about the North Loup. It's a tributary of the Platte River.
Knowing that we're in a, um, hot, dry "spell" that may last for centuries because of climate change, I decided to check the recent news on the state of the Platte River, located smack in the middle of our nation's granary.
It's um, not pretty: Drier than a bone: Platte River goes dry in wake of hot, rainless year
Not to worry. What's a famine between friends? It's nowhere near as serious as Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl. Those are all more scary than a burning planet, or so I'm led to believe. It's not like a famine will be as important as the cost of building the Vogtle nuclear reactors.
Well maybe there won't be a famine this year - who can say? - but mark my words, it's coming.
History will not forgive us, nor should it.
August 6, 2022
For many years around here, I've heard that so called "renewable energy" was driving the coal industry out of business. To the extent that this has some mote of truth, it is only because inherently unreliable energy, which may on occasion make reliable electricity worthless for short periods in which all electricity is essentially worthless impacts the economics of all reliable plants because of O&M costs, but in terms of environmental value, this is a nonsense statement. A dangerous fossil fuel power plant when operated intermittently is required to burn extra fossil fuels to restart after the wind blows for a few hours or because the sun is shining at noon. This is because of the obvious, but often overlooked fact that if a boiler cools, energy must be added back to it to make it re-boil, energy that is not recovered as electricity or as anything. It's pure waste and nothing but waste. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever worked a tea kettle, but somehow it isn't.
The reality is that the "renewable energy" fantasy has depended entirely on access to dangerous natural gas to hide its intrinsic unreliability - and in combined cycle plants the stopping and starting also wastes energy - and of course, all those steel wind turbine towers have depended on coal to make coke.
The constraints on gas supplies, now that Putin has used the money he earned from exporting gas to "renewable energy" anti-nuke governments to savagely attack an independent nation, has made the world "safe" for the coal industry and increasingly unsafe for living things.
I trust that you're having a pleasant weekend.
Dispatches from the "Energy Transition:" Glencore, the Coal Mining Company Posts an $18.5B Profit.
This bit comes from my news feed from Carbon News Brief, a UK news outlet discussing news related to climate change. The full article from Financial Times is behind a firewall, and I'm not going to pay to open it.
Here's what the Carbon News Brief email says:
In a frontpage story, the Financial Times reports that Glencore – the world’s largest mining company – has seen its profits more than double to a record in the first half of the year on the back of surging coal prices. The firm’s profits of $18.9bn for the first six months were up 119% from a year earlier, the paper says, beating its previous half-year record and coming in higher than expected. It notes that “a strong performance at its coal business, which Glencore has stuck with even as rivals retreat from the controversial fuel, accounted for almost half” of the profits. It adds: “The bumper profits will increase focus on its coal division, which generated earnings of $8.9bn, more than the whole company made in the first six months of last year.” Glencore said it would pay out an additional $4.5bn to shareholders, reports Reuters, “including a $1.45bn special dividend worth 11 cents per share, and a $3bn share buyback which it said was worth around 23 cents a share, taking 2022 payouts to $8.5bn in total”. The newswire notes that “Glencore, which plans to run down its thermal coal mines by the mid-2040s, produces more than 100m tonnes a year at mines in Colombia, Australia and South Africa”. Bloomberg adds that “Glencore’s bumper profits and returns set it aside from mining rivals, which have reported falling earnings and reduced payouts as commodities like iron ore and copper retreat”. The Times also has the story...
For many years around here, I've heard that so called "renewable energy" was driving the coal industry out of business. To the extent that this has some mote of truth, it is only because inherently unreliable energy, which may on occasion make reliable electricity worthless for short periods in which all electricity is essentially worthless impacts the economics of all reliable plants because of O&M costs, but in terms of environmental value, this is a nonsense statement. A dangerous fossil fuel power plant when operated intermittently is required to burn extra fossil fuels to restart after the wind blows for a few hours or because the sun is shining at noon. This is because of the obvious, but often overlooked fact that if a boiler cools, energy must be added back to it to make it re-boil, energy that is not recovered as electricity or as anything. It's pure waste and nothing but waste. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever worked a tea kettle, but somehow it isn't.
The reality is that the "renewable energy" fantasy has depended entirely on access to dangerous natural gas to hide its intrinsic unreliability - and in combined cycle plants the stopping and starting also wastes energy - and of course, all those steel wind turbine towers have depended on coal to make coke.
The constraints on gas supplies, now that Putin has used the money he earned from exporting gas to "renewable energy" anti-nuke governments to savagely attack an independent nation, has made the world "safe" for the coal industry and increasingly unsafe for living things.
I trust that you're having a pleasant weekend.
August 6, 2022
To be perfectly honest, I am not competent, to "go crazy" in this particular way. I have been peripherally involved in projects involving the determination of Langmuir constants in certain biological models, but the operative word is "peripherally."
Well, it appears that competent researchers, one at the University of Alabama, another at University of Arizona, a third at the University of Colorado, and a fourth at the Normal University in Nanjing, China have gone crazy doing this, as I came across this paper this morning: General Backward Model to Identify the Source for Contaminants Undergoing Non-Fickian Diffusion in Water, Yong Zhang, Mark L. Brusseau, Roseanna M. Neupauer, and Wei Wei Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (15), 10743-10753.
The paper contains a very beautiful, long, run on sentence which I will reproduce as a graphic object, with all kinds of references to mathematics.
Fick's law, at least in the simplest one dimensional case, is a straight forward differential equation based on concentration gradients.
First an excerpt from the paper giving a general statement of the problem:
Later the authors offer their approach:
The graphics object with the wonderful run on sentence, actually two beautiful run on sentences:
Another graphics object, table 1, with boundary conditions:
Yet another table, with some very justified bragging about the strength of the author's approach to this problem:
I note that this approach considers a case I made in my discussion of Hanford, linked above. Specifically it addresses the case I made with respect to the interaction of pertechnate with iron to form insoluble TcO2.
Of course, the rattle and gasps associated with Hanford by anti-nukes is based on the dangerous and ignorant assumption that the release of any amount of radioactivity justifies the rote acceptance of tens of millions of deaths every decade from air pollution. One sees this obscene and immoral claim in many settings, generally connected with things like Fukushima, Chernobyl and even - more obscenely - Three Mile Island.
The cost of the "clean up" of Three Mile Island in particular is patently absurd, since the "clean up" to a standard that almost no one applies to any other pollutant - the requirement that even badly educated people cannot imagine any risk to anyone at anytime - to will save very few lives, because very few lives are at risk. I personally drove through Harrisburg a few days back. It's still there, with lots and lots and lots of people living useful, productive, and healthy lives.
The fear and ignorance associated with this murderous risk fantasy is connected with the Linear No Threshold (LNT) Assumption, an assumption which has, a best, very, very, very, very weak scientific justification, the obsession with which is killing people on a vast scale, and in fact, killing the planet at an accelerating rate. In fact even if the the LNT assumption were justified - and I'm convinced it isn't based on some modern work involving molecular biology involving enzymatic analysis of DNA protein interactions - one doesn't need to have the mathematical sophistication of the fine scientists who authored this paper, to understand that the risk is almost vanishingly small in comparison to the risk of burning dangerous fossil fuels and dumping the waste directly into the planetary atmosphere.
The planet is burning. How about we wake up?
Have a pleasant weekend.
A Model to Identify the Source for Contaminants Undergoing Non-Fickian Diffusion in Water.
Some time ago, in a rather long and perhaps boring post at DU, I discussed the diffusion of certain radionuclides, in particular the mobile element technetium, at the big, bad anti-nuke boogeyman at Hanford, Washington where I speculated on the release of the "missing" technetium into the Columbia River: 828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels
I wrote:
I suppose one could go crazy doing calculations about this situation considering Fick's law of diffusion, or modifications of it to get diffusion advection equations in the case of flow. One could even go crazier, arguing all day whether a Stokes-Einstein formulation of the diffusion constant is appropriate with or without Langmuir or Freundlich corrections apply.
To be perfectly honest, I am not competent, to "go crazy" in this particular way. I have been peripherally involved in projects involving the determination of Langmuir constants in certain biological models, but the operative word is "peripherally."
Well, it appears that competent researchers, one at the University of Alabama, another at University of Arizona, a third at the University of Colorado, and a fourth at the Normal University in Nanjing, China have gone crazy doing this, as I came across this paper this morning: General Backward Model to Identify the Source for Contaminants Undergoing Non-Fickian Diffusion in Water, Yong Zhang, Mark L. Brusseau, Roseanna M. Neupauer, and Wei Wei Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (15), 10743-10753.
The paper contains a very beautiful, long, run on sentence which I will reproduce as a graphic object, with all kinds of references to mathematics.
Fick's law, at least in the simplest one dimensional case, is a straight forward differential equation based on concentration gradients.
First an excerpt from the paper giving a general statement of the problem:
Pollutant source identification (PSI) in surface and subsurface water focuses on using “results” (i.e., observed pollutant distributions) to find “causes” (such as the pollutant source location or release time). (1,2) PSI has remained a research topic and has been applied extensively in hydrology for four decades, including delineation of groundwater protection zones, (3,4) identification of responsible parties, (5,6) assessment of aquifer vulnerability, (7) recovery of the contaminant history, (8) calculation of groundwater ages, (9,10) and identification of pollutant sources in water (11,12) or soil. (13,14) Source-identification problems have also been popular in other disciplines related to water and environments, such as oceanic sciences where backward-in-time models were used to backtrack moving sea ice, ocean plankton, oil slicks, and marine debris, (15?17) atmospheric sciences where the models were used to track the source for airborne pollutants, (18,19) and other applications such as to track heat conduction or fish sources. (20,21)
PSI usually requires quantitative analyses, which involve chemical techniques (such as isotope signatures (22,23) and molecular markers (24,25) applicable for specific contaminants), statistical analysis, (26,27) or process-based physical/mathematical techniques (such as forward- or backward-in-time modeling of dissolved contaminant transport). The physical approach can incorporate the complex impact of geological media properties on PSI at various spatiotemporal scales, but it is computationally demanding and remains one fundamental challenge in environmental sciences (reviewed below). This study aims to quantify PSI using a generalized, computationally efficient mathematical model for contaminant transport in hydrologic systems with intrinsic physical heterogeneity by addressing the following three knowledge gaps in PSI.
First, PSI theories and applications mainly focused on pollutants undergoing Fickian diffusion, (1) while real-world pollutant transport in surface and subsurface water has been increasingly documented to be non-Fickian, characterized by the nonlinear growth of plume variance in time. (28) Non-Fickian diffusion generates pollutant plumes that are not uniformly distributed about the center of mass, with leading and/or trailing edges whose mass is orders of magnitude larger than that for Fickian diffusion. This discrepancy has important implications for water resources protection and remediation, challenging the Fickian diffusion-based PSI. For example, Zhang et al. (7) found that superdiffusion (where the plume variance increases faster than linear in time) must be accounted for in aquifers with preferential flow paths or rivers with turbulent flow when identifying the pollutant source position, since the standard Fickian diffusive models such as the classical advection–dispersion equation (ADE) cannot track the highly skewed probability density function (PDF) describing the pollutants’ initial locations. Neupauer and Wilson (29) developed the backward, single-rate mobile–immobile model to calculate the backward location PDF (which describes the possible location(s) of the pollutant source) for sorbing solutes in groundwater. To the best of our knowledge, these are the only works that have quantified the impact of non-Fickian transport on PSI using non-Fickian diffusive models with an upscaled, uniform velocity. We will expand upon them by considering a broader range of non-Fickian diffusion for dissolved contaminants in various hydrologic systems (i.e., rivers, soil, and aquifers).
Second, PSI has known mathematical challenges when using inverse or backward modeling. Inverse tools and backward models have been the two major physical methods in implementing PSI over the last four decades, each of which contains unsolved mathematical issues. The commonly used inverse tools can calibrate multiple unknown variables, including properties of pollutant sources (such as the location, number, mass, or release history of initial sources) and aquifer information (such as hydraulic conductivity), by repeatedly solving the forward-in-time model. (30) However, inverse problems are often ill-posed, (31,32) and the repeated simulation of forward-in-time models may sometimes be computationally prohibitive. Backward models, which backtrack pollutants by reversing the flow field, can directly identify a contaminant source; (33,34) hence, backward models do not suffer from the issues of solution existence, nonuniqueness, and instability...
PSI usually requires quantitative analyses, which involve chemical techniques (such as isotope signatures (22,23) and molecular markers (24,25) applicable for specific contaminants), statistical analysis, (26,27) or process-based physical/mathematical techniques (such as forward- or backward-in-time modeling of dissolved contaminant transport). The physical approach can incorporate the complex impact of geological media properties on PSI at various spatiotemporal scales, but it is computationally demanding and remains one fundamental challenge in environmental sciences (reviewed below). This study aims to quantify PSI using a generalized, computationally efficient mathematical model for contaminant transport in hydrologic systems with intrinsic physical heterogeneity by addressing the following three knowledge gaps in PSI.
First, PSI theories and applications mainly focused on pollutants undergoing Fickian diffusion, (1) while real-world pollutant transport in surface and subsurface water has been increasingly documented to be non-Fickian, characterized by the nonlinear growth of plume variance in time. (28) Non-Fickian diffusion generates pollutant plumes that are not uniformly distributed about the center of mass, with leading and/or trailing edges whose mass is orders of magnitude larger than that for Fickian diffusion. This discrepancy has important implications for water resources protection and remediation, challenging the Fickian diffusion-based PSI. For example, Zhang et al. (7) found that superdiffusion (where the plume variance increases faster than linear in time) must be accounted for in aquifers with preferential flow paths or rivers with turbulent flow when identifying the pollutant source position, since the standard Fickian diffusive models such as the classical advection–dispersion equation (ADE) cannot track the highly skewed probability density function (PDF) describing the pollutants’ initial locations. Neupauer and Wilson (29) developed the backward, single-rate mobile–immobile model to calculate the backward location PDF (which describes the possible location(s) of the pollutant source) for sorbing solutes in groundwater. To the best of our knowledge, these are the only works that have quantified the impact of non-Fickian transport on PSI using non-Fickian diffusive models with an upscaled, uniform velocity. We will expand upon them by considering a broader range of non-Fickian diffusion for dissolved contaminants in various hydrologic systems (i.e., rivers, soil, and aquifers).
Second, PSI has known mathematical challenges when using inverse or backward modeling. Inverse tools and backward models have been the two major physical methods in implementing PSI over the last four decades, each of which contains unsolved mathematical issues. The commonly used inverse tools can calibrate multiple unknown variables, including properties of pollutant sources (such as the location, number, mass, or release history of initial sources) and aquifer information (such as hydraulic conductivity), by repeatedly solving the forward-in-time model. (30) However, inverse problems are often ill-posed, (31,32) and the repeated simulation of forward-in-time models may sometimes be computationally prohibitive. Backward models, which backtrack pollutants by reversing the flow field, can directly identify a contaminant source; (33,34) hence, backward models do not suffer from the issues of solution existence, nonuniqueness, and instability...
Later the authors offer their approach:
...We propose the following tempered (meaning “truncation” of extremely long jump sizes) fractional-divergence (representing a fractional-order vector operator; see further explanation in Section S.1.4) advection–dispersion equation (TFD-ADE) with source/sink terms and chemical reactions (i.e., first-order decay) to model retention and superdiffusion for pollutants in aquatic systems at various scales...
The graphics object with the wonderful run on sentence, actually two beautiful run on sentences:
Another graphics object, table 1, with boundary conditions:
Yet another table, with some very justified bragging about the strength of the author's approach to this problem:
I note that this approach considers a case I made in my discussion of Hanford, linked above. Specifically it addresses the case I made with respect to the interaction of pertechnate with iron to form insoluble TcO2.
Of course, the rattle and gasps associated with Hanford by anti-nukes is based on the dangerous and ignorant assumption that the release of any amount of radioactivity justifies the rote acceptance of tens of millions of deaths every decade from air pollution. One sees this obscene and immoral claim in many settings, generally connected with things like Fukushima, Chernobyl and even - more obscenely - Three Mile Island.
The cost of the "clean up" of Three Mile Island in particular is patently absurd, since the "clean up" to a standard that almost no one applies to any other pollutant - the requirement that even badly educated people cannot imagine any risk to anyone at anytime - to will save very few lives, because very few lives are at risk. I personally drove through Harrisburg a few days back. It's still there, with lots and lots and lots of people living useful, productive, and healthy lives.
The fear and ignorance associated with this murderous risk fantasy is connected with the Linear No Threshold (LNT) Assumption, an assumption which has, a best, very, very, very, very weak scientific justification, the obsession with which is killing people on a vast scale, and in fact, killing the planet at an accelerating rate. In fact even if the the LNT assumption were justified - and I'm convinced it isn't based on some modern work involving molecular biology involving enzymatic analysis of DNA protein interactions - one doesn't need to have the mathematical sophistication of the fine scientists who authored this paper, to understand that the risk is almost vanishingly small in comparison to the risk of burning dangerous fossil fuels and dumping the waste directly into the planetary atmosphere.
The planet is burning. How about we wake up?
Have a pleasant weekend.
August 6, 2022
Here's the introductory cartoon:
A figure from the paper giving insight to the overall approach of the research:
The caption:
Figure 1. Flowchart of major steps for the development of the MRG chip, including literature review, database construction, primer design, experimental validation, in silico validation, and data processing.
Understanding the genomics of metal processing in organisms can have profound effects in the future for environmental remediation and indeed for the recovery of metals. (I have been aware of certain uranium complexing proteins in some coral species, but this work is far more general.)
Cool, I think.
The Genetics of the Heavy Metal Resistome of Microorganisms.
I like to approach accessible subjects about which I know nothing or very little. I have been required on a very superficial level on genomics, although it is unlikely I will ever become expert in the area; there won't be time.
I am aware however of the biochemistry of heavy metals, in particular with respect to their role in catalysis and transport, and I work regularly with proteomics and I am very aware of heavy metal pollution driven by coal combustion and other sources.
In this regard, I came across a cool paper today in the recent issue of Environmental Science and Technology, this one: MRG Chip: A High-Throughput qPCR-Based Tool for Assessment of the Heavy Metal(loid) Resistome, Jiaojiao Zhu, Qiong Huang, Xinyi Peng, Xinyuan Zhou, Shenghan Gao, Yuanping Li, Xuesong Luo, Yi Zhao, Christopher Rensing, Jianqiang Su, Peng Cai, Yurong Liu, Wenli Chen, Xiuli Hao, and Qiaoyun Huang Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (15), 10656-10667
Regrettably I'm not going to have time to discuss the paper in any detail, but the introductory paragraphs certainly define the flavor:
Heavy and transition metal(loid)s (“metals” hereafter), such as copper (Cu), silver (Ag), arsenic (As), and mercury (Hg), have been used as antimicrobial agents for centuries in agriculture, medicine, and aquaculture. (1) Nowadays, the release of metals is greatly accelerated by intensive anthropogenic activities such as mining, burning of fossil fuels, and worldwide use of metal-containing pesticides, fertilizers, and growth stimulants. (2?4) Elevated metals persist in the environment and pose a long-standing selective pressure for the evolution of bacterial metal resistance. (5) As a side effect, environmental metal pollution contributes to the selection and spread of antibiotic resistance via coselection, (6?8) causing great threats to public health. Among various metals, cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), chromium (Cr), Hg, and Cu have gained global attention since they are the most prevalent pollutants threatening human, plant, and environmental health. (9?13)
Microorganisms play an irreplaceable role in the biogeochemical cycling of metals. (14?17) Metals, such as Cu, Zn, cobalt (Co), and nickel (Ni), are essential micronutrients for microbial metabolism. These metals function as cofactors, involved in central bioenergetic and biogeochemical processes (e.g., respiration, photosynthesis, antioxidant defense, and nitrogen cycling). (18?20) However, due to the high affinity to thiol groups and/or oxidation properties, metals can be toxic and target multiple cellular processes through attacking iron–sulfur (Fe–S) clusters, replacing essential metals, dysfunction of proteins, oxidation of lipid and nucleic acid, and interfering nutrient assimilation. (1,18) To balance the metabolic function demand and metal toxicity, microbes have evolved sophisticated homeostatic mechanisms to maintain essential metals at a sufficient level. (19) These mechanisms are categorized as efflux, transformation, sequestration, precipitation, and reduced uptake. Among these, efflux pumps are the most expedient mechanism for bacteria to cope with excess metal ions, which is mainly mediated by three types of transport systems: the P-type ATPase, the Cation Diffusion Facilitator (CDF) efflux transporter, and the multicomponent Resistance-Nodulation-Division (RND) transport system. (21) Enzyme-mediated metal biotransformations alter metal speciation through redox and (de)methylation. (18,22,23) Metallothionein or chaperone proteins sequester intracellular metal ions to alleviate toxicity. (24) For instance, Cu chaperone CopZ can bind excess cytoplasmic Cu in Enterococcus hirae, (23) and metallothionein SmtA confers Cd resistance in Cyanobacteria. (25) In addition, various high- and low-affinity uptake systems contribute to the import of essential metals and are of importance for bacterial metal homeostasis. (26) These mechanisms protect bacteria from metal toxicity and meanwhile drive the metal biogeochemical cycling.
To date, the genetic basis for bacterial metal resistance and related biochemical pathways have been elaborated in considerable detail by pure culture-based studies. (27?29) However, the resistance systems identified in several isolates could not provide comprehensive insights into the scenario of resistance strategies in complex environments, since only a tiny fraction of microbes is culturable. Up to now, profiling the metal resistance determinants at the community level is still a great challenge, partially due to lack of comprehensive and targeted tools for gene quantification. Although metagenomic and metatranscriptomic approaches have been used to identify the gene profile underlying microbial resistance to metals, (30?33) they are still facing the challenge of rapid detection and quantification. (34,35) HT-qPCR based quantification approaches overcome the obstacle of meta-omic approaches for cost-effective and accurate quantification, which has been widely used to describe and interpret the microbial functional structure in various ecosystems. (36?40) However, the primer sets which are currently available for detecting metal resistance determinants are restricted to specific types of metals, resistance mechanisms, and bacterial species. (5) Some primer sets target sequences with a length of over 500 bp, which are too long and not suitable for the qPCR assay. Thus, the lack of reliable primer sets hinders the assessment of the metal resistome and microbially mediated metal biogeochemical cycling.
Here, a novel HT-qPCR-based chip, termed the MRG chip, was developed for the comprehensive profiling of known prokaryotic metal resistance genes (MRGs) involved in the homeostasis of 9 metals...
Microorganisms play an irreplaceable role in the biogeochemical cycling of metals. (14?17) Metals, such as Cu, Zn, cobalt (Co), and nickel (Ni), are essential micronutrients for microbial metabolism. These metals function as cofactors, involved in central bioenergetic and biogeochemical processes (e.g., respiration, photosynthesis, antioxidant defense, and nitrogen cycling). (18?20) However, due to the high affinity to thiol groups and/or oxidation properties, metals can be toxic and target multiple cellular processes through attacking iron–sulfur (Fe–S) clusters, replacing essential metals, dysfunction of proteins, oxidation of lipid and nucleic acid, and interfering nutrient assimilation. (1,18) To balance the metabolic function demand and metal toxicity, microbes have evolved sophisticated homeostatic mechanisms to maintain essential metals at a sufficient level. (19) These mechanisms are categorized as efflux, transformation, sequestration, precipitation, and reduced uptake. Among these, efflux pumps are the most expedient mechanism for bacteria to cope with excess metal ions, which is mainly mediated by three types of transport systems: the P-type ATPase, the Cation Diffusion Facilitator (CDF) efflux transporter, and the multicomponent Resistance-Nodulation-Division (RND) transport system. (21) Enzyme-mediated metal biotransformations alter metal speciation through redox and (de)methylation. (18,22,23) Metallothionein or chaperone proteins sequester intracellular metal ions to alleviate toxicity. (24) For instance, Cu chaperone CopZ can bind excess cytoplasmic Cu in Enterococcus hirae, (23) and metallothionein SmtA confers Cd resistance in Cyanobacteria. (25) In addition, various high- and low-affinity uptake systems contribute to the import of essential metals and are of importance for bacterial metal homeostasis. (26) These mechanisms protect bacteria from metal toxicity and meanwhile drive the metal biogeochemical cycling.
To date, the genetic basis for bacterial metal resistance and related biochemical pathways have been elaborated in considerable detail by pure culture-based studies. (27?29) However, the resistance systems identified in several isolates could not provide comprehensive insights into the scenario of resistance strategies in complex environments, since only a tiny fraction of microbes is culturable. Up to now, profiling the metal resistance determinants at the community level is still a great challenge, partially due to lack of comprehensive and targeted tools for gene quantification. Although metagenomic and metatranscriptomic approaches have been used to identify the gene profile underlying microbial resistance to metals, (30?33) they are still facing the challenge of rapid detection and quantification. (34,35) HT-qPCR based quantification approaches overcome the obstacle of meta-omic approaches for cost-effective and accurate quantification, which has been widely used to describe and interpret the microbial functional structure in various ecosystems. (36?40) However, the primer sets which are currently available for detecting metal resistance determinants are restricted to specific types of metals, resistance mechanisms, and bacterial species. (5) Some primer sets target sequences with a length of over 500 bp, which are too long and not suitable for the qPCR assay. Thus, the lack of reliable primer sets hinders the assessment of the metal resistome and microbially mediated metal biogeochemical cycling.
Here, a novel HT-qPCR-based chip, termed the MRG chip, was developed for the comprehensive profiling of known prokaryotic metal resistance genes (MRGs) involved in the homeostasis of 9 metals...
Here's the introductory cartoon:
A figure from the paper giving insight to the overall approach of the research:
The caption:
Figure 1. Flowchart of major steps for the development of the MRG chip, including literature review, database construction, primer design, experimental validation, in silico validation, and data processing.
Understanding the genomics of metal processing in organisms can have profound effects in the future for environmental remediation and indeed for the recovery of metals. (I have been aware of certain uranium complexing proteins in some coral species, but this work is far more general.)
Cool, I think.
August 5, 2022
Florida woman indicted on hate crime charges after pepper spraying Asian women in NYC
It isn't just "Florida man..."
Florida woman indicted on hate crime charges after pepper spraying Asian women in NYC
(CNN)A Florida woman accused of pepper spraying four Asian women while yelling xenophobic comments was indicted on 12 hate crime charges, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced Thursday.
Madeline Barker, 47, was indicted on eight counts of assault in the third degree as a hate crime and four counts of aggravated harassment in the second degree, a misdemeanor hate crime, a news release from District Attorney Alvin Bragg's Office said.
Thursday's indictment includes five more assault charges than Barker faced at her arraignment last month.
Barker remains in custody in New York. CNN has reached out to her attorney for comment...
Madeline Barker, 47, was indicted on eight counts of assault in the third degree as a hate crime and four counts of aggravated harassment in the second degree, a misdemeanor hate crime, a news release from District Attorney Alvin Bragg's Office said.
Thursday's indictment includes five more assault charges than Barker faced at her arraignment last month.
Barker remains in custody in New York. CNN has reached out to her attorney for comment...
August 5, 2022
I have nothing to add to these remarks.
The New Yorker: The Kansas Abortion Referendum Has a Message for Democrats
The Kansas Abortion Referendum Has a Message for Democrats (John Cassidy, the New Yorker, August 5, 2022.)Of all the reactions to Kansans’ rejection of an effort to overturn the abortion rights contained in their state constitution, the one that stood out to me most came from Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut. Murphy, a Democrat, isn’t up for reëlection this November, but, writing on Twitter, he offered some advice for colleagues in his party who will be on the ballot. “Run on personal freedom. Run on keeping the government out of your private life. Run on getting your rights back. This is where the energy is. This is where the 2022 election will be won.”
Murphy’s comments reminded me of a conversation I had, back in 2005, with Grover Norquist, the veteran Republican anti-tax campaigner who has long played a key role in uniting a fractious conservative movement, which he often refers to as the leave-me-alone coalition. “The guy who wants to be left alone to practice his faith, the guy who wants to make money, the guy who wants to spend money without paying taxes, the guy who wants to fondle his gun—they all have a lot in common,” Norquist told me. “They all want the government to go away. That is what holds together the conservative movement.”
Until now, it seems. In a state that already places strict limits on abortions after twenty-two weeks of pregnancy but allows terminations in other circumstances, the Kansas ballot initiative was an effort by conservative activists to open the way to a total ban. As my colleague Peter Slevin reported, opponents of the initiative portrayed it as an intrusive effort to extend government control into the private lives of Kansans—and this message hit home. Saline County is a Republican stronghold north of Wichita, which last voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate in 1964, and which Donald Trump carried by thirty-one points in 2020. On Tuesday, Saline’s voters rejected the anti-abortion proposal by fifty-five per cent to forty-five per cent...
... For decades, the Republican Party has largely owned and exploited the language of individual liberty and freedom, even as many of its policies have favored the rich and powerful— from gunmakers to Big Pharma and Wall Street—over individual middle-class Americans. This cynical strategy has paid big dividends for the G.O.P., but Senator Murphy is right. With the overturn of Roe, and efforts to ban any transgressions against fundamentalist views, the zealots of the Supreme Court and the conservative base are presenting Democrats with an opportunity to seize the mantle as the defenders of long-established individual rights.
The freedom to make one’s own decisions about reproduction and health. The freedom to vote. The freedom to choose one’s dating and life partners. The freedom to hold elections without worrying about an authoritarian putsch. The freedom to send one’s kids to school without fear of a madman armed with an AR-15. These are all rights that the vast majority of Americans cherish, and the radicalized G.O.P. of Alito, Thomas, Trump, and Masters is threatening them. Freedom is a many-sided thing, and no political party has a monopoly on it. Democrats should stake their claim now.
Murphy’s comments reminded me of a conversation I had, back in 2005, with Grover Norquist, the veteran Republican anti-tax campaigner who has long played a key role in uniting a fractious conservative movement, which he often refers to as the leave-me-alone coalition. “The guy who wants to be left alone to practice his faith, the guy who wants to make money, the guy who wants to spend money without paying taxes, the guy who wants to fondle his gun—they all have a lot in common,” Norquist told me. “They all want the government to go away. That is what holds together the conservative movement.”
Until now, it seems. In a state that already places strict limits on abortions after twenty-two weeks of pregnancy but allows terminations in other circumstances, the Kansas ballot initiative was an effort by conservative activists to open the way to a total ban. As my colleague Peter Slevin reported, opponents of the initiative portrayed it as an intrusive effort to extend government control into the private lives of Kansans—and this message hit home. Saline County is a Republican stronghold north of Wichita, which last voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate in 1964, and which Donald Trump carried by thirty-one points in 2020. On Tuesday, Saline’s voters rejected the anti-abortion proposal by fifty-five per cent to forty-five per cent...
... For decades, the Republican Party has largely owned and exploited the language of individual liberty and freedom, even as many of its policies have favored the rich and powerful— from gunmakers to Big Pharma and Wall Street—over individual middle-class Americans. This cynical strategy has paid big dividends for the G.O.P., but Senator Murphy is right. With the overturn of Roe, and efforts to ban any transgressions against fundamentalist views, the zealots of the Supreme Court and the conservative base are presenting Democrats with an opportunity to seize the mantle as the defenders of long-established individual rights.
The freedom to make one’s own decisions about reproduction and health. The freedom to vote. The freedom to choose one’s dating and life partners. The freedom to hold elections without worrying about an authoritarian putsch. The freedom to send one’s kids to school without fear of a madman armed with an AR-15. These are all rights that the vast majority of Americans cherish, and the radicalized G.O.P. of Alito, Thomas, Trump, and Masters is threatening them. Freedom is a many-sided thing, and no political party has a monopoly on it. Democrats should stake their claim now.
I have nothing to add to these remarks.
August 4, 2022
I have had to make this decision to "tell them," or "not tell them," twice and made the choice one way and, following the regret of doing so, did it completely differently the next time. Neither felt right, because it can never feel right to lose someone you love, although we all must do this.
The best I can do, as I enter my last years is to tell my sons that my death, when it comes, is my problem, not theirs. The "problem" such it as it is, is only that I have lived. When the time comes, I plan to "tell them," and ask them to get on with their lives.
Again, I'm sorry to be morbid, but this was on my mind and I came across this article.
This is the moment when we must let go of fear & recommit to kind, candid communication about dying.
I don't mean to be morbid, but...
I just dropped my son off at graduate school, and as my last piece of wisdom, I informed him that should I become terminally ill - I'm not other than being alive which is, in effect, a death sentence - I do not wish him to interrupt his studies or his life. I don't want him to be trapped by the dead while living.
I lived my life...
I'm catching up on emails, and came across this piece in my Inbox from the JAMA network, which strikes a nerve in this direction, having watched a number of people I loved die and know what it is to have to let people go. I thought it compassionate, and I thought I'd share it, if this is the place to do so...
Tell Them, Alexander. W. Steinberg, MD. JAMA Network, May 26, 2022
He was dying. I could see that from the door of his room in the emergency department (ED).
The page indicated “urgent,” so I walked over to the patient’s room while returning the call. I listened to the hospitalist’s concern; this patient was not stable for the medical floor because of his altered mental status and a new requirement for 10-L supplemental oxygen. I told him I would see the patient and be in touch.
I did a quick examination, noting the patient’s agonal breathing and lack of response to painful stimuli. I evaluated his fixed and dilated left pupil, and I listened to his heart and lungs. His electroencephalography technician and nurse moved about, adjusting the oxygen mask and attaching leads. The hospitalist’s request made sense to me; this patient’s needs would surely not be met on the medical floor. If only all the tools of the intensive care unit (ICU) could change the truth: Regardless of the possible interventions (intubation, hypertonic saline, steroids and antibiotics, antiepileptics and sedation), he was dying.
The patient was 70 years old. He had been diagnosed 18 months ago with metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the nasopharynx that spread to his brain. He went through first chemotherapy and radiation, followed by a second round of chemotherapy, then immunotherapy, and then palliative care with continued high-dose steroids. Over the past few weeks, he stopped eating, began losing weight, experienced increasing pain, and showed new confusion.
With our hospital in the midst of yet another wave of COVID-19 and related visitor restrictions, I imagined admitting this man to our ICU. Intubation was imminently indicated. We would rapidly perform a number of procedures and start half a dozen medications. I could picture his death in our ICU in the chaos of a resuscitation attempt that was doomed to fail. He would be alone, far from his family. I hoped we might do better...
...As we spoke, I was struck that this is commonly how the sharp part of medicine happens: hard decisions made with families by nurses, advanced practitioners, and trainees.
I told her he was dying. We talked about the best things I could offer. We talked about hospital admission, about symptom control, and about death. We talked about the risks of coming into the hospital and possibly losing the opportunity to be with him at the end of his life. We talked about what hospice and comfort care meant. She asked for time to talk it over with other family members who were on their way to the hospital...
...But it is important to talk about death, to tell someone they are dying even when we may not know exactly when death will come. I believe naming it can be empowering to both patients and physicians. It can bring clarity. Many patients already know that they are dying. Like us, they are holding their breath in fear, unable to speak about it. Naming death in the face of fear allows for the exhalation. The patient’s wife was completely shocked to learn his prognosis, but she had spent every day scared and confused, calling the oncologist’s office and asking about her husband’s arm pain. I wish her husband had told her. I wish he had let his physicians tell her. Honesty about death can create time to prioritize dignity, limit discomfort, and avoid unnecessary care.
We can do better for patients and their loved ones. With courage, we can act as guides who know a little about the unknown...
The page indicated “urgent,” so I walked over to the patient’s room while returning the call. I listened to the hospitalist’s concern; this patient was not stable for the medical floor because of his altered mental status and a new requirement for 10-L supplemental oxygen. I told him I would see the patient and be in touch.
I did a quick examination, noting the patient’s agonal breathing and lack of response to painful stimuli. I evaluated his fixed and dilated left pupil, and I listened to his heart and lungs. His electroencephalography technician and nurse moved about, adjusting the oxygen mask and attaching leads. The hospitalist’s request made sense to me; this patient’s needs would surely not be met on the medical floor. If only all the tools of the intensive care unit (ICU) could change the truth: Regardless of the possible interventions (intubation, hypertonic saline, steroids and antibiotics, antiepileptics and sedation), he was dying.
The patient was 70 years old. He had been diagnosed 18 months ago with metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the nasopharynx that spread to his brain. He went through first chemotherapy and radiation, followed by a second round of chemotherapy, then immunotherapy, and then palliative care with continued high-dose steroids. Over the past few weeks, he stopped eating, began losing weight, experienced increasing pain, and showed new confusion.
With our hospital in the midst of yet another wave of COVID-19 and related visitor restrictions, I imagined admitting this man to our ICU. Intubation was imminently indicated. We would rapidly perform a number of procedures and start half a dozen medications. I could picture his death in our ICU in the chaos of a resuscitation attempt that was doomed to fail. He would be alone, far from his family. I hoped we might do better...
...As we spoke, I was struck that this is commonly how the sharp part of medicine happens: hard decisions made with families by nurses, advanced practitioners, and trainees.
I told her he was dying. We talked about the best things I could offer. We talked about hospital admission, about symptom control, and about death. We talked about the risks of coming into the hospital and possibly losing the opportunity to be with him at the end of his life. We talked about what hospice and comfort care meant. She asked for time to talk it over with other family members who were on their way to the hospital...
...But it is important to talk about death, to tell someone they are dying even when we may not know exactly when death will come. I believe naming it can be empowering to both patients and physicians. It can bring clarity. Many patients already know that they are dying. Like us, they are holding their breath in fear, unable to speak about it. Naming death in the face of fear allows for the exhalation. The patient’s wife was completely shocked to learn his prognosis, but she had spent every day scared and confused, calling the oncologist’s office and asking about her husband’s arm pain. I wish her husband had told her. I wish he had let his physicians tell her. Honesty about death can create time to prioritize dignity, limit discomfort, and avoid unnecessary care.
We can do better for patients and their loved ones. With courage, we can act as guides who know a little about the unknown...
I have had to make this decision to "tell them," or "not tell them," twice and made the choice one way and, following the regret of doing so, did it completely differently the next time. Neither felt right, because it can never feel right to lose someone you love, although we all must do this.
The best I can do, as I enter my last years is to tell my sons that my death, when it comes, is my problem, not theirs. The "problem" such it as it is, is only that I have lived. When the time comes, I plan to "tell them," and ask them to get on with their lives.
Again, I'm sorry to be morbid, but this was on my mind and I came across this article.
August 4, 2022
I added the bold. It states the obvious despite medieval worshipping reactionary asshole Supreme Court Justice with nostalgia for the 16th century, declaring women to be chattel vessels, for among other things, rapists.
This thug Alito will go down in history as a disgrace, as will his fellow religious bigots on the court.
JAMA Viewpoint: The Role of Primary Care Clinicians in Protecting Access to Abortion Services
I've been away for a bit getting my son set up in his new digs for graduate school, so I missed this perspective from the JAMA Network that appears in my inbox.
Here it is for what it's worth:
The Role of Primary Care Clinicians in Protecting Access to Abortion Services (JAMA Network Viewpoint, Miriam Singer, Miriam Batz, MD, Lydia E. Pace, MD, MPH, August 1, 2022. Dr. Pace is the corresponding author.)
Excerpt:
Nearly 1 million people have an abortion in the United States each year; 1 in 4 individuals capable of becoming pregnant will have an abortion in their lifetime.1 Abortion care is a basic health service, and access to a safe, timely abortion can save lives. Yet according to a 2021 count, there had been 1338 state-level abortion restrictions enacted since the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade established abortion as a constitutional right.2 In June 2022, the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the Roe v Wade decision and allowed states to ban abortion entirely.
Primary care clinicians have critical roles in responding to state abortion bans and other restrictions. Depending on where they practice, important actions that primary care clinicians can take include (1) providing abortion services, particularly medication abortion; (2) knowing how to counsel and refer individuals seeking to terminate a pregnancy; and (3) advocating for access to safe abortion as part of comprehensive health care.
Medication abortion can be safely and effectively provided by primary care clinicians following assessment of patients for eligibility and counseling. Medication abortion involves 2 medications, mifepristone (an antiprogesterone) and misoprostol (a prostaglandin), taken 24 to 28 hours apart. This regimen is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for up to 10 weeks’ gestation (the gestational age under which 80% of abortions occur in the US).3 Medication abortion is more than 95% effective and safe (less than 0.5% of medication abortions result in adverse events4) and chosen by an increasing proportion of patients.3 Previously, the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) program of the FDA required mifepristone to be stocked in clinics and dispensed directly in a health care facility, an onerous logistical requirement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA suspended the in-person dispensing requirement. In December 2021, the FDA permanently repealed the requirement. Thus, clinicians can send mifepristone prescriptions to pharmacies...
...Although some states are considering or have enacted legislation to prevent residents from obtaining out-of-state abortions, such restrictions may be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to enforce. In addition, states where abortion is legal can enhance legal protections for clinicians providing these services by enacting laws that prevent law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state investigations regarding provision of legal abortion care in their state; some states have already taken such actions. Additionally, states can instruct their medical boards to refrain from taking disciplinary action against physicians in their state who offer legal abortion care to out-of-state patients...
...In states where abortion may be banned or otherwise legally restricted, some patients may pursue self-managed abortion with mifepristone and/or misoprostol. Clinicians can support patients in pursuing their self-managed abortion safely in a variety of ways, depending on the legal and regulatory environment. Some clinicians may choose to play an active role in supporting patients through this process, for example by confirming gestational age and providing counseling. At a minimum, primary care clinicians should be familiar with potential complications (such as incomplete abortion) and be prepared to provide compassionate follow-up care or referrals...
...Abortion is an essential health service, regardless of its legal and political status in the US. The legal and regulatory landscape of abortion care is uncertain, and there are many unanswered questions, for example about the relationship between FDA rules and state restrictions on medication abortion and the effects of state laws on prescribing medication abortion via telemedicine across state lines. Despite these uncertainties, one thing is clear: primary care clinicians across the country have essential roles in protecting access to abortion services.
Primary care clinicians have critical roles in responding to state abortion bans and other restrictions. Depending on where they practice, important actions that primary care clinicians can take include (1) providing abortion services, particularly medication abortion; (2) knowing how to counsel and refer individuals seeking to terminate a pregnancy; and (3) advocating for access to safe abortion as part of comprehensive health care.
Medication abortion can be safely and effectively provided by primary care clinicians following assessment of patients for eligibility and counseling. Medication abortion involves 2 medications, mifepristone (an antiprogesterone) and misoprostol (a prostaglandin), taken 24 to 28 hours apart. This regimen is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for up to 10 weeks’ gestation (the gestational age under which 80% of abortions occur in the US).3 Medication abortion is more than 95% effective and safe (less than 0.5% of medication abortions result in adverse events4) and chosen by an increasing proportion of patients.3 Previously, the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) program of the FDA required mifepristone to be stocked in clinics and dispensed directly in a health care facility, an onerous logistical requirement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA suspended the in-person dispensing requirement. In December 2021, the FDA permanently repealed the requirement. Thus, clinicians can send mifepristone prescriptions to pharmacies...
...Although some states are considering or have enacted legislation to prevent residents from obtaining out-of-state abortions, such restrictions may be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to enforce. In addition, states where abortion is legal can enhance legal protections for clinicians providing these services by enacting laws that prevent law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state investigations regarding provision of legal abortion care in their state; some states have already taken such actions. Additionally, states can instruct their medical boards to refrain from taking disciplinary action against physicians in their state who offer legal abortion care to out-of-state patients...
...In states where abortion may be banned or otherwise legally restricted, some patients may pursue self-managed abortion with mifepristone and/or misoprostol. Clinicians can support patients in pursuing their self-managed abortion safely in a variety of ways, depending on the legal and regulatory environment. Some clinicians may choose to play an active role in supporting patients through this process, for example by confirming gestational age and providing counseling. At a minimum, primary care clinicians should be familiar with potential complications (such as incomplete abortion) and be prepared to provide compassionate follow-up care or referrals...
...Abortion is an essential health service, regardless of its legal and political status in the US. The legal and regulatory landscape of abortion care is uncertain, and there are many unanswered questions, for example about the relationship between FDA rules and state restrictions on medication abortion and the effects of state laws on prescribing medication abortion via telemedicine across state lines. Despite these uncertainties, one thing is clear: primary care clinicians across the country have essential roles in protecting access to abortion services.
I added the bold. It states the obvious despite medieval worshipping reactionary asshole Supreme Court Justice with nostalgia for the 16th century, declaring women to be chattel vessels, for among other things, rapists.
This thug Alito will go down in history as a disgrace, as will his fellow religious bigots on the court.
August 4, 2022
Some challenges are listed:
Personally, I don't have any problem with the water gas shift reaction. It's a key chemical reaction in my view for saving the world via the use of a clean energy source, of which there is only one, nuclear energy.
Anyway, my purpose is not to put lipstick on the coal and gas pig; the wind and solar industry do that enough, but only to reference the value of oxyfuel combustion.
The authors optimize a palladium/cerium/Titanium oxide catalyst for this purpose. Palladium is an expensive metal, but it can be isolated and utilized from used nuclear fuel, as can cerium, a less expensive metal in any case. Titanium oxide is very common and can be considered inexhaustible.
Some graphics from the paper:
The caption:
The caption:
The caption:
Again, there should no longer be any excuse for burning coal or dangerous natural gas ten or twenty years from now, if not much sooner, but there's a lot of attention paid to hydrogen, and not much paid to oxygen for the remediation and clean up of the badly damaged atmosphere.
I post this simply to keep the matter in mind.
Removal of Oxygen Impurities from Pressurized OxyCombustion Flue Gas for the Production of Pure CO2.
In order to provide energy to those who lack it, while maintaining a sustainable society, very high temperature systems are required.
In the nuclear case, high thermal efficiency can be obtained by coupling the system to thermochemical water (or carbon dioxide) splitting for the production of captive intermediates, such as hydrogen (or carbon monoxide). Of course the side product of splitting either of these molecules is oxygen, the value of which is often ignored in these schemes.
Pure oxygen is a very valuable commodity in its own right for use in oxyfuel combustion, which can also achieve very high temperatures - the principle of a blast furnace is to provide oxygen at high pressure (albeit not free of the other components of air.)
The oxyfuel combustion of waste biomass and other waste products actually affords a capability to remove carbon dioxide from the air and to obtain it in relatively pure form for use.
To a limited extent, "use" of carbon dioxide can sequester it nearly permanently, other uses, such as synthetic fuels prepared by the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide (FT synthesis to make synthetic petroleum or even better, ethers).
I covered the time scale of "sequestration by use" in another post in this space, citing a paper which I personally find somewhat limited in scope, but nonetheless illustrative: A graphic on "making stuff out of CO2" and the time scale of sequestration by "stuff."
The paper to which I will make brief reference in this post on the topic of oxyfuel combustion is this one: Catalytic Removal of Oxygen Impurities from Pressurized Oxy-Combustion Flue Gas for the Production of High-Purity Carbon Dioxide, Hong Lu, Ye Jiang, Oki Abiodun, Luke Schideman, Andrew Kuhn, Hong Yang, and Yongqi Lu, Energy & Fuels 2022 36 (5), 2701-2711.
The paper refers to the oxyfuel combustion of the dangerous fossil fuel coal, with the source of electrons for oxygen removal being the chief component of dangerous natural gas, methane.
While it cannot be said, chiefly because of the degree of mineralization, that biomass and coal combust equivalently, the procedure the paper discusses can certainly be modified or adjusted to utilize other carbon based fuels, waste biomass or municipal waste for example.
Anyway, I'm referring to the paper only to highlight the value of oxygen, not because I approve of dangerous fossil fuels in any way or fashion: I want them banned as quickly as possible.
Some text from the paper:
Oxy-combustion has been investigated as an alternative to the conventional amine-based postcombustion technology to reduce the cost of carbon capture for power generation. First-generation oxy-combustion systems operate at atmospheric pressure and require the recycling of a large portion of flue gas to dilute pure oxygen (O2) for combustion in the boiler. These systems may incur additional costs associated with flue gas recycling, a large equipment footprint, and the extensive multiple-step purification process for effluent carbon dioxide (CO2). Pressurized oxy-combustion systems, such as staged, pressurized oxy-combustion (SPOC) systems, are considered second-generation oxy-combustion technologies. A SPOC system merges fuel-staged coal combustion with high-pressure operation. (1) During fuel-staged combustion, O2 is in excess and is used as a diluent before the last stage to control peak combustion temperatures, thus eliminating the need for flue gas recycling. In addition, operating at high pressure improves energy efficiency through the recovery of water vapor condensation heat at a high flue gas temperature and thereby reduces the equipment footprint and cost. (1,2)
One challenge in the oxy-combustion systems is the need for purification of their flue gases toward high-purity CO2 streams...
One challenge in the oxy-combustion systems is the need for purification of their flue gases toward high-purity CO2 streams...
Some challenges are listed:
..One existing technology for CO2 purification is cryogenic cooling or distillation that separates residual O2 from condensable CO2. (7) Cryogenic approaches incur massive amounts of energy use for refrigeration and lower the recovery of CO2 because of losses through the vent with noncondensable gases. Adsorption of O2 on metal adsorbents is only economically feasible for trace amounts of O2, thus unable to meet the desired throughputs for the purification of oxy-combustion flue gas. (8) In comparison, removal of O2 by catalytic reduction is a promising approach for flue gas purification because of its ability to process a large volume of gas with high CO2 removal efficiency and recovery and recover the heat of reaction. Catalytic reactions between methane (CH4) and O2 have been intensively investigated for gas treatment operating with air in excess of O2, such as cleanup of exhaust gases from coal mines and vehicles, (9?16) and for catalytic combustion of fuel gases operating under oxidizing conditions in air or O2. (17?19) However, applying catalytic approaches for residual O2 removal under oxy-combustion conditions has seldom been investigated. A recent study for the catalytic removal of residual O2 of oxy-combustion flue gas used supported palladium (Pd) and copper (Cu) nanomaterials and ambient pressure lab-scale reactors. (20) The addition of a reducing gas, such as hydrogen (H2), carbon monoxide (CO), and methane (CH4) at stoichiometric ratios with O2, has been effective in removing O2 to below 1000 ppm. However, H2 is more expensive and may react with CO2 via the reverse water gas shift reaction...
Personally, I don't have any problem with the water gas shift reaction. It's a key chemical reaction in my view for saving the world via the use of a clean energy source, of which there is only one, nuclear energy.
Anyway, my purpose is not to put lipstick on the coal and gas pig; the wind and solar industry do that enough, but only to reference the value of oxyfuel combustion.
The authors optimize a palladium/cerium/Titanium oxide catalyst for this purpose. Palladium is an expensive metal, but it can be isolated and utilized from used nuclear fuel, as can cerium, a less expensive metal in any case. Titanium oxide is very common and can be considered inexhaustible.
Some graphics from the paper:
The caption:
Figure 1. Conceptual scheme of the catalytic flue gas purification process for the pressurized oxy-combustion system, as illustrated in the blue dotted box. PM, particulate matter; Cmp, compressor (multistage compression and cooling); and DCC, direct contact cooler.
The caption:
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of the high-pressure fixed-bed reactor system used in this study. PR, pressure regulator; BPC, back pressure controller; MF, mass flow controller; TCr, temperature controller; TC, thermal couple; and RGA: residual gas analyzer.
The caption:
Figure 7. Oxygen conversions as a function of temperature over Pd5Cem/TiO2 catalysts. Flow rate: 1 SLPM; feed gas: 1.5 vol % CH4, 3 vol % O2, and the balance CO2; pressure: 15 bar; and GHSV: 30 000 h^(–1).
Again, there should no longer be any excuse for burning coal or dangerous natural gas ten or twenty years from now, if not much sooner, but there's a lot of attention paid to hydrogen, and not much paid to oxygen for the remediation and clean up of the badly damaged atmosphere.
I post this simply to keep the matter in mind.
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