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The production of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) had caused huge economic losses and security risks to oil fields, which had attracted the attention of many researchers. Studies focused on hypersaline oil reservoirs were scarce. Here, we simulated H2S inhibition by adding NO3- and NO2- in anaerobic bottles and up-flow sand-packed bioreactor in the laboratory using water samples from injection wells in the Jianghan reservoir. The microbial characteristics, pH, salinity, sulfate, sulfide, NO3- and NO2- were measured at every stage. The content of H2S and elemental sulfur (S0) gradually reduced to 0 mg/L with injected 400 mg/L of NO3- and 300 mg/L of NO2-. Halophilic nitrate-reducing bacteria (NRBs) related to Halomonas and Arcobacter could suppress the activity of sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRBs) through the accumulation of nitrite toxicity and the competition of organic substrates with SRBs. When SRBs activity could not be suppressed, the sulfur-oxidizing bacteria related to Sulfurimonas, Thiomicrospira and Acrobacter were accumulated for souring control through microbial sulfur cycle of H2S production and oxidation. Salinity could be a key parameter affecting microbial development and interactions. This study provides a fundamental data to souring control in the hypersaline oil reservoir by reinjection produced water amended with NO3- and NO2-. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximate computing is an emerging strategy to improve the energy efficiency of many error-tolerant applications. To design an approximate circuit automatically, many approximate logic synthesis (ALS) methods have been proposed, among which many are greedy. To improve the synthesis quality of these greedy methods, one key is to calculate the errors of all candidate approximate transformations accurately. However, the traditional simulation-based method is time consuming. Instead, many existing methods just perform quick but inaccurate error estimation. In this work, to improve both the accuracy and runtime of error estimation, we propose VECBEE, a versatile efficiency–accuracy configurable batch error estimation method for greedy ALS. It is based on Monte Carlo simulation and an efficient technique to capture whether a signal change due to an introduced approximation will be propagated to each primary output. VECBEE is generally applicable to any statistical error measurement, such as error rate and average error magnitude, and any graph-based circuit representation. It allows a flexible tradeoff between the error estimation accuracy and the runtime, while even the fully accurate version is much faster than the traditional simulation-based method. We apply VECBEE to two representative greedy ALS methods and demonstrate its effectiveness in generating better approximate circuits. The code of VECBEE is made open source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drill cuttings (DCs, Table 1), which are produced during hydrocarbon drilling operation, are rock coated with drilling fluids and hydrocarbons. DCs without adequate treatment could leave behind thousands of tons of hazardous materials, resulting in a large environmental liability. In this work, seven DCs samples were collected from Tu and Qing oilfields, and microbes inhabiting the DCs were revealed through 16S rDNA gene sequencing. The DCs from Qing oilfield showed higher microbial community abundance than those from Tu oilfield. The dominant microbes were Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, Nesterenkonia, Trichococcus, Soehngenia, Proteiniclasticum, and Fusibacter. Most of microorganisms could produce biosurfactant which has an ability of degradation of crude oil and bioremediation. Biosynthesis and biodegradation were predicted to be the most significant metabolic pathways in all samples. This study provides a fundamental insight into the potential reuse and save the cost of conventional treatment DCs, environmental bioremediation applications of DCs through indigenous microbes produced biosurfactant and degraded ability in oil reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil-produced wastewater treatment plants, especially those involving biological treatment processes, harbor rich and diverse microbes. However, knowledge of microbial ecology and microbial interactions determining the efficiency of plants for oil-produced wastewater is limited. Here, we performed 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing to elucidate the microbial composition and potential microbial functions in a full-scale well-worked offshore oil-produced wastewater treatment plant. Results showed that microbes that inhabited the plant were diverse and originated from oil and marine associated environments. The upstream physical and chemical treatments resulted in low microbial diversity. Organic pollutants were digested in the anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) dominantly through fermentation combined with sulfur compounds respiration. Three aerobic parallel reactors (APRs) harbored different microbial groups that performed similar potential functions, such as hydrocarbon degradation, acidogenesis, photosynthetic assimilation, and nitrogen removal. Microbial characteristics were important to the performance of oil-produced wastewater treatment plants with biological processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, much attention has been paid to approximate computing, a novel design paradigm for error-tolerant applications. It can significantly reduce area, power, and delay of circuits by introducing an acceptable amount of error. In this paper, we propose a new heuristic method for two-level approximate logic synthesis. The problem is to identify an approximate sum-of-product (SOP) expression under a given error rate (ER) constraint so that it has the fewest literals. The basic idea of our method is to find an optimal set of input combinations for 0-to-1 output complement (SICC). For this purpose, we first identify all prime SICCs, which are fundamental SICCs in the sense that the optimal SICC is very likely to be a union of a subset of the prime SICCs. Then, we search among all subsets of the prime SICCs the optimal subset, which leads to a final good approximate SOP. We further propose four speed-up techniques. The experiments on benchmarks showed that our method is better than the previous state-of-the-art method and our speed-up techniques are effective. For an ER threshold of 0.8%, our method can reduce 15.8% literals on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: Heteroatomic compounds are relatively abundant and believed to be bio‐resistant in heavy crude oils. However, few studies have focused on the biodegradation of these heteroatomic compounds. Methods: Heteroatoms, especially N1 species, in a blank crude oil and in three treated oils co‐incubated with anaerobic sulfate‐reducing bacteria, nitrate‐reducing bacteria and fermentative consortia cultures were detected using negative‐ion electrospray ionization coupled with high‐field Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry. Results: The relative abundance of N1 species in the three treated oils decreased, while the relative abundance of O2 species increased. Remarkably, the relative abundances of N1 species with low carbon number increased and those with higher carbon number decreased. Conclusions: These results revealed that the anaerobic biodegradations of heavy crude oil occurred. With direct evidences, the degradations of alkyl side chains of N1 species by the anaerobic microbes could be deduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies suggest that antibiotic resistance genes have an ancient origin, which is not always linked to the use of antibiotics but can be enhanced by human activities. Bacillus flexus strain T6186-2 was isolated from the formation water sample of a deep-subsurface oil reservoir. Interestingly, antimicrobial susceptibility testing showed that this strain is susceptible to kanamycin, however, resistant to ampicillin, erythromycin, gentamicin, vancomycin, fosfomycin, fosmidomycin, tetracycline and teicoplanin. To explore our knowledge about the origins of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the relatively pristine environment, we sequenced the genome of B. flexus strain T6186-2 as a permanent draft. It represents the evidence for the existence of a reservoir of ARGs in nature among microbial populations from deep-subsurface oil reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brevibacillus agri strain 5-2 was isolated from the formation water of a deep oil reservoir in Changqing Oilfield, China. This bacterium was found to have a capacity for degrading tetradecane, hexadecane and alkanesulfonate. To gain insights into its efficient metabolic pathway for degrading hydrocarbon and organosulfur compounds, here, we report the high quality draft genome of this strain. Two putative alkane 1-monooxygenases, one putative alkanesulfonate monooxygenase, one putative alkanesulfonate transporter, one putative sulfate permease and five putative sulfate transporters were identified in the draft genome. The genomic data of strain 5-2 may provide insights into the mechanism of microorganisms adapt to the petroleum reservoir after chemical flooding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: Heteroatomic compounds are relatively abundant and believed to be bio-resistant in heavy crude oils. However, few studies have focused on the biodegradation of these heteroatomic compounds., Methods: Heteroatoms, especially N 1 species, in a blank crude oil and in three treated oils co-incubated with anaerobic sulfate-reducing bacteria, nitrate-reducing bacteria and fermentative consortia cultures were detected using negative-ion electrospray ionization coupled with high-field Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry., Results: The relative abundance of N 1 species in the three treated oils decreased, while the relative abundance of O 2 species increased. Remarkably, the relative abundances of N 1 species with low carbon number increased and those with higher carbon number decreased., Conclusions: These results revealed that the anaerobic biodegradations of heavy crude oil occurred. With direct evidences, the degradations of alkyl side chains of N 1 species by the anaerobic microbes could be deduced., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Enterobacter mori strain 5-4 is a Gram-negative, motile, rod shaped, and facultatively anaerobic bacterium, which was isolated from a mixture of formation water (also known as oil-reservior water) and crude-oil in Karamay oilfield, China. To date, there is only one E. mori genome has been sequenced and very little knowledge about the mechanism of E. mori adapted to the petroleum reservoir. Here, we report the second E. mori genome sequence and annotation, together with the description of features for this organism. The 4,621,281 bp assembly genome exhibits a G + C content of 56.24% and contains 4,317 protein-coding and 65 RNA genes, including 5 rRNA genes.

Geobacillus thermocatenulatus strain GS-1 is a thermophilic bacillus having a growth optimum at 60°C, capable of degrading alkanes. It was isolated from the formation water of a high-temperature deep oil reservoir in Qinghai oilfield, China. Here, we report the draft genome sequence with an estimated assembly size of 3.5Mb. A total of 3371 protein-coding sequences, including monooxygenase, alcohol dehydrogenase, aldehyde dehydrogenase, fatty acid-CoA ligase, acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, enoyl-CoA hydrogenase, hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase and thiolase, were detected in the genome, which are involved in the alkane degradation pathway. Our results may provide insights into the genetic basis of the adaptation of this strain to high-temperature oilfield ecosystems., (Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Complement dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) significantly contributes to Rituximab (RTX) and Ofatumumab (OFA) efficacies in the treatment of B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Human CD59 (hCD59) is a key complement regulatory protein that restricts the formation of the membrane attack complex and thereby inhibits CDC. hCD59 is an important determinant of the sensitivity of NHL and CLL to RTX and OFA treatment. Recently, we developed a specific and potent hCD59 inhibitor, His-tagged ILYd4, which consists of 30 amino acid sequences extending from the N-terminus of ILYd4. Our previously published results indicate that His-tagged ILYd4 can be used as a lead candidate to further develop a potential therapeutic adjuvant for RTX and OFA treatment of RTX-resistant NHL and CLL. However, these studies were conducted using ILYd4 tagged on the N-terminus with 30 additional amino acids (AA) containing 6 X His used for immobilized metal affinity chromatograph. As a further step towards the development of ILYd4-based therapeutics, we investigated the impact of the removal of this extraneous sequence on the anti-hCD59 activity. In this paper, we report the generation and characterization of tag-free ILYd4. We demonstrate that tag-free ILYd4 has over threefold higher anti-hCD59 activities than the His-tagged ILYd4. The enhanced RTX-mediated CDC effect on B-cell malignant cells comes from tag-free ILYd4's improved functionality and physical properties including better solubility, reduced tendency to aggregation, and greater thermal stability. Therefore, tag-free ILYd4 is a better candidate for the further development for the clinical application.