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Hydrothermal activities occurred in the Yangtze block, South China, and affected the process of black shale sedimentation in the early Cambrian. Their specific influences, such as the sources, sedimentary environment, and mineralization, have not yet been revealed. Fortunately, the influences are explained through the geochemistry comparison of different wells FY1, XJ1, HY1, and XA1 in northwestern Hunan. The outcomes of the tectonic setting, distinguishable by element indicators, are disorganized. This is caused by the variable element composition, sedimentary recirculation of material source, and hydrothermal materials. FY1, the closest well to Zhangjiajie where Ni–Mo ores were formed by hydrothermal sedimentation, has more different features on the elemental geochemistry, but many indexes still indicate that it is normal sediments. XA1, which is far from the other wells and deposited in the deep-water basin, has significantly more differences in geochemical properties and shows more about normal marine deposition. XJ1 and HY1 are intermediate between them. Based on these wells, the hydrothermal contribution to the black shale sedimentation is not significant. However, some contents of trace and rare earth elements change widely because hydrothermal materials can diffuse and deposit over long distances. The concentration of Ag, As, Ba, Mo, Ba, U, and V generally has dozens of times higher than that of Upper Continental Crust. The early Cambrian environment was primarily anoxic/euxinic with enough sulfur, which is beneficial for enriching metal elements and organic matter. The sequence FY1, XJ1, HY1, and XA1 in turn has the same performance on the distance with Zhangjiajie, different intervals of suboxic environment and element enrichment, and hydrothermal-fluid-addition Ni abundance. Therefore, hydrothermal processes indeed provide materials for element enrichment and support the reducing environment, but the impact of hydrothermal activity decreases on the plane.

The Miocene Zhujiang Formation is the key horizon for oil and gas exploration in the Pearl River Mouth basin of northern South China Sea. With the help of core observation, seismic attributes and various analytical data, the sedimentary facies marks, distribution of sedimentary facies and depositional model of forced regression in the Miocene Zhujiang Formation of the Pearl River Mouth basin, northern South China Sea, have been studied. Forced regressive deposits were formed during the period when relative sea level ranged from highstand to lowstand and the sediments were forced to undergo progradation so that five sets of foreset delta deposits are developed in turn. In the early stage of forced regression, the normal delta where the delta plain, delta front and prodelta are not absent mainly developed. In the later stage of forced regression, the shelf edge delta with only the delta front and the prodelta, the longshore bar along the shelf break and the turbidite fan in the deep water of the slope area were developed. The favorable reservoir of forced regressive deposits are located near the upper boundary of the falling stage systems tract and the basal surface of forced regression, and they are the sand bodies of shelf edge delta, longshore bar and turbidite fan. The research results may provide guidance for reservoir prediction.

Great progress has been made in marine shale gas of Wufeng–Longmaxi formations in the Sichuan Basin. However, shale gas exploration in the complex structural belt around the Sichuan Basin still faces great challenges. In this study, shales of Wufeng–Longmaxi formations collected from the northern Guizhou were taken as the studied target, organic matter (OM) characteristics, mineral composition, pore structure, methane adsorption capacity and in situ desorption gas content were measured, and the controlling factors of shale gas content were further discussed. The results indicated that the sedimentary facies of Wufeng–Longmaxi formations in north Guizhou varies from shallow‐water shelf facies to deep‐water shelf facies from south to north, and organic‐rich shales are primarily distributed in Daozhen‐Xishui areas, with a maximum thickness of about 80–100 m. Organic‐rich shales are characterized by high total organic carbon (TOC) content, high thermal maturation and type I–II1 kerogens, which can be comparable with those in commercially produced shale gas field in Sichuan Basin. High‐quality shale gas reservoirs generally have a high content of brittle minerals, making them easier to be fractured. OM pores are the dominanted pore type in the studied shales, followed by intergranular pores associated with brittle minerals, dissolution pores within carbonate grains and microcracks, while clay mineral‐related pores are poorly developed. The Wufeng–Longmaxi Formation shales generally have strong methane adsorption capacities, but these vary greatly across different areas. Shale gas adsorption capacity is primarily controlled by TOC content and thermal maturation level. Similarly, total gas content, including desorption gas and lost gas, varies greatly in different areas, and it is obviously lower than that in Fuling and Luzhou shale gas field, due to the loss of shale gas and low‐pressure coefficient in the complex structural zone. It is worth explaining that shale gas is not always low in northern Guizhou, which is determined by burial depth and the distance of great fractures. Shale gas content is relatively high in LY1 well and DY1 well in Xishui‐Daozhen area, and it is extremely low in TY1 well and AY1 well in Tongzi‐Zheng'an area. Shale gas content in the same structural unit is primarily influenced by TOC content, OM pore development degree and water saturation. However, different structural units have different shale gas contents, due to the differences in preservation conditions. Shale reservoirs with good preservation conditions, that is, wide and gentle structure, far from a large fault and great burial depth, generally have high shale gas contents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The natural gas resources in the Sichuan Basin are abundant and exhibit various phenomena, for example, mixed sources, mixed maturities and overlapping combinations, resulting in great difficulties in identifying natural gas sources. In this study, several groups of thermal simulation experiments were conducted on various types of kerogens using closed and/or semi‐open systems to investigate the characteristics of the carbon isotope compositions of light hydrocarbon gases derived from different typical kerogens. The results showed that the carbon isotope compositions and variation trends of methane and ethane are controlled by the kerogen type, thermal simulation system and thermal evolution degree. The carbon isotope compositions of light hydrocarbon gases derived from different types of kerogens exhibit some differences with increased thermal evolution degree. When the thermal simulation temperature increases from 320 to 550°C, the methane carbon isotope of typically marine source rocks, mainly type I and type II1 kerogens, is slightly higher than or equivalent to that of ethane. However, the ethane carbon isotope of terrestrial source rocks, primarily types II2 and III kerogens, is significantly heavier than methane. By comparison, the evolution trend of carbon isotope compositions of actual natural gas is well consistent with that of light hydrocarbon gases cracked from thermal simulation experiments with increased thermal evolution degree. These findings are of great importance to identify the source rock of actual natural gas with high thermal maturities, as well as to determine the sources of deep shale gas in the southern Sichuan Basin, the Yuanba gas field and the Puguang gas field. Finally, a fitting method of carbon isotope values of methane and ethane of light hydrocarbon gases can be used to more finely differentiate the sources of natural gas in complex areas with mixed sources, mixed maturities and overlapping combinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the typical crude oil from the Cambrian Lower Ordovician source rocks has been found in the Tarim Basin, and it is characterized by 13C enrichment. The stable carbon isotope of the oil is concentrated at approximately −28‰, which is 3‰–6‰ heavier than that of the crude oil from the Middle and Upper Ordovician source rocks. The stable carbon isotope between crude oil and its kerogen is characterized by inversion, with an amplitude of approximately 3‰–4‰. However, the origin of this phenomenon remains controversial, which restricts the next exploration of crude oil in the Cambrian–Lower Ordovician in the Tarim Basin. Samples were collected from seven outcrop profiles in the Kuruketage region. The basic geochemical features of the Cambrian strata, including total organic carbon abundance, δ13Corg, δ13Ccarb, and δ18Ocarb, were studied and compared with those of well TD2. The results show that the lithologies, isotope stratigraphic evolutional curves, and correlations between the organic carbon and inorganic carbon of the profiles from the northern Kuruketage region are successively comparable with those of the profiles from the southern Kuruketage region and the well TD2. In this study, the carbon isotope records are supposed to indicate a vertical gradient Cambrian oceanic mode, including the shallow decoupled isotope zone, middle gradient‐coupled isotope zone, and deep isotope‐decoupled zone. The discovery of this isotope record reflects the formation of stable carbon and oxygen isotope stratified oceans during the Cambrian period. Additionally, it provides important insights into the origin of the 13C enrichment observed in some Lower Cambrian crude oils in the Tarim Basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing low-light image enhancement (LLIE) technologies have difficulty balancing image quality and computational efficiency. In addition, they amplify the noise and artifacts of the original image when enhancing deep dark images. Therefore, this study proposes a multi-scale adaptive low-light image enhancement method based on deep learning. Specifically, feature extraction and noise reduction modules are designed. First, a more effective low-light enhancement effect is achieved by extracting the details of the dark area of an image. Depth extraction of the details of dark areas is realized through the design of a residual attention mechanism and nonlocal neural network in the UNet model to obtain a visual-attention map of the dark area. Second, the designed noise network obtains the real noise map of the low-light image. Subsequently, the enhanced network uses the dark area visual-attention and noise maps in conjunction with the original low-light image as inputs to adaptively realize LLIE. The LLIE results using the proposed network achieve excellent performance in terms of color, tone, contrast, and detail. Finally, quantitative and visual experiments on multiple test benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to current state-of-the-art methods in terms of dark area details, image quality enhancement, and image noise reduction. The results of this study can help to address the real world challenges of low-light image quality, such as low contrast, poor visibility, and high noise levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the application value of peanuts, the fungicidal effect and physicochemical properties of the protein in peanuts were investigated by combining high voltage atmospheric cold plasma (HVCP) and ultraviolet-cold plasma (UVCP) in this study. Compared to the single HVCP or UVCP treatment, the combined treatments exhibited a higher fungicidal efficiency of A. flavus spores in peanuts, decreasing by 0.79-2.97 log 10 cfu/g after 8-min treatment. The A. flavus growth and aflatoxin production in peanuts during storage were also lower than the single plasma groups. Moreover, cold plasma treatments could modify the molecular structures of protein in peanuts by changing secondary and tertiary structures, decreasing particle size and increasing zeta potential, which contributed to improve the solubility and emulsification of protein. Overall, this research provides a unique strategy for the combined application of cold plasma in grain decontamination and protein modification., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)