Exploration Team Research Articles

Ichthyofauna in the Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park from Vietnam

Ichthyofauna in the phong Nha – Ke bang national Park is typically characterised by tectonic limestone structure with 300 caves, underground rivers and valuably rare flora and fauna in the Vietnam Red Book and World Red Book. Total length of cave system in this area is estimated about 80 km but joint team of Vietnamese and English explorers only discovered 20 km, in which 17 km in Phong Nha area and 3 km in Ke Bang area. Due to naturally special block Karst Phong Nha-Ke Bang, phenomenon of underground water flowing is widespread. In this region, some small streams flow into the Rao Thuong channel with some opening punctuated segments and into cave system as underground river and then gathered into Chay River and Trooc river and creat a lagest tributary of the Gianh River.

First record of the Blue Striped Hermit Crab, Clibanarius longitarsus (decapoda, crustacea) from Sunderbans mangrove forest, Bangladesh

Blue Stripped hermit crab, Clibanarius longitarsus (De Haan, 1849) was collected from Kalagachhia, Satkhira Forest Range of Sundarban Mangrove Forest on 18 April 2015 during an exploration of the IUCN Crustacean Exploration Team. This crustacen decapod was recorded for the first time from Bangladesh geographical area.Bangladesh J. Zool. 43(1): 131-135, 2015

The Qmeter - a portable tool for remanence and susceptibility

SUMMARY Breiner (1973) described a method to separate induced magnetisation from remanent magnetisation of a drill core or hand sample using a total field magnetometer, thereby allowing the Konigsberger ratio (Q) to be calculated. However, the method does not seem to be in general use, and nor has there been any improvement to the method despite recent developments that greatly facilitate data acquisition using handheld devices or notebook computers. Here a new fluxgate based pendulum instrument is described that allows a more controlled implementation of Breiner (1973)'s method. The instrument accommodates samples of varying sizes although best results are yielded using regular, cubic or cylindrical, shaped samples. The instrument is portable and powered from a USB port of a notebook or similar computer. Sensitivity is high enough to yield accurate results for rocks that cause significant magnetic anomalies (~Am -1 ). However, for high Q rocks susceptibility is lost in the noise, and likewise for low Q rocks, remanence is lost in the noise. The instrument is designed to quickly screen core samples at the drill site, or in a core shed, to alert the exploration team if significant remanence is present in which case the magnetic model of the target may require reconsidering. The instrument is not a replacement for laboratory measurements but potentially should save exploration costs by indicating when laboratory measurements should be undertaken.

Using AMT in the new Zambian copperbelt (Enterprise and Kansanshi case study)

During 2012 and 2013 FQML through its Zambian exploration team acquired about 300 line kilometres of Audio magneto telluric (AMT) survey for copper and nickel exploration in the north western Zambian copper belt. Kansanshi mine and the new $2bn Kalumbila (Enterprise Nickel deposit) development project are the survey locations (see Figure1). Hence this paper is a case study discussing major aspects of the projects including but not limited to major outcomes, difficulties encountered as well as solutions for futures data acquisition in similar geological settings. Stunning results were achieved whereby basement fault and many interesting geological features were identified (See Figure 2, Tm mode section along Line 19) over Enterprise and doming structures in Kansanshi (See figure 3).However limiting factors such as mine equipment noise, accessibility, swamps, tropical rain forest and wild life were some downside during the survey.

Antarctica on foot: the energy expended to walk, ski and man-haul

Polar exploration often involves travelling on foot and thus is physically intensive, with long-term excursions typically resulting in weight loss. Few studies have investigated the energy expended under such circumstances. Here, we present a range of prediction equations for estimating metabolic rate from heart rate or accelerometry data for specific activities including skiing and man-hauling which can be applied to either short- or long-term excursions. We also use some of these equations to estimate the energy expended undertaking various activities by a team of explorers while attempting to traverse the Antarctic continent during the austral winter of 2013 (as part of the White Mars Project during The Coldest Journey). Calibration equations based on either accelerometry data (from which overall dynamic body acceleration, ODBA, is derived) or heart rate showed good relationships with rate of oxygen consumption, particularly when person height was included. Periods of skiing and man-hauling on The Coldest Journey were estimated to be more energetically demanding (30.0 and 31.1 kJ min−1, respectively) than walking (24.9 kJ min−1), or other outdoor work (21.9 kJ min−1). Estimates of energy expenditure during The Coldest Journey were similar to measures obtained in previous, comparative scenarios. We hope that future expeditions to Antarctica will use these prediction equations to further our understanding of the energy costs of exploring Antarctica and the nutritional requirements needed to guard against emaciation.

Teams in Space Exploration

Researchers from a variety of disciplines are currently working with NASA to prepare for human exploration of Mars in the next decades. Such exploration will take scientific discovery to new heights, providing unprecedented information about the geology, atmosphere, and potential for life on Mars, including previous life, current life, and perhaps even our own lives in the future. To make these unparalleled discoveries, however, astronauts will need to undertake a novel and unprecedented journey. Moreover, the mission to Mars will require a team of crew members who will have to endure and sustain team performance requirements never seen before. Multidisciplinary teams of scientists have begun to provide the needed steps to address this challenge. The purpose of this article is (a) to illustrate the kinds of new conceptual frameworks and paradigms needed for teams in space exploration, (b) to delineate promising research paths to ensure that a robust team science can emerge for long-duration space exploration (LDSE), (c) to showcase initial findings and insights from studying astronauts now, and (d) to outline a plan of action for team-effectiveness research in LDSE.

We Gambled Everything: The Life and Times of an Oilman by Arne Nielsen. Foreword by Peter C. Newman (review)

Reviewed by: We Gambled Everything: The Life and Times of an Oilman by Arne Nielsen. Foreword by Peter C. Newman Allan Edward Ingelson We Gambled Everything: The Life and Times of an Oilman. By Arne Nielsen. Foreword by Peter C. Newman. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2012. xxi + 273 pp. Photographs, illustrations, maps, index. C$29.95 paper. The author, a prominent retired Canadian oil geologist and senior industry executive, captures in his memoirs the excitement of oil discoveries on the Alberta and Saskatchewan plains during the 1940s and ’50s. He shares his experiences as a corporate executive for Mobil Oil in New York, while overseeing exploration programs on the plains in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Kansas. Nielsen reviews his childhood and teenage years growing up on the family farm during the 1920s and ’30s in an area subject to drought, dust storms, and poverty on the Alberta plains. After noting there were numerous unsuccessful attempts at drilling for oil on the plains near Leduc, Alberta, and the contribution of improved seismic technology, Nielsen describes the significant commercial oil discovery by Imperial Oil in 1947, that laid the foundation for a Canadian oil and gas industry. Through the eyes of a young geology graduate in the late 1940s he alludes to the increased employment opportunities in the emerging Alberta oil industry for individuals with a strong work ethic. Nielsen notes the significant contribution of US companies—in terms of investment and the deployment of technology on the plains—to the development of the oil and gas industry in western Canada. Through the eyes of a 28-year-old geologist who was a member of the exploration team that discovered an immense oilfield, he shares the excitement of locating the multibillion barrel Pembina oilfield in 1953, that has become one of the most productive fields in North America. In light of his role in the major oil discovery Nielsen was fast tracked to the Socony (Standard Oil of New York) corporate headquarters. Nielsen discusses his oil exploration experience on the plains in Saskatchewan and further south in the Williston Basin in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana. When analyzing the investment climate for oil exploration in Saskatchewan during the 1950s and ’60s, he notes that notwithstanding the stark political contrast to entrepreneurial free-market Alberta, overall the socialist Saskatchewan provincial government was fairly positive toward oil development. The government was aware of the significant economic benefits that neighboring Alberta had accrued from its conventional oil exploration and production activities on the plains. In the balance of the book Nielsen analyzes the changes in Canadian federal energy policies that have dramatically affected the level of oil and gas investment, exploration, and development in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, eastern Canada offshore, and in the Northwest Territories. A key theme in We Gambled Everything is that US and Canadian oil companies assume substantial uncertainty in their search for commercial accumulations of fossil fuels. The high risk search that Nielsen describes in his book that was present in previous decades continues. Recently American and Canadian oil and gas developers have employed innovative horizontal drilling and fracking techniques to locate and evaluate unconventional energy resources on the plains that were previously uneconomic to produce on a significant scale, such as oil from the Bakken shales in North Dakota and Saskatchewan, in an attempt to satisfy the growing demand for fossil fuels in North America. Allan Edward Ingelson Canadian Institute of Resources Law, Faculty of Law University of Calgary, Alberta Copyright © 2014 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Geriatric oncology: an overview.

Geriatric oncology: an overview.

The Search for Rock Testing Tools That Are Better Than a Drill Bit

Rock Scans Whiting Petroleum has made an extraordinary commitment to rock testing. In its office tower in downtown Denver, its digital rock imaging laboratory analyzes about 6,000 ft of core samples each year, examining details down to pores only a few nanometers across. When evaluating new plays, or considering alternative plans for its proven fields, the independent oil company uses a battery of imaging devices. The common question faced is: “Is it going to work?” said Lyn Canter, a senior geoscience adviser who manages the laboratory at Whiting. She has been asked the same question by other companies considering whether there is a return for investing in in-house rock imaging. Her answer is: “We think it gives us a competitive edge” by providing timely answers to questions raised by complex tight oil formations, many in the Niobrara and the Bakken, that cannot be answered using routine core testing methods. One example of its value was that Whiting decided not to go forward with a costly proposed field development project after rock tests indicated it was not permeable enough to support profitable production, Canter said. While she said the equipment has paid for itself at Whiting, it represents an unusual level of support, which would be difficult for others to replicate. Service companies see growing interest in digital rock testing, but few companies regularly use digital imaging as a reservoir analysis tool, and only a couple of majors in the United States have their own in-house equipment, Canter said. Generating credible results likely to influence decision makers has required a significant, long-term commitment of equipment, skilled personnel, and the time needed to develop the workflows for generating results that exploration teams will use. This requires selecting representative samples, as small as a grain of sand, to image the pore-scale details from complex rocks with features that are consistently inconsistent. The tools and processes needed to turn observations of the rock microstructure into measurements is an emerging technology. As a result, engineers are the ones asking the toughest questions about the results, she said. “We want engineering to buy in to what we are doing,” Canter said, adding, “They are naturally skeptical, but can be convinced by making a good case that the results offer a view of the average properties of the larger reservoir.”

Impact of wellsite biostratigraphy on exploration drilling in the deepwater offshore Nigeria

The application of wellsite biostratigraphic technique has aided the reconstruction of the subsurface geology in the Nigerian deepwater region. It has further aided decision making during drilling operations including the planning of well paths. Critical decisions regarding casing setting, coring point selection, overpressure zone determination and total depth picks, are easily achieved through confirmation of well prognosis and correlation to offset wells. This technique is very important in the tectonically active Nigerian deepwater region which is characterized by varying degrees of both syn-depositional and post-depositional deformation. Accurate interpretation of basin architecture, lateral variation and facies change is required before drilling. Confirmation of well prognosis during drilling operation is equally important.It has been proved that wellsite biostratigraphic technique helps to “get it right at first” when integrated with the traditional lithologic description, log signature correlation and seismic profile interpretations. The modern and rapid processing technique of calcareous nannofossil, for instance, provides ‘real time’ result for the exploration team for confirmation of, or adjustment to, the drilling program. The attendant contribution in saved time, cost and safe and successful drilling operation makes the technique beneficial for all operators.This paper presents practical experience of wellsite biostratigraphy application in three oil prolific Nigerian deepwater regions: the Niger Delta, Joint Development zone of Nigeria/Sao Tome and Principe area (JDZ) and Benin (Dahomey) Basin.

Impact Through Images: Exploring Student Understanding of Environmental Science Through Integrated Place-Based Lessons in the Elementary Classroom

In the early 1800s, the U.S. President Thomas Jefferson assembled a team of explorers led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to forge a waterway connecting the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. How has this environment changed in 200 years and how do elementary students make sense of those changes? This study looks at the impact of environmental change over time in an integrated place-based curricular unit using visual art and images. This qualitative descriptive case study looks at how visual art and photographic images affect elementary students’ understanding when participating in an integrated place-based environmental science experience. Participants included 25 elementary students, their classroom teacher, and researcher as etic observer. Data were drawn from student journals, in-depth student interviews, teacher interview, and artifacts created by the participants. Three dominant themes emerged: (1) student perceptions about their own efficacy, (2) students’ scientific misconceptions, and (3) development of students’ critical thinking skills. Through this study, elementary students utilized mediated experiences to increase confidence in their ability to be part of their own learning experience by the inclusion of images in place-based environmental science lessons.

The 1911 South Pole Conquest as Historical Media Event and Media Ensemble

The conquest of the South Pole by Roald Amundsen and his team of explorers in 1911 became a major international media event by virtue of Amundsen's ‘Race for the Pole’ against Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition. This article shows how Roald Amundsen and his team entered into close collaborations with journalists, as well as engaging in extensive feats of media management. It also discusses how various media came together to build the media event, forming a ‘media ensemble’. The roles of books, photography, cinematography and newspapers are highlighted. On a conceptual level, this article considers possible differences between events involving the media ensemble from the previous turn of the century, and media events from the subsequent broadcast-dominated period. It comparatively discusses the tradition of media event research building on Dayan and Katz and a recent German strand of research into historical media events.

Modeling and Control Strategy of a Hybrid PV/Wind/Engine/Battery System to Provide Electricity and Drinkable Water for Remote Applications

In this paper a small-scale energy system called emergency container is presented. This container has lots of applications and can be designed as stationary solution in remote areas such as rural electrification and a mobile solution for disaster situation, military purposes and exploration teams. In this study the container is a hybrid PV/wind/engine energy system that is designed to provide electricity and drinkable water for 1000 person in disaster situations. A transient model implemented in Transient Simulation System (TRNSYS) program is developed and performance of the system during one-year operation for two locations (Nairobi in Kenya and Nyala in Sudan) with relatively high solar insolation is analyzed. The result of the model is significantly important in order to choose the right size of the different components. Due to the fluctuations of solar and wind energy as well as the importance of the battery life cycle, there is a need to have a smart power management and an appropriate fast response control system. In order to achieve it and to fulfill the energy demand as much as possible through renewable energies, a dispatch strategy is introduced and a control algorithm is applied to the model. This control algorithm has increased system reliability and power availability. The transient simulation shows that the share of power generation by solar energy is 63% and 80% and the share of wind power is 27% and 12% in Nairobi and Nyala respectively. It means that most of the energy demand (around 90%) can be covered by renewable energy. This results in significant mitigation of environmental issues compared to using only diesel engine that is a common solution in disaster situations.

Towards a new form of ideas contests in high-tech environment: design community building

Following the open innovation paradigm, many technological firms organize idea contests to surface bright ideas for new products, services or business models. This article demonstrates a new form of innovation contest: the generic technology idea contest, which aims to design technological platforms that can enable emerging applications in various business domains and analyzes its features. Drawing on the analysis of a series of innovation contest conducted by STMicroelectronics, the findings indicate that, contrary to usual marketplaces for technology, this new kind of innovation contests do not fundamentally establish commercial relations between seekers and solvers. Indeed, such contest does not allow initially determining incentive mechanisms since the commercial value and the targeted markets are still unknown. The paper demonstrates that in this case the generic technology idea contest creates design communities who are able to collectively explore and develop generic technological platforms of multiple markets. This research exhibits the novel innovation mechanisms that do not follow market-oriented logic but aim to jointly explore and build technological and market value, constitute new exploration teams. The findings clarify the process of technological and market exploration in unknown and propose a suitable organizational form to conduct the associated reasoning.

Remixing the Remix: Fannish Appropriation and the Limits of Unauthorised Use

Remixing the Remix: Fannish Appropriation and the Limits of Unauthorised Use

Value of URTeC for geophysicists

Geophysicists should make an effort to attend the first-of-its-kind joint-society (SEG, AAPG, and SPE) technical conference for Unconventional Resources, known as URTeC, to be held 12–14 August in Denver, Colorado. Geophysicists who now find themselves working on unconventional plays have had to adapt their skills in a variety of ways to be able to provide the proper analysis and input to multidisciplinary teams in exploration, appraisal, and development. Retooling our interpretation and analysis skills from the identification and mapping of conventional prospects where we focused on reservoir presence, trap timing, seal integrity, migration pathways, depth imaging, and attributes related to porosity and fluids involves refocusing on elastic properties, stress analysis, rock mechanics, fault and fracture trends, anisotropy, detailed time/depth conversion, structural attributes, and microseismic data.

Measuring and modelling of dry bulk rock density for mineral resource estimation

Rock density information is needed for the estimation of ore tonnage, and also for determining the amount of contained metal; this is because mineralisation grades are usually reported as a ratio of the economically viable components, metals or minerals, to weight units (e.g. grams/tonne). Despite the obvious importance of rock density for the accurate estimation of tonnage and grade of mineral resources, this parameter is often overlooked and receives significantly less attention than assayed metal grades. In particular, the quantity and spatial distribution of the rock density measurements may be chosen without considering the impact of the rock density measurements on the mineral resource estimation. This paper attempts to address several issues associated with current practices of rock density modelling. The first part of the paper overviews the methods most commonly used for measuring the dry bulk density (DBD) of rocks for the estimation of mineral resources. This is followed by a second part proposing the methodology of geostatistical modelling of the rock densities which is suggested as a mathematically supported approach for choosing optimal sampling grids for density samples. It is supported by several case studies of the deposits where geostatistically optimal DBD sampling grids were estimated and proposed for definition of the Measured and Indicated resources and for the grade control purpose. It was noted that the exploration team needs to assure that DBD data collected during the drilling campaigns are not only sufficient for definition of resources and reserves but are also closely enough spaced to allow accurate grade control. The optimal for grade control DBD grids, according to the geostatistical analysis, is similar to the chemical assay grids required for definition of the Measured resources or, less commonly, Indicated resources of the studied deposits.

Oil Rim Tool Measures Reservoir Fluids Continuously in Real Time, Below Pump

Technology Update Defining the reservoir by its porosity, permeability, fluid content, water saturation, and behavior is one of the predrilling goals of exploration and production teams, with the aim of optimizing reservoir production over the life of the field. Advances in Reservoir Characterization Very few 2D measurements of any kind are taken from inside a wellbore, except for temperature and reservoir microseismic activity. Distributed temperature sensing (DTS), which uses fiber-optic cables, can provide a full temperature profile. However, to obtain pressure, flow, or fluid information, results are extrapolated and mathematically calculated with an inferred answer. Thus, it does not measure the reservoir directly, continuously, and in real time. Some oil companies are moving toward time-lapse, 4D, seismic techniques that can identify infill drilling opportunities, predict flood fronts, and help avoid early water breakthroughs, despite the cost and complexity of these techniques. Seismic surveys are mostly for the identification of rock formations and subsurface faults, and much of the fluid analysis is inferred from these rather than directly measured. Knowledge of the position and thickness of the oil rim in particular is critical for effective reservoir observation. To achieve maximum production, it is important not only to be able to measure the effects of injection operations on a reservoir, but also to monitor long-term reservoir movement and behavior. The only alternative way to keep track of the position of an oil rim is with periodic logging surveys, which can be both inaccurate and expensive. Advances in seismic survey techniques have enabled much greater analysis of fluid chamber and reservoir movement. The gradual development and deployment of this type of technology has taken more than 50 years from single-point seismic source methods using an electronic transponder to 4D methods, which can map the movements, fluids, and sensitivities in the reservoir. A Clearer Vision With dwindling hydrocarbon reserves and increasing oil and gas demand, innovation in characterizing reservoirs is crucial to sustaining supply. Reservoir geophysics incorporating the latest soft-ware and reservoir characterization techniques is bringing significant improvements to production in existing fields. Production geoscientists are heavily involved in characterizing reservoirs, particularly describing how reservoirs have been affected by ongoing production processes. The combined use of time-lapse and multicomponent data, such as seismic, logging analysis, and DTS, has had a dramatic impact on reservoir understanding that has led to improved production over the life of the field.

Mass spectrometry for direct identification of biosignatures and microorganisms in Earth analogs of Mars

Rover missions to Mars require portable instruments that use minimal power, require no sample preparation, and provide suitably diagnostic information to an Earth-based exploration team. In exploration of analog environments of Mars it is important to screen rapidly for the presence of biosignatures and microorganisms and especially to identify them accurately.Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) has enormously contributed to the understanding of protein chemistry and cell biology. Without this technique proteomics would most likely not be the important discipline it is today. In this study, besides ‘true’ proteomics, MALDI-TOF-MS was applied for the analysis of microorganisms for their taxonomic characterization from its beginning. An approach was developed for direct analysis of whole bacterial cells without a preceding fractionation or separation by chromatography or electrophoresis on samples of bacteria from an Antarctic glacier.Supported by comprehensive databases, MALDI-TOF-MS-based identification could be widely accepted within only a few years for bacterial differentiation in Mars analogs and could be a technique of election for Mars exploration.

Field-based professional development of teachers engaged in distance education: experiences from the Arctic

We examine the experiences of five teachers who traveled with a team of educators, scientists, and explorers on circumpolar Arctic expeditions to deliver adventure learning (AL) programs to K–12 students at a distance. Results highlight the personal and professional impacts this opportunity had on teachers, including their empowering, fulfilling, and mentally exhausting experiences while assisting in delivering distance education to students worldwide. The article concludes with a discussion of issues to consider in the development of similar programs.