Smart Economy

Battery-free technology brings gesture recognition to all devices

February 27, 2014

Michelle Ma         

News and Information

Posted under: Engineering, News Releases, Research, Technology                 

          

Mute the song playing on your smartphone in your pocket by flicking your index finger in the air, or pause your “This American Life” podcast with a small wave of the hand. This kind of gesture control for electronics could soon become an alternative to touchscreens and sensing technologies that consume a lot of power and only work when users can see their smartphones and tablets.

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U of Washington

The AllSee prototype is integrated with an off-the-shelf mobile phone. This technology enables new applications such as gesture recognition with the phone still in your pocket.

Related paper:

“Bringing Gesture Recognition to All Devices”

University of Washington computer scientists have built a low-cost gesture recognition system that runs without batteries and lets users control their electronic devices hidden from sight with simple hand movements. The prototype, called “AllSee,” uses existing TV signals as both a power source and the means for detecting a user’s gesture command.

“This is the first gesture recognition system that can be implemented for less than a dollar and doesn’t require a battery,” said Shyam Gollakota, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering. “You can leverage TV signals both as a source of power and as a source of gesture recognition.”

The technology is set to appear April 2-4 at the Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation conference in Seattle.

The researchers built a small sensor that can be placed on an electronic device such as a smartphone. The sensor uses an ultra-low-power receiver to extract and classify gesture information from wireless transmissions around us. When a person gestures with the hand, it changes the amplitude of the wireless signals in the air. The AllSee sensors then recognize unique amplitude changes created by specific gestures.

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U of Washington

AllSee detects the unique signal changes (shown on the oscilloscope) and classifies a rich set of hand gestures.

Sensors use three to four times less power than existing gesture recognition systems by harvesting power from wireless transmissions. This allows for mobile devices to always have the gesture technology on and enabled.

Gesture recognition already is possible on some mobile devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. But users have to first manually enable the feature and be able to see the device for the gesture technology to work, and if left on, the gesture system quickly drains the phone’s battery. In contrast, AllSee consumes only tens of microwatts of power and can always be left on. The user could gesture at the phone in a pocket or handbag to change the volume or mute the phone without having to touch or see the phone.

High resolutionClick to expand

U of Washington

Beyond mobile devices, AllSee can also enable interaction with Internet of Things devices such as home monitoring solutions.

This technology could allow sensors to be attached to household electronics, making it possible to interact with everyday objects using gestures and also connect them to the Internet and to each other in an “Internet of Things” world.

“Beyond mobile devices, AllSee can enable interaction with Internet of Things devices. These sensing devices are increasingly smaller electronics that can’t operate with usual keypads, so gesture-based systems are ideal,” said Bryce Kellogg, a UW doctoral student in electrical engineering.

The UW team tested AllSee’s capabilities on smartphones and battery-free sensors using eight different hand gestures such as pushing or pulling to zoom in and out. The prototype could correctly identify the gestures more than 90 percent of the time while performed more than 2 feet away from the device.

Researchers have tested the technology for response time and whether it can distinguish between other motions and those directed at it. They found that the technology’s response time is less than 80 microseconds, which is 1,000 times faster than blinking an eye.

“This enables a seamless and interactive experience for the user,” said Vamsi Talla, a UW doctoral student in electrical engineering. The researchers also designed a wake-up gesture that allows the system not to confuse unintentional motions for actual gestures.

This technology builds on previous work by Gollakota on leveraging Wi-Fi signals around us for gesture recognition around the home. Prior wireless gesture recognition techniques, however, consume tens of watts of power and aren’t suitable for mobile or Internet of Things devices.

The research is funded by a Google Faculty Research Award and the Washington Research Foundation.

###

For more information, contact Gollakota, Kellogg and Talla at [email protected]

Crude oil from algae in 30 minutes

“Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said they have successfully perfected a new method that can transform a pea-soupy solution of algae into crude oil by pressure cooking in just 30 minutes. The crude oil created is lightweight and low in sulfur and can be “dropped in” to refineries that process fossil crudes.”
Further Details :
L#1 : http://is.gd/cSyLL8

L#2 : http://is.gd/8MGdbn

L#3 : http://is.gd/OTW42a

 

 

Synaptic transistor learns while it computes- transistor that mimics the behavior of a synapse

 

First of its kind, brain-inspired device looks toward highly efficient and fast parallel computing

 

Cambridge, Mass. – November 1, 2013 – It doesn't take a Watson to realize that even the world's best supercomputers are staggeringly inefficient and energy-intensive machines.

Our brains have upwards of 86 billion neurons, connected by synapses that not only complete myriad logic circuits; they continuously adapt to stimuli, strengthening some connections while weakening others. We call that process learning, and it enables the kind of rapid, highly efficient computational processes that put Siri and Blue Gene to shame.

Materials scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have now created a new type of transistor that mimics the behavior of a synapse. The novel device simultaneously modulates the flow of information in a circuit and physically adapts to changing signals.

Exploiting unusual properties in modern materials, the synaptic transistor could mark the
beginning of a new kind of artificial intelligence: one embedded not in smart algorithms but in the very architecture of a computer. The findings appear in Nature Communications.

“There’s extraordinary interest in building energy-efficient electronics these days,” says principal investigator Shriram Ramanathan, associate professor of materials science at Harvard SEAS. “Historically, people have been focused on speed, but with speed comes the penalty of power dissipation. With electronics becoming more and more powerful and ubiquitous, you could have a
huge impact by cutting down the amount of energy they consume.”

The human mind, for all its phenomenal computing power, runs on roughly 20 Watts of energy (less
than a household light bulb), so it offers a natural model for engineers.

“The transistor we’ve demonstrated is really an analog to the synapse in our brains,” says co-lead
author Jian Shi, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS. “Each time a neuron initiates an action and another neuron reacts, the synapse between them increases the strength of its connection. And the faster the neurons spike each time, the stronger the synaptic connection. Essentially, it memorizes the action between the neurons.”

In principle, a system integrating millions of tiny synaptic transistors and neuron terminals could take parallel computing into a new era of ultra-efficient high performance.

Several prototypes of the synaptic transistor are visible on this silicon chip. (Photo by Eliza Grinnell, SEAS Communications.)

While calcium ions and receptors effect a change in a biological synapse, the artificial version
achieves the same plasticity with oxygen ions. When a voltage is applied, these ions slip in and out of the crystal lattice of a very thin (80-nanometer) film of samarium nickelate, which acts as the synapse channel between two platinum "axon" and "dendrite" terminals. The varying concentration
of ions in the nickelate raises or lowers its conductance—that is, its ability to carry information on an electrical current—and, just as in a natural synapse, the strength of the connection depends on the time delay in the electrical signal.

Structurally, the device consists of the nickelate semiconductor sandwiched between two platinum
electrodes and adjacent to a small pocket of ionic liquid. An external circuit multiplexer converts the time delay into a magnitude of voltage which it applies to the ionic liquid, creating an electric field that either drives ions into the nickelate or removes them. The entire device, just a few hundred
microns long, is embedded in a silicon chip.

The synaptic transistor offers several immediate advantages over traditional silicon transistors.
For a start, it is not restricted to the binary system of ones and zeros.

“This system changes its conductance in an analog way, continuously, as the composition of the
material changes,” explains Shi. “It would be rather challenging to use CMOS, the traditional circuit technology, to imitate a synapse, because real biological synapses have a practically unlimited number of possible states—not just ‘on’ or ‘off.’”

The synaptic transistor offers another advantage: non-volatile memory, which means even when
power is interrupted, the device remembers its state.

Additionally, the new transistor is inherently energy efficient. The nickelate belongs to an unusual
class of materials, called correlated electron systems, that can undergo an insulator-metal transition. At a certain temperature—or, in this case, when exposed to an external field—the conductance of the material suddenly changes.

“We exploit the extreme sensitivity of this material,” says Ramanathan. “A very small excitation allows you to get a large signal, so the input energy required to drive this switching is potentially very small. That could translate into a large boost for energy efficiency.”

The nickelate system is also well positioned for seamless integration into existing silicon-based systems.

“In this paper, we demonstrate high-temperature operation, but the beauty of this type of a device
is that the 'learning' behavior is more or less temperature insensitive, and that’s a big advantage,” says Ramanathan. “We can operate this anywhere from about room temperature up to at least 160 degrees Celsius.”

For now, the limitations relate to the challenges of synthesizing a relatively unexplored material system, and to the size of the device, which affects its speed.

“In our proof-of-concept device, the time constant is really set by our experimental geometry,” says Ramanathan. “In other words, to really make a super-fas device, all you’d have to do is confine the liquid and position the gate electrode closer to it.”

In fact, Ramanathan and his research team are already planning, with microfluidics experts at SEAS,
to investigate the possibilities and limits for this “ultimate fluidic transistor.”

He also has a seed grant from the National Academy of Sciences to explore the integration of
synaptic transistors into bioinspired circuits, with L. Mahadevan, Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, and professor of physics.

“In the SEAS setting it’s very exciting; we’re able to collaborate easily with people from very
diverse interests,” Ramanathan says.

For the materials scientist, as much curiosity derives from exploring the capabilities of correlated oxides (like the nickelate used in this study) as from the possible applications.

“You have to build new instrumentation to be able to synthesize these new materials, but once
you’re able to do that, you really have a completely new material system whose properties are virtually unexplored,” Ramanathan says. “It’s very exciting to have such materials to work with, where very little is known about them and you have an opportunity to build knowledge from scratch.”

“This kind of proof-of-concept demonstration carries that work into the ‘applied’ world,” he
adds, “where you can really translate these exotic electronic properties into compelling, state-of-the-art devices.”

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Army Research Office’s
Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The team also benefited from the facilities at the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems, a member
of the NSF-supported National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network. Sieu D. Ha, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS, was the co-lead author; additional coauthors included graduate student You Zhou and Frank Schoofs, a former postdoctoral fellow.

 

 

 

Fracking Operations Triggered 100 Quakes in a Year – (New Scientist – August 19, 2013)

Fracking Operations Triggered 100 Quakes in a Year – (New
Scientist – August 19, 2013)
The Ohio quakes, centred around Youngstown,  were triggered by the disposal of wastewater from fracking operations in the  neighbouring state of Pennsylvania rather than by the fracking process itself.
The new geophysical research, by Won-Young Kim at Columbia University in  Palisades, New York, is the latest to suggest that the main risk of earthquakes  associated with fracking relates to the way the water used in the operations is  disposed of afterwards. In Ohio, the wastewater was injected into a deep well.
This raised the pressure of water within the rock and triggered 109 small quakes between January 2011 and February 2012. The largest, on 31 December 2011, had a  magnitude of 3.9.

Assessing the effects of cell phone radiation on brain tissue

Assessing the effects of cell phone radiation on brain tissue
December 17, 2012 by Sunanda Creagh in Medical research

 

Researchers have found a novel, non-invasive technique for measuring brain hot spots caused by electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones, according to a study published today.

However, the scientists noted their model measured a "worst case scenario" level of heat and that in reality, the body's natural self-cooling mechanisms would reduce the amount of heat rise in the
brain caused by a mobile phone. The World Health Organisation's cancer agency,
the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), classed mobile phones
as Group 2B or "possibly carcinogenic" in a report released last
year. That puts them in the same IARC category as coffee, napthalene and
pickled vegetables. To test how much electromagnetic energy from cell phone
radiation was absorbed into a brain, US researchers David H. Gultekin and
Lothar Moeller used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques on a brain that
had been removed from a cow. The scientists rigged up an antenna system to help
create 3D images of the hot spots without allowing the strong magnetic fields
of the NMR to interfere with the results. The results were checked against heat
measurements taken with fibre optic temperature sensors and showed that the NMR
method delivered accurate findings. The researchers concluded that "NMR
thermometry offers sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to characterise
the hot spots from absorbed cell phone radiation in… biological tissues."
However, the researchers said that a biological process called perfusion—in
which blood is directed to overheated body parts to help cool them down—would
mean that the amount of heat rise caused by a mobile phone in a living brain would
be less in real life than what was studied in this experiment. Ads by Google
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www.SinoBiological.com "This study essentially presents the worst case
scenario in terms of radiation-heated brain tissue. The temperature rise in the
in vivo brain tissue is expected to be smaller because of perfusion," the
study said. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. Their technique was an improvement on existing methods to
test for hot spots, which currently involve inserting a probe into a gel
designed to mimic the way a brain would conduct heat. "They are invasive
and they can not measure the thermal fields in ex-vivo or in-vivo tissues. NMR
method is non-invasive and can measure the thermal fields in ex-vivo and
in-vivo including the perfusion effects," said one of the scientists who
conducted the research, Dr David Gultekin from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Centre in New York.
Another author of the paper, Dr Lothar Moeller of Bell Labs, said "our
method has the advantages that it can be applied to measure remotely temperature
enhancement caused by cell phone radiation inside in-vivo brain. No other
existing method can do this." Professor Rodney Croft, Professor of Health
Physiology at the University
of Wollongong and a
researcher of mobile phone radiation said the research was interesting
proof-of-concept study but "I don't think it has much relevance to the
mobile phone debate." "What they are talking about at the moment is a
non-realistic model using biological material without thermoregulation,"
meaning natural mechanisms that help cool down overheated body parts, said Dr
Croft. "We can be exposed to quite a lot of changes in temperature and our
body can deal with it. If we get mobile phone exposure, because it's such a
small amount of heat, the thermoregulation can deal with that without any
difficulty." Dr Croft said there still was no research suggesting major
health problems caused by mobile phone use. "It really doesn't represent
much of a risk. We are talking about a conclusion that it remains a possibility
[that they may cause cancer] but there is no evidence it is a problem."
More information: "NMR imaging of cell phone radiation absorption in brain
tissue," by David H. Gultekin and Lothar Moeller: www.pnas.org/conte…
0/1205598109 Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by The Conversation This story is published courtesy of the The
Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives)



Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-effects-cell-brain-tissue.html#jCp

How to get fossil fuels from ice cream and soap

December 17, 2012 Scientists at the University of Manchester
have identified a biocatalyst which could produce chemicals found in ice-cream
and household items such as soap and shampoo – possibly leading to the
long-term replacement of chemicals derived from fossil fuels.

Writing in PNAS, the researchers have shown that the emerging
field of synthetic biology can be used to manipulate hydrocarbon chemicals,
found in soaps and shampoos, in cells. This development, discovered with
colleagues at the University of Turku in Finland, could mean fuel for cars
or household power supplies could be created from naturally-occurring fatty
acids. The researchers, led by Professor Nick Turner from The University of
Manchester, used synthetic biology to hijack the naturally-existing fatty acids
and direct those fatty molecules towards the production of ready-to-use fuel
and household chemicals. Hydrocarbon chemicals are everywhere in our daily
lives; as fragrance in soap, thickener in shampoo and fuel in the car. Their
number of carbons and whether they are acid, aldehyde, alcohol or alkane are
important parameters that influence how toxic they are to biological organisms,
the potential for fuel and their olfactory perception as aroma compounds. The
breakthrough allows researchers to further explore how to create renewable
energy from sustainable sources, and the advance could lead to more innovative
ways of sourcing fuel from natural resources. Synthetic biology is an area of
biological research and technology that combines science and engineering for
the benefit of society. Significant advances have been made in this field in
recent years. Professor Turner said: "In our laboratories in Manchester we currently
work with many different biocatalysts that catalyse a range of chemical
reactions – the key is to match up the correct biocatalyst with the specific
product you are trying to make. "Biocatalysts recognise molecules in the
way that a lock recognises a key – they have to fit perfectly together to work.
Sometime we redesign the lock so that if can accept a slightly different key
allowing us to make even more interesting products. "In this example we
need to make sure that the fatty acid starting materials would be a perfect
match for the biocatalysts that we discovered and developed in our
laboratories. "As with many leading areas of science today, in order to
make major breakthroughs it is necessary for two or more laboratories around
the world to come together to solve challenging problems." More
information: Carboxylic acid reductase is a versatile enzyme for the conversion
of fatty acids into fuels and chemical commodities, by M. Kalim Akhtar,
Nicholas J. Turner, and Patrik R. Jones, PNAS, 2012. Journal reference:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Provided by University of Manchester 



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-fossil-fuels-ice-cream-soap.html#jCp

The dark side of kerosene lamps: High black carbon emissions

The dark side of kerosene lamps: High black carbon
emissions

 

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The small kerosene lamps that light millions of homes in developing countries have a dark side: black carbon – fine particles of soot released into the atmosphere.

Simple kerosene lamps, a common source of light in the developing world, emit
high levels of black carbon – 20 times more than previously thought, according
to a new study. | Photo
by Tami Bond

New measurements show that
kerosene wick lamps release 20 times more black carbon than previously thought,
say researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of
California, Berkeley. The group published its findings in the
journal Environmental Science and Technology.



Black carbon is a hazard for human health and the environment, affecting air
quality both indoors and out. It has a major impact on climate as it absorbs
heat and sunlight, warming the air. Although it only lingers in the atmosphere
for about two weeks, one kilogram of black carbon can cause as much warming in
that short time as 700 kilograms of carbon dioxide circulating in the
atmosphere for 100 years, according to study leader Tami Bond,
a professor of civil and
environmental engineering at the U. of I.



“There’s a lot of interest right now in reducing black carbon as a quick way to
reduce climate warming – a way to reduce warming in the immediate future,
although not a full solution to long-term climate change,” Bond said. “In its
short lifetime of two weeks, it adds a lot of energy to the atmosphere. It’s
immediate warming now, which is why people are talking about reducing it.”



Previously, emissions researchers did not consider kerosene lamps a large
source of black carbon because of the relatively small amount of fuel used in a
lamp verses other particle-emitting sources, such as cookstoves or diesel
engines. However, the new measurements from the field show that 7 to 9 percent
of fuel burned is converted to black carbon – a very high emission factor,
making such lamps a major source of black carbon. In addition, unlike the
cocktail of aerosol particles released by cookstoves and cooking fires, the
dark curls rising from a kerosene lamp are nearly pure black carbon.



The good news is that there are inexpensive, easy alternatives that could curb
black carbon emissions from lamps. For example, LED lamps charged by solar
panels are becoming more popular. But an even easier fix would be to place a
glass shield around the lamp, which reduces – though does not eliminate – the
amount of black carbon particles that escape.



“Unlike cooking stoves, which also are very important health hazards but
challenging to replace, people actually like to replace the kerosene lamps,”
Bond said. “When it comes to lamps, nobody says, ‘I really like this tin can
that I filled with kerosene.’ It’s a plausible, inexpensive way to reduce
climate warming immediately, which is something we haven’t really had in the
black carbon field before.”



The study authors hope that, with the new data in hand, agencies working in
developing countries will implement lamp-replacement initiatives to develop and
distribute affordable alternatives.



"Getting rid of kerosene lamps may seem like a small, inconsequential step
to take,” said study lead author Nicholas Lam, a UC Berkeley graduate student,
“but when considering the collective impact of hundreds of millions of
households, it's a simple move that affects the planet."



The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences, the U.S. Agency for International Development
and the Environmental Protection Agency supported this research.

Editor's
note: To reach Tami Bond, call 217-244-5277; email [email protected]. The paper, “Household Light
Makes Global Heat: High Black Carbon Emissions From Kerosene Wick Lamps,” is
available online.

 

Flexible silicon solar-cell fabrics may soon become possible

		IMAGE:For the first time, a silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities has been developed that is capable of being scaled up to many meters in length. The research, led by...Click here for more information.

For the first time, a silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities has been developed that has been shown to be scalable to many meters in length. The research opens the door to the possibility of weaving together solar-cell silicon wires to create flexible, curved, or twisted solar fabrics. The findings by an international team of chemists, physicists, and engineers, led by John Badding, a professor of chemistry at Penn State University, will be posted by the journal Advanced Materials in an early online edition on 6 December 2012 and will be published on a future date in the journal's print edition.

The team's new findings build on earlier work addressing the challenge of merging optical fibers with electronic chips -- silicon-based integrated circuits that serve as the building blocks for most semiconductor electronic devices such as solar cells, computers, and cell phones. Rather than merge a flat chip with a round optical fiber, the team found a way to build a new kind of optical fiber -- which is thinner than the width of a human hair -- with its own integrated electronic component, thereby bypassing the need to integrate fiber-optics with chips. To do this, they used high-pressure chemistry techniques to deposit semiconducting materials directly, layer by layer, into tiny holes in optical fibers.

		IMAGE:For the first time, a silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities has been developed that is capable of being scaled up to many meters in length. The research, led by...Click here for more information.

Now, in their new research, the team members have used the same high-pressure chemistry techniques to make a fiber out of crystalline silicon semiconductor materials that can function as a solar cell -- a photovoltaic device that can generate electrical power by converting solar radiation into direct-current electricity. "Our goal is to extend high-performance electronic and solar-cell function to longer lengths and to more flexible forms. We already have made meters-long fibers but, in principle, our team's new method could be used to create bendable silicon solar-cell fibers of over 10 meters in length," Badding said. "Long, fiber-based solar cells give us the potential to do something we couldn't really do before: We can take the silicon fibers and weave them together into a fabric with a wide range of applications such as power generation, battery charging, chemical sensing, and biomedical devices."

Badding explained that one of the major limitations of portable electronics such as smart phones and iPads is short battery life. Solar-boosted batteries could help solve this problem. "A solar cell is usually made from a glass or plastic substrate onto which hydrogenated amorphous silicon has been grown," Badding explained. "Such a solar cell is created using an expensive piece of equipment called a PECVD reactor and the end result is something flat with little flexibility. But woven, fiber-based solar cells would be lightweight, flexible configurations that are portable, foldable, and even wearable." This material could then be connected to electronic devices to power them and charge their batteries. "The military especially is interested in designing wearable power sources for soldiers in the field," Badding added.

The team members believe that another advantage of flexibility in solar-cell materials is the possibility of collecting light energy at various angles. "A typical solar cell has only one flat surface," Badding said. "But a flexible, curved solar-cell fabric would not be as dependent upon where the light is coming from or where the sun is in the horizon and the time of day."

Pier J. A. Sazio of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and one of the team's leaders added, "Another intriguing property of these silicon-fiber devices is that as they are so compact, they can have a very fast response to visible laser light. In fact, we fabricated fiber-based photodetectors with a bandwidth of over 1.8 GHz."

###

In addition to Badding and Sazio, other researchers who contributed to this study include lead author Rongrui He, Todd D. Day, Mahesh Krishnamurthi, Justin R. Sparks, and Venkatraman Gopalan from Penn State.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Penn State's Materials Research Institute Nano Fabrication Network, and the United Kingdom's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

[ Katrina Voss ]

CONTACTS

 

John Badding:  814-777-3054 (mobile), [email protected]

Pier J. A. Sazio:  44-23-8059-3144, [email protected]

Barbara Kennedy (PIO): 814-863-4682, [email protected]

IMAGES

 

High-resolution images associated with this research are online at http://www.science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2012-news/Badding12-2012.

CAPTIONS

 

1. A cross-sectional image of the new silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities. Shown are the layers -- labeled n+, i, and p+ -- that have been deposited inside the pore of the fiber.

2. A coiled strand of a meter-long solar-cell junction fiber, thinner than the width of a human hair, which has been created by a team of chemists, physicists, and engineers led by John Badding at Penn State University.

CREDIT

 

Badding lab, Penn State University

GRANT NUMBERS

 

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/G028273/1 and EP/I035307/1), National Science Foundation (DMR-0806860 and DMR-1107894), and the Penn State Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (NSF DMR-0820404)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DNA Analysis of Microbes in a Fracking Site Yields Surprises

Poster
H11C-1196, “Microbial Community Shifts due to Hydrofracking: Results from
Field-Scale Observations and Laboratory-Scale Incubations” will be presented
from 8:00 a.m. - 12:20 p.m PT on Monday, Dec. 3, 2012 in Moscone South, Hall
A-C.

DNA Analysis of Microbes in a Fracking Site Yields Surprises

SAN FRANCISCO—Researchers have made a genetic analysis of the microbes living deep inside a deposit of Marcellus Shale at a hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” site, and uncovered some
surprises.

They expected to find many tough microbes suited to extreme environments, such as those that derive from archaea, a domain of single-celled species sometimes found in high-salt environments,
volcanoes, or hot springs. Instead, they found very few genetic biomarkers for archaea, and many more for species that derive from bacteria.

Paula   Mouser

They also found that the populations of microbes changed dramatically over a short
period of time, as some species perished during the fracking operation and
others became more abundant. One—an as-yet-unidentified bacterium—actually
prospered, and eventually made up 90 percent of the microbial population in
fluids taken from the fracked well.

Researchers may never know the exact
species of bacteria in the fluids because of the difficulty in replicating the
subsurface conditions in the laboratory, and the challenges associated with
culturing unknown microbes from such environments, explained Paula Mouser,
assistant professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at Ohio State
University and lead
author of the study.

“There are millions of microbes that we
can detect using biomarkers, but haven’t ever isolated or cultured from these
environments before. Most are grouped into loose associations based on shared
genetic characteristics—something akin to a human extended family,” Mouser
said.

“Probably, the best we’ll be able to do is
identify their microbial ‘cousins.’”

The study tracked the microbe species
found in the water pumped out of a typical fracking site over a period of
months during its normal operation. The rock at the site was a type of shale
known as Marcellus, named for the city in New York where it was first identified.

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“This kind of research is important, because   everything we learn about subsurface microorganisms helps us understand   ecology on Earth’s surface.”

To Mouser, the real value of the study is
the new knowledge it offers on how microbes in fracking fluids compete and
survive when the fluids are injected to the deep subsurface, as certain
microbes could prove detrimental to oil and gas quality, or compromise well
integrity.

She presented her team’s initial findings
at the American Geophysical Union meeting this week.

“This kind of research is important,
because everything we learn about subsurface microorganisms helps us understand
ecology on Earth’s surface,” she said. “When water samples like this are
shared, there is the potential for great discovery—this knowledge could open
doors to new technology for improving gas extraction efficiency or for treating
flowback fluids from these sites.”

Because of the large cost for drilling and
fracking one well—usually, millions of dollars—individual researchers must team
together with industry for access to samples.

In fact, companies do not normally share
the contents of their “flowback” fluids—the mix of water, oil, and gas that
emerges from an active well—because they could reveal the proprietary mix of
chemicals that the company is using to aid extraction.

The Ohio
State study was able to take place
only through a collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy
Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Pittsburgh.
NETL is working with industry to study fracking technologies and provided
Mouser’s team with water samples donated by an unnamed shale gas operation.

When it comes to energy extraction, tiny
microbes play a huge role, Mouser said.

As it happens, the chemicals that
companies pump into the ground along with water to help fracture shale and
release petroleum contain carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous—in chemical
formulations that microbes like to eat. So, left unchecked, the microbes in a
fracking well can grow and reproduce out of control—so much so, that they may
clog the fractures and block extraction, or foul the gas and oil with their
waste, which contains sulfur.

This is no news to oil companies, Mouser
added. They’ve long known about the microbes, and add biocides to the water to
control the population. What isn’t known: exactly what kinds of microbes live
there, and what altering their populations does to the environment.

“Our goal is really to understand the
physiology of the microbes and their biogeochemical role in the environment, to
examine how industry practices influence subsurface microbial life and water
quality,” Mouser said.

Maryam Ansari, a master’s student in
environmental sciences at Ohio
State, sequenced the
microbes’ DNA, and separated them into taxa, or taxonomic units—groups that
could be thought of as microbial “cousins.”

Of the 40 taxa the researchers identified
from water samples taken at the start of the fracking operation, only six
survived the first few weeks. Almost all of the bacteria at the site were
classified as “halo-tolerant,” similar to bacteria that live in deep saltwater
environments.

The study is just beginning, and Mouser
hopes that as they learn more, the researchers will be able to pin down how the
microbes metabolize fracking fluids.

Ultimately, they hope to meld those discoveries
with a computer model that can predict fluid movement from shale formations to
groundwater aquifers. The model would provide tools for commercial companies to
assess the safety of possible fracking sites.

In the meantime, Mouser is very interested
in teaming with other industry partners to also look at microbial dynamics in a
different kind of rock: Ohio’s
Utica Shale.

Ohio State’s Subsurface
Energy Resource
Center funded the genomic
analyses, which were done at the university’s Plant Microbe Genetics Facility.
These early findings have earned Mouser a new grant from the National Science
Foundation so that she can pursue the work further.

#

Contact: Paula Mouser, (614) 247-4429; [email protected]

Written by Pam Frost Gorder, (614)
292-9475; [email protected]

Editor’s note: to reach Mouser during the
American Geophysical Union meeting, contact Pam Frost Gorder.

 

Dirty Electricity > Disturbance of the immune system by electromagnetic fields which could lead to disease and impairment

Disturbance of the immune system by electromagnetic fields—A potentially underlying cause for cellular damage and tissue repair reduction which could lead to disease and impairment

Olle Johansson ∗

The Experimental Dermatology Unit,
Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

Received 23
August 2008; accepted 30 January 2009

 

http://www.emrnetwork.org/pdfs/PATPHY_621.pdf