Animals World

Tips for Refinery Gas Analysis
Refinery gas analysis (RGA) is an important application in oil and gas which characterizes the gases produced during crude oil refining, including stack emission, flame and reformate streams.
The challenge in RGA analysis is the reliable analysis of variable sources and compositions of gases produced via fluid catalytic cracking (FCC). The analysis must be quick and accurate to allow engineers to monitor permanent gases, such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, saturated and unsaturated hydrocarbon content and sulfur contaminant as by-products of refinery operations.

Given the increase in helium cost over the past few years, there is growing interest across a range of applications that are relatively gas hungry, including RGA. Agilent Technologies have performed RGA using a large valve oven with a selection of different carrier gases and detectors and have noted some interesting results:

Using a cool down ramp with a large valve oven will shorten the overall cycle time of fast RGA
Oxygen was found to be more stable using an Isothermal oven at 75 ℃ than at 70 ℃
Although hydrogenation of olefins has been reported when using hydrogen as carrier gas for RGA with a large valve oven, Agilent found no evidence of this when they ran a test sample
Results for large valve oven based RGA with both hydrogen and nitrogen carrier gases were broadly similar, with detection of the last hydrocarbon at 5 minutes 12 seconds and 5 minutes 30 seconds respectively
Hydrogen and nitrogen are suitable alternative carrier gases for large valve oven based RGA
Oxygen at 70 and 75 degrees

Figure 2 from the 'Fast Refinery Gas Analysis System Based on the Agilent 7890B GC System and G3507A Large Valve Oven Using Micropacked Columns' Application Note demonstrates that oxygen is more stable using an Isothermal oven at 75 ℃ than at 70 ℃

It is important to note that although both hydrogen and nitrogen can be produced as a by-product of RGA, labs which are using hydrogen or nitrogen as a carrier gas for RGA should not simply recycle the by-product gases produced for this purpose. This is discouraged as the repeatability of results using the by-product gases cannot be guaranteed, due to their varying sources and contaminant levels producing inconsistent gas purity.

To produce repeatable results using hydrogen or nitrogen, it is advisable to produce the gases via a gas generator as then their purity and consistency can be guaranteed. As hydrogen and nitrogen can both be produced via a gas generator, unlike helium which is a finite resource and subject to market volatility, they are economical and sustainable gas solutions for refinery gas analysis carrier gas.

AMUR LEOPARD SPECIES:

Not many people ever see an Amur leopard in the wild. Not surprising, as there are so few of them, but a shame considering how beautiful they are. Thick, luscious, black-ringed coats and a huge furry tails they can wrap around themselves to keep warm.

The good news is, having been driven to the edge of extinction, their numbers appear to be rising thanks to conservation work - we're also able to survey more areas than before and use camera traps to estimate population changes.

The Amur leopard is a nocturnal animal that lives and hunts alone – mainly in the vast forests of Russia and China. During the harsh winter, the hairs of that unique coat can grow up to 7cm long.

Over the years the Amur leopard hasn't just been hunted mercilessly, its homelands have been gradually destroyed by unsustainable logging, forest fires, road building, farming, and industrial development.

But recent research shows conservation work is having a positive effect, and wild Amur leopard numbers are believed to have increased, though there are still only around 90 adults in the wild, in Russia and north-east China.

Becci May
Becci May
Senior Programme Advisor (Asia Programmes)
"Amur leopards are such beautiful animals, and sadly, critically endangered. I’ve been very fortunate to go into their forest habitats in Russia and China, and see some fantastic videos and camera trap images, which provide insights into their world. The next few years are really critical for them. Together with governments and other organisations, I feel hopeful that we help populations to increase as we look to the future."

Wild female Amur leopard on a rocky hillside© naturepl.com / Vladimir Medvedev / WWF
WHERE AMUR LEOPARDS LIVE
Wild Amur leopards are now only found in the border areas between the Russian Far East and north-east China, and possibly North Korea.

Most are in Russia, with a few in China. Their range is smaller than 2,500 sq km – that’s an area smaller than Dorset.

They prefer mature forest and avoid open grasslands or populated areas.

Yuri Shibnev / naturepl.com
WHY AMUR LEOPARDS ARE SO IMPORTANT
Amur leopards are top predators in their landscape, so they’re crucial role for keeping the right balance of species in their area. That also affects the health of the forests and wider environment, which provides local wildlife and people with food, water and other resources.

By protecting the Amur leopard we’re helping to look after its environment for the benefit of other wildlife and people that share it.

Spectacular view 🌊 Greece 💙

1. THERE ARE SEVEN SPECIES OF MARINE TURTLE
Marine turtles were around more than 100 million years ago - and lived alongside dinosaurs. These days, scientists recognise seven species of marine turtle:
Hawksbill
Loggerhead
Leatherback
Olive ridley
Green
Flatback
Kemp's ridley
Six of these are threatened with extinction, and there's simply not enough information on the flatback to know how at risk they are.
Olive Ridley, Costa Ricanaturepl.com / Solvin Zankl / WWF
2. TURTLES DON’T HAVE TEETH
They use their beak-like mouth to grasp their food. This beak is made of keratin (the same stuff your fingernails are made of).
A loggerhead turtle, GreeceMichel Gunther / WWF
3. THEY’RE WELL ‘ARD
Turtle shells are made of over 50 bones fused together - so they're literally wearing their bones on the outside. They also have light, spongy bones that help them float.
Green turtle hatchlings, KenyaJonathan Caramanus / Green Renaissance / WWF-UK
4. THEIR YOUNG LIVES ARE A MYSTERY
The first few years of a marine turtle’s life are known as the ‘lost years’. That’s because the time between when the hatchlings emerge until they return to coastal shallow waters to forage is incredibly difficult to study. The lost years they spend at sea – which can be up to 20 years – largely remain a mystery to us.
Jürgen Freund / WWF
5. THEY CAN BE GINORMOUS
Marine turtle species vary greatly in size. The smallest, Kemp’s ridley, measure around 70cm long and weigh up to 40kg, whilst the leatherback can reach up to 180cm long and weigh 500kg. That’s over 10 times heavier! Amazingly, Wales holds the world record for the largest marine turtle ever found. In 1988, a leatherback was found ashore measuring 2.5 m long, 2.5 m from flipper to flipper, and weighing over 900kg (that’s more than 140 stone)!

6. IT’S SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
It's estimated that only around 1 in 1,000 marine turtle hatchlings make it to adulthood. This is down to the long time it takes for them to reach maturity and the many dangers faced by hatchlings and juveniles – from predators to marine plastics.

7. THEY MAKE SOME INTERESTING NOISES
Female leatherbacks make some strange noises when they’re nesting – some of which sound similar to a human belch.
Hawksbill turtleAntonio Busiello
8. THEY HAVE COLOUR PREFERENCES
Turtles seem to prefer red, orange and yellow food - they appear to investigate these colours more than others when looking for a meal.
Kemp's ridley turtleKemp's ridley turtle © Peter C.H. Pritchard / WWF
9. LIFE AIN’T A TRACK MEET, IT’S A MARATHON
Marine turtles can migrate incredibly long distances – the longest known record is for a female leatherback who swam nearly 13,000 miles over 647 days from Indonesia to the west coast of America. That’s over 20 miles a day.
Carlos Drews / WWF
10. THEY ALWAYS RETURN HOME
Females return to the same beach they hatched on, to lay their own eggs and bury them in sand ‘nests’. Marine turtles’ amazing ability to navigate comes from their sensitivity to the Earth's magnetic fields.

Like a miracle

Emerald Lake, Канада 🇨🇦

📸 .diegoph

The American West’s changing climate might mean more plague-carrying critters

Every year, a handful of Americans catch plague. The disease, caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, was introduced to North America during the early 1900s and stuck around in rodents in Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. When treated with antibiotics, it’s no longer deadly to humans—prairie dogs aren’t so lucky.

According to recent research, between 1950 and 2017, swaths of the Mountain West became 30 to 40 percent more suitable for the bacteria because of climate change. That’s a hint at how future warming might affect the transmission of animal-borne diseases in general.

“There’s this conventional wisdom that the biggest impacts are going to be from heat and disasters, and I just don’t think that’s a sure thing,” Colin Carlson, the study’s lead author, told Gizmodo. “I think it’s just harder to reconstruct the climate signal for infectious diseases.”

Plague can infect a wide range of species, but it establishes long-term reservoirs in rodent populations. In Central Asia, it appears to hang around in gerbils, while in North America, prairie dogs seem to play a key role. The bacteria spreads from animal to animal via several species of flea, or in some cases when a predator like a cat or coyote eats an infected critter. There’s some evidence that Y. pestis can also form a symbiotic relationship with amoeba, and even lives in the soil itself if conditions are right.

That complexity makes modelling plague reservoirs, let alone predicting the extent of possible outbreaks, very tricky. Different rodents may live in different size populations as the climate changes, while certain species of tick are better at spreading the bacteria at specific temperatures.

So the researchers set out to map out the distribution of plague in the past, as a way of understanding what factors might move it around in the future.

To do so, they overlaid data on human infections—which averaged 7.7 per year between 1950 and 2000—with the weather conditions at the time patients got sick. They also mapped data from wildlife surveys from 2000 to 2017, which recorded 5,000 plague cases out of 41,000 tested animals, almost entirely in coyotes. (Coyotes catch and spread the bacteria without getting sick, so the evidence comes from plague antibodies in their blood.)

Between 1950 and 2017, plague risk was highest in “rodent biodiversity hotspots,” which could be because there are more rodents to infect, or because those hotspots are more likely to have some ideal host that scientists haven’t yet pinpointed. It also appears that the bacteria form reservoirs only at high-altitude, likely because of some combination of soil conditions and the rodents that live there.

Long-term warming appears to have created more suitable conditions for reservoirs, as rodents expand into more high-altitude locations. It’s also possible that reservoirs have developed, undetected, in parts of Canada, Mexico, and California’s Central Valley.

The model also supports a relationship between climate events and pandemic plague. Plague was most abundant in animals during unseasonably warm years, but there was a higher risk of human infection in cold, wet years. The researchers think that that’s because hotter years allow a buildup of rodents and fleas, and so the overall amount of disease grows. When it gets cold, those rodents die off—and as the fleas jump ship, plague clusters in the survivors. Other fleas forge off in search of new hosts, which brings them into contact with humans.

Previous research by one of the new study’s coauthors focused on the most famous plague pandemic, the Black Death, which upended feudal Europe and set the stage for the modern world. It found that the bacteria left Central Asia in response to a fluctuating climate. Waves of the Black Death in Europe were preceded by a series of cold years in Mongolia, which the researchers believe sent plague-infested insects west.

This doesn’t mean that more people will begin dying of the disease as the country warms. The substantial increase in risk for animals has only raised instances of human spillover by a fraction of a percent, and those cases are still treatable.

But, the authors write, plague happens to be a good model for understanding the interplay between climate, ecosystems, and disease, because it’s so closely monitored in the US. The same process is taking place with other pathogens, from yellow fever, to lyme disease, to the flesh-eating leishmaniasis—but those shifts are even harder to track.

A newfound South American dinosaur had a tail like a war club

A new species of armored dinosaur from subantarctic Chile boasted a large tail weapon that looked dramatically different from those found on its relatives, and may shed light on a mysterious phase in the group’s evolution.

Scientists found the mostly-complete skeleton in 2018 in the Río de las Chinas Valley of Chilean Patagonia and determined it to be roughly 71.7 to 74.9 million years old, dating it to the late Cretaceous. When they further examined the skeleton, the researchers found a baffling mixture of features typically seen in ankylosaurs and stegosaurs. However, its “bizarre” tail didn’t seem to match with the tails seen in either of these famous groups; rather than the traditional spikes or clubs, the newly-named Stegouros elengassen had seven pairs of bony deposits encasing half the tail in a flattened frond-like structure, the researchers reported on December 1 in Nature.

Still, an analysis of the armored dinosaur family tree revealed that the fossil belonged to an ankylosaur, suggesting that different branches of the group flourished in the northern and southern hemispheres after the supercontinent Pangaea broke up.

“This is the first time scientists get a good look at what a South American ankylosaur is like,” says Alexander Vargas, a paleontologist at the University of Chile in Santiago and coauthor of the study. Stegouros’s tail weapon, he adds, is “absolutely unlike anything we have seen before.”

A number of present-day mammals and reptiles, including porcupines and alligators, use their tails as whips or lashes to defend themselves from predators or rivals. But southern African girdled lizards go a step farther: Their tails are equipped with bony spines. More elaborate versions of these tail armaments were once wielded by extinct relatives of turtles and armadillos.

“But the champions of them all are the armored dinosaurs,” Vargas says. In addition to the bony plates and spines along their backs, some members of this group developed specialized tail weapons. These included the tail spikes seen in stegosaurs such as Stegosaurus and rounded tail clubs belonging to ankylosaurs such as Ankylosaurus.

A newfound South American dinosaur had a tail like a war club
Paleontologist Sergio Soto examines the ankylosaur fossils found in southern Chile.
The ankylosaurs generally had broad backs and thick limbs. While ankylosaur fossils are plentiful in North America and Asia, Vargas says, until now only fragmented bones and teeth have been found of their more southern cousins.

“These scraps and pieces were often interpreted as a sign that ankylosaurs, which in North America were very abundant and diverse, somehow managed to cross into South America, to migrate,” he says.

The specimen that he and his colleagues discovered in 2018 at the southern tip of South America changes this picture, Vargas says. When the team began to excavate the fossil, they first noticed its slender limbs and speculated that the specimen might have been a bipedal herbivore. Next came the tail with its “astonishing weapon,” Vargas says, which indicated that the skeleton actually represented some kind of armored dinosaur.

“We thought we might have a stegosaur when we uncovered the hips,” he says. “They were identical to a stegosaur.” The fossil’s upper arm and right hand also resembled those of stegosaurs. Yet when the team reached the skull, they found that the upper jaw and palate looked distinctly ankylosaurian.

[Related: An overlooked fossil turned out to be a new herbivorous dinosaur with an oddly shaped nose]

To find out which group the puzzling species belonged to, the researchers analyzed hundreds of different traits from dozens of dinosaur species and ultimately identified ​​Stegouros as an ankylosaur. What’s more, its ancestors split off from the rest of the ankylosaurs some 167 million years ago in the mid-Jurassic.

“It’s an evolutionary link between the ankylosaurs…and other armored dinosaurs like the stegosaurs,” Vargas says.

This could explain why Stegouros bears so little resemblance to most ankylosaurs, with its agile limbs, narrow feet, light armor, and a hawk-like beak. The petite ankylosaur was only about 2 meters (6.6 feet) long and had a shorter tail than other armored dinosaurs. The weapon’s flattened shape might have made it easier for Stegouros to avoid dragging its tail and “being able to wield it for defense,” Vargas says. He and his colleagues named the structure after an Aztec war club, or macuahuitl, which resembles a wooden sword with obsidian blades protruding from either side. The researchers determined that Stegouros is closely related to two other ankylosaurs from Australia and Antarctica. The latter, which is known as Antarctopelta, features “enigmatic” bony plates that have perplexed scientists but which might be part of the same kind of macuahuitl used by Stegouros, Vargas says.

The findings suggest that Stegouros “is not an invader from the north,” he says. “It is actually a lineage that has roots so deep in time it’s [from] when all continents were together.”

As Pangaea finished separating into Laurasia (present-day North America and Eurasia) and Gondwana (which would become South America and the remaining continents) in the late Jurassic, the more familiar ankylosaurs would come to dominate the northern continent while Stegouros and its relatives laid claim to the south.

Surfing with dolphins anyone Sydney

Surfing with dolphins anyone Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 . . 📷