The future of shale

Master's Project (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2016This project examines the various drivers that led to the U.S. shale oil revolution in order to predict its place in the energy industry going forward and to analyze its effects on Alaska. The shale boom flooded the market with oil causing a dramatic decrease in crude oil prices in late 2014. With this price drop threatening to send Alaska into an economic recession, the future of shale should be of primary concern to all Alaskans as well as other entities that rely heavily on oil revenue. The primary driver leading to the shale revolution is technology. Advances in hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling, and 3D seismic mapping made producing shale oil and gas possible for the first time. New technologies like rotary steerable systems and measurements while drilling continue to make shale production more efficient, and technology will likely continue to improve. Infrastructure helps to explain why the shale revolution was mostly an American phenomenon. Many countries with shale formations have political infrastructure too unstable to risk shale investment. Capital infrastructure is a primary strength of the U.S. and also helps to explain why shale development didn't find its way up to Alaska despite having political stability. Financial infrastructure allowed oil companies to receive the funding necessary to quickly bring shale to the market. The final driver explored is crude oil prices. High oil prices helped spark the shale revolution, but with the recent price crash, there is uncertainty about its future. With production costs continually falling due to technology improvements and analysts predicting crude oil prices to stabilize above most project breakeven points, the future of shale looks bright.Introduction -- Shale & Alaska North Slope Crude Oil Prices -- Seeds of its own destruction? Technology -- Hydraulic Fracturing -- History of fracking -- Directional drilling -- History of drilling -- Benefits of directional drilling -- 3D seismic mapping -- Creating a shockwave -- Recording the data -- Interpreting the results -- The birth of a revolution -- Current/future developments -- Rotary steerable system -- Measurements while drilling -- Future developments. Infrastructure -- Political risk -- Financial markets -- Over investment -- Capital infrastructure. Crude prices -- The price crash -- Breakeven prices -- Future prices -- Alaska -- Conclusion -- Bibliography

Engaging Students Through Collaboration: How Project FUN Works

Students from three disciplines designed, developed, and implemented exercise and nutrition interventions, online modules and videos, to benefit low-income middle school students. The process used to incorporate the scholarship of teaching into a collaborative college-level application of learning is described

High Resolution Imaging Systems For Spin-Stabilized Probe Spacecraft

A novel design for a high-resolution imaging system which includes on-board data editing and optical navigation, suggests high quality images can be acquired from spin-stabilized spacecraft oriented towards high velocity, short duration planetary missions ("Probes"). The approach to designing imaging systems requires that mission objectives be met within the physical and fiscal constraints imposed by the spacecraft and mission design. Severe constraints imposed on a Comet Halley probe (for example, 57km/sec encounter velocity with a small, 10km diameter, object coupled with a great uncertainty in encounter time and distance, were overcome by innovative use of existing technology. Such designs suggest that 3-axis stabilization or non-spinning platforms are not necessary to acquire high resolution, high quality planetary images

Addressing Health Disparities in Middle School Students’ Nutrition and Exercise

Those with low income, especially women of African American and Hispanic heritage have the greatest risk of inactivity and obesity. A 4-session (Internet and video) intervention with healthy snack and gym labs was tested in 2 (gym lab in 1) urban low–middle-income middle schools to improve low fat diet and moderate and vigorous physical activity.1 The gym lab was particularly beneficial (p = .002). Fat in diet decreased with each Internet session in which students participated. Percentage of fat in food was reduced significantly p = .018 for Black, White, and Black/Native American girls in the intervention group. Interventions delivered through Internet and video may enable reduction of health disparities in students by encouraging those most at risk to consume 30% or less calories from fat and to engage in moderate and vigorous physical activity

Landform degradation on Mercury, the Moon, and Mars: Evidence from crater depth/diameter relationships

Morphologic classification of craters and quantitative measurements of crater depth as a function of diameter are used to investigate the relative degradational histories of Mercury, the moon, and Mars. Martian craters exhibit considerable depth variation and are generally shallower than their lunar or mercurian counterparts. On Mercury and the moon, visually fresh and degraded craters on smooth plains show no significant depth degradation except that attributed to lava flooding or local inundation by ejecta from large impacts. More heavily cratered regions on both planets display a large range of both visual and depth degradation, suggesting that most landform modification occurred before the final phase of formation of the oldest smooth plains on both planets. Depth/diameter data presented here are discussed as they relate to two early history scenarios. One scenario based on cratering and the ballistic transport of material has been suggested for Mercury, the moon, and Mars by several authors. Owing to discrepancies between this ballistic scenario and observations of crater densities and morphologies, we suggest that landforms on all these bodies also record nonballistic degradation associated with the formation of intercrater plains. Whichever scenario is applied, early, intense, bombardment-associated degradation appears to be a common element in the histories of the terrestrial planets

Desktop Exploration of Remote Terrain (DERT)

Software tool that utilizes a virtual world to visualize and navigate NASA digital elevation models

Symmetry of anomalous dimension matrices explained

In a previous paper, one of us pointed out that the anomalous dimension matrices for all physical processes that have been calculated to date are complex symmetric, if stated in an orthonormal basis. In this paper we prove this fact and show that it is only true in a subset of all possible orthonormal bases, but that this subset is the natural one to use for physical calculations.Comment: 4 page

Climatic variations on Mars: 2. Evolution of carbon dioxide atmosphere and polar caps

The long-term variations in the atmospheric pressure and the polar cap temperature of Mars resulting from the obliquity oscillations (presented by W. R. Ward, 1974) are discussed. In performing these calculations, the assumption is made that the atmosphere is in equilibrium with perennial CO_2 ice deposits at the north pole, as is proposed by R. B. Leighton and B. C. Murray (1966). If heat transport by the atmosphere is neglected, the temperature of CO_2 ice at the poles ranges from ∼130°K to ∼160°K, the corresponding atmospheric pressure rising from a few tenths of a millibar to ∼30 mbar, respectively. The neglect of atmospheric heat transport probably underestimates the peak pressure. Because the altitude of the south cap is ∼2 km higher than that of the north cap, CO_2 ice is unstable there and will migrate to the north cap at a rate ∼10 g/cm^2 yr, the implication being that the south residual cap is water ice. A simplified model of the annual polar caps and pressure fluctuations is also presented. This indicates that when the obliquity is at its maximum, the annual caps may be greatly enlarged in both mass and maximum coverage. The modifications introduced by including significant atmospheric heat transport are then discussed. Finally, the implications of different past climatic conditions on the mechanism of eolian erosion are briefly considered

The Luminosity Function of Young Star Clusters In "The Antennae" Galaxies (NGC 4038/4039)

The WFPC2 of the HST has been used to obtain high-resolution images of NGC 4038/4039 that go roughly 3 magnitudes deeper in V than previous observations made during Cycle 2 (-14 < M_V < -6). To first order the luminosity function (LF) is a power law, with exponent \alpha = -2.12 +/- 0.04. However, after decoupling the cluster and stellar LFs, which overlap in the range -9 < M_V < -6, we find an apparent bend in the young cluster LF at approximately M_V = -10.4. The LF has a power law exponent -2.6 +/- 0.2 in the brightward and -1.7 +/- 0.2 in the faintward. The bend corresponds to a mass ~ 10^5 M_{\odot}, only slightly lower than the characteristic mass of globular clusters in the Milky Way (~2x10^5 M_{\odot}). The star clusters of the Antennae appear slightly resolved, with median effective radii of 4 +/- 1 pc, similar to or perhaps slightly larger than those of globular clusters in our Galaxy. However, the radial extents of some of the very young clusters (ages < 10 Myr) are much larger than those of old globular clusters. A combination of the UBVI colors, \Halpha morphology, and GHRS spectra enables us to age-date the clusters in different regions of The Antennae. We find two groups of young star clusters with ages <~ 20Myr and ~100Myr, as well as an intermediate-age group (~500 Myr) and a handful of old globular clusters from the progenitor galaxies. Age estimates derived from GHRS spectroscopy yield 3 +/- 1 Myr for Knot K (just south of the nucleus of NGC 4038) and 7 +/- 1 Myr for Knot S in the Western Loop, in good agreement with ages derived from the UBVI colors. Effective gas-outflow velocities from Knots S and K are estimated to be about 25-30 km/s. However, the measured widths of the interstellar absorption lines suggest dispersion velocities of ~400 km/s along the lines of sight to Knots S and K.Comment: 56 pages, 4 tables and 23 figures, texts in AAS style, to be published in A