Ocean sequestration of carbon dioxide: modeling the deep ocean release of a dense emulsion of liquid Co2-in-water stabilized by pulverized limestone particles.

The release into the deep ocean of an emulsion of liquid carbon dioxide-in-seawater stabilized by fine particles of pulverized limestone (CaCO3) is modeled. The emulsion is denser than seawater, hence, it will sink deeper from the injection point, increasing the sequestration period. Also, the presence of CaCO3 will partially buffer the carbonic acid that results when the emulsion eventually disintegrates. The distance that the plume sinks depends on the density stratification of the ocean, the amount of the released emulsion, and the entrainment factor. When released into the open ocean, a plume containing the CO2 output of a 1000 MW(el) coal-fired power plant will typically sink hundreds of meters below the injection point. When released from a pipe into a valley on the continental shelf, the plume will sink about twice as far because of the limited entrainment of ambient seawater when the plume flows along the valley. A practical system is described involving a static mixer for the in situ creation of the CO2/seawater/pulverized limestone emulsion. The creation of the emulsion requires significant amounts of pulverized limestone, on the order of 0.5 tons per ton of liquid CO2. That increases the cost of ocean sequestration by about $13/ ton of CO2 sequestered. However, the additional cost may be compensated by the savings in transportation costs to greater depth, and because the release of an emulsion will not acidify the seawater around the release point.

A high-affinity interaction between NusA and the rrn nut site in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

The bacterial NusA protein enhances transcriptional pausing and termination and is known to play an essential role in antitermination. Antitermination is signaled by a nut-like cis-acting RNA sequence comprising boxB, boxA, and boxC. In the present study, we demonstrate a direct, specific high-affinity interaction between the rrn leader nut-like sites and the NusA proteins of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Escherichia coli. This NusA-RNA interaction relies on the conserved region downstream of boxA, the boxC region, thus demonstrating a key function of this element. We have established an in vivo assay for antitermination in mycobacteria and use this to show that the M. tuberculosis rrn nut-like site enhances transcriptional read-through of untranslated RNA consistent with an antitermination signal within this site. Finally, we present evidence that this NusA-RNA interaction affects transcriptional events further downstream.

Microtopography of growth of normal and leukemic murine cells in diffusion-chamber cultures.

Histologic examination of "suspension" diffusion-chamber (DC) cultures of normal murine bone marrow cells demonstrates that hemopoietic cell growth in this system takes place in clonal form. Soon after implantation, marrow cells are arrayed on the filter membranes in a circumferential fashion adjacent to the surrounding lucite ring. Colonies of granulocytic cells soon form in this location and increase in size and number with increasing time of culture. Eventually cells begin to approach confluence over the entire filter membrane. Growth of C1498 murine acute myelogenous leukemic cells in DC cultures also takes place on the filter membranes and begins in a circumferential pattern. However, the leukemic cells grow diffusely and soon overspread the entire filter membrane, often growing several layers thick. Thus, although normal marrow cells are implanted into and are harvested from DC cultures in liquid-suspension form, they grow in a clonal pattern similar to that observed with the plasma-clot and fibrin-clot DC culture methods.