New Tools Pinpoint Natural Gas Leaks, Maximizing a Fuel’s Green Qualities

WASHINGTON — Natural gas is hailed as green and safe, but its environmental benefits and ability to temper climate change are reduced by its tendency to leak into the air undetected. Now, laser technology, some of it borrowed from the telecommunications industry, is giving engineers and scientists crucial new tools to measure leaks and track them to their source.

Pacific Gas & Electric, which operates in northern and central California, has begun training employees to use the technology, a portable gas detector that was recently used in a car driven 785 miles through the streets of Boston.

Natural gas escapes into the atmosphere from two basic sources: natural ones, like swamps and marshes, and human activity, like leaking gas wells and pipelines. The boom in natural gas production, including hydraulic fracturing, has raised concerns about a subsequent boom in leaks, although how much gas escapes remains a mystery. The Environmental Protection Agency has been working on the question for years and “is still operating with guesses,” said John C. Bosch, who specialized in that issue before he retired from that agency four years ago.

But whether from man-made or natural causes, methane — the main component in natural gas — is a major contributor to global warming when released in the atmosphere. According to the E.P.A., over a 100-year period, a pound of methane is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in warming the climate. It can also be dangerous: In 2010, one of Pacific Gas & Electric’s pipelines leaked in San Bruno, south of San Francisco, and the ensuing explosion killed eight people.

“Leaking methane is becoming increasingly relevant from a greenhouse gas standpoint,” said Joseph T. Hodges, a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the Commerce Department, who helped develop the laser technology used in the new portable gas detector.

The detector, built by Picarro, a manufacturer of scientific instruments that has recently moved into the field of portable methane detection, is able to determine whether the gas originated from wells or was produced by the bacteria in swamps, landfills and sewers. Distinguishing between the two can prevent industrial polluters from plausibly denying that they have leaks.

The system was demonstrated in 2011, when researchers bolted it in the trunk of a car that drove through the streets of Boston, a city with a labyrinth of aging underground gas pipelines. In a peer-reviewed scientific journal last year, the researchers said they had found 3,356 leaks of methane, and some with concentrations 15 times normal methane levels in the atmosphere.

Robert B. Jackson, a professor of global environmental change at Duke and an author of the paper, said Picarro was “pushing the envelope on portability.”

The Picarro detector works like this: An inlet tube takes in air samples, which are sent to a chamber in the trunk of the car. The chamber, about the size of a drum major’s baton with mirrors at either end, bounces a laser back and forth between the two mirrors thousands of times, like a fold-up yardstick. The laser’s path is ultimately several miles long and so is able to precisely measure concentrations of methane in the range of parts per billion.

An anemometer, an instrument for measuring wind speed and direction, is mounted on top of the car, as is a GPS device. In some models, an inlet pipe samples air from various elevations. The system uses an onboard computer to turn the readings into a three-dimensional model of a gas plume — a funnel-shaped flow of contamination — and calculates the location and size of the origin. Methane molecules incorporate a carbon atom of two different types, one more commonly found in gas from wells and the other in gas from landfills and sewers. Studying the ratio, the instrument can say where the gas came from.

Michael R. Woelk, president and chief executive of Picarro, said the advantage of the detector was that it could be used on public roads to locate leaks on private property.

Pacific Gas & Electric has bought six Picarro systems.

“I see it as a game-changer,” said Nick Stavropoulos, the utility’s executive vice president for gas operations. “It’s amazing how much more effective it is in finding gas leaks on our system than traditional technology.” Previously when gas was detected, he said, the utility had to stay on the site until it was determined by a distant laboratory whether the gas was from its pipes or a landfill. Now that determination can be made almost immediately.

Other companies use different techniques for gas detection. Physical Sciences of Andover, Mass., has an instrument like a lantern that projects a laser beam and measures what bounces back. About 2,000 are in use worldwide, according to Michael B. Frish, a manager there.

LI-COR Bio-Sciences, of Lincoln, Neb., makes an “open path” model in which air flows naturally through a chamber. The company has deployed instruments at several landfills to measure their emissions, said Dayle K. McDermitt, vice president for research and development for environmental products. Measurement technology is advancing, he said, but modeling plumes is “still a work in progress.”

The Environmental Protection Agency, which has a history of requiring new controls as technology improves, intermittently hints that it might regulate methane emissions. It already counts on the presence of large amounts of methane to help spot smaller quantities of toxic gases that are currently regulated. Remote detection is outside the norm for the agency, said Eben D. Thoma, an E.P.A. researcher. More often the agency requires measurements at known sources, like tailpipes and smokestacks. Measuring plumes is easiest in wide-open spaces, and harder in “urban canyons” and wooded areas, where the plume is distorted, he said.

Mr. Bosch, the retired E.P.A. official, who now consults for Picarro, said that the agency had had more success in reducing emissions from smokestacks and vent pipes than from “fugitive” sources like leaky pipes and valves.

But Mr. Woelk, of Picarro, said his technology could locate leaks and prioritize them, and that the majority of the gas was generally escaping from a small fraction of the sources.

“Natural gas is the new green energy, supposedly,” he said, but finding and fixing the leaks would make it greener.

New Tools for Keeping the Lights On

Now, a decade after the largest blackout in American history, engineers are installing and linking 1,000 of those instruments, called phasor measurement units, to try to prevent another catastrophic power failure. When the work is done, the engineers say, they will have a diagnostic tool that makes the old system seem like taking a patient’s pulse compared with running a continuous electrocardiogram.

Gilbert C. Bindewald III, a program manager at the Energy Department, which has spent about $200 million to encourage their installation, said the instruments were “shedding light on the science that’s occurring behind the scenes, within the grid.”

Phasor measurement units work by measuring the rhythm of current at different points on the power grid. Readings at every point within each of the three North American grids — one covering the eastern two-thirds of North America, one covering the West, and one covering Texas — are supposed to be basically the same. If the measurements differ, it can be a sign of imminent collapse. When the current is flowing properly, phasor measurement units record normal readings — about as exciting as “watching paint dry,” in the words of Peter K. Lemme, a senior electrical engineer at the New York Independent System Operator, which runs New York’s grid. As Mr. Lemme spoke, he looked at a real-time display of phasor measurement units across the state.

But then he replayed New York records from an afternoon three weeks ago when a capacitor, a device that helps maintain voltage, suddenly failed at a substation near Utica. In response, measurements taken at an electrical substation near Rochester registered an enormous shock on a graph. In Leeds, south of Albany, the disruption was considerably milder. The disturbance gradually petered out, like a playground swing that slowly comes to rest.

If that glitch had been large enough to threaten a statewide power failure, the new devices could have alerted the engineers to the impending crisis and given them time to react, for example, by shutting down a part of the system to avoid cascading power failures. Tracy A. Flippo, the vice president for transmission operations at the Tennessee Valley Authority, said the devices could provide “precursor information” before a collapse.

The hope is that they could help prevent or at least limit a large-scale blackout like the one that happened a decade ago.

In 2003, as northern Ohio ran short of generation and transmission because of a combination of neglect, mismanagement and human error, circuit breakers took major transmission lines out of service. The power failure then cascaded across 600 miles, eight states and Canada. New York, Cleveland and Detroit went dark, as did Toronto and sections of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In New York office buildings were evacuated, thousands of commuters were stranded, and hospitals were flooded with patients suffering in the stifling heat.

“Somebody in Ohio could have recognized that we either need to raise generation or shed load,” said Richard Dewey, senior vice president of the New York Independent System Operator. Or, he said, New York could have seen trouble coming and insulated itself. The two units scrutinized after the blackout, one in Detroit and one in Cleveland, showed the strain.

Other changes to the grid should help, too. The federal government, for example, has given an industry group the authority to set standards. That group, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, has levied substantial fines against companies that failed in tasks like trimming trees or testing equipment. Untrimmed trees and improper procedures for testing equipment have caused widespread power failures in recent years.

Joel deJesus, a former director of compliance enforcement at the corporation, said that in his view the large fines had been effective. “Wrists have been slapped pretty hard,” he said.

The network of phasor measurement units offers a technological advantage.

So far hundreds of phasor measurement units have been installed across the country, including 48 in New York.

Before then, the operators of the New York grid had only scattered data points within the state. For years they have been mostly blind to the grid outside New York, receiving only a few readings from devices at the borders with New England, Quebec, Ontario, and a region that includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.

But by the end of 2014, officials at the Energy Department said, they anticipate that all 1,000 phasor measurement units will be in operation and linked to one another. The next step, they said, was to figure out how to better present the flood of data to human operators in a useful way.

“The question is, How do we cue them to an event that a computer might be able to see coming?” said Mr. Bindewald of the Energy Department. Initially data will be integrated into computer displays, and later it may be used to set off automatic protective actions that would prevent or limit blackouts.

Experts argue that such a system could easily pay for itself. The 2003 blackout cost billions of dollars in lost economic output.

App Smart: Smartphone Tools Have Their Place in the Wild

Planning a camping trip can be complex because there are so many different things you may need to take with you. The Camping List Pro, $2 for iOS, can help. It’s a list-making and organizing app specially set up for camping, with categories from shelter to personal hygiene. You can add your own things to the list as well. It’s easy to use and attractively designed, and its preloaded lists may help you remember to pack some useful items you may have overlooked, like air pumps and Ziploc bags.

Camping Trip Planner, $1 for Android, is similar. Simpler than Camping List Pro and graphically more spartan, it may suit your tastes. A list-based interface is straightforward, though I wish for a button on the main display to add entries rather than having to tap through the menu first. The app doesn’t suggest items for you, but it does have a model list with over 200 useful camping items to jog your memory.

After you’ve planned your trip, the next step is finding a campsite. On iOS and Android, the popular Camp and RV app is packed with comprehensive information for campsites across the United States and Canada — nearly 25,000 of them, from private sites to military campgrounds.

The app is based on a map interface. You search for a campsite or simply navigate to the region you’re interested in exploring, and see what icons pop up on the map. Tapping one of the icons brings up a message with more information on that site.

From there, you can bring up an information page that includes data like a Web site URL, contact details and even photographs. The $10 price tag is high, but it is kept current by its developers and will work offline, which may be really useful if you’re on the road. You can also opt for just the Camp and Tent version or the RV version, depending on your needs, and they’re just $5 each.

If you’re planning some sightseeing walks on your trip, then Columbia’s GPS Pal, from the Columbia Sportswear Company, may become your best outdoor digital friend. Using the GPS technology in your phone, it automatically logs your trek, including elevation data, so you can see later where you went. You can also add notes, photos and video to specific GPS location tags to record something memorable. It’s on iOS and Android and is free, which is impressive. But there’s one important issue common to all GPS apps: using them will eat up your battery life. That’s something to remember if you’re planning to use them to find your way back to where you started.

Knots are always handy to know, whether or not you’re camping — I even put my old Scouts knot training to use the other day while putting up a hammock. Many apps can help you learn knots, but a great one on iOS is What Knot to Do, also from Columbia Sportswear. It’s free and no-nonsense, listing 70 knots sorted by category, including knots like hitches or “stoppers.” The app includes a short description of each knot category and what individual knots are useful for, and you can save your favorites for easy reference later.

It walks you step by step, with images, through tying each knot. But if you’re a complete novice, you may get a bit lost among all the options and knotty jargon, with phrases like “a loop on the bight” and “fair the knot.”

The Android app Knots Guide is a great alternative, with a simple interface that divides knots into categories like “fishing” or “decorative.” It’s not the best-looking app ever, and the knot-tying diagrams sometimes need close examination. But it is free.

Compass apps are useful for trekking, or even pitching your tent relative to prevailing wind directions. Commander Compass on iOS is a graphically attractive compass that also packs in an inclinometer, GPS tracker and speedometer. If its $4 price is too much for you, you might try Apple’s simpler built-in compass app instead. On Android, the Compass app from Catch.com is a rough equivalent to Commander Compass and it’s free.

When you are out in the countryside, remember to use these and other apps only when you need them. The view of the real world around you is probably far better than the one on your touch screen.

Quick Call

Crayon Physics Deluxe has long been a big hit on iOS, thanks to its clever physics-based game and cute graphics that make your on-screen crayon drawings come to life to solve puzzles. It has finally been released as an Android app on Google Play, costing $3.

Bits Blog: YouTube Founders Focus on New Video Tools

Jim Wilson/The New York Times Steve Chen, left, and Chad Hurley, the founders of YouTube, in 2011 after their Internet company purchased a site called Delicious.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Twitter should consider itself very flattered.

Wanpai, a new smartphone video recording app available only in Chinese, bears a strong resemblance to Vine, Twitter’s fast-growing service that lets users shoot and post six-second snippets of video.

Perhaps even more flattering is that the Vine clone was created by Avos, the start-up created by the YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen after they left YouTube. (Google bought YouTube in 2006 and is an investor in Avos.)

In a phone interview on Thursday, Mr. Hurley acknowledged that Vine was “the inspiration” for Wanpai (which he translated from the original Mandarin as “Play Shot”). He said that Avos’s development team in Beijing, which operates with some autonomy from the company’s headquarters in San Mateo, Calif., had developed Wanpai on their own initiative.

“They didn’t think Vine was serving the market,” he said. Vine “wasn’t translated and didn’t work well in China.” (Twitter is blocked by the Chinese government and Vine is tightly integrated into the social networking service.)

Mr. Hurley said Avos’s newest creation, MixBit, to be released in July or August, would be much more original.

Although he wouldn’t divulge many details about the project, which is in private beta testing, Mr. Hurley said MixBit would provide an “intuitive” interface to help people easily create content, much the way YouTube made it easy to post videos to a wide audience.

“What we ended up creating at YouTube is a solution for distribution,” Mr. Hurley said. “What hasn’t been solved yet is the act of creation.”

He said current platforms for creating and sharing images and videos, likeTwitter and Instagram (owned by Facebook), are too focused on self-promotion, which intimidates many people.

“It limits what they put online,” he said. “Unless it’s pretty, they don’t share it.” (Anyone who has spent even 10 minutes plowing through a heap of Instagram photos or Vine videos might beg to differ.)

MixBit will enter a crowded market. In addition to Vine, which has grown to 13 million users in just four months, Instagram is expected to soon introduce its own quick-video product.

Avos first surfaced publicly in 2011 when it purchased the Delicious social bookmarking service from Yahoo. It has since kept a low profile, working on several projects, including Zeen, an online magazine creation tool that was supposed to go live a year ago but is still stuck in beta.

In contrast to the situation with the Wanpai app, Mr. Hurley said, he is directly involved in MixBit’s development. “This is a tool that I’m going to use,” he said.

That contrasts with a certain video site that he used to run. “Me, personally, I don’t upload video to YouTube,” Mr. Hurley said.

Novelties: In Cancer Treatment, New DNA Tools

Most of these gene flaws — there are scores of them, and they have names like BRAF V600E — are relative newcomers to medical terminology, as are most of the anticancer drugs, still in early testing, that are aimed at them. Development of the new drugs has been spurred by the falling cost of decoding DNA and the prospects of premium prices for drugs that specifically attack the molecular drivers of cancer.

Even medical oncologists can be daunted by the complexity of these genes and the therapies intended to fight them, said Dr. William Pao, a physician and scientist at Vanderbilt University who studies cancer mutations in addition to seeing patients. “There are so many genes and so many mutations,” he said. “The human brain can’t memorize all those permutations.”

To guide doctors and their patients, many tools are on the market, including one created by Dr. Pao and colleagues: the Web site My Cancer Genome. The site, which started two years ago, is maintained by 51 contributors from 20 institutions. It lists mutations in different types of cancer, as well as drug therapies that may or may not be of benefit. Most of the drugs are in clinical trials; a few have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The typical user of this information is an oncologist, Dr. Pao said. At the Web site, the doctor can select “melanoma” and “BRAF,” for instance, or “lung cancer” and “BRAF,” and see all types of mutations in the BRAF gene that occur in those instances. The doctor can then check for national and international drug trials aimed at these alterations.

Different treatments may work in different molecular subsets of cancer, depending on the mutation. More than 700 oncology drugs are now in development, many aimed at DNA defects, Dr. Pao said, “and the number will only accelerate.”

“We are moving away from the tissue of origin to the molecular basis of the cancer, using the mutation to search for a treatment,” he said.

Users do not pay to access the Web site. “Our premise is that much of the discovery work was paid for by taxpayer dollars,” he said, “so the site is public and freely available.” The site is supported almost entirely by the university and by philanthropy.

Before doctors go to My Cancer Genome or a similar site, their patients must have a diagnostic test to find relevant mutations. At one time, such tests were limited mainly to patients at large university cancer centers, and were often hard to interpret, said Dr. Fadi Braiteh, an oncologist who practices at Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada in Las Vegas. Now tests for the mutations and the analyses of the results are available to neighborhood doctors.

In the last four months, Dr. Braiteh has begun using a test, called FoundationOne, from Foundation Medicine in Cambridge, Mass. “In some cases, the test has allowed us to treat with a drug we hadn’t thought of,” he said. The cost is generally covered by insurance, he said; the list price is $5,800. (Dr. Braiteh has no financial connection to Foundation Medicine.)

For the FoundationOne test, the company analyzes a bit of the tumor smaller than a garden pea, extracting the DNA and sequencing genes known to be altered in cancer, said Dr. Michael J. Pellini, president and C.E.O. of Foundation Medicine. Alterations are matched with approved drugs or clinical trials. The treatment options are listed in a report that accompanies the test results. The company began offering its test last year, and it is now used by more than 1,000 doctors, he said, as well as by 15 companies developing cancer drugs.

Dr. Nicholas Koutrelakos, an oncologist who practices at Maryland Oncology Hematology in Columbia, Md., has used the FoundationOne test for the last eight months. “It wasn’t helpful for everyone,” he said, but it did help with four of 10 patients, particularly one with lung cancer who had not responded to chemotherapy. “It gave me some guidance,” he said. “We were able to give a drug we’ve never used before for this mutation.” The patient began taking the drug, and it has been effective so far.

Foundation Medicine, which is privately owned, has financial backing from many sources, including Third Rock Ventures, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and private investors like Bill Gates.

Many other genetic tests are coming or are already on the market. Genomic Health, for example, has a test costing $4,290 that helps determine if a woman with breast cancer should receive chemotherapy.

The FoundationOne test concerns itself with a very small subset of the three billion base pairs of DNA in a set of human chromosomes, analyzing the tumor samples for the 236 genes “known to be unambiguously involved in cancer,” a company spokeswoman said. As additional genes are identified, these will be added to the test.

Christopher Milne, director of research at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development at Tufts University, said that there were still many unanswered questions in this field. “There is so much we don’t know about mutations yet,” Dr. Milne said.

Dr. Razelle Kurzrock, director of the center for personalized cancer therapy at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, says she thinks that comprehensive tests like FoundationOne will be invaluable in the future. “We have to know what’s inside a tumor cell that is causing it to grow,” she said, “and match that knowledge up with the specific drug that targets the abnormality.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.