Mineral Exploration Funds

While independent mineral operators have traditionally been confronted with a scarcity of risk capital for mineral development, willing investors have often experienced equal difficulty in locating responsible mineral operations in which to invest. The exploration fund, a means of channeling risk capital furnished by high-bracket taxpayers into mineral exploration, is one answer to this dilemma. In this article the author deals extensively with the mineral, tax, business association, and securities law problems involved in the organization and operation of such a fund

The Revised Model State Administrative Procedure Act—Reform or Retrogression?

In this contribution, we deal with the deterministic dominance of the probability moments of stochastic processes. More precisely, given a positive stochastic process, we propose to dominate its probability moment sequence by the trajectory of appropriate lower and upper dominating deterministic processes. The analysis of the behavior of the original stochastic process is then transferred to the stability analysis of the deterministic dominating processes. The result is applied to a nonstationary auto-regressive process that appears in the system identification literature.

Volume-Enclosing Surface Extraction

In this paper we present a new method, which allows for the construction of triangular isosurfaces from three-dimensional data sets, such as 3D image data and/or numerical simulation data that are based on regularly shaped, cubic lattices. This novel volume-enclosing surface extraction technique, which has been named VESTA, can produce up to six different results due to the nature of the discretized 3D space under consideration. VESTA is neither template-based nor it is necessarily required to operate on 2x2x2 voxel cell neighborhoods only. The surface tiles are determined with a very fast and robust construction technique while potential ambiguities are detected and resolved. Here, we provide an in-depth comparison between VESTA and various versions of the well-known and very popular Marching Cubes algorithm for the very first time. In an application section, we demonstrate the extraction of VESTA isosurfaces for various data sets ranging from computer tomographic scan data to simulation data of relativistic hydrodynamic fireball expansions.Comment: 24 pages, 33 figures, 4 tables, final versio

Ellipse-based Principal Component Analysis for Self-intersecting Curve Reconstruction from Noisy Point Sets

Surface reconstruction from cross cuts usually requires curve reconstruction from planar noisy point samples -- The output curves must form a possibly disconnected 1manifold for the surface reconstruction to proceed -- This article describes an implemented algorithm for the reconstruction of planar curves (1manifolds) out of noisy point samples of a sel-fintersecting or nearly sel-fintersecting planar curve C -- C:[a,b]⊂R→R is self-intersecting if C(u)=C(v), u≠v, u,v∈(a,b) (C(u) is the self-intersection point) -- We consider only transversal self-intersections, i.e. those for which the tangents of the intersecting branches at the intersection point do not coincide (C′(u)≠C′(v)) -- In the presence of noise, curves which self-intersect cannot be distinguished from curves which nearly sel fintersect -- Existing algorithms for curve reconstruction out of either noisy point samples or pixel data, do not produce a (possibly disconnected) Piecewise Linear 1manifold approaching the whole point sample -- The algorithm implemented in this work uses Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with elliptic support regions near the selfintersections -- The algorithm was successful in recovering contours out of noisy slice samples of a surface, for the Hand, Pelvis and Skull data sets -- As a test for the correctness of the obtained curves in the slice levels, they were input into an algorithm of surface reconstruction, leading to a reconstructed surface which reproduces the topological and geometrical properties of the original object -- The algorithm robustly reacts not only to statistical noncorrelation at the self-intersections(nonmanifold neighborhoods) but also to occasional high noise at the nonselfintersecting (1manifold) neighborhood

Approximation of sweep surfaces by tensor product B-splines

Journal ArticleTensor product B-spline approximations to surfaces generated by sweeping a (possibly deforming) B-spline cross-section curve along a Bspline axis curve are discussed. A general form for the tensor product B-spline approximation for sweeps is derived and expressed in terms of the approximation of a set of offset curves of the axis curve. The actual algorithm used to generate the approximation depends on the nature of the desired deformation and change in orientation that the crosssection undergoes as it is swept along the axis. Several algorithms for generating tensor product B-spline approximations to sweep surfaces are presented

Acute Tax Neuroses

The major cause of acute taxitis is the mental and physical turmoil arising from accusations by the Revenue Service that false and fraudulent returns have been filed with intent to evade taxes. The three most common means by which tax evasion is discovered are: (1) routine audit-spot checks and surveys; (2) tips from informers in hopes of receiving sizeable rewards,or by jealous neighbors or disgruntled employees; (3) newspaper publicity about marriages, trips, home purchases, robberies, real estate and business transactions

Progressive refinement rendering of implicit surfaces

The visualisation of implicit surfaces can be an inefficient task when such surfaces are complex and highly detailed. Visualising a surface by first converting it to a polygon mesh may lead to an excessive polygon count. Visualising a surface by direct ray casting is often a slow procedure. In this paper we present a progressive refinement renderer for implicit surfaces that are Lipschitz continuous. The renderer first displays a low resolution estimate of what the final image is going to be and, as the computation progresses, increases the quality of this estimate at an interactive frame rate. This renderer provides a quick previewing facility that significantly reduces the design cycle of a new and complex implicit surface. The renderer is also capable of completing an image faster than a conventional implicit surface rendering algorithm based on ray casting