Evaluation of government equity participation in the minerals sector: a case study of Tanzania from 1996-2015

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering, Johannesburg, 2018Government’s equity role in the minerals sector is one of the nationalist measures to have a greater control and management of mineral resources in a country. This study looks into evaluation of government equity participation in the minerals sector in which Tanzania is a case study from 1996 to 2015. Amongst the objectives of the study was the determination of the number of mineral rights, minimum allowable exploration expenditures in Prospecting Licences (PLs) and forms of equity role of Tanzanian government in the minerals sector with their projects. Methodology of research included going through the background of the study, literature review, collection of data and analysis of PLs, Mining Licences (MLs) and Special Mining Licences (SMLs) to mention a few. Some of results of the research have indicated that, there were106 mineral rights (97 PLs, 3 MLs and 6 SMLs). State Mining Corporation (STAMICO) and National Development Corporation (NDC) as parastatals and Treasury Registrar (TR), a government agent owned these mineral rights on the behalf of the Tanzanian government (TZGT). It was also found that there are three forms of equity role namely: carried equity, paid equity and free carry equity that were applicable in prospecting, medium and large scale mining in the country. Carried equity role was applied in 56 PLs, 3 medium scale mines and 4 large scale mines. The three medium scale mines in which carried equity role was applied were Merelani TanzaniteOne Mining Ltd (MTM), Kigosi Gold Mine (KGM) and Ngaka Coal Mine (NCM). On the other hand, carried equity role was also exercised in the four large scale mines namely: Buckreef Gold Mine (BKGM), Liganga Iron ore Mine (LIOM), Mchuchuma Coal Mine (MCM) and Williamson Diamonds Mine (WDM). Paid equity role was applied in 41 PLs and 2 large scale mines namely: Kiwira Coal Mine (KCM and Stamigold Biharamulo Mine (SBM). Although the Mining Act, 2010 defines the free carry equity in terms of the free carried interest (FCI), this equity role approach is not yet in practice in Tanzania. In 2014, TZGT planned to execute free carry equity in Nachu Graphite Project (NGRP) and Mkuju River Uranium Project (MRUP). Negotiations for having free carried interest (FCI) for each project were conducted between the TZGT and project’s owners from 2014 to 2015. In 2015, negotiations between parties were concluded iii unsuccessful, as parties could not reach consensus on FCIs. This consequently impeded signing of minerals development agreements (MDAs), which also limited execution of the free carry equity role by the government. Research revealed also that there were a number of challenges or shortfalls faced by the TZGT equity role strategy in the mineral sector. One of the major challenge was the secrecy in agreements and contracts entered between the TZGT and the private sector investors through various business ownerships and mineral developments pertaining the minerals sector. This in turn resulted to non-transparency and unaccountability in the prospecting and mining, which risked TZGT entering unfair and/or objectionable agreements or contracts. Some of the conclusions were counter productivity of TZGT equity role and inadequacy of financial benefits realised from the strategy. These conclusions demonstrated ineffective performance of equity role of the Tanzanian government in prospecting, medium and large scale mining. Recommendations given in this research study report, is that, the government should review the Mining Act and Regulations of 2010. This is to allow the government incorporation of Parliament in the handling of agreements or contracts in the minerals sector. Moreover, proposition of fixed rates of FCI is among areas of future research work.XL201

Optimal Sufficient Requirements on the Embedded Ising Problem in Polynomial Time

One of the central applications for quantum annealers is to find the solutions of Ising problems. Suitable Ising problems, however, need to be formulated such that they, on the one hand, respect the specific restrictions of the hardware and, on the other hand, represent the original problems which shall actually be solved. We evaluate sufficient requirements on such an embedded Ising problem analytically and transform them into a linear optimization problem. With an objective function aiming to minimize the maximal absolute problem parameter, the precision issues of the annealers are addressed. Due to the redundancy of several constraints, we can show that the formally exponentially large optimization problem can be reduced and finally solved in polynomial time for the standard embedding setting where the embedded vertices induce trees. This allows to formulate provably equivalent embedded Ising problems in a practical setup.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figure

Estudo de pacientes com história de reações sistêmicas a himenópteDa Rosem Florianópolis.

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências da Saúde, Departamento de Clínica Médica, Curso de Medicina, Florianópolis, 199

Embedding of Complete Graphs in Broken Chimera Graphs

In order to solve real world combinatorial optimization problems with a D-Wave quantum annealer it is necessary to embed the problem at hand into the D-Wave hardware graph, namely Chimera or Pegasus. Most hard real world problems exhibit a strong connectivity. For the worst case scenario of a complete graph, there exists an efficient solution for the embedding into the ideal Chimera graph. However, since real machines almost always have broken qubits it is necessary to find an embedding into the broken hardware graph. We present a new approach to the problem of embedding complete graphs into broken Chimera graphs. This problem can be formulated as an optimization problem, more precisely as a matching problem with additional linear constraints. Although being NP-hard in general it is fixed parameter tractable in the number of inaccessible vertices in the Chimera graph. We tested our exact approach on various instances of broken hardware graphs, both related to real hardware as well as randomly generated. For fixed runtime, we were able to embed larger complete graphs compared to previous, heuristic approaches. As an extension, we developed a fast heuristic algorithm which enables us to solve even larger instances. We compared the performance of our heuristic and exact approaches.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, 2 table

Experimental Investigation of Permeability Alteration Due to Drying of Porous Media

The permeability of reservoir rocks can be significantly altered by the precipitation of brines caused by drying. In this study, alteration of permeability in porous media induced by drying of brines was investigated experimentally. Four different rock types were used; rock samples were initially analysed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and conventional core analysis (CCAL), including gas permeability and Helium porosity. The reservoir rock samples (2 each of carbonate and sandstone) were tested to determine the impact of rock type and initial permeability on possible injectivity impairment. Each of the rock samples was completely saturated in brine of NaCl, KCl and Caspian seawater (SW), with salt concentrations ranging between 10 and 200 g/L. The samples were then fully dried in an oven at a controlled, constant temperature of 70oC. The final gas permeability of each sample was measured after drying and compared with its initial value to determine the fractional permeability alteration. At the microscopic, pore-scale level, the extent of hindrance to flow from salt precipitation caused by drying of brines was investigated via scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results indicate that the evaporation of aqueous brine occurs near the surface, and is controlled by convection current, evidenced by a Peclet number >>1

Databasing Molecular Neuroimaging

Molecular neuroimaging Most molecular imaging studies relies on analysis of values from brain regions and report descriptive statistics for these values. There are two significant difficulties when comparing molecular neuroimaging studies: 1. Regions differ between studies: E.g., some include values for “temporal cortex ” others do not. 2. Measured and reported values differ between studies and they are not comparable: Tracers and receptors; transport rates (e.g., K1), distribution volume, binding potentials; different methods to compute the values

A Systematic Comparison of In-Person and Video-Based Online Interviewing

Due to the increasing popularity of online qualitative interviewing methods, we provide a systematically organized evaluation of their advantages and disadvantages in comparison to traditional in-person interviews. In particular, we describe how individual interviews, dyadic interviews, and focus groups operate in both face-to-face and videoconferencing modes. This produces five different areas for comparison: logistics and budget, ethics, recruitment, research design, and interviewing and moderating. We conclude each section with set of recommendations, and conclude with directions for future research in online interviewing

El mono filósofo. Presentación de El mono de Heidelberg, cuento de Michael von Albrecht

Michael von Albrecht, great Emeritus Professor of Latin Philology and author, among other pioneering works, of the monumental History of Roman Literature, published in 1989 a short story in Latin under the title De simia Heidelbergensi (Heidelberg's Monkey). The objective of this presentation is to provide the reader with a brief overview of this precious jewel of Neo-Latin literature and reveal, at the same time, current events that run through it, capable of transcending short story fiction.Michael von Albrecht, el gran catedrático emérito de Filología Latina y autor, entre otras obras pioneras, de la monumental Historia de la literatura romana, publicó en 1989 un cuento en latín con el título de De simia Heidelbergensi (El mono de Heidelberg). El objetivo de esta presentación es proporcionar al lector un breve panorama sobre esta preciada joya de la literatura neolatina y presentarle, al mismo tiempo, la actualidad que lo recorre, capaz de trascender la ficción cuentística

Solving Combinatorial Optimization Problems using a Quantum Annealer

In this talk we will start with a brief introduction of the rough concept of quantum annealing and how it can be used for combinatorial optimization. In the following we mainly focus on the steps that are necessary to transform an arbitrary discrete optimization problem to the specific class of problems D-Wave's quantum annealer is able to process, which are, in general, quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems (QUBO) respectively so-called Ising models. We will summarize some established transformation steps, such as encoding and reduction. However, due to several physical limitations the class of problems that can be solved on the machine is further restricted. E.g. by graph minor embedding we need to overcome the non-complete hardware connectivity. Afterwards the weight of an original node needs to be distributed over several hardware nodes in a certain way to enforce the equivalence of the solutions. We will show the accompanying difficulties and some first approaches to tackle them