SMALL STATES AND CYBERBOOSTERISM

ABSTRACT. The introduction and rapid diffusion of the World Wide Web for commercial purposes provides states with opportunities to present themselves to millions of other governmental, business, and individual consumers. In the world of expanding electronic commerce, images and symbols are key elements in the messages that states use to promote themselves and to seek a competitive advantage. Content analyses of the official Web homepages of four small states—Singapore, Slovenia, Western Samoa, and Costa Rica—attest to the colorful, playful, and creative images designed to attract investors and tourists.     

Application of GIS Processing Techniques for Producing Mineral Prospectivity Maps—A Case Study: Mesothermal Au in the Swayze Greenstone Belt,Ontario, Canada

A Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to prepare and process digital geoscience data in a variety of ways for producing gold prospectivity maps of the Swayze greenstone belt, Ontario, Canada. Data used to produce these maps include geologic, geochemical, geophysical, and remotely sensed (Landsat). A number of modeling methods are used and are grouped into data-driven (weights of evidence, logistic regression) and knowledge-driven (index and Boolean overlay) methods. The weights of evidence (WofE) technique compares the spatial association of known gold prospects with various indicators (evidence maps) of gold mineralization, to derive a set of weights used to produce the final gold prospectivity map. Logistic regression derives statistical information from evidence maps over each known gold prospect and the coefficients derived from regression analysis are used to weight each evidence map. The gold prospectivity map produced from the index overlay process uses a weighting scheme that is derived from input by the geologist, whereas the Boolean method uses equally weighted binary evidence maps.The resultant gold prospectivity maps are somewhat different in this study as the data comprising the evidence maps were processed purposely differently for each modeling method. Several areas of high gold potential, some of which are coincident with known gold prospects, are evident on the gold prospectivity maps produced using all modeling methods. The majority of these occur in mafic rocks within high strain zones, which is typical of many Archean greenstone belts.     

A New Approach for Border Detection of the Dumluca (Turkey) Iron Ore Area: Wavelet Cellular Neural Networks

Anomaly analysis is used for various geophysics applications such as determination of geophysical structure's location and border detections. Besides the classical geophysical techniques, artificial intelligence based image processing algorithms have been found attractive for geophysical anomaly analysis. Recently, cellular neural networks (CNN) have been applied to geophysical data and satisfactory results are reported. CNN provides fast and parallel computational capability for geophysical image processing applications due to its filtering structure. The behavior of CNN is defined by two template matrices that are adjusted by a properly supervised learning algorithm. After training stage for geophysical data, Bouguer anomaly maps can be processed and analyzed sequentially. In this paper, CNN learning and processing capability have been improved, combining Wavelet functions and backpropagation learning algorithms. The new architecture is denoted as Wavelet-Cellular Neural networks (Wave-CNN) and it is employed to analyze Bouguer anomaly maps which are important to extract useful information in geophysics. At first, Wave-CNN performance is tested on synthetic geophysical data, which are created by a computer environment. Then, Bouguer anomaly maps of the Dumluca iron ore field have been analyzed and results are reported in comparison to real drilling results.     

A GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF IMAGE INTERPRETATION METHODS

Image interpretation methods, procedures for relating image pattern to ground conditions, are essential to our use of remote sensing imagery. These methods can be analyzed in respect to the role of ancillary information in the image interpretation process. In general, those procedures that are comparatively independent of ancillary information can be applied in varied geographic settings. Because almost all interpretation procedures depend to some extent upon ancillary information, a detailed and integrated knowledge of the cultural and physical landscape is a prerequisite for both manual and automated interpretation procedures.     

Changes and continuity of wood-pastures in the lowland landscape in Czechia

The term wood-pastures is usually applied to areas with trees or other woody vegetation, scattered through a mainly grazed grassland area, and reflects one of the oldest land use types in Europe, which plays important ecological, agricultural and socio-cultural roles. However, a rapid decline in their area due to changes in land use and a lack of tree regeneration has recently been observed all over Europe, which has led to the necessity of a deeper understanding of their behaviour in relation to different factors via a detailed analysis of the history of the changes in their distribution over space and time. Despite the recent increase in the number of related studies, information on historic patterns of wood-pastures in many European locations, such as Czechia, remains incomplete. The goal of this study is to assess the habitat continuity of current wood-pastures and to analyse the land-use/land-cover changes of historical and current wood-pastures in lowlands and warm landscapes of hills and basins of Czechia. To achieve this, nine sites covering a total area of 98.6 km² were studied in Czechia. The situation on three time horizons (1820–1840s, the early 1950s and today) was analysed. The results have shown that almost all wood-pastures from the 1st half of the 19th century have now been lost and most of the currently existing ones were formed from the 1950s till today. Most wood-pastures, which were lost by the 1950s, were turned into open habitats, such as arable lands, and the ones lost from 1950 were turned into forest. New wood-pastures are mostly formed from open habitats, often in former military areas.     

Visualization issues in the development of electronic atlas in China

In this paper, we discuss the development of electronic atlas in China, with focus on the issues of visualization. We particularly categorise this development into four periods, and then analyse the characters in each period and discuss the visualization issues. The four periods are highlighted: 1) Infant period (<1990) characterized as computer assisted mapping with products of screen maps; 2) Starting period (1991-1995) characterized as object-oriented mapping with products of interactive maps/atlases; 3) Advancing period (1996-2000) characterized as integrated mapping with products of multimedia cartographic maps; 4) New era (> 2001) characterized as web mapping and adaptive map design with products of Internet maps and atlas as well as adaptive maps. It is obvious that the development follows the logical way from static to dynamic, and even real time visualization, from single user to multiple users, from presentation to exploration for effective communication and knowledge construction. Current research and development projects are focused on customisation of atlas information systems for real-time tasks, Internet operability, small displays and mobile environments. The major challenges involved in each of such customisation processes are identified and commented in relation to the further development of visualization.     

An Integrated Mapping Approach to Petroleum Exploration on the Pratt Anticline,Pratt County,Kansas

A quantitative map comparison/integration technique to aid in petroleum exploration was applied to an area in south-central Kansas. The visual comparison and integration of maps has become increasingly difficult with the large number and different types of maps necessary to interpret the geology and assess the petroleum potential of an area; therefore, it is desirable to quantify these relationships. The algebraic algorithm used in this application is based on a point-by-point comparison of any number and type of spatial data represented in map form. Ten geological and geophysical maps were compared and integrated, utilizing data from 900 wells located in a nine-township area on the Pratt Anticline in Pratt County, Kansas. Five structure maps, including top of the Lansing Group (Pennsylvanian), Mississippian chert, Mississippian limestone, Viola Limestone (Ordovician), and Arbuckle Group (Cambro-Ordovician), two isopachous maps from top of Mississippian chert to Viola and Lansing to Arbuckle, a Mississippian chert porosity map, Bouguer gravity map, and an aeromagnetic map were processed and interpreted. Before processing, each map was standardized and assigned a relative degree of importance, depending on knowledge of the geology of the area. Once a combination of weights was obtained that most closely resembled the pattern of proved oil fields (target map), a favorability map was constructed based on a coincidence of similarity values and of geological properties of petroleum reservoirs. The resulting favorability maps for the study area indicate location of likely Mississippian chert and lower Paleozoic production.     

Frequency analysis of a dynamical system

Frequency analysis is a new method for analyzing the stability of orbits in a conservative dynamical system. It was first devised in order to study the stability of the solar system (Laskar, Icarus, 88, 1990). It is a powerful method for analyzing weakly chaotic motion in hamiltonian systems or symplectic maps. For regular motions, it yields an analytical representation of the solutions. In cases of 2 degrees of freedom system with monotonous torsion, precise numerical criterions for the destruction of KAM tori can be found. For a 4D symplectic map, plotting the frequency map in the frequency plane provides a clear representation of the global dynamics and describes the actual Arnold web of the system.     

SOFTWARE REVIEWS

software reviews are in this article BMDP/PC CONCEPTS COMPUTERIZED ATLAS EVALUATION OF ALTERNATE PROPOSALS (EAP) EXTRA: EXPRESS TRANSIT ANALYSIS MATC CAD MOTORS TRANSPORTATION PACKAGE PCMAP: Thematic Mapping Software for the IBM Personal Computer, Version 2.3 PLACE TRANPLAN . US-ATLAS