GPS telemetry of energetic-technical and technological parameters at open pit mines

Application of GPS in mining and geology has proved to be of ever increasing importance since recently. GPS is used for positioning both researching and exploitation drill holes, mining facilities, equipment, machines, when monitoring slopes and falls, mining facilities dimensioning, navigation of machines, roads tracing, etc. The paper presents a pilot system for surveillance and monitoring of energetic and technological parameters at open pit mines, developed at the “Jazovnik” open pit mine for experimental purposes. __________ Translated from Fiziko-Tekhnicheskie Problemy Razrabotki Poleznykh Iskopaemykh, No. 4, pp. 90–94, July–August, 2008.     

Longitudinal air permeability of pinewood with beetle transmitted blue-stain

The mountain pine beetle epidemic is destroying an extensive volume of the lodgepole pine forests being one of the most commercially harvested trees in British Columbia. The purpose of this study was to test the permeability of wood of four different classes regarding the time of the beetle attack. The experiments used the ‘‘falling water’’ unsteady-steady method of measuring superficial air permeability. The results showed that the specific permeability is not significantly different between the infested classes tested. The same conclusion could be reached for comparisons of uninfected and infested wood.     

The p-hub Model with Hub-catchment Areas,Existing Hubs,and Simulation: A Case Study of Serbian Intermodal Terminals

This paper addresses the problem of optimally locating intermodal freight terminals in Serbia. To solve this problem and determine the effects of the resulting scenarios, two modeling approaches were combined. The first approach is based on multiple-assignment hub-network design, and the second is based on simulation. The multiple-assignment p-hub network location model was used to determine the optimal location of intermodal terminals. Simulation was used as a tool to estimate intermodal transport flow volumes, due to the unreliability and unavailability of specific statistical data, and as a method for quantitatively analyzing the economic, time, and environmental effects of different scenarios of intermodal terminal development. The results presented here represent a summary, with some extension, of the research realized in the IMOD-X project (Intermodal Solutions for Competitive Transport in Serbia).     

Optimal dynamic management of exploitation life of the mining machinery: models with limited interval

A theoretical concept and an illustrated practical example of the limited interval dynamic model, aimed for application in optimizing the exploitation life of the mining machinery with shorter life cycle such as bulldozers, scrapers, haul trucks, excavators with one working element and smaller capacity, etc., is presented in this paper.     

Parking assistance using dense motion-stereo

The ability of generating and interpreting a three-dimensional representation of the environment in real-time is one of the key technologies for autonomous vehicles. While active sensors like ultrasounds have been commercially used, their cost and precision is not favorable. On the other hand, integrating passive sensors, like video cameras, in modern vehicles is quite appealing especially because of their low cost. However, image processing requires reliable real-time algorithms to retrieve depth from visual information. In addition, the limited processing power in automobiles and other mobile platforms makes this problem even more challenging. In this paper we introduce a parking assistance system which relies on dense motion-stereo to compute depth maps of the observed environment in real-time. The flexibility and robustness of our method is showcased with different applications: automatic parking slot detection, a collision warning for the pivoting ranges of the doors and an image-based rendering technique to visualize the environment around the host vehicle. We evaluate the accuracy and reliability of our system and provide quantitative and qualitative results. A comparison to ultrasound and feature-based motion-stereo solutions shows that our approach is more reliable.     

Spectral determination of graphs whose components are paths and cycles

We consider the class of graphs each of whose components is either a path or a cycle. We classify the graphs from the class considered into those which are determined and those which are not determined by the adjacency spectrum. In addition, we compare the result with the corresponding results for the Laplacian and the signless Laplacian spectra. It turns out that the signless Laplacian spectrum performs the best, confirming some expectations from the literature.