Promises

Even if geological conditions for the presence of hydrocarbons are promising, host country political and fiscal conditions must also be favourable for the commercial success of exploration ventures. Distance to potential markets, existence of an infrastructure, and availability of a skilled workforce are further parameters which need to be evaluated before a long term commitment can be made. 

The closest analogy to a project investment is to consider how much you are required to pay today for the promise of 10,000 in 5 years time. Assuming the only options are the bank or the offer, then the maximum you should be prepared to pay today is 7,130. If you are requested to pay more, then you would do better by putting the 7,130 in the bank. 

A promising technique currently under development is downhole separation whereby a device similar to a hydrocyclone separates oil and water in the well bore. The water is subsequently compressed into a zone beneath the producing interval and only the oil is produced to surface. 

The approach of using so-called adaptiv filters which are already widely accepted in telecommunications and have greatly improved the quality of voice transmission seems to be promising as well. 

Experiments have shown promising results. For components in sintered state a number of components with different defects have been able to reject based on reference measurements on components without defects. For components in green state the results vary, cracks have been able to detect, but density differences not. For both measurements on components in green and sintered state scatter between measurements was observed to be substantial. 

Upon considering the observation that even with 4 segments a detectable diffracted signal was observed, most popularly employed 4 segment EMATs, with unequal spacing and 780 kHz were tried for TOFD measurements and found to be very promising. 

In this report problem of information processing in MIA pulse flaw detectors by means of cross correlation function is considered. Such processing promises to increase the sensitivity and to reduce the noises, mainly the frictional ones. 

The required resolution for the powder coating thickness measurement problem is about 5 microns. Therefore a processing time unit of 0.08 ps (12.5 MHz) seemed to be ok (compare line 2 in table 1). First results based on real measurement are documented in Fig. 7. and are very promising result. Today corresponding patent is pending [7]. 

The system is to be qualified under the new regulations for ISI in Swedish nuclear plants, SKIPS, during the spring of 98 and the pre-trials for these qualifications has produced very promising results. 

These initial considerations were promising for an eccentricity measuring system. To investigate the practical possibilities a series of problems had to be examined, such as transducers and equipment, demand to tube guidance, coupling and measurement velocity. 

Measurement at 500 m/min was considered so promising that it was decided to manufacture and test a prototype for the four channel scanning system. In such a system multiplexing of signals from the four transducers to one ultrasonic instrument was a possibility. Alternatively four independent instruments (one for each transducer) could be used in the scanning system. 

We elose with tliree eonnnents. First, there is preliminary work on retrieving not only the amplitude but also the phase of photon eehoes [49]. This appears to be a promising avenue to aequire eomplete 2-dimensional time and freqiieney infonnation on the dynamies, analogous to methods tliat have been used in NMR. Seeond, we note that there is a growing literature on non-pertnrbative, niimerieal simulation of nonlinear speetroseopies. In these methods, the eonsisteney of the order of interaetion with the field and the appropriate relaxation proeess is aehieved automatieally. 

Flowever, in order to deliver on its promise and maximize its impact on the broader field of chemistry, the methodology of reaction dynamics must be extended toward more complex reactions involving polyatomic molecules and radicals for which even the primary products may not be known. There certainly have been examples of this notably the crossed molecular beams work by Lee [59] on the reactions of O atoms with a series of hydrocarbons. In such cases the spectroscopy of the products is often too complicated to investigate using laser-based techniques, but the recent marriage of intense syncluotron radiation light sources with state-of-the-art scattering instruments holds considerable promise for the elucidation of the bimolecular and photodissociation dynamics of these more complex species. 

A second recent development has been the application 46 of the initial value representation 47 to semiclassically calculate A3.8.13 (and/or the equivalent time integral of the flux-flux correlation fiinction). While this approach has to date only been applied to problems with simplified hannonic baths, it shows considerable promise for applications to realistic systems, particularly those in which the real solvent bath may be adequately treated by a fiirther classical or quasiclassical approximation. 

Surface science studies of corrosion phenomena are excellent examples of in situ characterization of surface reactions. In particular, the investigation of corrosion reactions with STM is promising because not only can it be used to study solid-gas interfaces, but also solid-liquid interfaces. 

Growth reactions at surfaces will certainly continue to be tlie focus of much research. In particular, the synthesis of novel materials is an exciting field that holds much promise for the nanoscale engineering of materials. Undoubtedly, the advent of STM as a means of investigating growth reactions on the atomic scale will influence the llitiire of nanoscale teclmology. 

Clearly the broad survey of current activity in Raman spectroscopy revealed by this simple snapshot promises an exciting flitiire tiiat is likely to find surprising new applications, even as present methods and applications become refined. 

It is interesting to note the analogy of developments in light microscopy during the last few decades. The confocal microscope as a scaiming beam microscope exceeds by far the nomial fluorescence light microscope in resolution and detection level. Very recent advances in evanescent wave and interference microscopy seem to promise to provide even higher resolution (B1.18). 

The technological importance of thin films in snch areas as semicondnctor devices and sensors has led to a demand for mechanical property infonnation for these systems. Measuring the elastic modnlns for thin films is mnch harder than the corresponding measurement for bnlk samples, since the results obtained by traditional indentation methods are strongly perturbed by the properties of the substrate material. Additionally, the behaviour of the film under conditions of low load, which is necessary for the measnrement of thin-film properties, is strongly inflnenced by surface forces [75]. Since the force microscope is both sensitive to surface forces and has extremely high depth resolntion, it shows considerable promise as a teclnhqne for the mechanical characterization of thin films. 

A promising approaeh, still in the early stages of development, mvolves the fimetionalization of the AFM tip. 

A considerable number of experimental extensions have been developed in recent years. Luckliam et al [5] and Dan [ ] review examples of dynamic measurements in the SFA. Studying the visco-elastic response of surfactant films [ ] or adsorbed polymers [7, 9] promises to yield new insights into molecular mechanisms of frictional energy loss in boundary-lubricated systems [28, 70]. 

Another promising extension uses x-rays to probe the structure of confined molecules [72]. 

The adliesion and fiision mechanisms between bilayers have also been studied with the SEA [M, 100]. Kuhl et al [17] found that solutions of short-chained polymers (PEG) could produce a short-range depletion attraction between lipid bilayers, which clearly depends on the polymer concentration (fignre Bl.20.1 It. This depletion attraction was found to mduce a membrane fusion widiin 10 minutes that was observed, in real-time, using PECO fringes. There has been considerable progress in the preparation of fluid membranes to mimic natural conditions in the SEA [ ], which promises even more exciting discoveries in biologically relevant areas. 

This tool, which they call pseudospectralmethods, promises to reduce the CPU, memory and disk storage requirements for many electronic structure calculations, thus pemiitting their application to much larger molecular systems. In addition to ongoing developments in the underlying theory and computer... 

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