冀东油田柳南地区新近系油藏剩余油形成及分布规律研究

This thesis is based on the research project of Study on the Geological Characteristics and Remaining Oil Distribution Law of Neogene Reservoirs in Liunan Area, which is one of the key research projects set by PetroChina Jidong Oilfield Company in 2006. The determination of remaining oil distribution and its saturation changes are the most important research contents for the development and production modification of oilfields in high water-cut phases. Liunan oilfield, located in Tangshan of Hebei Province geographically and in Gaoliu structural belt of Nanpu sag in Bohai Bay Basin structurally, is one of the earliest fields put into production of Jidong oilfield. Focusing on the development problems encountered during the production of the field, this thesis establishes the fine geological reservoir model through the study of reservoir properties such as fine beds correlation, sedimentary facies, micro structures, micro reservoir architecture, flow units and fluid properties. Using routine method of reservoir engineering and technology of reservoir numerical modeling, remaining oil distribution in the target beds of Liunan area is predicted successfully, while the controling factors of remaining oil distribution are illustrated, and the model of remaining oil distribution for fault-block structure reservoirs is established. Using staged-subdivision reservoir correlation and FZI study, the Strata in Liunan Area is subdivided step by step; oil sand body data-list is recompiled; diagram databases are established; plane and section configuration of monolayer sandstone body, and combination pattern of sandstone bodys are summarized. The study of multi-level staged subdivision for sedimentary micro-facies shows that the Lower member of Minghuazhen formation and the whole Guantao formation in Liunan Area belong to meandering river and braided river sedimentary facies respectively, including 8 micro facies such as after point bar, channel bar, channel, natural levee, crevasse splay, abandoned channel, flood plain and flood basin. Fine 3D geological modeling is performed through the application of advanced software and integration of geological, seismic logging and reservoir engineering data. High resolution numerical simulation is performed with a reserve fitting error less than 3%, an average pressure fitting fluctuation range lower than 2Mpa and an accumulate water cut fitting error less than 5%. In this way, the distribution law of the target reservoir in the study area is basically recognized. Eight major remaining oil distribution models are established after analysis of production status and production features in different blocks and different layers. In addition, fuzzy mathematics method is used to the integreted evaluation and prediction of abundant remaining oil accumulation area in major production beds and key sedimentary time units of the shallow strata in Liunan Area and corresponding modification comments are put forward. In summary, the establishment of fine reservoir geological model, reservoir numerical simulation and distribution prediction of remaining oil make a sound foundation for further stimulation of oilfield development performance.

生物－热催化过渡带沉积成岩演化及其成烃作用研究

The biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas is a new type of natural gas genetic theory, and also an clean, effective and high quality energy with shallow burial depth, wide distribution and few investment. Meanwhile, this puts biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas in important position to the energy resource and it is a challenging front study project. This paper introduces the concept, the present situation of study and developmental trend about biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas in detail. Then by using heat simulating of source rocks and catalysis mechanism analysis in the laboratory and studying structural evolution, sedimentation, diagenesis and the conditions of accumulation formation and so on, this paper also discusses catalytic mechanism and evolutionary model of the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas formation, and establishes the methods of appraisal parameter and resources prediction about the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas. At last, it shows that geochemical characteristics and differentiated mark of the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas, and perfect natural gas genetic theory, and points out the conditions of accumulation formation, distribution characteristics and potential distribution region on the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas m China. The paper mainly focuses on the formation mechanism and the resources potential about the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas. Based on filed work, it is attached importance to a combination of macroscopic and microcosmic analysis, and the firsthand data are obtained to build up framework and model of the study by applying geologic theory. Based on sedimentary structure, it is expounded that structural actions have an effect on filling space and developmental cource of sediments and evolution of source rocks. Carried out sedimentary environment, sequence stratigraphy, sedimentary system and diagenesis and so on, it is concluded that diagenesis influences developmental evolution of source rocks, and basic geologic conditions of the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas. Applying experiment simulating and catalytic simulating as well as chemical analysis, catalytic mechanism of clay minerals is discussed. Combined diagenecic dynamics with isotope fractionation dynamics, it is established that basis and method of resource appraisal about the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas. All these results effectively assess and predict oil&gas resources about the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas-bearing typical basin in China. I read more than 170 volumes on the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas and complete the dissertation' summary with some 2.4 ten thousand words, draw up study contents in some detail and set up feasible experimental method and technologic course. 160 pieces of samples are obtained in oilfield such as Liaohe, Shengli, Dagang and Subei and so on, some 86 natural gas samples and more than 30 crude oil samples. Core profiles about 12 wells were observed and some 300 geologic photos were taken. Six papers were published in the center academic journal at home and abroad. Collected samples were analysised more than 1000 times, at last I complete this dissertation with more than 8 ten thousand words, and with 40 figures and 4 plates. According to these studies, it is concluded the following results and understandings. 1. The study indicates structural evolution and action of sedimentary basin influence and control the formation and accumulation the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas. Then, the structural action can not only control accommodation space of sediments and the origin, migration and accumulation of hydrocarbon matters, but also can supply the origin of energy for hygrocarbon matters foramtion. 2. Sedimentary environments of the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas are lake, river and swamp delta- alluvial fan sedimentary systems, having a warm, hot and humid climate. Fluctuation of lake level is from low to high., frequency, and piling rate of sedimentary center is high, which reflect a stable depression and rapidly filling sedimentary course, then resulting in source rocks with organic matter. 3. The paper perfects the natural gas genetic theory which is compound and continuous. It expounds the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas is a special gas formation stage in continuous evolutionary sequence of organic matter, whose exogenic force is temperture and catalysis of clay minerals, at the same time, having decarbxylation, deamination and so on. 4. The methodology is established which is a combination of SEM, TEM and Engery spectrum analysis to identify microstructure of crystal morphology about clay minerals. Using differential thermal-chromatographic analysis, it can understand that hydrocarbon formation potential of different typies kerogens and catalytic method of all kinds of mineral matrix, and improve the surface acidity technology of clay minerals measured by the pyridine analytic method. 5. The experiments confirm catalysis of clay minerals to organic matter hygrocarbon formation. At low temperature (<300 ℃), there is mainly catalysis of montmorillonite, which can improve 2-3 times about produced gas of organic matters and the pyrolyzed temperature decreased 50 ℃; while at the high temperature, there is mainly catalysis of illite which can improve more than 2 times about produced gas of organic matters. 6. It is established the function relationship between organic matter (reactant) concentration and temperature, pressure, time, water and so on, that is C=f (D, t). Using Rali isotope fractionation effect to get methane isotope fractionation formula. According to the relationship between isotope fractionation of diagenesis and depth, and combined with sedimentary rate of the region, it is estimated that relict gas of the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas in the representative basin. 7. It is revealed that hydrocarbon formation mechanism of the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas is mainly from montmorillonite to mixed minerals during diagenesis. In interlayer, a lot of Al~(3+) substitute for Si~(4+), resulting in a imbalance between surface charge and interlayer charge of clay minerals and the occurrence of the Lewis and Bronsted acid sites, which promote to form the carbon cation. The cation can form alkene or small carbon cation. 8. It is addressed the comprehensive identification mark of the biothermo - catalytic transitional zone gas. In the temproal-spatial' distribution, its source rocks is mainly Palaeogene, secondly Cretaceous and Jurassic of Mesozoic, Triassic, having mudy rocks and coal-rich, their organic carbon being 0.2% and 0.4% respectively. The vitrinite reflection factor in source rocks Ro is 0.3-0.65%, a few up to 0.2%. The burial depth is 1000-3000m, being characterized by emerge of itself, reservoir of itself, shallow burial depth. In the transitional zone, from shallow to deep, contents of montmorillonites are progressively reduced while contents of illites increasing. Under SEM, it is observed that montmorillonites change into illite.s, firstly being mixed illite/ montmorillonite with burr-like, then itlite with silk-like. Carbon isotope of methane in the biothermocatatytic transitional zone gas , namely δ~(13)C_1-45‰- -60 ‰. 9. From the evolutionary sequence of time, distribution of the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas is mainly oil&gas bearing basin in the Mesozoic-Neozoic Era. From the distribution region, it is mainly eastern stuctural active region and three large depressions in Bohaiwang basin. But most of them are located in evolutionary stage of the transitional zone, having the better relationship between produced, reservoir and seal layers, which is favorable about forming the biothermocatalytic transitional zone gas reservoir, and finding large gas (oil) field.

铂族元素分析方法研究及其在有关地质问题中的应用

Characterization of Platinum Group Elements (PGE) has been applied to earth, space and environmental sciences. However, all these applications are based on a basic prerequisite, i.e. their concentration or ratio in the research objects can be accurately and precisely determined. In fact, development in these related studies is a great challenge to the analytical chemistry of the PGE because their content in the geological sample (non-mineralized) is often extremely low, range from ppt (10~(-12)g/g) to ppt (10~(-9)g/g). Their distribution is highly heterogeneous, usually concentrating in single particle or phase. Therefore, the accurate determination of these elements remains a problem in analytical chemistry and it obstructs the research on geochemistry of PGE. A great effort has been made in scientific community to reliable determining of very low amounts of PGE, which has been focused on to reduce the level of background in used reagents and to solve probable heterogeneity of PGE in samples. Undoubtedly, the fire-assay method is one of the best ways for solving the heterogeneity, as a large amount of sample weight (10-50g) can be hold. This page is mainly aimed at development of the methodology on separation, concentration and determination of the ultra-trace PGE in the rock and peat samples, and then they are applied to study the trace of PGE in ophiolite suite, in Kudi, West Kunlun and Tunguska explosion in 1908. The achievements of the study are summarized as follows: 1. A PGE lab is established in the Laboratory of Lithosphere Tectonic Evolution, IGG, CAS. 2. A modified method of determination of PGE in geological samples using NiS Fire-Assay with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is set up. The technical improvements are made as following: (1) investigating the level of background in used reagents, and finding the contents of Au, Pt and Pd in carbonyl nickel powder are 30, 0.6 and 0.6ng/g, respectively and 0.35, 7.5 and 6.4ng, respectively in other flux, and the contents of Ru, Rh, Os in whole reagents used are very low (below or near the detection limits of ICP-MS); (2) measuring the recoveries of PGE using different collector (Ni+S) and finding 1.5g of carbonyl nickel is effective for recovering the PGE for 15g samples (recoveries are more than 90%), reducing the inherent blank value due to impurities reagents; (3) direct dissolving nickel button in Teflon bomb and using Te-precipitation, so reducing the loss of PGE during preconcentration process and improving the recoveries of PGE (above 60% for Os and 93.6-106.3% for other PGE, using 2g carbonyl nickel); (4) simplifying the procedure of analyzing Osmium; (5)method detection limits are 8.6, 4.8, 43, 2.4, 82pg/g for 15g sample size ofRu, Rh, Pd, Ir, Pt, respectively. 3. An analytical method is set up to determine the content of ultra-trace PGE in peat samples. The method detection limits are 0.06, 0.1, 0.001, 0.001 and 0.002ng/mL for Ru, Rh, Pd, Ir and Pt, respectively. 4. Distinct anomaly of Pd and Os are firstly found in the peat sampling near the Tunguska explosion site, using the analytical method. 5. Applying the method to the study on the origin of Tunguska explosion and making the following conclusions: (1) these excess elements were likely resulted from the Tunguska Cosmic Body (TCB) explosion of 1908. (2) The Tunguska explosive body was composed of materials (solid components) similar to C1 chondrite, and, most probably, a cometary object, which weighed more than 10~7 tons and had a radius of more than 126 m. 6. The analysis method about ultra-trace PGE in rock samples is successfully used in the study on the characteristic of PGE in Kudi ophiolite suite and the following conclusions are made: (1) The difference of the mantle normalization of PGE patterns between dunite, harzburgite and lherzolite in Kudi indicates that they are residual of multi-stage partial melt of the mantle. Their depletion of Ir at a similar degree probably indicates the existence of an upper mantle depleted Ir. (2) With the evolution of the magma produced by the partial melt of the mantle, strong differentiation has been shown between IPGE and PPGE; and the differentiation from pyroxenite to basalt would have been more and more distinct. (3) The magma forming ophiolite in Kudi probably suffered S-saturation process.

凝析油气藏描述及开发对策研究-以莫北2油气藏为例

Gas condensate reservoir research involves not only structure sediment reservoir liquid properties characterization but also the change of the temperature field, the change of the pressure field, the change of liquid phase and the reservoir sensitivity. To develop the gas condensate reservoir effectively .we must depict the static properties of the oil and gas system ,build exact and comprehensive parameter field, predict the rule of dynamic change and do the necessary reservoir characterization development plan dynamic prediction direct production. The MoBei Oil and Gas Field is the first gas condensate reservoirs which is found by the Xinjiang Oil Field Company in ZhunGaEr basin belly.it has deserved some knowledge after prospect evaluation, the MoBei Oil and Gas Field start development ,it is one of the important development blocks of Xinjiang Oil Field Company productivity constuction. During its development , it gradually appears some problems, such as complex oil and gas phase, great change of reservoir stretch .uncertain reservoir type and scale, controling its development strategy and plan difficultly. To deserve the high efficient development and long-term stable production of the gas condensate reservoir, it is necessary to characterize it systematically and form a suit of scientific development strategy. This thesis take the MoBei zone SanGongHe sand group reservoir as research object, applied advanced log techniques ,such as the nulear magnetism log ,MDT testing .etc. After comprehensive research of loging geology information, set up a suit of methods to identify oil gas water layer .these methods can identify the gas-oil level and the oil-water level. On the basis of reasonable development object system, according fine structure interpretation and structure modeling. build any oil water column height of the reservoir accurately. Through carefully analysis of the basic theory and method of reservoir seism prediction. optimize a reservoir inversion method .technique. software fitting the research region aiming strata, set up the GR field, porosity field, Rt field, impedence field .permeability field and initial oil saturation field, generating the base of quantity reservoir characterization. Discussing the characteristic of reservoir fluid and the movement and reallocating of muti-phase fluid in reservoir. And according the material of 100 soviet gas condensate reservoir ,build the recognition method and mode of gas condensate reservoir. Building the 3D geology model ,carry on the static and production evaluation, propose the development strategy and improve plan , provide the base of increasing reserves and advancing production and enriching the prospect development theory of the gas condensate reservoi

港西油田现代油藏管理研究与实践

Through years of practice, reservoir management has already become the basic mode of foreign oil companies to realize the high-efficient development of the oil field. From the view of reservoir development and technological economy, reservoir management regards the study of the reservoir engineering, designs of reservoir projects and the dynamic analysis of the reservoir's performance as a system. In the fields of reservoir description, the establishment of the geological models and development models, the dynamic simulations of reservoir exploitation and the design of the oil engineering, reservoir management emphasizes the cooperation of the geology and the engineering, the combination of the engineering technology and the economic evaluation. In order to provide the means and basis for the reservoir geology study, reservoir evaluation, reserves calculation, numerical simulation, development plan and risk analysis, it adopts the reservoir management activities(team work) to make and implement the optimized oil field development management strategies so that secientific and democratic decision making can be achieved. Under the planned economic system for a long time, the purpose of Chinese reservoir development has been to fulfill the" mandatory" production task. With the deepening of the reform, the management organization of Chinese petroleum enterprises has been gradually going through the transition and reforms to the operational entity and the establishment of the mode of oil companies under the socialist market economy system. This research aims at introducing the advanced reservoir management technique from foreign countries to further improve the reservoir development results and wholly raise the economic benefits of Chinese mature land facieses sandstone reservoirs in the later stage of the water flooding. We are going to set up a set of modern reservoir management modes according to the reservoir features, current situation and existing problems of GangXi oil field of DaGang oil company. Through the study and implementation of the reservoir description and numerical simulation technology effectively, we plan to work out integrated adjustment projects, to study the related technology of oil recovery; to set up the effective confirmable data procedure and data management system of the reservoir management, to establish the coordinated model and workbench related to geology, engineering and economy in order to realize the real time supervision and evaluation on the process of reservoir development. We hope to stipulate modernization management tools for GangXi oil fields to rationally utilize various kinds of existing technological methods and to realize the economic exploitation and achieve the maximum benefits from the reservoir. The project of the modem reservoir management will be carried out on the GangXi oil field of DaGang oil company for this oil field is typical and has integrated foundamental materials and perfect networks. Besides, it is located in the good geographical position enjoying very convenient traffic. Implementing modern reservoir management will raise the recovery ratio, reduce the production cost and improve the working efficiency. Moreover, the popularization of modern reservoir management will improve the comprehensive benefits of DaGang oil company and even the whole Petro China. Through the reserch of this project, the following technical indicators can be reached: Establishing the concept of modern reservoir management. Establishing a set of integrated data information management system adapt to the features of GangXi reservoir. 3. Forming technical research modes of modern reservoir management suitable for mature reservoirs in the later developing stage. 4. Advancing projects of GangXi reservoir which are maxium optimized in engineering technique and economic benefits of oil exploitation. Besides, this set of technology, research principle and method can guide the mature reservoir of DaGang oil field and even the whole PetroChina to develop the further research of reservoir adjustment and improve the reservoir recovery factor and developing level constantly.

大港油田孔南地区孔一段储层流动单元研究

The main reservoir type in the south of Dagang Oilfield is alluvial reservoir. In this paper, the reservoir structure model and the distribution of connected body and flow barrier were built on base of the study of high-resolution sequential stratigraphic skeleton and fine sedimentary microfacies on level of single sandbody. Utilizing the static and dynamic data synthetically and carrying out the comparision of the classification method for reservoir flow unit in different reservoir, the criterion, which can be used to classify the flow unit in first section of Kongdian formation of Kongnan area, was defined. The qualitative method of well-to-well correlation and the quantitative method of conditional simulation using multiple data are adopted to disclose the oil and water moving regulation in different flow unit and the distribution rule of remaining oil by physical simulation measure. A set of flow unit study method was formed that is suit for the Dagang Oilfield on account of the remaining oil production according to the flow unit. Several outstanding progresses was obtained in the following aspects:It is considered that the reservoir structure of Zao V iow oil group- Zao Vup4 layerand are jigsaw-puzzled reservoir, while ZaoVup3-ZaoVupi layers are labyrinth reservoir,which are studied on base of high-resolution sequential stratigraphic skeleton on the levelof single sandbody in first section of Kongdian formation of Kongnan area and accordingto the study of fine sedimentary microfacies and fault sealeing.When classifying the flow unit, only permeability is the basic parameter using thestatic and dynamic data and, and also different parameters should be chose or deleted, suchas porosity, effective thickness, fluid viscosity and so on, because of the weak or stronginterlayer heterogeneous and the difference of interlayer crude oil character.The method of building predicting-model of flow unit was proposed. This methodis according to the theories of reservoir sedimentology and high-resolution sequencestratigraphic and adopts the quantitative method of well-to well correlation and the quantitative method of stochastic simulation using integrateddense well data. Finally the 3-D predicting-model of flow unit and the interlay er distribution model in flow unit were built which are for alluvial fan and fan delta fades in first section of Kongdian formation of Kongnan area, and nine genetic model of flow unit of alluvial environment that spread in the space were proposed.(4) Difference of reservoir microscopic pore configuration in various flow units and difference of flow capability and oil displacement effect were demonstrated through the physical experiments such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), constant rate mercury penetration, flow simulation and so on. The distribution of remaining oil in this area was predicted combining the dynamic data and numerical modeling based on the flow unit. Remaining oil production measure was brought up by the clue of flow unit during the medium and late course of the oilfield development.

亲子依恋对大学生人际关系影响的性别效应

Parent-child attachment refers to the emotional bond that forms between parent and child, which has great influences on the child’s interpersonal development. Present study applied both correlation method and secure attachment memory activation method to investigate the “gender relation effects” of parent-child attachment’s influences on college students’ close relationships, general attachment representation, and emotion and social loneliness. The basic hypotheses on “gender relation” were set as: “same-sex” parent-child attachment has more influences on college students’ “same-sex” interpersonal relationships, while “opposite-sex” parent-child attachment has more influences on college students’ “opposite-sex” interpersonal relationships. Major findings includes: 1. There was weak correlation of attachment security between father-child and mother-child relationships. The findings indicated that, among college students, the security of “opposite-sex” parent-child attachment representation is higher to some extent than that of “same-sex” parent-child attachment representation. 2. There were significant correlations between parent-child attachment and college students’ attachment anxiety in close relationships. Major findings indicated that “opposite-sex” parent-child attachment security negatively predicts college students’ attachment anxiety in both “same-sex” and “opposite-sex” close relationships. 3. Gender relation effects were significant in the correlations between parent-child attachment and college students’ level of avoidant attachment representation. “Same-sex” parent-child attachment security positively predicted avoidant attachment level in college students’ “same-sex” close relationships, while “opposite-sex” parent-child attachment security positively predicted avoidant attachment level in “opposite-sex” close relationships. 4. Parent-child attachment security memory activation had significant influences on college students’ general attachment representation, in which gender relation effects indicated that: the memory activation of father-child attachment security significantly increases participants’ security of self-model in general attachment representation to “male others”; while the memory activation of mother-child attachment security significantly increase participants’ security of others-model in general attachment representation to “female others”. 5. For male college students, father-son attachment security negatively predicted their emotion and social loneliness. For female college students, father-daughter attachment security negatively predicted their emotion loneliness, while mother-daughter attachment security negatively predicted their social loneliness. Attachment security memory activation had significant influences on college students’ social loneliness, in which gender relation effects was confirmed in that only father-child attachment security memory activation significantly decreased male participants’ level of social loneliness. The results indicated that gender relation effects are significant in the influences of parent-child attachment on college students’ interpersonal relationship representations, especially when the level of avoidant of attachment in college students’ close relationships was predicted by parent-child attachment representation, and when the memory activation of parent-child attachment influenced college students’ general attachment representation. The present study confirmed to some extent that gender relation consistency exists in attachment representations among different interpersonal relations, and serves as a new model for analysis of gender differences in the research fields. In the present study, however, gender relation effects were not confirmed in all the interpersonal relationship representations, which indicated the complexity in the problems of gender differences in the research fields of close relationships.

企业组织领导参与决策行为研究

In the processes of Chinese economic and political reforms, making decision democratically and scientifically is one of the most important problems for the managers. Through the investigations of 319 managers from 13 companies in 3 cities of China, the participation or the behavior of influence and power sharing in managerial decision-making was systematically analyzed. The research was concerned with three aspects: (1) the descriptive study of managerial decision-making; (2) the relationship between managerial decision-making and a set of specified contingent situational factors; (3) the relationship between managerial decision-making and various outcome variables, such as job satisfaction and organizational effectiveness. The principal results of the research showed. 1. The managers used different methods of decision-making in different situations. The wildly used method by the managers was "prior consultation with subordinate". 2. Compared with the developed countries, Chinese managers tended to use more centralized methods of decision-making. In the comparisons among the different districts of China, the managers in the districts of the higher level economic and cultural development tended to use more participative methods in the processes of decision-making. 3. The behavior of managerial decision-making was influenced by the various contingent factors, such as the uncertainties of the environments, the job constraints, and the variables related to persons, etc. 4. The behavior of the managerial decision-making correlated significantly with the job satisfaction and organizational effectiveness. The more influence and power managers owned in the processes of decision-making, the more positive they evaluated their job satisfaction and organizational effectiveness.

The Alignment of Objects With Smooth Surfaces: Error Analysis of the Curvature Method

The recognition of objects with smooth bounding surfaces from their contour images is considerably more complicated than that of objects with sharp edges, since in the former case the set of object points that generates the silhouette contours changes from one view to another. The "curvature method", developed by Basri and Ullman [1988], provides a method to approximate the appearance of such objects from different viewpoints. In this paper we analyze the curvature method. We apply the method to ellipsoidal objects and compute analytically the error obtained for different rotations of the objects. The error depends on the exact shape of the ellipsoid (namely, the relative lengths of its axes), and it increases a sthe ellipsoid becomes "deep" (elongated in the Z-direction). We show that the errors are usually small, and that, in general, a small number of models is required to predict the appearance of an ellipsoid from all possible views. Finally, we show experimentally that the curvature method applies as well to objects with hyperbolic surface patches.

The Grasping Problem: Toward Task-Level Programming for an Articulated Hand

This report presents a system for generating a stable, feasible, and reachable grasp of a polyhedral object. A set of contact points on the object is found that can result in a stable grasp; a feasible grasp is found in which the robot contacts the object at those contact points; and a path is constructed from the initial configuration of the robot to the stable, feasible final grasp configuration. The algorithm described in the report is designed for the Salisbury hand mounted on a Puma 560 arm, but a similar approach could be used to develop grasping systems for other robots.

Shape from Shading: A Method for Obtaining the Shape of a Smooth Opaque Object from One View

A method will be described for finding the shape of a smooth apaque object form a monocular image, given a knowledge of the surface photometry, the position of the lightsource and certain auxiliary information to resolve ambiguities. This method is complementary to the use of stereoscopy which relies on matching up sharp detail and will fail on smooth objects. Until now the image processing of single views has been restricted to objects which can meaningfully be considered two-dimensional or bounded by plane surfaces. It is possible to derive a first-order non-linear partial differential equation in two unknowns relating the intensity at the image points to the shape of the objects. This equation can be solved by means of an equivalent set of five ordinary differential equations. A curve traced out by solving this set of equations for one set of starting values is called a characteristic strip. Starting one of these strips from each point on some initial curve will produce the whole solution surface. The initial curves can usually be constructed around so-called singular points. A number of applications of this metod will be discussed including one to lunar topography and one to the scanning electron microscope. In both of these cases great simplifications occur in the equations. A note on polyhedra follows and a quantitative theory of facial make-up is touched upon. An implementation of some of these ideas on the PDP-6 computer with its attached image-dissector camera at the Artificial intelligence Laboratory will be described, and also a nose-recognition program.

A hyper-heuristic ensemble method for static job-shop scheduling.

We describe a new hyper-heuristic method NELLI-GP for solving job-shop scheduling problems (JSSP) that evolves an ensemble of heuristics. The ensemble adopts a divide-and-conquer approach in which each heuristic solves a unique subset of the instance set considered. NELLI-GP extends an existing ensemble method called NELLI by introducing a novel heuristic generator that evolves heuristics composed of linear sequences of dispatching rules: each rule is represented using a tree structure and is itself evolved. Following a training period, the ensemble is shown to outperform both existing dispatching rules and a standard genetic programming algorithm on a large set of new test instances. In addition, it obtains superior results on a set of 210 benchmark problems from the literature when compared to two state-of-the-art hyperheuristic approaches. Further analysis of the relationship between heuristics in the evolved ensemble and the instances each solves provides new insights into features that might describe similar instances.

Finding Rough Set Reducts with SAT.

R. Jensen, Q. Shen and A. Tuson, 'Finding Rough Set Reducts with SAT,' Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Rough Sets, Fuzzy Sets, Data Mining and Granular Computing, LNAI 3641, pp. 194-203, 2005.

User-Level Sandboxing: a Safe and Efficient Mechanism for Extensibility

Extensible systems allow services to be configured and deployed for the specific needs of individual applications. This paper describes a safe and efficient method for user-level extensibility that requires only minimal changes to the kernel. A sandboxing technique is described that supports multiple logical protection domains within the same address space at user-level. This approach allows applications to register sandboxed code with the system, that may be executed in the context of any process. Our approach differs from other implementations that require special hardware support, such as segmentation or tagged translation look-aside buffers (TLBs), to either implement multiple protection domains in a single address space, or to support fast switching between address spaces. Likewise, we do not require the entire system to be written in a type-safe language, to provide fine-grained protection domains. Instead, our user-level sandboxing technique requires only paged-based virtual memory support, and the requirement that extension code is written either in a type-safe language, or by a trusted source. Using a fast method of upcalls, we show how our sandboxing technique for implementing logical protection domains provides significant performance improvements over traditional methods of invoking user-level services. Experimental results show our approach to be an efficient method for extensibility, with inter-protection domain communication costs close to those of hardware-based solutions leveraging segmentation.

Efficient End-Host Architecture for High Performance Communication Using User-level Sandboxing

Current low-level networking abstractions on modern operating systems are commonly implemented in the kernel to provide sufficient performance for general purpose applications. However, it is desirable for high performance applications to have more control over the networking subsystem to support optimizations for their specific needs. One approach is to allow networking services to be implemented at user-level. Unfortunately, this typically incurs costs due to scheduling overheads and unnecessary data copying via the kernel. In this paper, we describe a method to implement efficient application-specific network service extensions at user-level, that removes the cost of scheduling and provides protected access to lower-level system abstractions. We present a networking implementation that, with minor modifications to the Linux kernel, passes data between "sandboxed" extensions and the Ethernet device without copying or processing in the kernel. Using this mechanism, we put a customizable networking stack into a user-level sandbox and show how it can be used to efficiently process and forward data via proxies, or intermediate hosts, in the communication path of high performance data streams. Unlike other user-level networking implementations, our method makes no special hardware requirements to avoid unnecessary data copies. Results show that we achieve a substantial increase in throughput over comparable user-space methods using our networking stack implementation.