Our work shows that XRD and XRF studies on missions to Mars and Saturn's moons could be carried out using the radioisotopes Rh-101 or Am-241 as sources of radiation. We discuss geological questions which we believe should be answered before any search for biological structures or pre-forms of life. We also suggest a method to produce Rh-101.

Dual-beam focused ion beam microscopy (FIB/SEM) preparation of rock varnish for high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) has enabled us to characterize unreported nanostructures. Fossils, unreported textures, and compositional variability were observed at the nanoscale. These techniques could provide a method for studying ancient terrestrial and extra-terrestrial environments t...

A new method is presented which combines a forward and an image operator (resolution function) to construct a simulated migrated seismic section from a geological depth model. To efficiently use this tool during seismic interpretation, a fast implementation is necessary. This is achieved by improving the performance of the serial algorithm.

With the continued growth in demand for mineral resources and China's efforts in increasing investment in geological prospecting, fiscal investment in geological exploration becomes a research hotspot. This paper examines the yearly relationship among fiscal investment in geological exploration of the current term, that of the last term and prices of mining rights over the period 1999-2009. Hin...

and this has been a common practice within the British Columbia Geological Survey Branch for a number of years (MacIntyre, 1991). Geological data are commonly stored in CAD-based files that record points. lines and polygons that describe geological features. Additional infolmation that includes structural measurements and other descriptive features of field data are commonly stored in databa...

a Division of Geodetic Science, School of Earth Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH, USA b U.S. Geological Survey, Vancouver WA, USA c U.S. Geological Survey, Louisiana Water Science Center, Baton Rouge LA, USA d U.S. Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center, Lafayette LA, USA e Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences, Korea Military Academy, Seoul, S...

truncated gaussian simulation (tgs) is a well-known method to generate realizations of the ore domains located in a spatial sequence. in geostatistical framework geological domains are normally utilized for stationary assumption. the ability to measure the uncertainty in the exact locations of the boundaries among different geological units is a common challenge for practitioners. as a simple a...

Geometallurgy tries to predict the instability the behavior of ores caused by variability in the geological settings, and to optimize the mineral value chain. Understanding the ore variability and subsequently the process response are considered to be the most important functions of an accurate geometallurgical study. In this paper, the geometallurgical index is presented as a new tool to...

Applicability of the weighting function method to gravity problems is discussed as compared with the exact method. The merits of the weighting function method are its simplicity and rapidity of computation, particularly in three-dimensional problems. For local geological problems, the weighting function method can be used for the gravity calculation with sufficient accuracy when the structure i...