Destroying Biological Hazards Anthrax. Mad Cow Disease. Biological Weapons. These words have filled headlines, increasing anxiety around the world. The threat of such biological hazards, both natural and man-made, has created unprecedented challenges for public health institutions and hospitals, as well as for national defense. These biohazards demand fast and effective decontamination techniques.

The spores of Bacillus spp. are found widely distributed in nature, which may cause contamination of the environment and eventually diseases to humans and animals. The formation of the bacterial spore is a sophisticated mechanism by which some bacteria remain viable inadequate when subjected to survival stress such as lack of nutrients. The spores are highly resistant to heat, radiation, variou...

In many applications of terrain analysis, pits or local minima are considered artifacts that must be removed before the terrain can be used. Most of the existing methods for local minima removal work only for raster terrains. In this paper we consider algorithms to remove local minima from polyhedral terrains, by modifying the heights of the vertices. To limit the changes introduced to the terr...