Journal of Research of the
National Institute of
Standards and Technology

Cover Explanation:

The cover depicts a sequence of images illustrating problems and applications of Operations Research, Geometric Design, and Optimization. Clockwise from the top center, the first item is the formulation of a linear program, the central theme of Operations Research. It is followed by a figure in the lead article of this Special Issue (p. 57) depicting a Lavery spline. The schematic diagram of two natural gas pipelines is from a report on a national gas supply forecasting model. Interpolating two points with given tangents by two smoothly connecting circular arcs has one degree of freedom: all possible connection points lie on a circle. A display of a terrain drain pattern generated from contour lines follows. The final item shows both the Voronoi diagram and the Delaunay triangulation of a set of points indicative of work furthering the development of TIN (Triangulated Irregular Networks) for surface modeling. Cover illustration by C. Carey.