ProcDef: Local‐to‐global Deformation for Skeleton‐free Character Animation

Animations of characters with flexible bodies such as jellyfish, snails, and, hearts are difficult to design using traditional skeleton‐based approaches. A standard approach is keyframing, but adjusting the shape of the flexible body for each key frame is tedious. In addition, the character cannot dynamically adjust its motion to respond to the environment or user input. This paper introduces a new procedural deformation framework (ProcDef) for designing and driving animations of such flexible objects. Our approach is to synthesize global motions procedurally by integrating local deformations. ProcDef provides an efficient design scheme for local deformation patterns; the user can control the orientation and magnitude of local deformations as well as the propagation of deformation signals by specifying line charts and volumetric fields. We also present a fast and robust deformation algorithm based on shape‐matching dynamics and show some example animations to illustrate the feasibility of our framework.     

Two complementary operations inspired by the DNA hairpin formation: Completion and reduction

We consider two complementary operations: Hairpin completion introduced in [D. Cheptea, C. Martin-Vide, V. Mitrana, A new operation on words suggested by DNA biochemistry: Hairpin completion, in: Proc. Transgressive Computing, 2006, pp. 216–228] with motivations coming from DNA biochemistry and hairpin reduction as the inverse operation of the hairpin completion. Both operations are viewed here as formal operations on words and languages. We settle the closure properties of the classes of regular and linear context-free languages under hairpin completion in comparison with hairpin reduction. While the class of linear context-free languages is exactly the weak-code image of the class of the hairpin completion of regular languages, rather surprisingly, the weak-code image of the class of the hairpin completion of linear context-free languages is a class of mildly context-sensitive languages. The closure properties with respect to the hairpin reduction of some time and space complexity classes are also studied. We show that the factors found in the general cases are not necessary for regular and context-free languages. This part of the paper completes the results given in the earlier paper, where a similar investigation was made for hairpin completion. Finally, we briefly discuss the iterated variants of these operations.     

Solving the irregular strip packing problem via guided local search for overlap minimization

The irregular strip-packing problem (ISP) requires a given set of non-convex polygons to be placed without overlap within a rectangular container having a fixed width and a variable length, which is to be minimized. As a core sub-problem to solve ISP, we consider an overlap minimization problem (OMP) whose objective is to place all polygons into a container with given width and length so that the total amount of overlap between polygons is made as small as possible. We propose to use directional penetration depths to measure the amount of overlap between a pair of polygons, and present an efficient algorithm to find a position with the minimum overlap for each polygon when it is translated in a specified direction. Based on this, we develop a local search algorithm for OMP that translates a polygon in horizontal and vertical directions alternately. Then we incorporate it in our algorithm for OMP, which is a variant of the guided local search algorithm. Computational results show that our algorithm improves the best-known values of some well-known benchmark instances.     

A Bayesian solution to the multiple composite hypothesis testing for fault diagnosis in dynamic systems

This paper is concerned with model-based isolation and estimation of additive faults in discrete-time linear Gaussian systems. The isolation problem is stated as a multiple composite hypothesis testing on the innovation sequence of the Kalman filter (KF) that considers the system operating under fault-free conditions. Fault estimation is carried out, after isolating a fault mode, by using the Maximum a Posteriori (MAP) criterion. An explicit solution is presented for both fault isolation and estimation when the parameters of the fault modes are assumed to be realizations of specific random variables (RV).     

On the possible patterns of inputs for block sorting in the Burrows-Wheeler transformation

Block sorting in the Burrows-Wheeler transformation is to sort all of the n circular shifts of a string of length n lexicographically. We introduce a notion called the width of a sequence of n strings of length n and show that the values of widths are very different between the two types of sequences of strings; (1) a sequence of n randomly generated strings of length n, and (2) the sequence of n circular shifts of a randomly generated string of length n.     

Technique for anisotropic extension of organic crystals: application to temperature dependence of electrical resistance

We have developed a technique for the anisotropic extension of fragile molecular crystals. The pressure medium and the instrument, which extends the pressure medium, are both made from epoxy resin. Since the thermal contraction of our instrument is identical to that of the pressure medium, the strain applied to the pressure medium has no temperature dependence down to 2 K. Therefore, the degree of extension applied to the single crystal at low temperatures is uniquely determined from the degree of extension in the pressure medium and thermal contractions of the epoxy resin and the single crystal at ambient pressure. Using this novel instrument, we have measured the temperature dependence of the electrical resistance of metallic, superconducting, and insulating materials. The experimental results are discussed from the viewpoint of the extension (compression) of the lattice constants along the parallel (perpendicular) direction.     

Robust loss functions for boosting

Boosting is known as a gradient descent algorithm over loss functions. It is often pointed out that the typical boosting algorithm, Adaboost, is highly affected by outliers. In this letter, loss functions for robust boosting are studied. Based on the concept of robust statistics, we propose a transformation of loss functions that makes boosting algorithms robust against extreme outliers. Next, the truncation of loss functions is applied to contamination models that describe the occurrence of mislabels near decision boundaries. Numerical experiments illustrate that the proposed loss functions derived from the contamination models are useful for handling highly noisy data in comparison with other loss functions.     

A high-resolution transmission electron microscope study of a zinc oxide varistor

Investigations were made of varistor microstructure, the morphology of Bi₂O₃ at multiple ZnO grain junctions, Bi₂O₃/ZnO grain boundaries and ZnO/ZnO grain boundaries (especially whether Bi₂O₃ is present or not at the ZnO/ZnO grain boundary) by means of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and X-ray microanalysis in the scanning transmission electron microscope. Bi₂O₃ at multiple ZnO grain junctions consists of small particles of 0.1m in diameter, and they are vitrified to some extent. It is suggested that bismuth ions dissolve into ZnO grains over a 30 nm range from a Bi₂O₃/ZnO grain boundary; however, there is no bismuth at ZnO/ZnO grain boundaries.