Caustic spot light for rendering caustics

It is difficult to render caustic patterns at interactive frame rates. This paper introduces new rendering techniques that relax current constraints, allowing scenes with moving, non-rigid scene objects, rigid caustic objects, and rotating directional light sources to be rendered in real-time with GPU hardware acceleration. Because our algorithm estimates the intensity and the direction of caustic light, rendering of non-Lambertian surfaces is supported. Previous caustics algorithms have separated the problem into pre-rendering and rendering phases, storing intermediate results in data structures such as photon maps or radiance transfer functions. Our central idea is to use specially parameterized spot lights, called caustic spot lights (CSLs), as the intermediate representation of a two-phase algorithm. CSLs are flexible enough that a small number can approximate the light leaving a caustic object, yet simple enough that they can be efficiently evaluated by a pixel shader program during accelerated rendering.We extend our approach to support changing lighting direction by further dividing the pre-rendering phase into per-scene and per-frame components: the per-frame phase computes frame-specific CSLs by interpolating between CSLs that were pre-computed with differing light directions.     

Collapse-free thermal bonding technique for large area microchambers in plastic lab-on-a-chip applications

Bonding is an essential step to form microchannels or microchambers in lab-on-a-chip applications. In this paper, we present a novel plastic thermal bonding technique to seal and form large area microchambers (planar characteristic width and length on the order of 1 mm and characteristic thickness on the order of 10–100 μm) without collapse by introducing a holed pressure equalizing plate (HPEP) that includes holes of the same size and shape as the microchambers. To demonstrate the proposed technique, two types of large area microchambers [(1) 20 × 10 mm and 40 μm thick and (2) 12 × 2.5 mm and 120 μm thick] with microchannels were designed and replicated on plastic substrates by means of hot embossing and injection molding processes with prepared two nickel mold inserts. The replicated large area microchambers as well as the microchannels in the plastic lab-on-a-chip were successfully sealed (i.e., no leakage) and formed without any collapse by the proposed thermal bonding technique with the help of the HPEP.     

A piecewise analysis method to stability analysis of linear continuous/discrete systems with time‐varying delay

The delay‐dependent stability problem of linear continuous/discrete systems with time‐varying delay is investigated based on a piecewise analysis method (PAM). In the method, the variation interval of the time delay is firstly divided into several subintervals. By checking the variation of the Lyapunov functional in every subinterval, some new delay‐dependent stability criteria are derived. Several numerical examples show that our method can lead to much less conservative results than those in the existing references. Moreover, when the number of the divided subintervals increases, the corresponding criteria can provide an improvement on the results. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

新形势下对设计教育方法的思考

在信息化社会里,设计专业与社会需求之间有着非常紧密的联系,为了使学生在大量信息面前,对所学习的专业知识与技能,展开独立的思考,多向思维、多种角度去认识同一事物,并能根据自己的需要进行分类和整理,培养学生捕捉信息的敏锐感受和理解的能力,要求教师积极主动调整知识结构、增加新的教育方法来改善我们的设计教育,使每一个学生的潜能都能得到充分发展,并获得更直接、更实际的专业知识。     

如何设定品牌标志的设计标准

品牌设计师通过知觉联想可以将文字语言转化为直接、可见的视觉图形传达给社会大众,这种语言上的转换是设计师发掘人们想象不到或想象不全面的一种表现方式,是艺术创造。同时,在没有限制,具有广泛可能性的创意、设计中,要把企业理念和目标等文字语言浓缩、整合出适合创意、设计的关键语,这一个个关键语就是品牌标志设计的依据和标准。有了这样的设计标准就会提高设计效率和准确性,减少在标志设计过程中的矛盾与摩擦,起到指引方向和检验最终方案的作用。     

Diffractive-phase-element design that implements several optical functions

A scheme for the design of diffractive phase elements (DPE's) that integrates several optical functions is presented in a consistent sense based on the general theory of amplitude-phase retrieval and the Yang-Gu algorithm [Appl. Opt. 33, 209 (1994)]. We extend the original Yang-Gu algorithm to treat a system illuminated by a beam of incident light whose components are at different wavelengths, and a set of equations for determining the phase distribution of the DPE is derived. The profile of a surface-relief DPE can be designed with an iterative algorithm. Numerical simulations are carried out for the design of one-dimensional DPE's capable of both demultiplexing different wavelength components and focusing each partial wave at predetermined positions. The influence of the extension of sampling points in the DPE's from ideal geometric points to physical spots on design results is also investigated. The numerical simulation results show that the new algorithm can be used successfully to design the desired DPE's. It is therefore expected to be useful in the design of DPE's for micro-optical systems.     

An automatic docking method for large-scale sections based on real-time pose measuring and assembly deviation control

Aiming at the problem of poor accuracy consistency of large sections’ docking assembly, an automatic docking method using multiple laser trackers to measure the position and posture of the docking sections in real time was proposed. In the solution of the pose of the docking section, real-time pose measurement of the docking section was realized by establishing a global coordinate system and a coordinate fusion method of three or more laser trackers. In the automatic control of the docking process, the real-time communication protocol and the circular negative feedback control strategy of measurement-adjustment-re-measurement are adopted, and the fully-automated docking of large sections is realized. Finally, an experimental verification system was set up, and the docking of the large-scale section reduction models was realized under the requirements of docking accuracy, and the effectiveness of the automatic docking scheme was successfully verified.     

Lightweight deep learning methods for panoramic dental X-ray image segmentation

Neural Computing and Applications - Dental X-ray image segmentation is helpful for assisting clinicians to examine tooth conditions and identify dental diseases. Fast and lightweight segmentation...     

Small Changes,Big Impact: Tungsten Bronzes with Extremely Large Second Harmonic Generation Achieved by the Transition Metal Doping on the B-Site

Two novel transition metal-doped tungsten bronze oxides, Pb_2.15Li_0.85Nb_4.85Ti_0.15O₁₅ (PLNT) and Pb_2.15Li_0.55Nb_4.85W_0.15O₁₅ (PLNW), are synthesized by high-temperature solid-state reactions. The Rietveld method using the high-resolution synchrotron radiation indicates that PLNT and PLNW crystallize in the orthorhombic polar noncentrosymmetric space group, Pmn2₁ (no. 31). As a class of tungsten bronze oxide, PLNT and PLNW retain a unique rigid framework composed of d⁰ transition metal cation (Ti⁴⁺ or W⁶⁺)-doped highly distorted NbO₆ octahedra along with the subsequently generated Pb/LiO₁₂ and PbO₁₅ polyhedra. Interestingly, the d⁰ transition metal-doped tungsten bronzes, PLNT and PLNW, exhibit extremely large second-harmonic generation (SHG) responses of 56 and 67 × KH₂PO₄, respectively. The observed immeasurably strong SHG is mainly attributed to a net polarization originating from the alignment of highly distorted NbO₆ octahedra with doped transition metals in the frameworks. It is believed that doping transition metal cations at the B-site of the tungsten bronze structures should be an innovative strategy to develop novel high-performance nonlinear optical materials.     

Relational attention-based Markov logic network for visual navigation

The Journal of Supercomputing - We argue the agent’s low generalization problem for searching target object in challenging visual navigation could be solved by "how" and...