Perspective:Societally connected multimedia across cultures

The advance of the Internet in the past decade has radically changed the way people communicate and col- laborate with each other. Physical distance is no more a barrier in online social networks, but cultural differences (at the individual, community, as well as societal levels) still govern human-human interactions and must be con- sidered and leveraged in the online world. The rapid de-ployment of high-speed Internet allows humans to interact using a rich set of multimedia data such as texts, pictures, and videos. This position paper proposes to define a new research area called ’connected multimedia’, which is the study of a collection of research issues of the super-area social media that receive little attention in the literature. By connected multimedia, we mean the study of the social and technical interactions among users, multimedia data, and devices across cultures and explicitly exploiting the cultural differences. We justify why it is necessary to bring attention to this new research area and what benefits of this new research area may bring to the broader scientific research community and the humanity.     

Just a matter of time

As Midwestern foodservice directors & dietitians recently discovered when an earthquake alert was sounded in their area, it's never too early to review & update emergency plans. Herein is a compendium of tips that can be used by any foodservice professional working in an area at risk of disaster, whether it be earthquake, tornado, hurricane, blackout or flood.     

砷化镓材料中EPR“As_(Ga)”的退火行为

本文比较了中子辐照。压缩变形和原生LEC砷化镓等三种不同来源样品的EPR“As_(Ga)”的Hamiltonian参数。并系统地研究了EPR“As_(Ga)”的浓度和低温光猝灭行为随退火温度的变化,从而进一步验证了EPR“As_(Ga)”的本性,即除孤立As_(Ga)反位原子外,还可能包括As_(Ga)的一些空位络合物。这些不同本性的EPR“As_(Ga)”缺陷及其它有关的缺陷在样品热处理过程中可能相互转化。按照物理化学中Le Chatlier原理,缺陷的原始浓度和晶体内部应变能似应是引起这些转化反应的重要因素。     

The random phase transducer: a new technique for incoherent processing-experimental results

Ultrasonic speckle is an inherent consequence of the stochastic nature of the reflectivity of biological tissues. Speckle is a source of noise on envelope detected echoes as well as on the power spectra. A technique where the spatial coherence of the transducer is controlled by moving a random phase screen (RPS) through the ultrasonic beam is described. An RPS that is a rough surface generating phase shifts that are randomly distributed between 0 and 2pi is presented. Measurements with unfocused and focused transducers working in broadband pulse-echo mode were performed. Experimental results on the directivity pattern and the ability of the system to obtain uncorrelated speckle patterns are presented. The performance of the RPS in SNR improvements is discussed. Experimental results are in good agreement with theoretical predictions.     

Finite-element analysis of vibrational modes in piezoelectric ceramic disks

The natural vibrational modes of axially symmetric piezoelectric ceramic disks have been calculated by the finite-element method. The disks are of the type used as active elements in compressional wave ultrasonic transducers, and are electrically polarized in thickness with full electrodes on the disk's major faces. To optimize disk geometry for ultrasonic transducer application, the dependence of the vibrational modes on the disk diameter-to-thickness ratio for ratios from 0.2 (a tall cylinder) to 10.0 (a thin disk) has been studied. Series and parallel resonance frequencies for each of the modes are determined through an eigenfrequency analysis, and effective electromechanical coupling coefficients are calculated. The modal displacement fields in the disk are calculated to determine the physical nature of each mode. An analysis of the complete spectrum of piezoelectrically active modes as a function of diameter-thickness ratio is presented for the ceramic PZT-5H, including and identification of radial, edge, length expander, thickness shear, and thickness extensional vibrations. From this analysis, optimal diameter-to-thickness ratios for good transducer performance are discussed.     

A neuron membrane mesh representation for visualization of electrophysiological simulations

We present a process to automatically generate three-dimensional mesh representations of the complex, arborized cell membrane surface of cortical neurons (the principal information processing cells of the brain) from nonuniform morphological measurements. Starting from manually sampled morphological points (3D points and diameters) from neurons in a brain slice preparation, we construct a polygonal mesh representation that realistically represents the continuous membrane surface, closely matching the original experimental data. A mapping between the original morphological points and the newly generated mesh enables simulations of electrophysiolgical activity to be visualized on this new membrane representation. We compare the new mesh representation with the state of the art and present a series of use cases and applications of this technique to visualize simulations of single neurons and networks of multiple neurons.     

A deformable surface model for real-time water drop animation

A water drop behaves differently from a large water body because of its strong viscosity and surface tension under the small scale. Surface tension causes the motion of a water drop to be largely determined by its boundary surface. Meanwhile, viscosity makes the interior of a water drop less relevant to its motion, as the smooth velocity field can be well approximated by an interpolation of the velocity on the boundary. Consequently, we propose a fast deformable surface model to realistically animate water drops and their flowing behaviors on solid surfaces. Our system efficiently simulates water drop motions in a Lagrangian fashion, by reducing 3D fluid dynamics over the whole liquid volume to a deformable surface model. In each time step, the model uses an implicit mean curvature flow operator to produce surface tension effects, a contact angle operator to change droplet shapes on solid surfaces, and a set of mesh connectivity updates to handle topological changes and improve mesh quality over time. Our numerical experiments demonstrate a variety of physically plausible water drop phenomena at a real-time rate, including capillary waves when water drops collide, pinch-off of water jets, and droplets flowing over solid materials. The whole system performs orders-of-magnitude faster than existing simulation approaches that generate comparable water drop effects.