Caricature generation utilizing the notion of anti-face

The production of caricatures is a particularly interesting field of art, because it aims to highlight the very essence of a given face. Caricature generation systems traditionally rely on two approaches: they either follow extracted rules through learning algorithms, or follow rules that were directly programmed by experts. This paper attempts to reduce the reliance on heuristic methods, by proposing a novel method that provides a set of well-defined rules, which can be put to use for the purpose of caricature generation. The method is based on the notion of anti-face in conjunction with unbiased distortions. In addition, we indicate the usefulness of the anti-face as a means to perceive, for our own sake, the degree to which our face seems peculiar to others. Finally, we deploy a reverse variant of the method in order to attain beautification.

     

Diacetoxyiodobenzene and bis(trifluoroacetoxy)iodobenzene as photoinitiators for cationic polymerisations

Summary It is shown that i-butyl vinyl ether, tetrahydrofuran, epichlorhydrin and cyclohexene oxide, which undergo typically cationic polymerisation, are polymerised by UV-irradiation in the presence of diacetoxyiodobenzene or bis(trifluoroacetoxy)iodobenzene.     

The cost of satisfying design requirements on progressive collapse resistance – Investigation based on structural optimisation

This work is concerned with the explicit treatment of progressive collapse resistance within the structural design process. Progressive collapse resistance is associated with the damage tolerance of a structural system and controls the ability of the system to sustain local damage by absorbing the potential of triggering system collapse and suffering disproportionally large consequences. This work focuses on the design of elastoplastic steel frames. The measure of progressive collapse resistance employed is expressed as a ratio comparing the limit loads obtained with elastoplastic analyses of the intact structure and of an artificially damaged structure (‘damage’ is caused by the notional removal of a column from the intact structure). This measure is used to incorporate a constraint on progressive collapse resistance into a structural design optimisation formulation, which – in its classical form – takes only standard design code constraints into account and aims at minimising the structural cost. The developed optimisation approach is capable of producing cost-effective structural designs with acceptable system damage tolerance. By enforcing the satisfaction of the additional design requirement on progressive collapse resistance, structural cost is inevitably increased due to the need for extra material. This increase is quantitatively explored with the presented structural design optimisation approach.     

Effect of Asynchronous Earthquake Motion on Complex Bridges. I: Methodology and Input Motion

Based on observed damage patterns from previous earthquakes and a rich history of analytical studies, asynchronous input motion has been identified as a major source of unfavorable response for long-span structures, such as bridges. This study is aimed at quantifying the effect of geometric incoherence and wave arrival delay on complex straight and curved bridges using state-of-the-art methodologies and tools. Using fully parametrized computer codes combining expert geotechnical and earthquake structural engineering knowledge, suites of asynchronous accelerograms are produced for use in inelastic dynamic analysis of the bridge model. Two multi-degree-of-freedom analytical models are analyzed using 2,000 unique synthetic accelerograms with results showing significant response amplification due to asynchronous input motion, demonstrating the importance of considering asynchronous seismic input in complex, irregular bridge design. The paper, Part 1 of a two-paper investigation, presents the development of the input motion sets and the modeling and analysis approach employed, concluding with sample results. Detailed results and implications on seismic assessment are presented in the companion paper: Effect of Asynchronous Motion on Complex Bridges. Part II: Results and Implications on Assessment.     

Cold storage,reconditioning potential and chip processing quality of spring potato (Solanum tuberosum L. cv. Hermes) tubers in response to differential nitrogen fertilisation

BACKGROUND: Crop management has been implicated in tuber sugar accumulation and potato processing quality. However, reports on potato postharvest behaviour, tuber composition and processing quality in response to crop nitrogen (N) fertilisation have been sparse and inconclusive. In this study, chipping potato cv. Hermes was treated with four preplanting N rates (0, 100, 200 and 300 kg ha^?1) to evaluate the effect of N fertilisation on sugar accumulation profiles and processing quality at harvest, after cold storage at 4.5 °C for up to 200 days and after reconditioning at 16 °C for 10–30 days. RESULTS: Preharvest leaf petiole analysis and tuber nitrate analysis at harvest confirmed crop response to N rates. At harvest, tuber specific gravity decreased marginally beyond 200 kg N ha^?1. Chip colour as well as tuber sucrose and reducing sugar (RS) content was unaffected by N fertilisation rate. During cold storage and reconditioning, tuber fresh weight loss and sprout growth were unaffected by N rate, while its effect on tuber sugar levels was either statistically or practically insignificant. Tuber sucrose and RS contents correlated highly with chip colour (r = ? 0.729, P <0.001 and r = ?0.791, P <0.001 respectively). Importantly, postharvest chip colour was also unaffected by N rate, though it declined markedly with the onset of cold storage and improved significantly throughout reconditioning. Differences in chip colour between years were limited but potentially critical in meeting the commercial standard. CONCLUSION: Completion of physiological crop senescence of the spring potato crop under Mediterranean climatic conditions seems to mitigate the potential interference of preplanting N fertilisation with tuber maturation and subsequently cold storage performance, reconditioning potential and processing quality. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry     

Biochemistry of hydrogen metabolism in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii wild type and a Rubisco-less mutant

Sulfate nutrient-deprivation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii   brings about prompt degradation of Rubisco and a concomitant substantial accumulation of starch. These changes precede hydrogen (_H2${\mathrm{H}}_2$) photoevolution by the cells. The cause-and-effect relationship between Rubisco loss, starch accumulation and subsequent _H2${\mathrm{H}}_2$-photoevolution in C. reinhardtii, and the role of illumination for these changes to occur, was investigated in this work. A Rubisco-less and acetate-requiring mutant of C. reinhardtii   (CC2653) was employed as a tool in this investigation and compared to the wild type (WT) in terms of protein and starch metabolic flux and _H2${\mathrm{H}}_2$-evolution upon sulfur deprivation. Results showed a prompt Rubisco degradation and concomitant 10-fold starch accumulation in the WT in the light, which was completed within 48 h of S-deprivation. This was followed by a regulated starch degradation and concomitant _H2${\mathrm{H}}_2$-photoevolution, which lasted for up to 120 h in S-deprivation. This massive flux of primary metabolites (protein and starch) did not occur in the dark in the WT, suggesting a strictly light-dependent and integrated process in metabolite rearrangement and _H2${\mathrm{H}}_2$-photoevolution in C. reinhardtii  . The Rubisco-less CC2653 mutant failed to accumulate starch upon S-deprivation in the light or dark and also failed to evolve _H2${\mathrm{H}}_2$ gas. These results suggested a temporal cause-and-effect relationship between the light-dependent catabolism of Rubisco and starch accumulation, and the subsequent ability of the cell to perform a light-dependent starch degradation and _H2${\mathrm{H}}_2$-photoevolution. The regulated starch breakdown in the light apparently provides the endogenous substrate that supports _H2${\mathrm{H}}_2$-evolution, both by feeding electrons into the plastoquinone pool in chloroplasts, and indirectly by sustaining mitochondrial respiration for the maintenance of anaerobiosis in the cell.     

Contribution to Shear Wrinkling of GFRP Webs in Cell-Core Sandwiches

Glass-fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) cell-core sandwiches are composed of outer GFRP face sheets, a foam core, and a grid of GFRP webs integrated into the core to reinforce the shear load capacity. One of the critical failure modes of cell-core sandwich structures is shear wrinkling, a local buckling failure in the sandwich webs because of shear loading. The shear wrinkling behavior of GFRP laminates with different laminate sequences, stabilized by a polyurethane foam core, was experimentally and numerically investigated. Shear wrinkling was simulated by a biaxial compression–tension setup. The results show that an increasing transverse tension load significantly decreases the wrinkling load. The decreasing effect of tension is explained by the lateral contraction because of Poisson’s effect, which causes an increase in the initial imperfections and subsequent accelerated bending.     

Identification of oil mixtures in extracted and refined vegetable oils

Identification of adulteration in mechanically extracted oils or the botanical origin of refined vegetable oil blends can be effectively achieved through the combination of spectroscopic methods and chemometric techniques. Chromatographic methods remain highly relevant but suffer from various limitations which derive from natural compositional variation. Modern multivariate techniques have demonstrated that it is possible to identify patterns and effectively classify unknown samples in both cases. Development of robust analytical methodologies requires however vigorous validation. Spectroscopic methods combined with chemometric techniques lack established validation protocols and this might hinder their use by law enforcement authorities.     

A Filter Bank Based Approach for Rotation Invariant Fingerprint Recognition

This paper presents a systematic approach for image-based fingerprint recognition. The proposed method first enhances an input fingerprint image using a contextual filtering based method in the frequency domain. Complex filters are used for the detection of the core point, and a region of interest (ROI) of a predefined size centered at the detected core point is extracted. The resulting ROI is rotated based on the angle of the detected core point to ensure rotation invariance. Subsequently, the proposed system extracts the average absolute deviation (AAD) from the outputs of a Gabor filter bank. To reduce the dimensionality of the extracted features whilst generating more discriminatory representation, this paper compares the unsupervised Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the supervised Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) methods for dimensionality reduction. User-specific thresholding schemes are investigated to improve the verification performance. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through extensive experimentation on the FVC2002 set_a public database, in both identification and verification scenarios.     

Co-existence of OFDM and FBMC for resilient photonic millimeter-wave 5G mobile fronthaul

Photonic Network Communications - This paper presents a novel co-existence of multiple Fifth-Generation (5G) services employing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Filter Bank...