Faster isosurface ray tracing using implicit KD-trees

The visualization of high-quality isosurfaces at interactive rates is an important tool in many simulation and visualization applications. Today, isosurfaces are most often visualized by extracting a polygonal approximation that is then rendered via graphics hardware or by using a special variant of preintegrated volume rendering. However, these approaches have a number of limitations in terms of the quality of the isosurface, lack of performance for complex data sets, or supported shading models. An alternative isosurface rendering method that does not suffer from these limitations is to directly ray trace the isosurface. However, this approach has been much too slow for interactive applications unless massively parallel shared-memory supercomputers have been used. In this paper, we implement interactive isosurface ray tracing on commodity desktop PCs by building on recent advances in real-time ray tracing of polygonal scenes and using those to improve isosurface ray tracing performance as well. The high performance and scalability of our approach will be demonstrated with several practical examples, including the visualization of highly complex isosurface data sets, the interactive rendering of hybrid polygonal/isosurface scenes, including high-quality ray traced shading effects, and even interactive global illumination on isosurfaces.     

Effects of dietary olive and linseed oil on lipid composition, meat quality, sensory characteristics and muscle structure in pigs

The aim of this study was to alter the fatty acid composition of porcine tissue by accumulating essential fatty acids without adversely affecting carcass composition, muscle structure or meat eating quality. A total of 13 female and 12 castrated Pietrain×German Landrace pigs were fed a basal concentrate diet supplemented with 5% olive oil or 5% linseed oil during the growing-finishing period. Carcass composition and meat quality were not affected by the diet. Feeding linseed oil to pigs significantly increased the relative content of linolenic acid and long chain n-3 fatty acids in lipids of muscle, backfat and heart at the expense of arachidonic acid. Oleic acid was accumulated in muscle, backfat and heart lipids by feeding olive oil. The overall flavour of combined meat/backfat samples from castrates was negatively influenced by linseed oil supplementation compared to supplementation with olive oil. The oxidative stability of muscle lipids was lower in linseed oil-fed pigs compared to olive oil fed pigs. The greater cross section areas of the longissimus muscle of females were caused by an increased diameter of red, intermediate and white fibres.     

A general integral method for the determination of empirical reaction rates and parameters

A general procedure for the determination of empirical rates and kinetic parameters of irreversible, constant volume reactions is presented which is clearly superior to the conventional methods of kinetic analysis. By nonlinear regression of the integrated potential rate equation for stoichiometrically independent reactions of n the order, the empirical pre-exponential factor, activation energy, and reaction order are obtained. The regression equation relates explicitly the final concentration of the reference component not only to the time parameter of the reaction but also to the initial concentration. This includes an integral method for the determination of reaction orders in concentration. Two limiting cases are treated - the stoichiometric mixture of reactants and a mixture with one reactant in large excess. By analysis of standard Hougen-Watson rate models the dependence of empirical reaction orders on experimental conditions and simulated rate parameters is evaluated. By grouping the data into ranges of monotonous concentration change, conversion rates and rate parameters of reactions with changing volumes are calculated in a less rigorous deduction. The simplified interpretation of published experimental data is demonstated for the total oxidation of methane on Pd-catalysts and the dehydrogenation of cyclohexanol on ZnO.     

A new delay-line kicker with capacitive loading sandwiches

The delay-line type of kicker for the in- and ejection into and from cyclic accelerators is the right choice if extremely fast rise and fall times are required. It will be shown that it may be operated at 1/3 of the wave impedance of the pulse generator as compared to the lumped element solution with a corresponding reduction in the pulse voltage [1]. The pulse generator charge voltage will be reduced by a factor of 1.5. However, low wave impedance requires high capacitive loading for which the usual construction of delay-line magnets is prohibitive since is makes use of longitudinal subdivision of the ferritic core of the magnet into a number of individual cells, each cell consisting of a piece of ferrite followed by a capacitive plate connected to the magnet conductor. For decreasing cell length the percentage of longitudinal space occupied by the capacitive plate increases with a corresponding increase in overall length and a decrease in magnetic length. Therefore in practice there exists a lower limit for the cell length and the associated cell inductance. This in turn introduces a lower limit for the wave impedance since the capacitive loading would lead to unacceptable bulky capacitor units.

In this article a straightforward modification of the usual design of delay-line kickers will be described with a picture frame ferrite geometry as it is used for lumped element kickers and capacitive loading units being attached to the core like sandwiches. This approach offers a number of advantages compared to the conventional solution.     

Möglichkeiten zur Wasserstoff-Erzeugung mit verminderter Kohlendioxid-Emission für zukünftige Energiesysteme

Hydrogen production possibilities for future energy systems with reduced carbon dioxide emission. All possible hydrogen production methods which are of technical importance or could become technically important have been systematically classified. The conventional processes based on fossil raw materials, as well as hydrogen production from biomass, are considered with a view to the separation of CO₂ or the minimization of CO₂ emission by using nuclear energy or solar energy, or by using electric energy generated from these primary energies. In addition, possibilities of hydrogen production with carbon separation are investigated. The nonfossil processes using thermal, electric or radiation energy are treated briefly, and water electrolysis is described in more detail. Finally, the hydrogenation of fossil raw materials is discussed, which would lead to mixed carbon-hydrogen energy systems.     

Motion estimation in beating heart surgery

Minimally invasive beating-heart surgery offers substantial benefits for the patient, compared to conventional open surgery. Nevertheless, the motion of the heart poses increased requirements to the surgeon. To support the surgeon, algorithms for an advanced robotic surgery system are proposed, which offer motion compensation of the beating heart. This implies the measurement of heart motion, which can be achieved by tracking natural landmarks. In most cases, the investigated affine tracking scheme can be reduced to an efficient block matching algorithm allowing for realtime tracking of multiple landmarks. Fourier analysis of the motion parameters shows two dominant peaks, which correspond to the heart and respiration rates of the patient. The robustness in case of disturbance or occlusion can be improved by specially developed prediction schemes. Local prediction is well suited for the detection of single tracking outliers. A global prediction scheme takes several landmarks into account simultaneously and is able to bridge longer disturbances. As the heart motion is strongly correlated with the patient's electrocardiogram and respiration pressure signal, this information is included in a novel robust multisensor prediction scheme. Prediction results are compared to those of an artificial neural network and of a linear prediction approach, which shows the superior performance of the proposed algorithms.     

Cryogenic far-infrared laser absorptivity measurements of the Herschel Space Observatory telescope mirror coatings

Far-infrared laser calorimetry was used to measure the absorptivity, and thus the emissivity, of aluminum-coated silicon carbide mirror samples produced during the coating qualification run of the Herschel Space Observatory telescope to be launched by the European Space Agency in 2007. The samples were measured at 77 K to simulate the operating temperature of the telescope in its planned orbit about the second Lagrangian point, L2, of the Earth-Sun system. Together, the telescope's equilibrium temperature in space and the emissivity of the mirror surfaces will determine the far-infrared-submillimeter background and thus the sensitivity of two of the three astronomical instruments aboard the observatory if stray-light levels can be kept low relative to the mirror emission. Absorptivities of both clean and dust-contaminated samples were measured at 70, 118, 184, and 496 microm. Theoretical fits to the data predict absorptivities of 0.2-0.4% for the clean sample and 0.2-0.8% for the dusty sample, over the spectral range of the Herschel Space Observatory instruments.