Use of melatonin in recovery from jet-lag following an eastward flight across 10 time-zones

Subjective, physiological and physical performance variables are affected following travel across multiple time-zones (jet-lag). The objective of the study was to examine the effects of oral melatonin in alleviating jet-lag by investigating its effects on subjects who had flown from London to Eastern Australia, 10 time-zones to the east. Melatonin (5 mg day^?1) or placebo capsules were administered to 14 experimental (13 males and 1 female) and 17 control subjects (15 males and 2 females), respectively, in a double-blind study; the time of administration was in accord with the current consensus for maximizing its hypnotic effect. Grip strength and intra-aural temperature were measured on alternate days after arrival at the destination, at four different times of day (between the times 07:00 – 08:00 h, 12:00 13:00 h, 16:00 – 17:00 h and 19:00 – 20:00 h local time). In addition, for the first 6 – 7 days after arrival in Australia,subjective ratings of jet-lag on a 0- 10 visualanalogue scale and responses to a Jet-lag Questionnaire (incorporating items for tiredness, sleep, meal satisfaction and ability to concentrate) were recorded at the above times and also on retiring (at about midnight). Subjects continued normally with their work schedules between the data collection times. Subjects with complete data (13 melatonin and 13 placebo subjects), in comparison with published data, showed partial adjustment of the diurnal rhythm in intra-aural temperature after 6 days. A time-of-day effect was evident in both right and left grip strength during adjustment to Australian time; there was no difference between the group taking melatonin and that using the placebo. Right and left grip strength profiles on day 6 were adjusted either by advancing or delaying the profiles, independent of whether subjects were taking melatonin or placebo tablets. Subjects reported disturbances with most measures in the Jet-lag Questionnaire but, whereas poorer concentration and some negative effects upon sleep had disappeared after 3 – 5 days, ratings of jet-lag and tiredness had not returned to ‘zero’ (or normal values), respectively, by the sixth day of the study. Subjects taking melatonin showed no significant differences from the placebo group in perceived irritability, concentration, meal satisfaction, ease in getting to sleep and staying asleep, frequency of bowel motion and consistency of the faeces. These results suggest that, in subjects who, after arrival, followed a busy schedule which resulted in frequent and erratic exposure to daylight, melatonin had no benefit in alleviating jet-lag or the components of jet-lag, and it did not influence the process of phase adjustment.     

三维动画表演教学研究——浅析动画表演中角色动作与角色情感性格

随着科技的发展,数字动画及影视特技特效越来越被广泛应用,三维动画作为新兴科技、艺术、技术和表演的综合体,被广泛应用在虚拟现实中。动画师作为动画角色的创作者表演有着至关重要作用。在动画创作过程中,要使动画师能够抓住角色的性格,必须亲身体验角色表演的整个过程,抓住角色的肢体语言动作与角色的情态特征,使所创作的角色更加鲜活。     

Towards view-invariant gait modeling: Computing view-normalized body part trajectories

This paper proposes an approach to compute view-normalized body part trajectories of pedestrians walking on potentially non-linear paths. The proposed approach finds applications in gait modeling, gait biometrics, and in medical gait analysis. Our approach uses the 2D trajectories of both feet and the head extracted from the tracked silhouettes. On that basis, it computes the apparent walking (sagittal) planes for each detected gait half-cycle. A homography transformation is then computed for each walking plane to make it appear as if walking was observed from a fronto-parallel view. Finally, each homography is applied to head and feet trajectories over each corresponding gait half-cycle. View normalization makes head and feet trajectories appear as if seen from a fronto-parallel viewpoint, which is assumed to be optimal for gait modeling purposes. The proposed approach is fully automatic as it requires neither manual initialization nor camera calibration. An extensive experimental evaluation of the proposed approach confirms the validity of the normalization process.     

浅谈综合布线系统接地设计

综合布线系统作为建筑智能化不可缺少的基础设施，其接地系统的好坏将直接影响到综合布线系统的运行质量，故而显得尤为重要。本文介绍了综合布线系统接地的结构及设计要求，并提出在接地设计中应注意的几个问题．     

“软件人”的概念模型与构造特征

本文是国家自然科学基金“计算机网络环境中虚拟机器人——‘软件人’的研究”(基金项目编号：60375038)研究内容的一部分。文章对“软件人”(SoftMan：SM)的概念、概念模型及拳体构遣特征等进行了探讨，在此基础上提出了“软件人”的拳体结构模型，为进一步构造“软件人”的行为算法和软件人功能建立了基础。     

Experiencing Nature: Embodying Animals in Immersive Virtual Environments Increases Inclusion of Nature in Self and Involvement With Nature

Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) produce simulations that mimic unmediated sensory experiences. 3 experiments (N = 228) tested how different modalities increase environmental involvement by allowing users to inhabit the body of animals in IVEs or watch the experience on video. Embodying sensory‐rich experiences of animals in IVEs led to greater feeling of embodiment, perception of being present in the virtual world, and interconnection between the self and nature compared to video. Heightened interconnection with nature elicited greater perceptions of imminence of the environmental risk and involvement with nature, which persisted for 1 week. Although the effect sizes were small to moderate, findings suggest that embodied experiences in IVEs may be an effective tool to promote involvement with environmental issues.     

强跟踪滤波器在潜射运载器传递对准中的应用

潜射运载器在发射前进行精确的传递对准十分重要.然而潜射运载器的传递对准精度会因为潜艇挠曲变形而受到严重影响.为了解决艇体挠曲变形给运载器传递对准精度带来的不利影响,对强跟踪滤波器在潜射运载器动基座传递对准中的应用进行了研究,设计了强跟踪滤波器,仿真结果表明在潜艇具有很小的机动以及考虑艇体挠曲变形的条件下能够较好地估计出从惯导相对主惯导的失准角.由于该方法不必建立艇体挠曲变形的复杂模型,使得解决挠曲变形对传递对准精度影响的问题大大简化了,具有一定的工程意义.     

Multimouth surfaces for synthetic actor animation

Most parts of the human body are cylindrical in shape. Generalized cylinders, with two cross-sectional openings, are a logical choice to represent these cylindrical shapes. However, a variety of human body regions can be visualized as surfaces with multiple openings or multimouth (MM) surfaces. Some examples of such surfaces are the pelvis, the chest, and the palms of the hands. We investigated the suitability of non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) formulation for creating multimouth surfaces. Two techniques, the surface wrapping model and the garland model, are presented.     

基于二维关节型人体模型和EM算法的人体跟踪

提出一种跟踪单眼图像序列中的行人,并恢复其运动参数的新方法.在跟踪中采用了基于SPM(Sealed Prismat Model)扩展的二维纸板人模型取代三维人体模型,以获取更快的计算速度.作者使用EM算法在概率框架下进行运动估计,同时,算法也考虑了混合的运动模型和运动约束,以减小解的搜索空间.试验结果证明了该方法的有效性.     

Parametric 3D modeling of young women's lower bodies based on shape classification

Three-dimensional (3D) human body modeling is an important research direction in the field of clothing virtual design. On the basis of 3D human body scanning, this paper studied a method to build a 3D parametric lower body model according to body classification. The research includes three main parts. (1) Anthropometry and body shape classification. We randomly selected 333 young women ages 18–25 years old in Northeast China as the experimental sample. Then we divided the lower body shape into three categories using principal component analysis and K-means clustering. (2) Determination of feature cross sections and points, and reconstruction of feature curves. According to the average values of each body type, we obtained the mean reference body by Euclidean distance method. We determined feature cross sections and points, and extracted the 3D coordinates of the feature points of the mean reference body to reconstruct the feature curves. (3) The surface lofting and establishment of parametric 3D lower body model. According to the shape characteristics of the lower body, we constructed the guiding lines for the crotch and lower limbs, and established parametric lower body models for three body types.Relevance to industry3D human modeling is an important part of garment industry digitization. This research provides an effective way to construct a parametric 3D lower body model. The method offers a reference for the parametric virtual human modeling and virtual fitting of trousers.