Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design methodology of single-flux-quantum flip-flops composed of both 0- and π-shifted Josephson junctions

A methodology for designing single-flux-quantum (SFQ) flip-flops composed of both conventional (0-) and π-shifted Josephson junctions is investigated. We investigated the implementation of a storage loop, which can store flux quantum and is indispensable to express binary logic states in superconductor logic circuits. As all SFQ flip-flops have storage loops, the investigated design methodology can be applied to their design. We designed several SFQ flip-flops composed of 0- and π-shifted Josephson junctions using the investigated design methodology. The performances of the designed SFQ flip-flops were quantitatively evaluated by using an analog circuit simulator which we developed. We confirmed the correct operation of various SFQ flip-flops composed of 0- and π-shifted Josephson junctions with wide operating margins. Moreover, we observed that the investigated design methodology is suitable for SFQ flip-flops with complementary outputs because a storage loop composed of both 0- and π-shifted Josephson junctions has a symmetric structure and the complementary output function can be realized by using the storage loop. Our investigation indicates that the number of Josephson junctions and static power consumption of a non-destructive read-out flip-flop with complementary outputs (NDROC) can be reduced to less than half of those of the conventional NDROC, which has two storage loops composed of 0-Josephson junctions, to realize the complementary output function. The investigated design methodology is expected to be applied to not only SFQ circuits but also other superconducting logic circuits and novel reconfigurable logic devices using programmable 0-π Josephson junctions.
Reduced‐reference quality metric based on local sharpness measure for blurred images

A simple yet robust reduced-reference quality metric based on local sharpness measure for blurred images in discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain is introduced. As a single feature to represent the quantification of blur in an image, a global image sharpness is quantified from the local sharpness with a selected optimal subset of DCT coefficients in each overlapped block in the feature extraction process. Then, the final objective quality score is simply calculated by division by the reference value in the quality analysis process. The experimental results on three public quality assessment databases demonstrate the proposed method correlates highly with human subjective judgements and outperform other methods consistently in terms of prediction accuracy and monotonicity for a wide range of blurriness.
INEQUALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH RATIOS OF GAMMA FUNCTIONS

We use properties of the gamma function to estimate the products $\prod _{k=1}^{n}(4k-3)/4k$ and $\prod _{k=1}^{n}(4k-1)/4k$ , motivated by the work of Chen and Qi [‘Completely monotonic function associated with the gamma function and proof of Wallis’ inequality’, Tamkang J. Math. 36(4) (2005), 303–307] and Mortici et al. [‘Completely monotonic functions and inequalities associated to some ratio of gamma function’, Appl. Math. Comput. 240 (2014), 168–174].
Morphological and Hormonal Changes Following Vasectomy in Rats, Suggesting a Functional Role for Leydig-Cell Associated Macrophages

Summary The effects of bilateral vasectomy on hor mone serum levels as well as Leydig cell and associated macrophage structure were analysed in parallel in rats 36 weeks following the operation. Serum testosterone was decreased in vasectomized rats (1.96 ±0.11 ng/ml) com pared with control animals (3.44 + 0.22 ng/ml, p < 0.05). Vasectomy also resulted in an increase in serum luteinizing hormone (LH) to 0.299 + 0.02 ng/ml compared to the con trol group (0.175 + 0.01 ng/ml, p < 0.05). Also serum fol licle-stimulating hormone (FSH) was increased following vasectomy (350.88 + 15.5 ng/ml) compared to 132.0 + 4.8 ng/ml in control animals (p<0.01). Morphometric analysis of Leydig cells showed hypertrophy with a 19% increase of total cell area, p < 0.01 (cytoplasm 28 %, nucleus 8 % increase). On the ultrastructural level, ley-dig cells demonstrated massively dilated smooth endo plasmic reticulum characteristic for stimulated cells. There was also a significant hypertrophy of the Leydig cell-as sociated macrophages. The macrophage cell area was en larged by 22%, p < 0.01 (cytoplasm 25%, nucleus 18%). Vasectomy also led to remarkable ultrastructural changes of macrophages with a marked dilated and extended rough endoplasmic reticulum. Macrophages were found in ap position to Leydig cells with close cellular contact zones, and they frequently formed cell extensions on Leydig cells. Our data obtained following vasectomy indicate that, by their close contacts to Leydig cells, as well as the known in fluence on Leydig-cell steroidogenesis, macrophages may form the basis of a local immunoendocrine regulation of the pituitary-gonadal axis.
Hidden Markov Models for Time Series: An Introduction Using R (2nd Edition)

The distribution of estimable parameters of observed data in some stochastic processes may be inﬂuenced by another yet unobservable process called the parameter process. Such a parameter process can be serially dependent. A tractable mathematical model to account for serially dependent processes is the Markov chain process, which can be applied to both observed and unobserved processes. A Markov chain process used to model an unobserved serially dependent process is commonly called hidden Markov model (HMM)
Demonstration of an optical phased array using electro-optic polymer phase shifters

We have been investigating an optical phased array (OPA) using electro-optic (EO) polymers in phase shifters to achieve ultrafast optical beam steering. In this paper, we describe the basic structures of the OPA using EO polymer phase shifters and show the beam steering capability of the OPA. The designed OPA has a multimode interference (MMI) beam splitter and 8-channel polymer waveguides with EO polymer phase shifters. We compare 1 × 8 MMI and cascaded 1 × 2 MMI beam splitters numerically and experimentally, and then obtain uniform intensity outputs from the 1 × 8 beam splitter. We fabricate the EO polymer OPA with a 1 × 8 MMI beam splitter to prevent intensity dispersion due to radiation loss in bending waveguides. We also evaluate the optical beam steering capability of the fabricated OPA and found a 2.7° deflection of far-field patterns when applying a voltage difference of 25 V in adjacent phase shifters.
Transtiff: Haptic Interaction with a Stick Interface with Various Stiffness

We propose Transtiff, a stick-shaped device that can display various stiffness for stick-based haptic interaction. The device has a stiffness-changing joint replicating an artificial muscle mechanism in the relay portion of the stick to change its stiffness. Transtiff can be applied to touch interaction of the screen, augmenting the haptic experience of operating with a stylus pen, which is usually felt uniform. As applications, users can experience the sensation of pen and brush writing on a single device. In addition, it is possible to change the stiffness of the device for each object on the screen to reproduce the tactile feel of that object.
Reprojection-Free VR Passthrough

Virtual reality (VR) passthrough uses external cameras on the front of a headset to allow the user to see their environment. However, passthrough cameras cannot physically be co-located with the user’s eyes, so the passthrough images have a different perspective than what the user would see without the headset. Although the images can be computationally reprojected into the desired view, errors in depth estimation and missing information at occlusion boundaries can lead to undesirable artifacts. We propose a novel computational camera that directly samples the rays that would have gone into the user’s eye, several centimeters behind the sensor. Our design contains an array of lenses with an aperture behind each lens, and the apertures are strategically placed to allow through only the desired rays. The resulting thin, flat architecture has suitable form factor for VR, and the image reconstruction is computationally lightweight, enabling low-latency passthrough. We demonstrate our approach experimentally in a fully functional binocular passthrough prototype with practical calibration and real-time image reconstruction.
Rhizomorph: The Coordinated Function of Shoots and Roots

Computer graphics has dedicated a considerable amount of effort to generating realistic models of trees and plants. Many existing methods leverage procedural modeling algorithms - that often consider biological findings - to generate branching structures of individual trees. While the realism of tree models generated by these algorithms steadily increases, most approaches neglect to model the root system of trees. However, the root system not only adds to the visual realism of tree models but also plays an important role in the development of trees. In this paper, we advance tree modeling in the following ways: First, we define a physically-plausible soil model to simulate resource gradients, such as water and nutrients. Second, we propose a novel developmental procedural model for tree roots that enables us to emergently develop root systems that adapt to various soil types. Third, we define long-distance signaling to coordinate the development of shoots and roots. We show that our advanced procedural model of tree development enables - for the first time - the generation of trees with their root systems.
Meso-Facets for Goniochromatic 3D Printing

Goniochromatic materials and objects appear to have different colors depending on viewing direction. This occurs in nature, such as in wood or minerals, and in human-made objects such as metal and effect pigments. In this paper, we propose algorithms to control multi-material 3D printers to produce goniochromatic effects on arbitrary surfaces by procedurally augmenting the input surface with meso-facets, which allow distinct colors to be assigned to different viewing directions of the input surface while introducing minimal changes to that surface. Previous works apply only to 2D or 2.5D surfaces, require multiple fabrication technologies, or make considerable changes to the input surface and require special post-processing, whereas our approach requires a single fabrication technology and no special post-processing. Our framework is general, allowing different generating functions for both the shape and color of the facets. Working with implicit representations allows us to generate geometric features at the limit of device resolution without tessellation. We evaluate our approach for performance, showing negligible overhead compared to baseline color 3D print processing, and for goniochromatic quality.
Generating Activity Snippets by Learning Human-Scene Interactions

We present an approach to generate virtual activity snippets, which comprise sequenced keyframes of multi-character, multi-object interaction scenarios in 3D environments, by learning from recordings of human-scene interactions. The generation consists of two stages. First, we use a sequential deep graph generative model with a temporal module to iteratively generate keyframe descriptions, which represent abstract interactions using graphs, while preserving spatial-temporal relations through the activities. Second, we devise an optimization framework to instantiate the activity snippets in virtual 3D environments guided by the generated keyframe descriptions. Our approach optimizes the poses of character and object instances encoded by the graph nodes to satisfy the relations and constraints encoded by the graph edges. The instantiation process includes a coarse 2D optimization followed by a fine 3D optimization to effectively explore the complex solution space for placing and posing the instances. Through experiments and a perceptual study, we applied our approach to generate plausible activity snippets under different settings.
ArrangementNet: Learning Scene Arrangements for Vectorized Indoor Scene Modeling

We present a novel vectorized indoor modeling approach that converts point clouds into building information models (BIM) with concise and semantically segmented polygonal meshes. Existing methods detect planar shapes and connect them to complete the scene. Some focus on floor plan reconstruction as a simplified problem to better analyze connectivity between planes of floors and walls. However, the connectivity analysis is still challenging and ill-posed with incomplete point clouds as input. We propose ArrangementNet to estimate scene arrangements from an incomplete point cloud, which we can easily convert into a BIM model. ArrangementNet is a novel graph neural network that consumes noisy over-partitioned initial arrangements extracted through non-learning techniques and outputs high-quality scene arrangement. The core of ArrangementNet is an extended graph convolution that leverages co-linear and co-face relationships in the arrangement and improves the quality of prediction in complex scenes. We apply ArrangementNet to improve floor plan and ceiling arrangements and enrich them with semantic objects as scene arrangements for scene generation. Our approach faithfully models challenging scenes obtained from laser scans or multiview stereo and shows significant improvement in BIM model reconstruction compared to the state-of-the-art. Our code is available at https://github.com/zssjh/ArrangementNet.
Trim Regions for Online Computation of From-Region Potentially Visible Sets

Visibility computation is a key element in computer graphics applications. More specifically, a from-region potentially visible set (PVS) is an established tool in rendering acceleration, but its high computational cost means a from-region PVS is almost always precomputed. Precomputation restricts the use of PVS to static scenes and leads to high storage cost, in particular, if we need fine-grained regions. For dynamic applications, such as streaming content over a variable-bandwidth network, online PVS computation with configurable region size is required. We address this need with trim regions, a new method for generating from-region PVS for arbitrary scenes in real time. Trim regions perform controlled erosion of object silhouettes in image space, implicitly applying the shrinking theorem known from previous work. Our algorithm is the first that applies automatic shrinking to unconstrained 3D scenes, including non-manifold meshes, and does so in real time using an efficient GPU execution model. We demonstrate that our algorithm generates a tight PVS for complex scenes and outperforms previous online methods for from-viewpoint and from-region PVS. It runs at 60 Hz for realistic game scenes consisting of millions of triangles and computes PVS with a tightness matching or surpassing existing approaches.
A Full-Wave Reference Simulator for Computing Surface Reflectance

Computing light reflection from rough surfaces is an important topic in computer graphics. Reflection models developed based on geometric optics fail to capture wave effects such as diffraction and interference, while existing models based on physical optics approximations give erroneous predictions under many circumstances (e.g. when multiple scattering from the surface cannot be ignored). We present a scalable 3D full-wave simulator for computing reference solutions to surface scattering problems, which can be used to evaluate and guide the development of approximate models for rendering. We investigate the range of validity for some existing wave optics based reflection models; our results confirm these models for low-roughness surfaces but also show that prior rendering methods do not accurately predict the scattering behavior of some types of surfaces. Our simulator is based on the boundary element method (BEM) and accelerated using the adaptive integral method (AIM), and is implemented to execute on modern GPUs. We demonstrate the simulator on domains up to 60 × 60 × 10 wavelengths, involving surface samples with significant height variations. Furthermore, we propose a new system for efficiently computing BRDF values for large numbers of incident and outgoing directions at once, by combining small simulations to characterize larger areas. Our simulator will be released as an open-source toolkit for computing surface scattering.
Example-Based Procedural Modeling Using Graph Grammars

We present a method for automatically generating polygonal shapes from an example using a graph grammar. Most procedural modeling techniques use grammars with manually created rules, but our method can create them automatically from an example. Our graph grammars generate graphs that are locally similar to a given example. We disassemble the input into small pieces called primitives and then reassemble the primitives into new graphs. We organize all possible locally similar graphs into a hierarchy and find matching graphs within the hierarchy. These matches are used to create a graph grammar that can construct every locally similar graph. Our method generates graphs using the grammar and then converts them into a planar graph drawing to produce the final shape.
Imperceptible Color Modulation for Power Saving in VR/AR

Untethered VR/AR HMDs can only last 2-3 hours on a single charge. Toward resolving this issue, we develop a real-time gaze-contingent power saving filter which modulates peripheral pixel color while preserving visual fidelity. At SIGGRAPH 2023, participants will be able to view a short panoramic video within a VR HMD with our perceptually-aware power saving filter turned on. Participants will also have the opportunity to view the power output of scenes through our power measurement setup.
Dense, Interlocking-Free and Scalable Spectral Packing of Generic 3D Objects

Packing 3D objects into a known container is a very common task in many industries such as packaging, transportation, and manufacturing. This important problem is known to be NP-hard and even approximate solutions are challenging. This is due to the difficulty of handling interactions between objects with arbitrary 3D geometries and a vast combinatorial search space. Moreover, the packing must be interlocking-free for real-world applications. In this work, we first introduce a novel packing algorithm to search for placement locations given an object. Our method leverages a discrete voxel representation. We formulate collisions between objects as correlations of functions computed efficiently using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). To determine the best placements, we utilize a novel cost function, which is also computed efficiently using FFT. Finally, we show how interlocking detection and correction can be addressed in the same framework resulting in interlocking-free packing. We propose a challenging benchmark with thousands of 3D objects to evaluate our algorithm. Our method demonstrates state-of-the-art performance on the benchmark when compared to existing methods in both density and speed.
AI-Mediated 3D Video Conferencing

We present an AI-mediated 3D video conferencing system that can reconstruct and autostereoscopically display a life-sized talking head using consumer-grade compute resources and minimal capture equipment. Our 3D capture uses a novel 3D lifting method that encodes a given 2D input into an efficient triplanar neural representation of the user, which can be rendered from novel viewpoints in real-time. Our AI-based techniques drastically reduce the cost for 3D capture, while providing a high-fidelity 3D representation on the receiver’s end at the cost of traditional 2D video streaming. Additional advantages of our AI-based approach include the ability to accommodate both photorealistic and stylized avatars, and the ability to enable mutual eye contact in multi-directional video conferencing. We demonstrate our system using a tracked stereo display for a personal viewing experience as well as a lightfield display for a room-scale multi-viewer experience.
Computational Long Exposure Mobile Photography

Long exposure photography produces stunning imagery, representing moving elements in a scene with motion-blur. It is generally employed in two modalities, producing either a foreground or a background blur effect. Foreground blur images are traditionally captured on a tripod-mounted camera and portray blurred moving foreground elements, such as silky water or light trails, over a perfectly sharp background landscape. Background blur images, also called panning photography, are captured while the camera is tracking a moving subject, to produce an image of a sharp subject over a background blurred by relative motion. Both techniques are notoriously challenging and require additional equipment and advanced skills. In this paper, we describe a computational burst photography system that operates in a hand-held smartphone camera app, and achieves these effects fully automatically, at the tap of the shutter button. Our approach first detects and segments the salient subject. We track the scene motion over multiple frames and align the images in order to preserve desired sharpness and to produce aesthetically pleasing motion streaks. We capture an under-exposed burst and select the subset of input frames that will produce blur trails of controlled length, regardless of scene or camera motion velocity. We predict inter-frame motion and synthesize motion-blur to fill the temporal gaps between the input frames. Finally, we composite the blurred image with the sharp regular exposure to protect the sharpness of faces or areas of the scene that are barely moving, and produce a final high resolution and high dynamic range (HDR) photograph. Our system democratizes a capability previously reserved to professionals, and makes this creative style accessible to most casual photographers.
Effect of Prior Exercise on the V·O2/Work Rate Relationship During Incremental Exercise and Constant Work Rate Exercise

Abstract The disproportionate increase in V˙O 2 (“extra V˙O 2 ”) reported at elevated intensity during incremental exercise (IE) might result from the same physiological mechanisms as the V˙O 2 slow component observed during heavy constant work rate exercise (CWRE). Moreover, it has been demonstrated that prior heavy exercise can diminish the V ˙ O 2 slow component. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether prior heavy exercise also alters the “extra V ˙ O 2 ” during IE. Ten trained sprinters performed three tests on a cycle ergometer: Test 1 was an IE; Test 2 consisted of six minutes of a CWRE (90% of V˙O 2max ) followed by six minutes at 35 W and by an IE and Test 3 was composed of two CWRE of six minutes separated by six minutes of exercise at 35 W. For each IE, the slope and the intercept of the V ˙ O 2 /work rate relationship were calculated by linear regression using data before the first Ventilatory Threshold (pre-VT1 slope). The difference be-tween V ˙ O 2max measured and V ˙ O 2max expected using the pre-LT slope was calculated (