bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of Postharvest Storability of Ponkan Mandarins at Different Storage Temperatures Based on Principal Component Analysis
Authors: Cai Nan , Wan Chunpeng , Chen Jinyin , Chen Chuying
Published: November 2019

To reduce postharvest losses of Ponkan mandarins caused by outdated storage facilities and preservation technology, we evaluated the preservation effect of different storage temperatures on Ponkan mandarins (5 ±1, 10 ± 1, 15 ± 1, and 20 ±1 °C), and obtained a comprehensive score using principal component analysis (PCA) to determine its suitable storage temperature. The results indicate that, relative to the other three storage temperatures, storage at 10 °C significantly maintains high total soluble solid content, titratable acid, and vitamin C contents; the accumulation of malondialdehyde (MDA) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) content decreased and changes in the relative conductivity (REC) were suppressed; and high activities of superoxide-dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT), and ascorbate peroxidase (APX), as well as high contents of total phenol and total flavonoid were maintained. The PCA and clustering heat map results show that that the comprehensive score was the highest when stored at 10 °C. The data indicate that the suitable storage temperature of Ponkan mandarins at 10 °C significantly decreased MDA accumulation and reactive oxygen species metabolism, maintains high antioxidant capacity, maintains good fruit quality and achieves good storage and preservation effect, which is the appropriate storage temperature for Ponkan mandarins.
Acute exposure to nicotine vapor causes short-term increases in impulsive choice in rats
Authors: Flores R.J. , Alshbool F.Z. , Giner P. , O’Dell L.E. , Mendez I.A.
Published: November 2019

Background

Previous studies have shown that exposure to nicotine smoke increases impulsivity. Surprisingly, research investigating the effects of electronic cigarette nicotine vapor exposure on impulsivity has not been conducted. Therefore, the present study examined the effects of nicotine vapor exposure on impulsive choice.

Methods

Twenty-four adult male rats were trained in the delay discounting task to choose between small immediate food rewards or larger food rewards with delayed deliveries. After 24 days of training in the delay discounting task, rats were passively exposed to vapor containing either 0, 12, or 24 mg/mL of nicotine for 10 days. To monitor exposure to nicotine, serum cotinine levels were assessed on exposure days 1, 5, and 10 using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Following vapor exposure, rats were retrained in the delay discounting task until stable performance was achieved, and the effects of nicotine vapor exposure on choice preference were assessed.

Results

Rats that were exposed to 12 and 24 mg/mL nicotine vapor displayed higher serum cotinine levels, relative to those exposed to 0 mg/mL nicotine vapor. There were no differences in impulsive choice between any of the vapor groups when tested 15-21 days after exposure. However, increases in impulsive choice were observed when testing immediately following exposure to 24 mg/mL nicotine vapor, relative to immediately following exposure to 0 mg/mL nicotine vapor.

Conclusions

Findings suggest that while exposure to nicotine vapor may not cause long-term changes in decision making, it can cause short-term increases in impulsive choice, an effect that can have negative social and health consequences.
Formation of two crystal modifications of Fe7C3−x
at 5.5 GPa
Authors: Gromilov Sergey , Chepurov Anatoly , Sonin Valeri , Zhimulev Egor , Sukhikh Aleksandr , Chepurov Aleksei , Shcheglov Dmitry
Published: November 2019

The Fe–C system, which is widely used to grow commercial high-pressure–high-temperature diamond monocrystals, is rather complicated due to the formation of carbides. The carbide Fe3C is a normal run product, but the pressure at which Fe7C3 carbide becomes stable is a subject of discussion. This paper demonstrates the synthesis of Fe7C3 carbide and its detailed study using single-crystal and powder X-ray diffraction, as well as electron probe micro-analysis and scanning electron microscopy. The experiments were performed using a multiple-anvil high-pressure apparatus of `split-sphere' (BARS) type at a pressure of 5.5 GPa and a temperature of 1623 K. Our results show that in the Fe–C system, in addition to diamond, a phase that corresponds to the Fe7C3 carbide was synthesized. This means that both carbides (Fe7C3 and Fe3C) are stable at 5.5 GPa. Two crystal phases are described, Fe14C6 and Fe28C12−x
. Fe14C6 is based on the well known rhombic structure of Fe7C3, while Fe28C12−x
has a different packing order of Fe6C polyhedrons. The results obtained in this study should be taken into account when synthesizing and growing diamond at high pressures and temperatures in metal–carbon systems with a high iron content, as well as when conducting experimental studies on the synthesis of diamond directly from carbide.
Boundary element analysis for elasticity problems using expanding element interpolation method
Authors: Zhang Jianming , Han Lei , Zhong Yudong , Dong Yunqiao , Lin Weicheng
Published: November 2019

Purpose

This paper aims to propose a boundary element analysis of two-dimensional linear elasticity problems by a new expanding element interpolation method.

Design/methodology/approach

The expanding element is made up based on a traditional discontinuous element by adding virtual nodes along the perimeter of the element. The internal nodes of the original discontinuous element are referred to as source nodes and its shape function as raw shape function. The shape functions of the expanding element constructed on both source nodes and virtual nodes are referred as fine shape functions. Boundary variables are interpolated by the fine shape functions, while the boundary integral equations are collocated on source nodes.

Findings

The expanding element inherits the advantages of both the continuous and discontinuous elements while overcomes their disadvantages. The polynomial order of fine shape functions of the expanding elements increases by two compared with their corresponding raw shape functions, while the expanding elements still keep independence to each other as the original discontinuous elements. This feature makes the expanding elements able to naturally and accurately interpolate both continuous and discontinuous fields.

Originality/value

Numerical examples are presented to verify the proposed method. Results have demonstrated that the accuracy, efficiency and convergence rate of the expanding element method.
Workplace positive actions, trans people’s self-esteem and human resources’ evaluations
Authors: Bozani Vasiliki , Drydakis Nick , Sidiropoulou Katerina , Harvey Benjamin , Paraskevopoulou Anna
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical patterns regarding trans people’s self-esteem-oriented evaluations during observations of positive workplace actions. The case of a 2015 UK workplace guide is utilized to fulfil the aims. The guide provides suggestions to employers for recruiting and retaining trans people.

Design/methodology/approach

A new questionnaire is created which forms a 20-item scale capturing a variety of self-evaluations. Trans people provided their responses in a 2018–2019 survey and the study’s patterns were captured.

Findings

The outcomes suggest that trans people’s self-esteem and self-respect are enhanced by policy makers’ positive actions to promote inclusivity in the workplace. In addition, due to these actions trans people feel more accepted, valued and trusted by the government. The authors suggest that a lack of positive workplace actions may be detrimental to trans people’s self-esteem. However, if a workplace policy is perceived to be a recognition of trans people’s worth this may be internalized, resulting in positive self-evaluations. The authors suggest that the 2015 workplace guide aims to ensure that trans people’s self-expressions are not constrained in ways that could cause them self-esteem difficulties.

Practical implications

The study also finds that firms which have implemented the workplace guide have informed human resources strategies, affected corporate profiles and staff organizational behaviours, created a more inclusive workplace culture, and addressed LGBT business and trans staff members’ needs. The authors suggest that when employers utilize policy makers’ positive workplace policies they may be able to realize positive organizational outcomes in their firms.

Social implications

The World Health Organization perceives self-esteem as a public matter and this study suggests that inclusive workplace strategies can positively affect the psychological states of a highly marginalized population group.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first attempt to quantify how a workplace guide impacts on self-esteem-oriented evaluations among trans people. Each one of the 20 items in the scale brings new insights into the subject matter.
Irish occupational therapists use of evidenced-based falls prevention programmes
Authors: Lombard Kim , Desmond Laura , Phelan Ciara , Brangan Joan
Published: November 2019

Purpose

As one ages, the risk of experiencing a fall increases and poses a number of serious consequences; 30 per cent of individuals over 65 years of age fall each year. Evidence-based falls prevention programmes demonstrate efficacy in reducing the rate and risk of falls among older adults, but their use in Irish occupational therapy practice is unknown. This study aims to investigate the implementation of falls prevention programmes by occupational therapists working with older adults in Ireland.

Design/methodology/approach

A cross-sectional survey was used to gather data on the use of falls prevention programmes among occupational therapists working with older adults in any clinical setting across Ireland. Purposeful, convenience and snowball sampling methods were used. The Association of Occupational Therapists of Ireland acted as a gatekeeper. Descriptive statistics and summative content analysis were used to analyse quantitative and qualitative data, respectively.

Findings

In all, 85 survey responses were analysed. Over 85 per cent of respondents reported “Never” using any of the evidence-based falls prevention programmes. The “OTAGO” Exercise Programme was the most “Frequently” used programme (9.5 per cent, n = 7); 29 respondents reported using “in-department” developed falls prevention programmes and 14 provided additional comments regarding current falls prevention practices in Ireland.

Originality/value

In the absence of Irish data on the subject, this study provides a benchmark to describe the use of evidence-based falls programmes by Irish occupational therapists with older adults.
Aligning financial inclusion and financial integrity
Authors: Tran Thu Thi Hoai , De Koker Louis
Published: November 2019

Purpose

This study aims to consider the anti-money laundering/combating of financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime that applies to microfinance institutions (MFIs) and microfinance programmes and projects (MFPs) in Vietnam to identify ways in which to improve the alignment between financial inclusion and financial integrity objectives in relation to this sector.

Design/methodology/approach

This doctrinal study is informed by the Financial Action Task Force mutual evaluation methodology.

Findings

The AML/CFT regulatory framework for MFIs/MFPs is inadequate but improving. The money laundering and terrorist financing risks posed by microfinance are low and so is the capacity of many providers to comply with AML/CFT obligations. Given the low risk, there is space to simplify AML/CFT requirements for this sector in a manner that will better align financial inclusion and financial integrity policy objectives.

Research limitations/implications

This paper considers the implementation of AML/CFT obligations of MFIs/MFPs based on existing studies as well as own research relating to compliance and supervisory practices. Further empirical studies to determine for the whole microfinance sector could provide a more granular understanding of crime risks and compliance capacities in the sector.

Practical implications

AML/CFT regulators in Vietnam can take concrete steps to simplify the AML/CFT due diligence obligations of MFIs/MFPs and support these institutions to formalise and implement appropriate AML/CFT measures.

Social implications

MFIs/MFPs play a vital socio-economic role by providing financial services to the poor. Appropriate AML/CFT control measures can enable these providers to continue providing these services while strengthening economic formalisation and integrity goals of the government.

Originality/value

The paper provides novel supervisory perspectives on the AML/CFT regime in relation to MFIs/MFPs.
The problem of regulating the easy way out – EU money laundering regulation
Authors: Rose Kalle Johannes
Published: November 2019

Purpose

Current research within law and economics focus on money laundering as an externality problem caused by financial institutions. Thus, when existing research and legislation place the responsibility on financial institutions, it creates a void where it is neglected that clients of financial institutions may, in fact, play a vital role in the problem of externality. However, based on the definition of money laundering, this paper aims to examine and analyze the need to focus on the clients as part of the externality problem with regard to money laundering.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper examines how a lack of regulatory focus on the clients of financial institutions lead to inefficient anti-money laundering regulation. Through a functional approach of law and economics, it analyzes the externality problem of money laundering based on both the legal definition and the economic conditions of the problem.

Findings

Based on the fourth anti-money laundering directive, the paper argues that present regulation has a tendency to focus on financial institutions, thereby not considering the entire scope of the externality problem in money laundering. For regulation to efficiently combat money laundering, it is necessary to place some responsibility on the clients of financial institutions and not solely on the financial institutions. Nevertheless, the inclusion of client responsibility might lead to some legal or economic complications, which need to be subject to further research.

Originality/value

The paper identifies the need for a fundamental change in the perception of the externality problem of money laundering, and thus, presents the required approach to reach an efficient solution.
The hoax of demonetization in Indian economy: a mathematical analysis
Authors: Roy Debasish
Published: November 2019

Purpose

Over one and half years have passed since the demonetization of Indian economy had occurred on November 8, 2016. The drastic step was initiated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an intention to curb the “huge” circulation of illicit or “black” money of Indian economy by means of withdrawal of high value denominations of Rupees 500 and Rupees 1,000 from the supply of broad money (M3). This step helped to demonetize around 86 per cent value of total money supply leading to an unprecedented chaos in the economy and public life. The long delays in issuing fresh currency notes at the banks and ATMs further deteriorated the sudden economic crisis.

Design/methodology/approach

This research paper is aimed at exploring the proclaimed “efficacy” of demonetization policy as proposed by Reserve Bank of India by means of a mathematical approach and critically examines the effects of demonetization on the illicit money supply of Indian economy on the basis of macroeconomic theory.

Findings

From the mathematical model and related estimates, it may be easily deduced that the Indian policymakers deliberately hurled the masses in one of the gravest economic crises with a clear-cut intention of creating a political gimmick, when in reality, the proportion of illegitimate money supply was not even 1 per cent of total legitimate supply of money.

Originality/value

The analyses and findings related to this paper are based on mathematical modeling and logical interpretations. This paper is free of plagiarism as all the necessary sources and references are properly cited.
Halkbank and OFAC: a sanctions evasion case study
Authors: Scott Benjamin Fraser
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to use two recent US prosecutions of Turkish nationals for sanctions evasion, the Zarrab and Atilla cases, as case studies of recent developments in US sanctions law and law enforcement.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses primary sources (pleadings and other court documents) to articulate the key facts and arguments in the Zarrab and Atilla cases and to explain the sanctions evasion methodologies used by the group. This paper then draws out the lessons of these cases for the practice of financial crime compliance in banking institutions.

Findings

This paper highlights the expanding scope of US sanctions laws and the challenges for banks in complying with them. In particular, it shows the similarities between sanctions evasion and other financial crime methodologies, arguing that banks need to become more interdisciplinary in their operational approach to financial crime.

Originality/value

The Zarrab and Atilla cases are of international significance in sanction law. This paper is the first in-depth case study of these cases from a legal and compliance perspective.
Maintenance strategy selection in a cement industry using analytic network process
Authors: Kurian Mary C. , P.R. Shalij , V.R. Pramod
Published: November 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the application of analytic network process (ANP) as a methodology to make multiple criteria decision in selecting the most appropriate maintenance strategy for organizations with critical manufacturing requirements.

Design/methodology/approach

Maintenance strategy selection problems are multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problems which consist of many qualitative and quantitative characteristics. For solving MCDM problems, the ANP is highly recommended as it considers the interdependent influences among and between the various levels of decision attributes. In this research paper, the ANP method is used to select the optimum maintenance strategy in a cement industry in India.

Findings

The ANP method can be used as an effective tool for the evaluation of possible alternatives in maintenance strategy decision problems by considering the dependency among the strategic factors.

Research limitations/implications

As illustrated in this paper, ANP method can also be used in other industries for adopting the optimum maintenance strategy to enhance the business performance by decreasing the losses associated with equipment effectiveness.

Practical implications

The major contribution of this research is the successful development of the comprehensive ANP model for the cement plant. ANP model incorporates diversified variables of the cement plant supply chain and includes their interdependencies. The proposed ANP model in this paper, not only guides the decision makers in the selection of the best services but also enables them to visualize the impact of various criteria in the arrival of the final solution.

Social implications

The model can be extended to certain other manufacturing sectors as the future scope of research and may assist in obtaining a clear idea regarding the status of current maintenance strategies. It should be carried out with a larger number of firms in India focusing on small and medium firms to confirm these results and reinforce their applicability to these kinds of firms. Studies of such a nature would help in identifying successful organizational factors or successful maintenance practices that lead to superior performance.

Originality/value

This paper explores the value of implementing ANP as a decision making method in maintenance strategy, which is currently not a prevalent method.
Prevalence and Economic Burden of Malnutrition Diagnosis Among Patients Presenting to United States Emergency Departments
Authors: Lanctin David P. , Merced‐Nieves Francheska , Mallett Renee M. , Arensberg Mary Beth , Guenter Peggi , Sulo Suela , Platts‐Mills Timothy F.
Published: November 2019

Background

Malnutrition is a potentially remediable condition that when untreated contributes to poor health and economic outcomes. While assessment of malnutrition risk is improving, its identification rate and economic burden in emergency departments (EDs) is largely unknown. We sought to determine prevalence and economic burden of diagnosed malnutrition among patients presenting to U.S. EDs.

Methods

This is a retrospective analysis of Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Emergency Department Sample data. Malnutrition prevalence was confirmed via International Classification of Diseases, 9th Edition, diagnosis codes. The economic burden was assessed by comparing probability of hospitalization and the average total charges between propensity‐score matched visits with and without a malnutrition diagnosis.

Results

Data from 238 million ED visits between 2006 and 2014 were analyzed. Over this period, the prevalence of diagnosed malnutrition increased for all demographic categories assessed. For older adults (≥65 years), the prevalence increased from 2.5% (2006) to 3.6% (2014). Older age, high‐income community residence, Western region, urban areas, and Medicare coverage were associated with higher diagnosis prevalence. Malnutrition diagnosis was associated with a 4.23 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.93 to 4.55) times higher odds of hospitalization and $21,892 higher mean total charges (95% CI = $19,593 to $24,192).

Conclusions

While malnutrition is currently diagnosed at a low rate in U.S. EDs, the economic burden of malnutrition is substantial in this care setting. Given the potential for systematic malnutrition screening and treatment protocols to alleviate this burden, future research is warranted.
Stereoselective neurochemical, behavioral, and cardiovascular effects of α‐pyrrolidinovalerophenone enantiomers in male rats
Authors: Schindler Charles W. , Thorndike Eric B. , Walters Hailey M. , Walther Donna , Rice Kenner C. , Baumann Michael H.
Published: November 2019

The synthetic cathinone α‐pyrrolidinovalerophenone (α‐PVP) continues to be abused despite being banned by regulatory agencies. The abused formulation of α‐PVP is a racemic mixture consisting of two enantiomers, S‐α‐PVP and R‐α‐PVP. In this study, we investigated the neurochemical, behavioral, and cardiovascular effects of racemic α‐PVP and its enantiomers in male rats. Racemic α‐PVP blocked the uptake of both dopamine and norepinephrine ex vivo, but did not block the uptake of serotonin (5‐HT), at their respective transporters. S‐α‐PVP was slightly more potent than racemic α‐PVP, while R‐α‐PVP was 10 to 20 times less potent at blocking dopamine and norepinephrine uptake. In microdialysis studies, racemic and S‐α‐PVP increased extracellular dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, but not levels of 5‐HT. Racemic and S‐α‐PVP also increased locomotor activity. When tested at the same doses, S‐α‐PVP produced larger effects than racemic α‐PVP. R‐α‐PVP also increased extracellular dopamine levels and locomotor activity, but only at 30 times higher doses than S‐α‐PVP. Racemic and S‐α‐PVP were self‐administered by rats at 0.03 mg/kg/injection, whereas R‐α‐PVP was self‐administered at a 10 times higher dose. Dose‐effect determinations following acquisition suggested that R‐α‐PVP was at least 30 times less potent than S‐α‐PVP. Finally, racemic and S‐α‐PVP increased blood pressure and heart rate at doses approximately 30 times less than was required for R‐α‐PVP to produce similar effects. These results show that the neurochemical, behavioral, and cardiovascular effects of racemic α‐PVP most likely reflect the actions of S isomer.
Superior survival of unmanipulated haploidentical haematopoietic stem cell transplantation compared with intensive chemotherapy as post‐remission treatment for children with very high‐risk philadelphia chromosome negative B‐cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in first complete remission
Authors: Xue Yu‐juan , Suo Pan , Huang Xiao‐jun , Lu Ai‐dong , Wang Yu , Zuo Ying‐xi , Yan Chen‐hua , Wu Jun , Kong Jun , Zhang Xiao‐hui , Chen Yu‐hong , Jia Yue‐ping , Liu Kai‐yan , Han Wei , Xu Lan‐ping , Zhang Le‐ping , Cheng Yi‐fei
Published: November 2019

We explored the prognostic factors for children with very high‐risk (VHR) Philadelphia chromosome (Ph) negative B‐cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (B‐ALL) and compared the therapeutic effects of intensive chemotherapy and unmanipulated haploidentical haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (haplo‐HSCT) as post‐remission treatment in these patients undergoing first complete remission (CR1). A total of 104 paediatric patients with VHR B‐ALL in CR1 were retrospectively enrolled in this study, including 42 receiving unmanipulated haplo‐HSCT (Group A) and 62 receiving ongoing chemotherapy (Group B). Estimated 3‐year overall survival (OS), disease‐free survival (DFS) and cumulative incidence of relapse (CIR) at 36·2 months median follow‐up were 69·5 ± 4·7%, 63·5 ± 4·8% and 32·4 ± 4·7%, respectively. Maintenance of persistent positive or conversion from negative to positive of measurable residual disease (MRD) and chemotherapy were independent risk factors associated with inferior long‐term survival and higher CIR. OS, DFS, and CIR differed significantly between the groups in patients with persistent positive or negative‐to‐positive MRD. Haplo‐HSCT may be an option for children with VHR Ph‐negative B‐ALL in CR1, especially for patients with persistent positive or negative‐to‐positive MRD, and could achieve better survival than intensive chemotherapy as post‐remission treatment.
Learning to Trace: Expressive Line Drawing Generation from Photographs
Authors: Inoue N. , Ito D. , Xu N. , Yang J. , Price B. , Yamasaki T.
Published: November 2019

In this paper, we present a new computational method for automatically tracing high‐resolution photographs to create expressive line drawings. We define expressive lines as those that convey important edges, shape contours, and large‐scale texture lines that are necessary to accurately depict the overall structure of objects (similar to those found in technical drawings) while still being sparse and artistically pleasing. Given a photograph, our algorithm extracts expressive edges and creates a clean line drawing using a convolutional neural network (CNN). We employ an end‐to‐end trainable fully‐convolutional CNN to learn the model in a data‐driven manner. The model consists of two networks to cope with two sub‐tasks; extracting coarse lines and refining them to be more clean and expressive. To build a model that is optimal for each domain, we construct two new datasets for face/body and manga background. The experimental results qualitatively and quantitatively demonstrate the effectiveness of our model. We further illustrate two practical applications.
Deep Line Drawing Vectorization via Line Subdivision and Topology Reconstruction
Authors: Guo Yi , Zhang Zhuming , Han Chu , Hu Wenbo , Li Chengze , Wong Tien‐Tsin
Published: November 2019

Vectorizing line drawing is necessary for the digital workflows of 2D animation and engineering design. But it is challenging due to the ambiguity of topology, especially at junctions. Existing vectorization methods either suffer from low accuracy or cannot deal with high‐resolution images. To deal with a variety of challenging containing different kinds of complex junctions, we propose a two‐phase line drawing vectorization method that analyzes the global and local topology. In the first phase, we subdivide the lines into partial curves, and in the second phase, we reconstruct the topology at junctions. With the overall topology estimated in the two phases, we can trace and vectorize the curves. To qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate our method and compare it with the existing methods, we conduct extensive experiments on not only existing datasets but also our newly synthesized dataset which contains different types of complex and ambiguous junctions. Experimental statistics show that our method greatly outperforms existing methods in terms of computational speed and achieves visually better topology reconstruction accuracy.
Surface Fairing towards Regular Principal Curvature Line Networks
Authors: Chu Lei , Bo Pengbo , Liu Yang , Wang Wenping
Published: November 2019

Freeform surfaces whose principal curvature line network is regularly distributed, are essential to many real applications like CAD modeling, architecture design, and industrial fabrication. However, most designed surfaces do not hold this nice property because it is hard to enforce such constraints in the design process. In this paper, we present a novel method for surface fairing which takes a regular distribution of the principal curvature line network on a surface as an objective. Our method first removes the high‐frequency signals from the curvature tensor field of an input freeform surface by a novel rolling guidance tensor filter, which results in a more regular and smooth curvature tensor field, then deforms the input surface to match the smoothed field as much as possible. As an application, we solve the problem of approximating freeform surfaces with regular principal curvature line networks, discretized by quadrilateral meshes. By introducing the circular or conical conditions on the quadrilateral mesh to guarantee the existence of discrete principal curvature line networks, and minimizing the approximate error to the original surface and improving the fairness of the quad mesh, we obtain a regular discrete principal curvature line network that approximates the original surface. We evaluate the efficacy of our method on various freeform surfaces and demonstrate the superiority of the rolling guidance tensor filter over other tensor smoothing techniques. We also utilize our method to generate high‐quality circular/conical meshes for architecture design and cyclide spline surfaces for CAD modeling.
Generating 3D Faces using Multi‐column Graph Convolutional Networks
Authors: Li Kun , Liu Jingying , Lai Yu‐Kun , Yang Jingyu
Published: November 2019

In this work, we introduce multi‐column graph convolutional networks (MGCNs), a deep generative model for 3D mesh surfaces that effectively learns a non‐linear facial representation. We perform spectral decomposition of meshes and apply convolutions directly in the frequency domain. Our network architecture involves multiple columns of graph convolutional networks (GCNs), namely large GCN (L‐GCN), medium GCN (M‐GCN) and small GCN (S‐GCN), with different filter sizes to extract features at different scales. L‐GCN is more useful to extract large‐scale features, whereas S‐GCN is effective for extracting subtle and fine‐grained features, and M‐GCN captures information in between. Therefore, to obtain a high‐quality representation, we propose a selective fusion method that adaptively integrates these three kinds of information. Spatially non‐local relationships are also exploited through a self‐attention mechanism to further improve the representation ability in the latent vector space. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the superiority of our end‐to‐end framework in improving the accuracy of 3D face reconstruction. Moreover, with the help of variational inference, our model has excellent generating ability.
Polycube Shape Space
Authors: Zhao Hui , Li Xuan , Wang Wencheng , Wang Xiaoling , Wang Shaodong , Lei Na , Gu Xiangfeng
Published: November 2019

There are many methods proposed for generating polycube polyhedrons, but it lacks the study about the possibility of generating polycube polyhedrons. In this paper, we prove a theorem for characterizing the necessary condition for the skeleton graph of a polycube polyhedron, by which Steinitz's theorem for convex polyhedra and Eppstein's theorem for simple orthogonal polyhedra are generalized to polycube polyhedra of any genus and with non‐simply connected faces. Based on our theorem, we present a faster linear algorithm to determine the dimensions of the polycube shape space for a valid graph, for all its possible polycube polyhedrons. We also propose a quadratic optimization method to generate embedding polycube polyhedrons with interactive assistance. Finally, we provide a graph‐based framework for polycube mesh generation, quadrangulation, and all‐hex meshing to demonstrate the utility and applicability of our approach.
Two‐phase Hair Image Synthesis by Self‐Enhancing Generative Model
Authors: Qiu H. , Wang C. , Zhu H. , Zhu X. , Gu J. , Han X.
Published: November 2019

Generating plausible hair image given limited guidance, such as sparse sketches or low‐resolution image, has been made possible with the rise of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Traditional image‐to‐image translation networks can generate recognizable results, but finer textures are usually lost and blur artifacts commonly exist. In this paper, we propose a two‐phase generative model for high‐quality hair image synthesis. The two‐phase pipeline first generates a coarse image by an existing image translation model, then applies a re‐generating network with self‐enhancing capability to the coarse image. The self‐enhancing capability is achieved by a proposed differentiable layer, which extracts the structural texture and orientation maps from a hair image. Extensive experiments on two tasks, Sketch2Hair and Hair Super‐Resolution, demonstrate that our approach is able to synthesize plausible hair image with finer details, and reaches the state‐of‐the‐art.
Unsupervised Dense Light Field Reconstruction with Occlusion Awareness
Authors: Ni Lixia , Jiang Haiyong , Cai Jianfei , Zheng Jianmin , Li Haifeng , Liu Xu
Published: November 2019

Light field (LF) reconstruction is a fundamental technique in light field imaging and has applications in both software and hardware aspects. This paper presents an unsupervised learning method for LF‐oriented view synthesis, which provides a simple solution for generating quality light fields from a sparse set of views. The method is built on disparity estimation and image warping. Specifically, we first use per‐view disparity as a geometry proxy to warp input views to novel views. Then we compensate the occlusion with a network by a forward‐backward warping process. Cycle‐consistency between different views are explored to enable unsupervised learning and accurate synthesis. The method overcomes the drawbacks of fully supervised learning methods that require large labeled training dataset and epipolar plane image based interpolation methods that do not make full use of geometry consistency in LFs. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can generate high quality views for LF, which outperforms unsupervised approaches and is comparable to fully‐supervised approaches.
Real‐time Indirect Illumination of Emissive Inhomogeneous Volumes using Layered Polygonal Area Lights
Authors: Kuge Takahiro , Yatagawa Tatsuya , Morishima Shigeo
Published: November 2019

Indirect illumination involving with visually rich participating media such as turbulent smoke and loud explosions contributes significantly to the appearances of other objects in a rendering scene. However, previous real‐time techniques have focused only on the appearances of the media directly visible from the viewer. Specifically, appearances that can be indirectly seen over reflective surfaces have not attracted much attention. In this paper, we present a real‐time rendering technique for such indirect views that involves the participating media. To achieve real‐time performance for computing indirect views, we leverage layered polygonal area lights (LPALs) that can be obtained by slicing the media into multiple flat layers. Using this representation, radiance entering each surface point from each slice of the volume is analytically evaluated to achieve instant calculation. The analytic solution can be derived for standard bidirectional reflectance distribution functions (BRDFs) based on the microfacet theory. Accordingly, our method is sufficiently robust to work on surfaces with arbitrary shapes and roughness values. In addition, we propose a quadrature method for more accurate rendering of scenes with dense volumes, and a transformation of the domain of volumes to simplify the calculation and implementation of the proposed method. By taking advantage of these computation techniques, the proposed method achieves real‐time rendering of indirect illumination for emissive volumes.
A Rigging‐Skinning Scheme to Control Fluid Simulation
Authors: Lu Jia‐Ming , Chen Xiao‐Song , Yan Xiao , Li Chen‐Feng , Lin Ming , Hu Shi‐Min
Published: November 2019

Inspired by skeletal animation, a novel rigging‐skinning flow control scheme is proposed to animate fluids intuitively and efficiently. The new animation pipeline creates fluid animation via two steps: fluid rigging and fluid skinning. The fluid rig is defined by a point cloud with rigid‐body movement and incompressible deformation, whose time series can be intuitively specified by a rigid body motion and a constrained free‐form deformation, respectively. The fluid skin generates plausible fluid flows by virtually fluidizing the point‐cloud fluid rig with adjustable zero‐ and first‐order flow features and at fixed computational cost. Fluid rigging allows the animator to conveniently specify the desired low‐frequency flow motion through intuitive manipulations of a point cloud, while fluid skinning truthfully and efficiently converts the motion specified on the fluid rig into plausible flows of the animation fluid, with adjustable fine‐scale effects. Besides being intuitive, the rigging‐skinning scheme for fluid animation is robust and highly efficient, avoiding completely iterative trials or time‐consuming nonlinear optimization. It is also versatile, supporting both particle‐ and grid‐ based fluid solvers. A series of examples including liquid, gas and mixed scenes are presented to demonstrate the performance of the new animation pipeline.
Topology Preserving Simplification of Medial Axes in 3D Models
Authors: Chu Yiyao , Hou Fei , Wang Wencheng , Li Lei
Published: November 2019

We propose an efficient method for topology‐preserving simplification of medial axes of 3D models. Existing methods either cannot preserve the topology during medial axes simplification or have the problem of being geometrically inaccurate or computationally expensive. To tackle these issues, we restrict our topology‐checking to the areas around the topological holes to avoid unnecessary checks in other areas. Our algorithm can keep high precision even when the medial axis is simplified to be in very few vertices. Furthermore, we parallelize the medial axes simplification procedure to enhance the performance significantly. Experimental results show that our method can preserve the topology with highly efficient performance, much superior to the existing methods in terms of topology preservation, accuracy and performance.
Intrinsic Symmetry Detection on 3D Models with Skeleton‐guided Combination of Extrinsic Symmetries
Authors: Wang Wencheng , Ma Junhui , Xu Panpan , Chu Yiyao
Published: November 2019

The existing methods for intrinsic symmetry detection on 3D models always need complex measures such as geodesic distances for describing intrinsic geometry and statistical computation for finding non‐rigid transformations to associate symmetrical shapes. They are expensive, may miss symmetries, and cannot guarantee their obtained symmetrical parts in high quality. We observe that only extrinsic symmetries exist between convex shapes, and two intrinsically symmetric shapes can be determined if their belonged convex sub‐shapes are symmetrical to each other correspondingly and connected in a similar topological structure. Thus, we propose to decompose the model into convex parts, and use the similar structures of the skeleton of the model to guide combination of extrinsic symmetries between convex parts for intrinsic symmetry detection. In this way, we give up statistical computation for intrinsic symmetry detection, and avoid complex measures for describing intrinsic geometry. With the similar structures being from small to large gradually, we can quickly detect multi‐scale partial intrinsic symmetries in a bottom up manner. Benefited from the well segmented convex parts, our obtained symmetrical parts are in high quality. Experimental results show that our method can find many more symmetries and runs much faster than the existing methods, even by several orders of magnitude.
Discrete Calabi Flow: A Unified Conformal Parameterization Method
Authors: Su KH , Li CC , Zhou YM , Xu X , Gu XF
Published: November 2019

Conformal parameterization for surfaces into various parameter domains is a fundamental task in computer graphics. Prior research on discrete Ricci flow provided us with promising inspirations from methods derived via Riemannian geometry, which is rigorous in theory and effective inpractice. In this paper, we propose a unified conformal parameterization approachfor turning triangle meshes into planar and spherical domains using discrete Calabi flow onpiecewise linear metric. We incorporate edge‐flipping surgery to guarantee convergence as well as other significant improvements including approximate Newton's method, optimal step‐lengths, priority embedding and boundary customizing, which achieve better performance and functionality with robustness and accuracy.
Fact and value in invasion biology
Authors: Sagoff Mark
Published: November 2019

Some invasion biologists contend their science has reached a consensus on 4 facts: cost estimates of the effects of nonindigenous species provided in papers by Pimentel et al. are credible; invasive species generally, not just predators, pose significant extinction threats; characteristic biological differences distinguish novel from native species, ecosystems, communities, and processes; and ontological dualism, which distinguishes between natural and anthropogenic processes and influences, plays a useful role in biological inquiry. I contend there is no convincing empirical evidence for any of these propositions. Leading invasion biologists cite their agreement about these propositions as evidence for them and impugn the motives of critics who believe consensus should be based on evidence not the other way around.
Mosquito phytophagy – sources exploited, ecological function, and evolutionary transition to haematophagy
Authors: Peach Daniel A. H. , Gries Gerhard
Published: November 2019

For a very long time, mosquitoes have been known or suspected to consume plant liquids. Recently eclosed mosquitoes cannot survive long without consuming sugary plant liquids that provide fuel for flight and enable blood‐feeding and mating. Populations of even highly synanthropic mosquitoes may not be able to persist without phytophagy, even when vertebrate blood is readily available. Phytophagy is a key element of mosquito ecology, and understanding it is critical to combat mosquito‐borne diseases. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge about mosquito phytophagy and outline future research needs. Specifically, we review the many plant‐derived food sources mosquitoes exploit, study the pollination function of mosquitoes, highlight the predation risks of plant‐foraging mosquitoes, investigate the role of microbes in the sugar‐foraging ecology of mosquitoes, and shed light on the evolution of haematophagy.
The many dimensions of phytochemical diversity: linking theory to practice
Authors: Wetzel William C. , Whitehead Susan R.
Published: November 2019

Research on the ecological and evolutionary roles of phytochemicals has recently progressed from studying single compounds to examining chemical diversity itself. A key conceptual advance enabling this progression is the use of species diversity metrics for quantifying phytochemical diversity. In this perspective, we extend the theory developed for species diversity to further our understanding of what exactly phytochemical diversity is and how its many dimensions impact ecological and evolutionary processes. First, we discuss the major dimensions of phytochemical diversity – richness, evenness, functional diversity, and alpha, gamma and beta diversity. We describe their potential independent roles in biotic interactions and the practical challenges associated with their analysis. Second, we re‐analyse the published and unpublished datasets to reveal that the phytochemical diversity experienced by an organism (or observed by a researcher) depends strongly on the scale of the interaction and the total amount of phytochemicals involved. We argue that we must account for these frames of reference to meaningfully understand diversity. Moving from a general notion of phytochemical diversity as a single measure to a precise definition of its multidimensional and multiscale nature yields overlooked testable predictions that will facilitate novel insights about the evolutionary ecology of plant biotic interactions.
Shifts in the temperature‐sensitive periods for spring phenology in European beech and pedunculate oak clones across latitudes and over recent decades
Authors: Wenden Bénédicte , Mariadassou Mahendra , Chmielewski Frank‐M. , Vitasse Yann
Published: November 2019

Spring phenology of temperate trees has advanced worldwide in response to global warming. However, increasing temperatures may not necessarily lead to further phenological advance, especially in the warmer latitudes because of insufficient chilling and/or shorter day length. Determining the start of the forcing phase, that is, when buds are able to respond to warmer temperatures in spring, is therefore crucial to predict how phenology will change in the future. In this study, we used 4,056 leaf‐out date observations during the period 1969–2017 for clones of European beech (Fagus sylvaticaL.) and pedunculate oak (Quercus roburL.) planted in 63 sites covering a large latitudinal gradient (from Portugal ~41°N to Norway ~63°N) at the International Phenological Gardens in order to (a) evaluate how the sensitivity periods to forcing and chilling have changed with climate warming, and (b) test whether consistent patterns occur along biogeographical gradients, that is, from colder to warmer environments. Partial least squares regressions suggest that the length of the forcing period has been extended over the recent decades with climate warming in the colder latitudes but has been shortened in the warmer latitudes for both species, with a more pronounced shift for beech. We attribute the lengthening of the forcing period in the colder latitudes to earlier opportunities with temperatures that can promote bud development. In contrast, at warmer or oceanic climates, the beginning of the forcing period has been delayed, possibly due to insufficient chilling. However, in spite of a later beginning of the forcing period, spring phenology has continued to advance at these areas due to a faster satisfaction of heat requirements induced by climate warming. Overall, our results support that ongoing climate warming will have different effects on the spring phenology of forest trees across latitudes due to the interactions between chilling, forcing and photoperiod.
A review of specialized and automated features in implantable cardiac devices
Authors: Ayinde Hakeem , Lloyd Michael
Published: November 2019

Automated features available in cardiac implantable electronic devices continue to increase in number and complexity. These features are frequently confused with device malfunction and often result in unnecessary clinical attention. This review will serve as an update to some of the more commonly‐encountered features discussed in terms of the behavior they exhibit.