bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
STE(A)M+: Transforming Higher Education through Collaborative Play
Authors: Vranken Ilse , Troost Dominique , Sharar Raad , Hanssens Pieter , Van Espen Simon , Salamat Ronald Cruz , Nykytiuk Iryna , De Praitere Hannes , Smeers Inge , Nguyen Totran , Snick Anne
Published: December 2021

Our world is facing various wicked problems, such as climate change and extinction. These complex problems require an in-depth understanding. STEM disciplines in higher education play a crucial role in preparing students to solve such problems in their career. Yet it can be questioned
whether STEM in higher education offers all the elements required to prepare students for a sustainable future. Additionally, a sole focus on STEM fields may not contribute to finding solutions to these problems. With STE(A)M in higher education, we explore what the missing element in higher
education is and how higher education can be improved. We addressed this question within the Honours Programme Transdisciplinary Insights of the Institute for the Future at KU Leuven. Within this programme, a team of students, PhD researchers and coaches from various disciplines examined the
educational system and explored how students can be better prepared to co-create a more sustainable future. This learning path was supported by reading books about systems thinking, watching documentaries, following co-creative workshops, and engaging in team discussions. In this process,
we found that the following four key elements could be given a greater emphasis in education: transdisciplinarity, systems thinking, co-creation, and critical thinking. To promote this, we created a board game that aims to make learning about the importance of these elements engaging. While
playing this game, we learned that we can bring students from different dis ciplines together and foster critical thinking and reflec tions. These insights illustrate how creative tools (e.g. board games) can be used in higher education to foster important skills that can prepare students
for a sustainable future. Since this game, developed by students for students, is entirely learner-driven, it departs from the current educational system in which knowledge is mainly transferred by professors. An important advantage of such initiatives is that they foster co-creation and learning
between students. Our findings have been summarised in a small video.
Uprooting Deeper Causes of Belgium's Lack of Pandemic Preparedness in the Covid-19 Crisis
Authors: Bouvy Séverine , Ceulemans Lise , Konnova Angelina , Mennens Ramila , Nankova Maria , Nguyen Tam , Sandler Jan-Peter , Van Laere Tim , Vandamme Anne-Mieke , Baelen Jef , Langeraet Joachim , Thyssen Pieter
Published: December 2021

The challenge of the Coronavirus Pandemic Preparedness project was to explore gaps in the way Belgium addressed the COVID-19 pandemic as a path forward for learning how to be better prepared in the probable event of a future pandemic. A pandemic is more than just a health crisis; well-intentioned
efforts to contain an epidemic resulted in mental health problems, an economic downturn and the impairment of learning, among other issues. To understand a complex or "wicked" problem, such as a pandemic, we deployed a transdisciplinary approach, engaging experts and stakeholders from a variety
of fields. At the end of March 2021, we organised an online co-creation workshop on behalf of the transdisciplinary research team at the Institute for the Future (1), inviting societal actors to participate in a multilevel brainstorming discussion. The purpose of the workshop was to identify
deeper causes underlying the gaps in Belgian pandemic preparedness, building upon earlier work of the research team. We engaged stakeholders from different sectors of society in interactive exercises to verify and challenge the work of the research team. As a result, our team unearthed plausible
missing elements within the deeper causes underlying the Belgian lack of preparedness for the pandemic. The majority of gaps identified by the stake holders could be traced to deeper causes interwoven in our society's fabric. Some key areas where improvement was suggested were greater political
willingness to tackle more complex problems, an expansion of transdisciplinary knowledge and education across our institutions and trust-building among citizens, government and the scientific community. Our findings are summarised and presented in a short video output. These findings can be
taken up to formulate future objectives for pandemic preparedness in Belgium. This can in turn serve to create a more resilient and sustain- able society.
Comparación de la eficacia, la seguridad y la farmacocinética de los antivenenos antiofídicos: revisión de literatura
Authors: Sarmiento Karen , Rodríguez Ariadna , Quevedo-Buitrago William , Torres Ivonne , Ríos Carolina , Ruíz Laura , Salazar Julian , Hidalgo-Martínez Patricia , Diez Hugo
Published: December 2021

En Colombia se presentan anualmente alrededor de 5000 casos de mordedura de serpiente y su tratamiento se basa en la neutralización con inmunoglobulinas completas purificadas, sin embargo, globalmente se utilizan antivenenos faboterápicos. Objetivo: Dar a conocer diferencias entre las generaciones de antivenenos, la importancia del veneno en la producción de anticuerpos, comparar aspectos farmacocinéticos y los efectos adversos en pacientes. Materiales Métodos: Se realizó una búsqueda de literatura en bases de datos utilizando combinaciones de los descriptores y términos Mesh, en inglés y español. Se cotejaron parámetros farmacocinéticos en estudios preclínicos y los efectos adversos en estudios clínicos. Resultados: Se encontraron diferencias debidas al tamaño de la fracción de la inmunoglobulina que la compone, así entre más pequeña es ésta, se observa mayor distribución a los tejidos y una vida media más corta, comparada con las moléculas más pesadas. Se encontraron estudios con disminución de efectos adversos con antivenenos faboterápicos
Caracterización de pacientes pediátricos con diagnóstico de bronquiolitis obliterante postinfecciosa a 2600 metros sobre el nivel del mar
Authors: Gómez Viracachá Ingrid Mayerly , Pedraza Galvis Margarita Del Pilar , Panqueva Centanaro Olga Patricia , Estrada Cano Diana Carolina , Soler Ramírez Ángela María , Echeverry Argüello Diana Carolina , Fuquen Sánchez Olga Cristina
Published: December 2021

Aim: To characterize a group of pediatric patients diagnosed with post-infectious bronchiolitis obliterans (PBO) at a university hospital in Bogotá. Methods: A total of 2,635 PBO-compatible clinical histories were reviewed. Pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, and 19 cases were retrieved and used to develop an observational, descriptive, and retrospective study. Results: The mean age for developing acute lower respiratory tract infection (ALRTI) was 18 months. The average hospitalization was 14.5 days. Approximately 21.5% of patients required attention at a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), and mechanical ventilation was applied for 10% of these cases. A total of 30% of the patients had microbiological isolation, 10.5% corresponded to a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and 5% corresponded to a mixed isolation (adenovirus and RSV). All patients had chest high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) scans, which revealed a mosaic pattern of attenuation in 89.4% of all cases. Conclusions: The sample showed clinical and radiological characteristics similar to those described in other case series worldwide.
Demandas de los empresarios en la contratación de los mayores de 45 años
Authors: Sánchez Martín Micaela , Izquierdo Rus Tomás
Published: December 2021

La situación actual de crisis económica y la progresiva pérdida de puestos de trabajo ha generado un debate en torno a las demandas requeridas por los empleadores en la selección de sus trabajadores. El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar el papel que juegan determinados factores individuales de los desempleados en la percepción sobre la contratación por parte del empresariado. La entrevista de percepción subjetiva se ha aplicado a 174 desempleados (73.3 % hombres, 26.7 % mujeres) registrados en las oficinas del Servicio Público de Empleo de Andalucía. El análisis de los datos se ha realizado con el programa ATLAS.ti v8. Los resultados muestran los factores edad, sexo, situación sociofamiliar, experiencia laboral y duración del desempleo son relevantes en los procesos de selección de persona. Se concluye que es necesario impulsar actuaciones de asesoramiento, individual y grupal, así como la participación de los empleadores en la contratación de mayores de 45 años.
Identity Development of Female Adolescents Belonging to Illegal Armed Groups in Colombia
Authors: Aguirre-Dávila Eduardo
Published: December 2021

The article presents the results of the research on the identity of the female adolescent soldiers who, at the time of the study, were in the Colombian government’s rehabilitation programs. The life history interviews methodology was used, 20 adolescents and young women participated, with an average age of 18.9 years. When they entered the illegal armed groups, they had an average of 12.5 years and remained in the groups an average of 4.4 years. From the narratives of the participants, it was discovered that the development of their identity went through three key moments: the first is the product of family interactions, and it is expressed in the tension of assuming the traditional role of women and the decision to join to illegal groups; the second is the result of their permanence in the groups and is defined by the strong masculine culture of war; and the third moment is a consequence of the transit of these women through of the governmental rehabilitation programs, and it is characterized by assuming control of their lives from the exercise of citizenship.
Using resonance to measure the independent elastic constants of problematic materials such as elastomers
Authors: Maynard J. D.
Published: December 2021

The determination of the elastic constants for a solid material may be conveniently accomplished by measuring resonances corresponding to the elastic normal modes of a sample. Isotropic materials should be particularly straightforward, since they involve only two independent elastic constants, the shear modulus and the longitudinal modulus. In practice one typically measures the shear modulus and Young's modulus, but for some problematic materials these are not truly independent. Probing the microscopic processes of solid mechanical behavior requires knowledge of independent moduli. In this paper, a resonance method for directly measuring the independent moduli for problematic materials is described.
A far-red light–inducible CRISPR-Cas12a platform for remote-controlled genome editing and gene activation
Authors: Wang Xinyi , Dong Kaili , Kong Deqiang , Zhou Yang , Yin Jianli , Cai Fengfeng , Wang Meiyan , Ye Haifeng
Published: December 2021

Far-red light–inducible CRISPR-Cas12a/dCas12a systems were developed for controllable gene editing and activation.
Nickel particle–enabled width-controlled growth of bilayer molybdenum disulfide nanoribbons
Authors: Li Xufan , Li Baichang , Lei Jincheng , Bets Ksenia V. , Sang Xiahan , Okogbue Emmanuel , Liu Yang , Unocic Raymond R. , Yakobson Boris I. , Hone James , Harutyunyan Avetik R.
Published: December 2021

Nickel nanoparticles drive the width of bilayer nanoribbons down to 8 nm, enabling quantum transport at high temperatures.
A single motor neuron determines the rhythm of early motor behavior inCiona
Authors: Akahoshi Taichi , Utsumi Madoka K. , Oonuma Kouhei , Murakami Makoto , Horie Takeo , Kusakabe Takehiro G. , Oka Kotaro , Hotta Kohji
Published: December 2021

Single motor neuron regulates rhythmic tail flick in prehatchingCionaembryo.
Macular and submacular choroidal microvasculature in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma and high myopia
Authors: Lin Fengbin , Qiu Zhen , Li Fei , Chen Yu , Peng Yuying , Chen Meiling , Song Yunhe , Xiong Jian , Cheng Weijing , Liu Yuhong , Tan Mingkui , Zhang Xiulan , Weinreb Robert
Published: December 2021

Aims

To characterise the influence of primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) and high myopia (HM) on the macular and choroidal capillary density (CD).

Methods

Two hundred and seven eyes were enrolled, including 80 POAG without HM, 50 POAG with HM, 31 HM without POAG and 46 normal controls. A fovea-centred 6×6 mm optical coherence tomography angiography scan was performed to obtain the CD of the superficial capillary plexus (SCP), deep capillary plexus (DCP) and choriocapillaris. Macular and choroidal CDs were compared among the groups and the association of CDs with visual field mean deviation (MD) was determined using linear regression models.

Results

Compared with normal eyes, SCP CD was decreased in the POAG without HM group (p<0.05), while DCP CD was significantly decreased in the HM without POAG group (p<0.05). Both SCP and DCP CDs were significantly decreased in the POAG with HM group (p<0.05). CD reduction occurred mainly in the outer rather than inner ring of the 6×6 mm scan size. In multivariate regression analysis, worse MD was associated with lower CD in the outer ring of the SCP in all the HM eyes (p<0.05).

Conclusions

POAG and HM reduced macular CD in different layers of the retinal capillary plexus and both particularly in the outer ring of the 6×6 mm scans. Furthermore, assessment of the CD in the outer ring of the SCP may facilitate the diagnosis of glaucoma in eyes with HM.
Nationwide inventory on retinopathy of prematurity screening in the Netherlands
Authors: Trzcionkowska Kasia , Termote Jacqueline U , Böhringer Stefan , van Sorge Arlette J , Schalij-Delfos Nicoline
Published: December 2021

Purpose

Provide up-to-date insight in incidence of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), logistics of screening and treatment in the Netherlands and influence of the new national ROP guideline in which more stringent screening criteria were implemented and the early treatment for ROP criteria (ETROP) were emphasised.

Methods

Multicentre prospective nationwide study including all preterm infants, born in the Netherlands in 2017, and considered eligible for ROP screening. Anonymised data from ophthalmologists and paediatricians were merged. Outcome data were compared with the first national ROP inventory (NEDROP-1, 2009).

Results

In 2017, 1492 infants were live born with gestational age (GA) <32 weeks (2009: 1662); 1287 infants were eligible for screening (2009: 2033). Ophthalmologists screened 1085 infants, versus 1688 in 2009, corrected with factor 1.114 for the difference in number of live births, a 28.4% (479/1688) decrease in screened infants was seen. Among surviving infants with GA <32 week, ROP was found in 305/1492 babies, 20.4% (2009: 324/1662, 19.5%) of which 49/1492 stage ≥3, 3.3% (2009: 30/1662, 1.8%). In all infants, report on presence or absence of plus disease was provided, according to the ETROP criteria. Treatment was performed in 39 infants. Of infants with ROP stage ≥3, 3/49 (6.1%) progressed to retinal detachment (2009: 6/30, 20.0%).

Conclusion

The overall ROP incidence expressed as a percentage, remained stable but the number of infants that developed severe ROP nearly doubled. A near one-third reduction in screened infants shows satisfactory implementation of the new screening criteria. A notable decrease in retinal detachment delineates improved treatment outcome.
Injuries in elite women’s ski jumping: a cohort study following three International Ski Federation (FIS) World Cup seasons from 2017–2018 to 2019–2020
Authors: Stenseth Oleane Marthea Rebne , Barli Sindre Fløtlien , Martin R Kyle , Engebretsen Lars
Published: December 2021

Objectives

To define incidence and injury patterns of International Ski Federation (FIS) World Cup (WC) women ski jumpers over three seasons.

Methods

Ski jump athletes competing in the Women’s FIS WC were recruited for prospective injury surveillance from 2017–2018 to 2019–2020. Team representatives recruited the athletes annually and prospectively recorded all injuries requiring medical attention. Retrospective end-of-season interviews corroborated injury surveillance. Medical doctors collected and processed the data. The 4-month competitive season was used to calculate the annual incidence of injuries per 100 athletes per season. Injury type, location, severity and aetiology were reported.

Results

Athletes from 19 nations were enrolled equalling 205 athlete-seasons. Mean age was 21.2 years (SD=3.8). Thirty-nine injury events resulted in 54 total injuries (26.3 injuries/100 athletes/season). Injuries were mostly acute (83%) and occurred on the ski jump hill (78%). The most common injury location was the knee (n=18, 33%). Crash landings were the most common cause of injury events (70%). Nearly half of the acute ski jump injury events occurred in snowy, windy or cloudy conditions (44%) and/or during telemark landings (46%), and most jumps (96%) were shorter than hill size. One third of the injuries were severe, and 78% of severe injuries involved the knee.

Conclusion

Acute injury events occur relatively frequently in elite women ski jumpers, most resulting in time-loss from sport and a significant proportion involving serious knee injuries. Crash landing was the leading cause of injury. This baseline information can be used to guide and evaluate future efforts at injury prevention.
Naringin prevents bone damage in the experimental metabolic syndrome induced by a fructose-rich diet
Authors: Rivoira María A. , Rigalli Alfredo , Corball Lucía , Tolosa de Talamoni Nori , Rodríguez Valeria
Published: December 2021

We analyzed the effect of naringin (NAR), a flavonoid from citric fruits, on bone quality and biomechanical properties, as well as the redox state of bone marrow in rats fed a fructose-rich diet (FRD), an experimental model to mimic human metabolic syndrome. NAR blocked the increase in the number of osteoclasts and adipocytes and the decrease in the number of osteocytes and osteocalcin (+) cells caused by FRD. Trabecular number was significantly higher in the FRD+NAR group. FRD induced a decrease in the femoral trabecular and cortical bone mineral density, which was blocked by NAR. The fracture and ultimate loads were also decreased in the FRD and FRD+NAR groups. NAR increased the number of nodes to terminal trabecula, the number of nodes to node trabecula, the number of nodes, and the number of nodes with 2 terminals and decreased the Dist (mean size of branches) value. FRD decreased bone marrow catalase activity, an effect that was prevented by NAR. In conclusion, FRD has detrimental effects on the long bones, which are associated with oxidative stress in the bone marrow. Most of these changes are prevented by NAR through its antioxidant properties and promotion of bone formation.

Novelty: Fructose-rich diets have detrimental effects on long bones, which are associated with oxidative stress in the bone marrow. Most of these changes are prevented by naringin through its antioxidant properties and promotion of bone formation.
Dimethoate insecticide application seldom reduces silvertop incidence in grass seed fields on the Canadian prairies
Authors: Soroka J.J. , Gossen B.D.
Published: December 2021

Many arthropods have been reported (but none confirmed) as causal agents of sterile seed heads in perennial grass seed fields, known as silvertop or white head. Field studies to identify the arthropods that cause silvertop were conducted in five perennial grass species at seven sites in Saskatchewan, Canada, over several years. The effect timing of insecticide application in spring — early, mid, or late — and of post-harvest residue management — mowing, close mowing with straw removed (scalping), and burning — on subsequent arthropod populations, silvertop incidence, and seed yield were assessed. Samples of grass tillers and sweep net collections were taken regularly, and the arthropods collected were identified to family level and counted. Arthropod populations from sweep samples varied among sites and dates in number and taxon composition, but no arthropod assemblage was consistently associated with silvertop in any grass species. Thrips were the most numerous arthropods on tillers at all sites. Insecticide application often temporarily reduced arthropod populations, but reduced silvertop incidence at only 1 of 15 site-years, and increased seed yield at only 1 of 17 site-years. Scalping or burning did not reduce silvertop incidence but often increased healthy seed head numbers and seed yield relative to mowing, the standard treatment. The majority of Kentucky bluegrass fields had extremely low seed yields unrelated to silvertop or arthropod levels. This extensive study, across a range of grass species and management regimes, provides strong support for the conclusion based on previous work that arthropod pests are not the sole cause of silvertop.
From primordial quantum black holes to Bohr’s atom
Authors: Cristofano Gerardo
Published: December 2021

Recently great interest has been devoted toward a better understanding of a possible deep relation between large size structures we observe today in the universe and the quantum fluctuations at Planck time. Within such a context this paper provides us with a procedure for how to obtain a faithful description of the Bohr energy levels for hydrogen like atoms, starting from a generalization of a quantum relation for primordial black holes’ masses at Planck time. The key role of quantum mechanics in such a description is emphasized and the classical correspondence taking us from Newton’s law for interacting masses to Coulomb’s law for interacting charges evidenced.
Representations and deformations of 3-Hom-ρ-Lie algebras
Authors: Peyghan Esmaeil , Gezer Aydin , Bagheri Zahra , Gultekin Inci
Published: December 2021

The aim of this paper is to introduce 3-Hom-ρ-Lie algebra structures generalizing the algebras of 3-Hom-Lie algebra. Also, we investigate the representations and deformations theory of this type of Hom-Lie algebras. Moreover, we introduce the definition of extensions and abelian extensions of 3-Hom-ρ-Lie algebras and show that associated to any abelian extension, there is a representation and a 2-cocycle.
A new elliptic mixed boundary value problem with (p,q)-Laplacian and Clarke subdifferential: Existence, comparison and convergence results
Authors: Zeng Shengda , Migórski Stanisław , Tarzia Domingo A.
Published: December 2021

The goal of this paper is to investigate a new class of elliptic mixed boundary value problems involving a nonlinear and nonhomogeneous partial differential operator [Formula: see text]-Laplacian, and a multivalued term represented by Clarke’s generalized gradient. First, we apply a surjectivity result for multivalued pseudomonotone operators to examine the existence of weak solutions under mild hypotheses. Then, a comparison theorem is delivered, and a convergence result, which reveals the asymptotic behavior of solution when the parameter (heat transfer coefficient) tends to infinity, is obtained. Finally, we establish a continuous dependence result of solution to the boundary value problem on the data.
Lambert series associated to Hilbert modular form
Authors: Agnihotri Rishabh
Published: December 2021

In 1981, Zagier conjectured that the Lambert series associated to the weight 12 cusp form [Formula: see text] should have an asymptotic expansion in terms of the nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function. This conjecture was proven by Hafner and Stopple. In 2017 and 2019, Chakraborty et al. established an asymptotic relation between Lambert series associated to any primitive cusp form (for full modular group, congruence subgroup and in Maass form case) and the nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function. In this paper, we study Lambert series associated with primitive Hilbert modular form and establish similar kind of asymptotic expansion.
Effect of Co Doping on the Functional Properties of MnO2Thin Films
Authors: Sadouki Bellal , Benhebal Hadj , Benrabah Bedhiaf , Kharroubi Abdelmalek
Published: December 2021

Thin films of Co-doped [Formula: see text]-MnO2have been deposited on Pyrex glass substrates by the sol–gel dip-coating method with Co concentrations of 1, 3, 5 and 7 at.%. The deposited thin films were characterized for their structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties. The XRD spectra confirm that all the samples have tetragonal phase of [Formula: see text]-MnO2. FTIR spectra reveal the presence of Mn–O in all of the samples. AFM measurements indicate that the surfaces of films have been affected with cobalt content incorporation. Transmittance spectra of the undoped and Co-doped MnO2thin films were recorded by a UV–vis spectrometer. Optical gap was found to be in the 2.60–2.51-eV scale. This decrease is due to the presence of manganese vacancies and/or oxygen defects. From the complex impedance measurements that show semicircular arcs at different cobalt contents, an equivalent parallel [Formula: see text] electrical circuit has been proposed.
Time-travel rephotography
Authors: Luo Xuan , Zhang Xuaner (Cecilia) , Yoo Paul , Martin-Brualla Ricardo , Lawrence Jason , Seitz Steven M.
Published: December 2021

Many historical people were only ever captured by old, faded, black and white photos, that are distorted due to the limitations of early cameras and the passage of time. This paper simulates traveling back in time with a modern camera to rephotograph famous subjects. Unlike conventional image restoration filters which apply independent operations like denoising, colorization, and superresolution, we leverage the StyleGAN2 framework to project old photos into the space of modern high-resolution photos, achieving all of these effects in a unified framework. A unique challenge with this approach is retaining the identity and pose of the subject in the original photo, while discarding the many artifacts frequently seen in low-quality antique photos. Our comparisons to current state-of-the-art restoration filters show significant improvements and compelling results for a variety of important historical people. Please go to time-travell-rephotography.github.io for many more results.
Predicting high-resolution turbulence details in space and time
Authors: Bai Kai , Wang Chunhao , Desbrun Mathieu , Liu Xiaopei
Published: December 2021

Predicting the fine and intricate details of a turbulent flow field in both space and time from a coarse input remains a major challenge despite the availability of modern machine learning tools. In this paper, we present a simple and effective dictionary-based approach to spatio-temporal upsampling of fluid simulation. We demonstrate that our neural network approach can reproduce the visual complexity of turbulent flows from spatially and temporally coarse velocity fields even when using a generic training set. Moreover, since our method generates finer spatial and/or temporal details through embarrassingly-parallel upsampling of small local patches, it can efficiently predict high-resolution turbulence details across a variety of grid resolutions. As a consequence, our method offers a whole range of applications varying from fluid flow upsampling to fluid data compression. We demonstrate the efficiency and generalizability of our method for synthesizing turbulent flows on a series of complex examples, highlighting dramatically better results in spatio-temporal upsampling and flow data compression than existing methods as assessed by both qualitative and quantitative comparisons.
Dynamic neural garments
Authors: Zhang Meng , Wang Tuanfeng Y. , Ceylan Duygu , Mitra Niloy J.
Published: December 2021

A vital task of the wider digital human effort is the creation of realistic garments on digital avatars, both in the form of characteristic fold patterns and wrinkles in static frames as well as richness of garment dynamics under avatars' motion. Existing workflow of modeling, simulation, and rendering closely replicates the physics behind real garments, but is tedious and requires repeating most of the workflow under changes to characters' motion, camera angle, or garment resizing. Although data-driven solutions exist, they either focus on static scenarios or only handle dynamics of tight garments. We present a solution that, at test time, takes in body joint motion to directly produce realistic dynamic garment image sequences. Specifically, given the target joint motion sequence of an avatar, we propose
dynamic neural garments
to synthesize plausible dynamic garment appearance from a desired viewpoint. Technically, our solution generates a coarse garment proxy sequence, learns deep dynamic features attached to this template, and neurally renders the features to produce appearance changes such as folds, wrinkles, and silhouettes. We demonstrate generalization behavior to both unseen motion and unseen camera views. Further, our network can be fine-tuned to adopt to new body shape and/or background images. We demonstrate our method on a wide range of real and synthetic garments. We also provide comparisons against existing neural rendering and image sequence translation approaches, and report clear quantitative and qualitative improvements. Project page: http://geometry.cs.ucl.ac.uk/projects/2021/DynamicNeuralGarments/
TM-NET
Authors: Gao Lin , Wu Tong , Yuan Yu-Jie , Lin Ming-Xian , Lai Yu-Kun , Zhang Hao
Published: December 2021

We introduce TM-NET, a novel deep generative model for synthesizing
textured meshes
in a
part-aware
manner. Once trained, the network can generate novel textured meshes from scratch or predict textures for a given 3D mesh, without image guidance. Plausible and diverse textures can be generated for the same mesh part, while texture compatibility between parts in the same shape is achieved via conditional generation. Specifically, our method produces texture maps for individual shape parts, each as a deformable box, leading to a natural UV map with limited distortion. The network
separately
embeds part geometry (via a PartVAE) and part texture (via a TextureVAE) into their respective latent spaces, so as to facilitate learning texture probability distributions conditioned on geometry. We introduce a
conditional autoregressive model
for texture generation, which can be conditioned on both part geometry and textures already generated for other parts to achieve texture compatibility. To produce high-frequency texture details, our TextureVAE operates in a high-dimensional latent space via dictionary-based vector quantization. We also exploit transparencies in the texture as an effective means to model complex shape structures including topological details. Extensive experiments demonstrate the plausibility, quality, and diversity of the textures and geometries generated by our network, while avoiding inconsistency issues that are common to novel view synthesis methods.
Generalized adaptive refinement for grid-based hexahedral meshing
Authors: Pitzalis Luca , Livesu Marco , Cherchi Gianmarco , Gobbetti Enrico , Scateni Riccardo
Published: December 2021

Due to their nice numerical properties, conforming hexahedral meshes are considered a prominent computational domain for simulation tasks. However, the automatic decomposition of a general 3D volume into a small number of hexahedral elements is very challenging. Methods that create an adaptive Cartesian grid and convert it into a conforming mesh offer superior robustness and are the only ones concretely used in the industry. Topological schemes that permit this conversion can be applied only if precise compatibility conditions among grid elements are observed. Some of these conditions are local, hence easy to formulate; others are not and are much harder to satisfy. State-of-the-art approaches fulfill these conditions by prescribing additional refinement based on special building rules for octrees. These methods operate in a restricted space of solutions and are prone to severely over-refine the input grids, creating a bottleneck in the simulation pipeline. In this article, we introduce a novel approach to transform a general adaptive grid into a new grid meeting hexmeshing criteria, without resorting to tree rules. Our key insight is that we can formulate all compatibility conditions as linear constraints in an integer programming problem by choosing the proper set of unknowns. Since we operate in a broader solution space, we are able to meet topological hexmeshing criteria at a much coarser scale than methods using octrees, also supporting generalized grids of any shape or topology. We demonstrate the superiority of our approach for both traditional grid-based hexmeshing and adaptive polycube-based hexmeshing. In all our experiments, our method never prescribed more refinement than the prior art and, in the average case, it introduced close to half the number of extra cells.
Ensemble denoising for Monte Carlo renderings
Authors: Zheng Shaokun , Zheng Fengshi , Xu Kun , Yan Ling-Qi
Published: December 2021

Various denoising methods have been proposed to clean up the noise in Monte Carlo (MC) renderings, each having different advantages, disadvantages, and applicable scenarios. In this paper, we present
Ensemble Denoising
, an optimization-based technique that combines multiple individual MC denoisers. The combined image is modeled as a per-pixel weighted sum of output images from the individual denoisers. Computation of the optimal weights is formulated as a constrained quadratic programming problem, where we apply a dual-buffer strategy to estimate the overall MSE. We further propose an iterative solver to overcome practical issues involved in the optimization. Besides nice theoretical properties, our ensemble denoiser is demonstrated to be effective and robust, and outperforms any individual denoiser across dozens of scenes and different levels of sample rates. We also perform a comprehensive analysis on the selection of individual denoisers to be combined, providing important and practical guides for users.
Motion recommendation for online character control
Authors: Cho Kyungmin , Kim Chaelin , Park Jungjin , Park Joonkyu , Noh Junyong
Published: December 2021

Reinforcement learning (RL) has been proven effective in many scenarios, including environment exploration and motion planning. However, its application in data-driven character control has produced relatively simple motion results compared to recent approaches that have used large complex motion data without RL. In this paper, we provide a real-time motion control method that can generate high-quality and complex motion results from various sets of unstructured data while retaining the advantage of using RL, which is the discovery of optimal behaviors by trial and error. We demonstrate the results for a character achieving different tasks, from simple direction control to complex avoidance of moving obstacles. Our system works equally well on biped/quadruped characters, with motion data ranging from 1 to 48 minutes, without any manual intervention. To achieve this, we exploit a finite set of discrete actions, where each action represents full-body future motion features. We first define a subset of actions that can be selected in each state and store these pieces of information in databases during the preprocessing step. The use of this subset of actions enables the effective learning of control policy even from a large set of motion data. To achieve interactive performance at run-time, we adopt a proposal network and a k-nearest neighbor action sampler.
Polarimetric spatio-temporal light transport probing
Authors: Baek Seung-Hwan , Heide Felix
Published: December 2021

Light emitted from a source into a scene can undergo complex interactions with multiple scene surfaces of different material types before being reflected towards a detector. During this transport, every surface reflection and propagation is encoded in the properties of the photons that ultimately reach the detector, including travel time, direction, intensity, wavelength and polarization. Conventional imaging systems capture intensity by integrating over all other dimensions of the incident light into a single quantity, hiding this rich scene information in these aggregate measurements. Existing methods are capable of untangling these measurements into their spatial and temporal dimensions, fueling geometric scene understanding tasks. However, examining polarimetric material properties jointly with geometric properties is an open challenge that could enable unprecedented capabilities beyond geometric scene understanding, allowing for material-dependent scene understanding and imaging through complex transport, such as macroscopic scattering.

In this work, we close this gap, and propose a computational light transport imaging method that captures the spatially- and temporally-resolved complete polarimetric response of a scene, which encodes rich material properties. Our method hinges on a novel 7D tensor theory of light transport. We discover low-rank structure in the polarimetric tensor dimension and propose a data-driven rotating ellipsometry method that learns to exploit redundancy of polarimetric structure. We instantiate our theory with two imaging prototypes: spatio-polarimetric imaging and coaxial temporal-polarimetric imaging. This allows us, for the first time, to decompose scene light transport into temporal, spatial, and complete polarimetric dimensions that unveil scene properties hidden to conventional methods. We validate the applicability of our method on diverse tasks, including shape reconstruction with subsurface scattering, seeing through scattering media, untangling multi-bounce light transport, breaking metamerism with polarization, and spatio-polarimetric decomposition of crystals.
SuperTrack
Authors: Fussell Levi , Bergamin Kevin , Holden Daniel
Published: December 2021

In this paper we show how the task of motion tracking for physically simulated characters can be solved using supervised learning and optimizing a policy directly via back-propagation. To achieve this we make use of a world model trained to approximate a specific subset of the environment's transition function, effectively acting as a differentiable physics simulator through which the policy can be optimized to minimize the tracking error. Compared to popular model-free methods of physically simulated character control which primarily make use of Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) we find direct optimization of the policy via our approach consistently achieves a higher quality of control in a shorter training time, with a reduced sensitivity to the rate of experience gathering, dataset size, and distribution.
Neural actor
Authors: Liu Lingjie , Habermann Marc , Rudnev Viktor , Sarkar Kripasindhu , Gu Jiatao , Theobalt Christian
Published: December 2021

We propose Neural Actor (NA), a new method for high-quality synthesis of humans from arbitrary viewpoints and under arbitrary controllable poses. Our method is developed upon recent neural scene representation and rendering works which learn representations of geometry and appearance from only 2D images. While existing works demonstrated compelling rendering of static scenes and playback of dynamic scenes, photo-realistic reconstruction and rendering of humans with neural implicit methods, in particular under user-controlled novel poses, is still difficult. To address this problem, we utilize a coarse body model as a proxy to unwarp the surrounding 3D space into a canonical pose. A neural radiance field learns pose-dependent geometric deformations and pose- and view-dependent appearance effects in the canonical space from multi-view video input. To synthesize novel views of high-fidelity dynamic geometry and appearance, NA leverages 2D texture maps defined on the body model as latent variables for predicting residual deformations and the dynamic appearance. Experiments demonstrate that our method achieves better quality than the state-of-the-arts on playback as well as novel pose synthesis, and can even generalize well to new poses that starkly differ from the training poses. Furthermore, our method also supports shape control on the free-view synthesis of human actors.
ExtraNet
Authors: Guo Jie , Fu Xihao , Lin Liqiang , Ma Hengjun , Guo Yanwen , Liu Shiqiu , Yan Ling-Qi
Published: December 2021

Both the frame rate and the latency are crucial to the performance of realtime rendering applications such as video games. Spatial supersampling methods, such as the Deep Learning SuperSampling (DLSS), have been proven successful at decreasing the rendering time of each frame by rendering at a lower resolution. But temporal supersampling methods that directly aim at producing more frames on the fly are still not practically available. This is mainly due to both its own computational cost and the latency introduced by interpolating frames from the future. In this paper, we present ExtraNet, an efficient neural network that predicts accurate shading results on an extrapolated frame, to minimize both the performance overhead and the latency. With the help of the rendered auxiliary geometry buffers of the extrapolated frame, and the temporally reliable motion vectors, we train our ExtraNet to perform two tasks simultaneously: irradiance in-painting for regions that cannot find historical correspondences, and accurate ghosting-free shading prediction for regions where temporal information is available. We present a robust hole-marking strategy to automate the classification of these tasks, as well as the data generation from a series of high-quality production-ready scenes. Finally, we use lightweight gated convolutions to enable fast inference. As a result, our ExtraNet is able to produce plausibly extrapolated frames without easily noticeable artifacts, delivering a 1.5× to near 2× increase in frame rates with minimized latency in practice.
Spiral-spectral fluid simulation
Authors: Cui Qiaodong , Langlois Timothy , Sen Pradeep , Kim Theodore
Published: December 2021

We introduce a fast, expressive method for simulating fluids over radial domains, including discs, spheres, cylinders, ellipses, spheroids, and tori. We do this by generalizing the spectral approach of Laplacian Eigenfunctions, resulting in what we call
spiral-spectral
fluid simulations. Starting with a set of divergence-free analytical bases for polar and spherical coordinates, we show that their singularities can be removed by introducing a set of carefully selected enrichment functions. Orthogonality is established at minimal cost, viscosity is supported analytically, and we specifically design basis functions that support scalable FFT-based reconstructions. Additionally, we present an efficient way of computing all the necessary advection tensors. Our approach applies to both three-dimensional flows as well as their surface-based, codimensional variants. We establish the completeness of our basis representation, and compare against a variety of existing solvers.
Neural 3D holography
Authors: Choi Suyeon , Gopakumar Manu , Peng Yifan , Kim Jonghyun , Wetzstein Gordon
Published: December 2021

Holographic near-eye displays promise unprecedented capabilities for virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) systems. The image quality achieved by current holographic displays, however, is limited by the wave propagation models used to simulate the physical optics. We propose a neural network-parameterized plane-to-multiplane wave propagation model that closes the gap between physics and simulation. Our model is automatically trained using camera feedback and it outperforms related techniques in 2D plane-to-plane settings by a large margin. Moreover, it is the first network-parameterized model to naturally extend to 3D settings, enabling high-quality 3D computer-generated holography using a novel phase regularization strategy of the complex-valued wave field. The efficacy of our approach is demonstrated through extensive experimental evaluation with both VR and optical see-through AR display prototypes.
Practical pigment mixing for digital painting
Authors: Sochorová Šárka , Jamriška Ondřej
Published: December 2021

There is a significant flaw in today's painting software: the colors do not mix like actual paints. E.g., blue and yellow make gray instead of green. This is because the software is built around the RGB representation, which models the mixing of colored lights. Paints, however, get their color from pigments, whose mixing behavior is predicted by the Kubelka-Munk model (K-M). Although it was introduced to computer graphics almost 30 years ago, the K-M model has never been adopted by painting software in practice as it would require giving up the RGB representation, growing the number of per-pixel channels substantially, and depriving the users of painting with arbitrary RGB colors. In this paper, we introduce a practical approach that enables mixing colors with K-M while keeping everything in RGB. We achieve this by establishing a latent color space, where RGB colors are represented as mixtures ofprimary pigments together with additive residuals. The latents can be manipulated with linear operations, leading to expected, plausible results. We describe the conversion between RGB and our latent representation, and show how to implement it efficiently.
Efficient and robust discrete conformal equivalence with boundary
Authors: Campen Marcel , Capouellez Ryan , Shen Hanxiao , Zhu Leyi , Panozzo Daniele , Zorin Denis
Published: December 2021

We describe an efficient algorithm to compute a discrete metric with prescribed Gaussian curvature at all interior vertices and prescribed geodesic curvature along the boundary of a mesh. The metric is (discretely) conformally equivalent to the input metric. Its construction is based on theory developed in [Gu et al. 2018b] and [Springborn 2020], relying on results on hyperbolic ideal Delaunay triangulations. Generality is achieved by considering the surface's intrinsic triangulation as a degree of freedom, and particular attention is paid to the proper treatment of surface boundaries. While via a double cover approach the case with boundary can be reduced to the case without boundary quite naturally, the implied symmetry of the setting causes additional challenges related to stable Delaunay-critical configurations that we address explicitly. We furthermore explore the numerical limits of the approach and derive continuous maps from the discrete metrics.
Fast and accurate spherical harmonics products
Authors: Xin Hanggao , Zhou Zhiqian , An Di , Yan Ling-Qi , Xu Kun , Hu Shi-Min , Yau Shing-Tung
Published: December 2021

Spherical Harmonics (SH) have been proven as a powerful tool for rendering, especially in real-time applications such as Precomputed Radiance Transfer (PRT). Spherical harmonics are orthonormal basis functions and are efficient in computing dot products. However, computations of triple product and multiple product operations are often the bottlenecks that prevent moderately high-frequency use of spherical harmonics. Specifically state-of-the-art methods for accurate SH triple products of order
n
have a time complexity of
O
(
n
5
), which is a heavy burden for most real-time applications. Even worse, a brute-force way to compute
k
-multiple products would take
O
(
n

2
k

) time. In this paper, we propose a fast and accurate method for spherical harmonics triple products with the time complexity of only
O
(
n
3
), and further extend it for computing
k
-multiple products with the time complexity of
O
(
kn
3
+
k
2
n
2
log
(
kn
)). Our key insight is to conduct the triple and multiple products in the Fourier space, in which the multiplications can be performed much more efficiently. To our knowledge, our method is theoretically the fastest for accurate spherical harmonics triple and multiple products. And in practice, we demonstrate the efficiency of our method in rendering applications including mid-frequency relighting and shadow fields.