View space linking, solid node compression and binary space partitioning for visibility determination in 3D walk-throughs

Today\u27s 3D games consumers are expecting more and more quality in their games. To enable high quality graphics at interactive rates, games programmers employ a technique known as hidden surface removal (HSR) or polygon culling. HSR is not just applicable to games; it may also be applied to any application that requires quality and interactive rates, including medical, military and building applications. One such commonly used technique for HSR is the binary space partition (BSP) tree, which is used for 3D ‘walk-throughs’, otherwise known as 3D static environments or first person shooters. Recent developments in 3D accelerated hardware technology do not mean that HSR is becoming redundant; in fact, HSR is increasingly becoming more important to the graphics pipeline. The well established potentially visible sets (PSV) BSP tree algorithm is used as a platform for exploring three enhanced algorithms; View Space Lighting, Solid Node Compression and hardware accelerated occlusion are shown to reducing the amounts of nodes that are traversed in a BSP tree, improving tree travel efficiency. These algorithms are proven (in cases) to improve overall efficiency

Performing Statehood in Northern Kosovo : Discursive Struggle over Contested Space

Since Serbia and Kosovo began their political and technical dialogue mediated by the European Union in 2011, numerous agreements were signed, but few of them implemented. In addition, since 2018 the idea of partitioning Kosovo along ethnic lines has entered public debates. This article asks why that is the case and argues that Northern Kosovo - specifically, who has the right to claim statehood over this area - lies at the heart of why partition was suggested as a viable option and why so few agreements have been implemented. In order to demonstrate this, the article adopts a performative view of statehood, particularly suitable for states 'in-becoming', such as Kosovo. As only externally performed statehood has been examined so far, that is, efforts for international recognition, this article extends performativity to internally negotiated statehood, against the background of two political systems competing for legitimacy in the long run. This is the case with Northern Kosovo, conceptualized as an area of overlapping limited statehood. The developed analytical framework can be extended to other cases of territorial disputes, such as Crimea or Palestine. The framework can also be expanded to explore performativity of statehood in areas where statehood is not institutionally disputed, but rather symbolically.Peer reviewe

In the Thick of It: Formation of the Tuberculous Granuloma and Its Effects on Host and Therapeutic Responses

The defining pathology of tuberculosis is the granuloma, an organized structure derived from host immune cells that surrounds infecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis. As the location of much of the bacteria in the infected host, the granuloma is a central point of interaction between the host and the infecting bacterium. This review describes the signals and cellular reprogramming that drive granuloma formation. Further, as a central point of host-bacterial interactions, the granuloma shapes disease outcome by altering host immune responses and bacterial susceptibility to antibiotic treatment, as discussed herein. This new understanding of granuloma biology and the signaling behind it highlights the potential for host-directed therapies targeting the granuloma to enhance antibiotic access and tuberculosis-specific immune responses

Prediction of polyspecificity from antibody sequence data by machine learning

Antibodies are generated with great diversity in nature resulting in a set of molecules, each optimized to bind a specific target. Taking advantage of their diversity and specificity, antibodies make up for a large part of recently developed biologic drugs. For therapeutic use antibodies need to fulfill several criteria to be safe and efficient. Polyspecific antibodies can bind structurally unrelated molecules in addition to their main target, which can lead to side effects and decreased efficacy in a therapeutic setting, for example via reduction of effective drug levels. Therefore, we created a neural-network-based model to predict polyspecificity of antibodies using the heavy chain variable region sequence as input. We devised a strategy for enriching antibodies from an immunization campaign either for antigen-specific or polyspecific binding properties, followed by generation of a large sequencing data set for training and cross-validation of the model. We identified important physico-chemical features influencing polyspecificity by investigating the behaviour of this model. This work is a machine-learning-based approach to polyspecificity prediction and, besides increasing our understanding of polyspecificity, it might contribute to therapeutic antibody development

Unstressed Vowel Reduction Across Majorcan Catalan Dialects: Production and Spoken Word Recognition

This study investigates the production and auditory lexical processing of words involved in a patterned phonological alternation in two dialects of Catalan spoken on the island of Majorca, Spain. One of these dialects, that of Palma, merges /?/ and /o/ as [o] in unstressed position, and it maintains /u/ as an independent category, [u]. In the dialect of Soller, a small village, speakers merge unstressed /?/, /o/, and /u/ to [u]. First, a production study asks whether the discrete, rule-based descriptions of the vowel alternations provided in the dialectological literature are able to account adequately for these processes: are mergers complete? Results show that mergers are complete with regards to the main acoustic cue to these vowel contrasts, that is, F1. However, minor differences are maintained for F2 and vowel duration. Second, a lexical decision task using cross-modal priming investigates the strength with which words produced in the phonetic form of the neighboring (versus one's own) dialect activate the listeners' lexical representations during spoken word recognition: are words within and across dialects accessed efficiently? The study finds that listeners from one of these dialects, Soller, process their own and the neighboring forms equally efficiently, while listeners from the other one, Palma, process their own forms more efficiently than those of the neighboring dialect. This study has implications for our understanding of the role of lifelong linguistic experience on speech performance

The carceral in literary dystopia: social conformity in Aldous Huxley’s Brave new world, Jasper Fford’s Shades of grey and Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-127)This dissertation examines how three dystopian texts, namely Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey and Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, exhibit social conformity as a disciplinary mechanism of the ‘carceral’ – a notion introduced by poststructuralist thinker Michel Foucault. Employing poststructuralist discourse and deconstructive theory as a theoretical framework, the study investigates how each novel establishes its world as a successful carceral city that incorporates most, if not all, the elements of the incarceration system that Foucault highlights in Discipline and Punish. It establishes that the societies of the texts present potentially nightmarish future societies in which social and political “improvements” result in a seemingly better world, yet some essential part of human existence has been sacrificed. This study of these fictional worlds reflects on the carceral nature of modern society and highlights the problematic nature of the social and political practices to which individuals are expected to conform. Finally, in line with Foucault, it postulates that individuals need not be enclosed behind prison walls to be imprisoned; the very nature of our social systems imposes the restrictive power that incarcerates societiesEnglish StudiesM.A. (English Studies

The Logic of the Laws

This study is directed towards providing basic background material for the understanding of South Sumatran social organisation. To this end, four legal codes from the first half of the nineteenth century are presented and analysed. The method used in the analysis is a modification of that used by Levi-Strauss for the analysis of myth

Advances in Synthesis of Metallic, Oxidic and Composite Powders

Advances in synthesis of metallic, oxidic and composite powders were presented via the following methods: ultrasound-assisted leaching¸ ultrasonic spray pyrolysis, hydrogenation, dehydrogenation, ball milling, molten salt electrolysis, galvanostatic electrolysis, hydrogen reduction, thermochemical decomposition, inductively coupled thermal plasma, precipitation and high pressure carbonation in an autoclave. This Special Issue contains 17 papers from Europe, Asia, Australia, South Africa and the Balkans. The synthesis was focused on metals: Co, Cu; Re; oxides: ZnO, MgO, SiO2; V2O5; sulfides: MoS2, core shell material: Cu-Al2O3, Pt/TiO2; compounds: Ca0.75Ce0.25ZrTi2O7, Mo5Si3, Ti6Al4V. The environmentally friendly strategies were presented at the carbonation of olivine, treatment of acid mine drainage water and production of vanadium oxide