Shape manipulation using physically based wire deformations

This paper develops an efficient, physically based shape manipulation technique. It defines a 3D model with profile curves, and uses spine curves generated from the profile curves to control the motion and global shape of 3D models. Profile and spine curves are changed into profile and spine wires by specifying proper material and geometric properties together with external forces. The underlying physics is introduced to deform profile and spine wires through the closed form solution to ordinary differential equations for axial and bending deformations. With the proposed approach, global shape changes are achieved through manipulating spine wires, and local surface details are created by deforming profile wires. A number of examples are presented to demonstrate the applications of our proposed approach in shape manipulation

Resolving Structure in Human Brain Organization: Identifying Mesoscale Organization in Weighted Network Representations

Human brain anatomy and function display a combination of modular and hierarchical organization, suggesting the importance of both cohesive structures and variable resolutions in the facilitation of healthy cognitive processes. However, tools to simultaneously probe these features of brain architecture require further development. We propose and apply a set of methods to extract cohesive structures in network representations of brain connectivity using multi-resolution techniques. We employ a combination of soft thresholding, windowed thresholding, and resolution in community detection, that enable us to identify and isolate structures associated with different weights. One such mesoscale structure is bipartivity, which quantifies the extent to which the brain is divided into two partitions with high connectivity between partitions and low connectivity within partitions. A second, complementary mesoscale structure is modularity, which quantifies the extent to which the brain is divided into multiple communities with strong connectivity within each community and weak connectivity between communities. Our methods lead to multi-resolution curves of these network diagnostics over a range of spatial, geometric, and structural scales. For statistical comparison, we contrast our results with those obtained for several benchmark null models. Our work demonstrates that multi-resolution diagnostic curves capture complex organizational profiles in weighted graphs. We apply these methods to the identification of resolution-specific characteristics of healthy weighted graph architecture and altered connectivity profiles in psychiatric disease.Comment: Comments welcom

Wavelet Multiresolution Analysis of High-Frequency Asian FX Rates, Summer 1997

FX pricing processes are nonstationary and their frequency characteristics are time-dependent. Most do not conform to geometric Brownian motion, since they exhibit a scaling law with a Hurst exponent between zero and 0.5 and fractal dimensions between 1.5 and 2. This paper uses wavelet multiresolution analysis, with Haar wavelets, to analyze the nonstationarity (time-dependence) and self-similarity (scale-dependence) of intra-day Asian currency spot exchange rates. These are the ask and bid quotes of the currencies of eight Asian countries (Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand), and of Germany for comparison, for the crisis period May 1, 1998 - August 31, 1997, provided by Telerate (U.S. dollar is the numeraire). Their time-scale dependent spectra, which are localized in time, are observed in wavelet based scalograms. The FX increments can be characterized by the irregularity of their singularities. This degrees of irregularity are measured by homogeneous Hurst exponents. These critical exponents are used to identify the fractal dimension, relative stability and long term dependence of each Asian FX series. The invariance of each identified Hurst exponent is tested by comparing it at varying time and scale (frequency) resolutions. It appears that almost all FX markets show anti-persistent pricing behavior. The anchor currencies of the D-mark and Japanese Yen are ultra-efficient in the sense of being most anti-persistent. The Taiwanese dollar is the most persistent, and thus unpredictable, most likely due to administrative control. FX markets exhibit these non- linear, non-Gaussian dynamic structures, long term dependence, high kurtosis, and high degrees of non-informational (noise) trading, possibly because of frequent capital flows induced by non-synchronized regional business cycles, rapidly changing political risks, unexpected informational shocks to investment opportunities, and, in particular, investment strategies synthesizing interregional claims using cash swaps with different duration horizons.foreign exchange markets, anti-persistence, long-term dependence, multi-resolution analysis, wavelets, time-scale analysis, scaling laws, irregularity analysis, randomness, Asia