Learning 3D Scene Priors with 2D Supervision

Holistic 3D scene understanding entails estimation of both layout configuration and object geometry in a 3D environment. Recent works have shown advances in 3D scene estimation from various input modalities (e.g., images, 3D scans), by leveraging 3D supervision (e.g., 3D bounding boxes or CAD models), for which collection at scale is expensive and often intractable. To address this shortcoming, we propose a new method to learn 3D scene priors of layout and shape without requiring any 3D ground truth. Instead, we rely on 2D supervision from multi-view RGB images. Our method represents a 3D scene as a latent vector, from which we can progressively decode to a sequence of objects characterized by their class categories, 3D bounding boxes, and meshes. With our trained autoregressive decoder representing the scene prior, our method facilitates many downstream applications, including scene synthesis, interpolation, and single-view reconstruction. Experiments on 3D-FRONT and ScanNet show that our method outperforms state of the art in single-view reconstruction, and achieves state-of-the-art results in scene synthesis against baselines which require for 3D supervision.Comment: Video: https://youtu.be/YT7MEdygRoY Project: https://yinyunie.github.io/sceneprior-page

Empowering Film Sound Practice: Countering visual hegemony and industrial ideology with reference to the short-film ‘Fade’

This thesis examines the possible marginalisation of sound practices in contemporary mainstream film and television, the fundamental reason for which amounts to a dominant, delineating visual culture (a visual hegemony) that is proliferated within filmmaking practice via ideological and technological means. Evidence for the discussion consists of historical and anecdotal accounts. The discussion is framed by broader concepts of ideology and industrial structures by philosophers: Antonio Gramsci, Dick Hebdige, Louis Althusser and Theodore Adorno. The central contention is that due to the belief that sound is ‘passive’ and a ‘secular’ sphere of film production; it is frequently underrepresented and provided as a ‘sweetener’ to make the visual elements more tangible. The term secular here refers to sounds often segregated and subordinate position in comparison to metaphorical ‘deification’ of visual practices. My assertion is that this ideology, reinforced by industrial constraints, can belittle the expressive power that sound offers. The practical work builds from this a philosophy that empowers the soundtrack in production and reception, by exploiting the subjective, emotive and sensorial nature of sound to create an aesthetic that demands further engagement from the receiver. This is achieved by engendering experimentation and discourse between picture and sound edits. Ultimately this is framed by a guerrilla filmmaking process of film production and a subsequent exploitation of the freedoms of workflow during postproduction that working as an auteur affords

From the Thirteenth to the Fourteenth Party Congress: Promises and Challenges of the PRC\u27s Economic Reform, the ROC\u27s Political Democratization and China\u27s National Reintegration

The thirteenth party congresses of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) were arguably the most important vantage points in contemporary Chinese political history. They symbolized an apex of reformist political currents in the People\u27s Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland and the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, respectively. The congresses ushered in a period of unprecedented change and uncertainty, hope and despair. Many analysts\u27 earlier euphoria, however, gave way to sober reassessment, as each polity encountered tremendous challenges. In particular, the Tiananmen Massacre served as a rude awakening to the seemingly irresolvable tension between economic reform and political reform. By contrast, Taiwan\u27s further democratization has opened a Pandora\u27s box of political untouchables such as national identity, sub-ethnic conflict, and independence aspiration. Many noteworthy developments are still unfolding, the implications of which are not yet clear to us. But as Thomas B. Gold suggests, the status quo is not static, these significant events necessitate our reconceptualization of the political systems and the state-society relationship within each polity, as well as the repercussions of these events on Mainland-Taiwan relations

A Political Process Explanation of Algerian AAV’s Fiasco in the Legislative Election of 2012

“Islamist vote” has been an area of interest in the academia for quite a long time and has attracted particular attention of scholars following the Arab Spring, as Islamist parties witnessed an increase of popularity at the ballot boxes in 2011-2012 in North African countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. Whereas much of the recent academic literature on Islamist parties is oriented around the cases of Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, limited attention has been paid to a puzzle that deserves profound analysis: given the many similarities between Algeria and its neighbors in the 2010s, why did Algerian Islamist parties failed to enlarge its supporting base as their counterparts in other North African countries did? This research attempts to examine the phenomenon of “Algerian exceptionalism” from a political process perspective by analyzing the political opportunities, organizational structure and framing of AAV, and how these factors affected the alliance’s mobilization. The approach presented in this article is not limited to the case of Algerian AAV but can be leveraged to study Islamist parties and Islamic activism in general. Keywords: Islamist parties; Mobilization; Algeria

Space missions to comets

The broad impact of a cometary mission is assessed with particular emphasis on scientific interest in a fly-by mission to Halley's comet and a rendezvous with Tempel 2. Scientific results, speculations, and future plans are discussed