Matisse : Painting 2D regions for Modeling Free-Form Shapes

International audienceThis paper presents "Matisse", an interactive modeling system aimed at providing the public with a very easy way to design free-form 3D shapes. The user progressively creates a model by painting 2D regions of arbitrary topology while freely changing the view-point and zoom factor. Each region is converted into a 3D shape, using a variant of implicit modeling that fits convolution surfaces to regions with no need of any optimization step. We use intuitive, automatic ways of inferring the thickness and position in depth of each implicit primitive, enabling the user to concentrate only on shape design. When he or she paints partly on top of an existing primitive, the shapes are blended in a local region around the intersection, avoiding some of the well known unwanted blending artifacts of implicit surfaces. The locality of the blend depends on the size of smallest feature, enabling the user to enhance large, smooth primitives with smaller details without blurring the latter away. As the results show, our system enables any unprepared user to create 3D geometry in a very intuitive way

SENS: Sketch-based Implicit Neural Shape Modeling

We present SENS, a novel method for generating and editing 3D models from hand-drawn sketches, including those of an abstract nature. Our method allows users to quickly and easily sketch a shape, and then maps the sketch into the latent space of a part-aware neural implicit shape architecture. SENS analyzes the sketch and encodes its parts into ViT patch encoding, then feeds them into a transformer decoder that converts them to shape embeddings, suitable for editing 3D neural implicit shapes. SENS not only provides intuitive sketch-based generation and editing, but also excels in capturing the intent of the user's sketch to generate a variety of novel and expressive 3D shapes, even from abstract sketches. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model compared to the state-of-the-art using objective metric evaluation criteria and a decisive user study, both indicating strong performance on sketches with a medium level of abstraction. Furthermore, we showcase its intuitive sketch-based shape editing capabilities.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figure

Shading Curves: Vector-Based Drawing With Explicit Gradient Control

A challenge in vector graphics is to define primitives that offer flexible manipulation of colour gradients. We propose a new primitive, called a shading curve, that supports explicit and local gradient control. This is achieved by associating shading profiles to each side of the curve. These shading profiles, which can be manually manipulated, represent the colour gradient out from their associated curves. Such explicit and local gradient control is challenging to achieve via the diffusion curve process, introduced in 2008, because it offers only implicit control of the colour gradient. We resolve this problem by using subdivision surfaces that are constructed from shading curves and their shading profiles.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cgf.1253

Search for B → K^(*)vv and invisible quarkonium decays

We search for the flavor-changing neutral-current decays B→K^(*)νν, and the invisible decays J/ψ→νν and ψ(2S)→νν via B→K^(*)J/ψ and B→K^(*)ψ(2S), respectively, using a data sample of 471×10^6 BB pairs collected by the BABAR experiment. We fully reconstruct the hadronic decay of one of the B mesons in the Υ(4S)→BB decay, and search for the B→K^(*)νν decay in the rest of the event. We observe no significant excess of signal decays over background and report branching fraction upper limits of B(B^+→K^+νν)<3.7×10^(-5), B(B^0→K^0νν)<8.1×10^(-5), B(B^+→K^(*+)νν)<11.6×10^(-5), B(B^0→K^(*0)νν)<9.3×10^(-5), and combined upper limits of B(B→Kνν)<3.2×10-5 and B(B→K^*νν)<7.9×10^(-5), all at the 90% confidence level. For the invisible quarkonium decays, we report branching fraction upper limits of B(J/ψ→νv)<3.9×10^(-3) and B(ψ(2S)→νν)<15.5×10^(-3) at the 90% confidence level. Using the improved kinematic resolution achieved from hadronic reconstruction, we also provide partial branching fraction limits for the B→K^(*)νν decays over the full kinematic spectrum

Gaining a better understanding of respiratory health inequalities among cities: An ecological case study on elderly males in the larger French cities

International audienceBackground: In recent years, there has been a growing number of studies on spatial inequalities in health covering a variety of scales, from small areas to metropolitan areas or regions, and for various health outcomes. However, few investigations have compared health status between cities with a view to gaining a better understanding of the relationships between such inequalities and the social, economic and physical characteristics. This paper focuses on disparities in respiratory health among the 55 largest French cities. The aim is to explore the relationships between inter-urban health patterns, city characteristics and their regional contexts, and to determine how far a city's health status relates to the features observed on different geographical scales. Methods: We used health data describing hospitalizations for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) as a proxy for respiratory health, as compared to the total number of hospitalizations (all diagnoses) as a proxy for general health. A large set of indicators relating to socioeconomic, physical and amenity aspects of the cities (urban units) was also constructed. Data were analyzed using linear correlations and multiple linear regression models. Results: The results suggest that socioeconomic characteristics are major discriminators for inequalities in respiratory health status among urban units. Once combined to socioeconomic characteristics, physical characteristics do not always appear as explanatory variables. At the regional scale, differences arising from employment features explain respiratory health inequalities. It also appears that intra-urban spatial inequalities, when combined with regional employment indicators, more efficiently describe differences in the respiratory health status of urban units than do compositional indicators. Conclusion: In order to design effective urban policies, it is essential to gain a better understanding of the differences among cities in their entirety, rather than solely differences across small urban areas or individuals

Innovative methods in European road freight transport statistics: A pilot study

By using innovative methods, such as the automated transfer of corporate electronic data to National Statistical Institutions, official transport data can be significantly improved in terms of reliability, costs and the burden on respondents. In this paper, we show that the automated compilation of statistical reports is possible and feasible. Based on previous findings, a new method and tool were developed in cooperation with two business partners from the logistics sector in Austria. The results show that the prototype could successfully be implemented at the partner companies. Improved data quality can lead to more reliable analyses in various fields. Compared to actual volumes of investments into transport, the costs of transport statistics are limited. By using the new and innovative data collection techniques, these costs can even be reduced in the long run; at the same time, the risk of bad investments and wrong decisions caused by analyses relying on poor data quality can be reduced. This results in a substantial value for business, research, the economy and the society

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse