An Integrated Approach to Finish Machining of RP Parts

An integrated approach to finish machining of RP parts and tools has been developed at the University of Rhode Island. Pre-processing operations, including surface offsets to add machining stock, and post-processing operations, including CNC tool-path generation, have been combined into one integrated set of software algorithms to make possible the effective finishing of near-net parts and tools from RP. An in-depth description of the uniquely developed STL vertex offset algorithm will be explored as well as an automatic method for adaptive raster milling, sharp edge contour machining and hole drilling from STL files. The time involved and surface finish benefits of the developed methodology will be compared to alternative approaches.Mechanical Engineerin

The Jus Ad Bellum and the 1998 Initiation of the Eritrean-Ethopian War

From May 1998 to December 2000, Eritrea and Ethiopia engaged in an armed conflict that cost the lives of thousands of individuals, injured thousands more, and displaced tens of thousands of men, women, and children from their homes. In December 2000, the two sides concluded a comprehensive agreement that ended the war. Among other things, the agreement established the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission. Consisting of five arbitrators, the Commission’s mandate was to “decide through binding arbitration all claims for loss, damage or injury by one Government against the other” that were “related to the conflict” and that “resulted from violations of international humanitarian law, including the 1949 Geneva Conventions, or other violations of international law.” The two countries filed claims with the Commission in December 2001 and from that time until August 2009, the Commission issued seventeen arbitral awards and eight decisions, covering a broad array of claims, including inhumane treatment of prisoners of war and civilian internees, abuse of enemy aliens in a belligerent’s territory or in occupied territory, wrongful seizure of the enemy’s public or private property, indiscriminate battlefield conduct or aerial bombing, harassment of diplomats and seizure of diplomatic property, and many other matters. The book LITIGATING WAR: ARBITRATION OF CIVIL INJURY BY THE ERITREA-ETHIOPIA CLAIMS COMMISSION seeks to integrate in discrete chapters the Commission’s findings on key topics, with each chapter organized into sub-sections that deal with the principal elements of that topic. The guiding emphasis is not on who-filed-what claim but is instead on what kinds of violations were addressed by the Commission, what kinds of evidence were relevant in establishing or defending against such violations, what legal conclusions emerged in addressing those violations, and what levels of compensation were deemed appropriate when a violation was found.The dominant area of international law upon which claims before the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission were based was the jus in bello, or the law operating as between two belligerents after an armed conflict has arisen. One type of claim filed before the Commission, however, was quite different, in that it concerned an alleged violation of the jus ad bellum, or the law on when a state may resort to a use of military force against another state. As one of the most important norms for the international legal system, the Commission’s treatment of the jus ad bellum claim is of particular interest, and is addressed in the book’s Chapter IV on “Initiation of War.

Human Rights Through The Lens: A Study of the Institutionalization and Professionalization of Video Activism

This dissertation examines the institutional environments in which human rights video activism takes shape. Looking at how three leading human rights groups produce and use video—Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and WITNESS—it tackles how institutional environments, as we know them, are changing through their adoption of video, and what this shift suggests about the status of visual knowledge and human rights activism today. The dissertation argues that the visual knowledge provided by video and long claimed by activists has now attained legitimacy across the institutions central for human rights—journalism, the law and advocacy. These institutions are characterized by different professional logics and dynamics, but each of them has built its authority upon the power of words, sidelining the value of images. In the current moment, though, journalism, the law and advocacy are all turning to video as a way of offsetting a varied set of cultural, social, financial and technological challenges. This turn to video is therefore providing an institutional locus that supports the emerging professionalization of video activism by human rights groups. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and WITNESS are developing tactics and strategies for video that play to the modalities of journalism, the law and advocacy as a way of better tapping into the channels through which human rights receive fuller recognition and restitution. Through video production, standards and training, they move video activism away from its long-held status as an occupational craft into a proxy profession that puts human rights videos into institutional service. As video’s power as a human rights tool rests upon its ability to serve as a platform for voice, this dissertation also analyzes the effects of the proxy profession on the voice of video activism

Efficient Direct Slicing Of Dilated And Eroded 3d Models For Additive Manufacturing: Technical Report

In the context of additive manufacturing we present a novel technique for direct slicing of a dilated or eroded volume, where the input volume boundary is a triangle mesh. Rather than computing a 3D model of the boundary of the dilated or eroded volume, our technique directly produces its slices. This leads to a computationally and memory efficient algorithm, which is embarrassingly parallel. Contours can be extracted under an arbitrary chord error, non-uniform dilation or erosion are also possible. Finally, the scheme is simple and robust to implement

Chained segment offsetting for ray-based solid representations

International audienceWe present a novel approach to offset solids in the context of fabrication. Our input solids can be given under any representation: boundary meshes, voxels, indicator functions or CSG expressions. The result is a ray-based representation of the offset solid directly used for visualization and fabrication: We never need to recover a boundary mesh in our context. We define the offset solid as a sequence of morphological operations along line segments. This is equivalent to offsetting the surface by a solid defined as a Minkowski sum of segments, also known as a zonotope. A zonotope may be used to approximate the Euclidean ball with precise error bounds. We propose two complementary implementations. The first is dedicated to solids represented by boundary meshes. It performs offsetting by modifying the mesh in sequence. The result is a mesh improper for direct display, but that can be resolved into the correct offset solid through a ray representation. The major advantage of this first approach is that no loss of information – re-sampling – occurs during the offsetting sequence. However, it applies only to boundary meshes and cannot mix sequences of dilations and erosions. Our second implementation is more general as it applies directly to a ray-based representation of any solid and supports any sequence of erosion and dilation along segments. We discuss its fast implementation on modern graphics hardware. Together, the two approaches result in a versatile tool box for the efficient offsetting of solids in the context of fabrication

From 3D Models to 3D Prints: an Overview of the Processing Pipeline

Due to the wide diffusion of 3D printing technologies, geometric algorithms for Additive Manufacturing are being invented at an impressive speed. Each single step, in particular along the Process Planning pipeline, can now count on dozens of methods that prepare the 3D model for fabrication, while analysing and optimizing geometry and machine instructions for various objectives. This report provides a classification of this huge state of the art, and elicits the relation between each single algorithm and a list of desirable objectives during Process Planning. The objectives themselves are listed and discussed, along with possible needs for tradeoffs. Additive Manufacturing technologies are broadly categorized to explicitly relate classes of devices and supported features. Finally, this report offers an analysis of the state of the art while discussing open and challenging problems from both an academic and an industrial perspective.Comment: European Union (EU); Horizon 2020; H2020-FoF-2015; RIA - Research and Innovation action; Grant agreement N. 68044

The rural non-farm economy in India: Some policy issues

The annual growth rate of the male workforce in the rural non- farm sector in India was 4.3 per cent during 1977-88 and 2.0 per cent during 1988-2000, whereas in agriculture it was only one per cent during 1977-99. Thus the non-farm sector in India has immense potential to generate new jobs with relatively low direct investments. However its expansion depends upon a number of factors, which are influenced by government policies – directly or indirectly. These are discussed in this report

A Graphical Method of Computing Offset Curves

Computation of offset curves is an operation critical to many computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) applications. Though simple on the surface, differences between the straightforward mathematical definition and the demands of CAD/CAM environment in the formulation and expression of an offset curve create a problem for which only complicated, approximate solutions are presently available. This thesis explores one of the newest methods of offset curve computation, using graphics hardware to directly compute the offset curve for arbitrary input geometry. Linear segments of the input curve are represented as meshes in 3D space, and the rendering process is used to create a field of depth values from which the offset curve is extracted as an isoline. This results in significant performance enhancements over previous, similar methods. Combined with a quantification of the errors involved in a graphical approach, these advances bring the technique closer to industrial readiness. Algorithm performance is shown to be linear with respect to geometric complexity of the input curve

Central Florida Future, Vol. 27 No. 67, July 12, 1995

Lamda Chi Alpha wins programming award for third year in a row; It\u27s official-UCF is Division I-A (photo); Student Government Announcements: SG offers advice and info on campus activities; Features: Sending Letters To Cleo at The Edge; Opinion: Magic away games in the O-rena; Sports: Orlando Cubs extend their winning streak to six games.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/centralfloridafuture/2309/thumbnail.jp