Not just immobile. Moving drawings and visual synecdoches in Neon Genesis Evangelion

When thinking about anime, stillness is usually pointed out as one of the most defining traits. However, stillness can be used for different reasons (from budget restrictions to aesthetic choices) and in many different ways. Neon Genesis Evangelion stands out as a paramount example of how anime employs stillness as a powerful aesthetic and visual narrative device

The anime connection. Early Euro-Japanese co-productions and the animesque: form, rhythm, design

After European audiences had first contact with anime in the late 1970s, animated co-productions between domestic producers and Japanese studios emerged in the early 1980s, playing a lead role in standardizing anime aesthetics and hence contributing to the broader development of anime in Spain and other major European markets. These pioneering co-productions fostered the arrival of Japanese studios to the European broadcasting scene. However, its real impact on the popularization of anime is subject to debate. Appealing to a European audience, these series lacked some of the most recognizable features associated with anime as a larger medium. Nonetheless, in some of these animated productions there was an underlying animesque flair in the shape of conventionalized elements, character design, facial expressions, rhythm, camera action and tropes. Neither entirely domestic nor fully Japanese, these hybrid productions set up a ‘bridge’ between European and American animated visual language and anime mainstream features, thereby shaping the collective idea of what anime is for the first generation of viewers in Spain and Europe

Production of molecular weight fractionated hemicelluloses hydrolyzates from spent coffee grounds combining hydrothermal extraction and a multistep ultrafiltration/diafiltration

Producción CientíficaSpent coffee grounds are a huge residual stream from instant coffee makers. The production of spent coffee oil and molecular weight fractionated hemicellulose hydrolysates via supercritical CO2 and a hydrothermal treatment followed by concentration, separation, and purification through cascade ultrafiltration/diafiltration (30-10-5 kDa) was studied. Hemicelluloses extraction yield reached 3.49 g/100 g of dry defatted spent coffee after 40 min at 160 °C. The ultrafiltration system allowed concentrating up to 5-fold certain groups of hemicellulose, being most of them retained in the first membrane. Hemicellulose concentration and molecular weight of the feed exerted a great influence on the mass transfer through the membrane due to the formation of aggregates. However, purification through diafiltration allowed both to decrease by-products retentions from 45.6% to 8.7%, increasing the molecular weight of each fraction. Six hemicellulose products were obtained with purities between 83.7 and 97.8 wt% and weight-average molecular weights between 1641 and 49,733 Da.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project CTQ2015-64892-R and FEDER)Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deportes (reference FPU15/06366

Creación de artículos en Wikipedia como herramienta de introducción al concepto de web 2.0 para estudiantes de Comunicación Audiovisual

La comprensión de los conceptos básicos que gobiernan la llamada Web 2.0 es fundamental para los estudiantes de la titulación de Comunicación Audiovisual por lo que comporta de cara a su futuro profesional. La presentación de estos conceptos se puede realizar de forma intuitiva y práctica mediante la elaboración de una experiencia práctica que utiliza como primera herramienta una wiki y, en una segunda etapa, la enciclopedia online Wikipedia. Esta experiencia permite al alumno comprender la sencillez de uso de las aplicaciones 2.0, la capacidad de las mismas para generar contenidos de forma colaborativa y el respeto que exigen las normas establecidas por las comunidades que gobiernan el uso de estas aplicaciones. Un estudio de varias encuestas cumplimentadas por los alumnos antes y después de la experiencia demuestra el interés surgido entre ellos por las aplicaciones 2.0 gracias a la realización de esta experiencia práctica. El diseño de la experiencia en dos fases: una con la herramienta software en entorno local y otra con la misma herramienta pero en un entorno global resulta innovadora y facilita la consecución de los objetivos propuestos.Peer Reviewe

Tabu search-based method for bézier curve parameterization

A very important issue in many applied fields is to construct the fitting curve that approximates a given set of data points optimally in the sense of least-squares. This problem arises in a number of areas, such as computer-aided design & manufacturing (CAD/CAM), virtual reality, medical imaging, computer graphics, computer animation, and many others. This is also a hard problem, because it is highly nonlinear, over-determined and typically involves a large number of unknown variables. A critical step in this process is to obtain a suitable parameterization of the data points. In this context, this paper introduces a new method to obtain an optimal solution for the parameterization problem of the least-squares fitting Bézier curve. Our method is based on a local search metaheuristic approach for optimization problems called tabu search. The method is applied to some simple yet illustrative examples for the cases of 2D and 3D curves. The proposed method is simple to understand, easy to implement and can be applied to any kind of smooth data points. Our experimental results show that the presented method performs very well, being able to fit the data points with a high degree of accuracy.This research has been financially supported by the Computer Science National Program of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Project Ref. #TIN2012-30768, Toho University, the University of Cantabria, and the Instituto de Física de Cantabria, a mixed research center of the University of Cantabria and CSIC-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.Peer Reviewe

Agent Architecture Modelling at the Knowledge Level

The definition of an agent architecture at the knowledge level makes emphasis on the knowledge role played by the data interchanged between the agent components and makes explicit this data interchange this makes easier the reuse of these knowledge structures independently of the implementation This article defines a generic task model of an agent architecture and refines some of these tasks using the interference diagrams. Finally, a operationalisation of this conceptual model using the rule-oriented language Jess is shown. knowledge level

From Nonlinear Optimization to Convex Optimization through Firefly Algorithm and Indirect Approach with Applications to CAD/CAM

ABSTRACT. Fitting spline curves to data points is a very important issue in many applied fields. It is also challenging, because these curves typically depend on many continuous variables in a highly interrelated nonlinear way. In general, it is not possible to compute these parameters analytically, so the problem is formulated as a continuous nonlinear optimization problem, for which traditional optimization techniques usually fail.This paper presents a new bioinspired method to tackle this issue. In this method, optimization is performed through a combination of two techniques. Firstly, we apply the indirect approach to the knots, in which they are not initially the subject of optimization but precomputed with a coarse approximation scheme. Secondly, a powerful bioinspired metaheuristic technique, the firefly algorithm, is applied to optimization of data parameterization; then, the knot vector is refined by using De Boor’s method, thus yielding a better approximation to the optimal knot vector. This scheme converts the original nonlinear continuous optimization problem into a convex optimization problem, solved by singular value decomposition. Our method is applied to some illustrative real-world examples from the CAD/CAM field. Our experimental results show that the proposed scheme can solve the original continuous nonlinear optimization problem very efficiently

Two simulated annealing optimization schemas for rational bézier curve fitting in the presence of noise

Fitting curves to noisy data points is a difficult problem arising in many scientific and industrial domains. Although polynomial functions are usually applied to this task, there are many shapes that cannot be properly fitted by using this approach. In this paper, we tackle this issue by using rational Bézier curves. This is a very difficult problem that requires computing four different sets of unknowns (data parameters, poles, weights, and the curve degree) strongly related to each other in a highly nonlinear way. This leads to a difficult continuous nonlinear optimization problem. In this paper, we propose two simulated annealing schemas (the all-in-one schema and the sequential schema) to determine the data parameterization and the weights of the poles of the fitting curve. These schemas are combined with least-squares minimization and the Bayesian Information Criterion to calculate the poles and the optimal degree of the best fitting Bézier rational curve, respectively. We apply our methods to a benchmark of three carefully chosen examples of 2D and 3D noisy data points. Our experimental results show that this methodology (particularly, the sequential schema) outperforms previous polynomial-based approaches for our data fitting problem, even in the presence of noise of low-medium intensity.This research has been kindly supported by the Computer Science National Program of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Project Ref. #TIN2012-30768, Toho University (Funabashi, Japan), and the University of Cantabria (Santander, Spain)

Firefly algorithm for polynomial Bézier surface parameterization

A classical issue in many applied fields is to obtain an approximating surface to a given set of data points. This problem arises in Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM), virtual reality, medical imaging, computer graphics, computer animation, and many others. Very often, the preferred approximating surface is polynomial, usually described in parametric form. This leads to the problem of determining suitable parametric values for the data points, the so-called surface parameterization. In real-world settings, data points are generally irregularly sampled and subjected to measurement noise, leading to a very difficult nonlinear continuous optimization problem, unsolvable with standard optimization techniques. This paper solves the parameterization problem for polynomial Bézier surfaces by applying the firefly algorithm, a powerful nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithm introduced recently to address difficult optimization problems. The method has been successfully applied to some illustrative examples of open and closed surfaces, including shapes with singularities. Our results show that the method performs very well, being able to yield the best approximating surface with a high degree of accuracy

Hybrid Functional-Neural Approach for Surface Reconstruction

ABSTRACT. This paper introduces a new hybrid functional-neural approach for surface reconstruction. Our approach is based on the combination of two powerful artificial intelligence paradigms: on one hand, we apply the popular Kohonen neural network to address the data parameterization problem. On the other hand, we introduce a new functional network, called NURBS functional network, whose topology is aimed at reproducing faithfully the functional structure of the NURBS surfaces. These neural and functional networks are applied in an iterative fashion for further surface refinement. The hybridization of these two networks provides us with a powerful computational approach to obtain a NURBS fitting surface to a set of irregularly sampled noisy data points within a prescribed error threshold. The method has been applied to two illustrative examples. The experimental results confirm the good performance of our approach.This research has been kindly supported by the Computer Science National Program of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Project ref. no. TIN2012-30768, Toho University (Funabashi, Japan), and the University of Cantabria (Santander, Spain)