Sustainability Literate Graduates: Linking Education for Sustainable Development within Higher Education with the ‘Skills Gap’ in the Employment Market

This paper considers the effects of education for sustainable development (ESD) on undergraduates within higher education (HE), through learning outcomes from courses and campus activities. It is high on the agenda of global governments and educational authorities to encourage organisations and economies to become more sustainable, which can be achieved primarily by educating future decision makers, professionals and leaders. Firstly, an overview of secondary data on sustainability and ESD in HE is offered; then, findings and further discussion, contributing to the knowledge and creating opportunities for further explorations in the field. The data was obtained from University of Huddersfield undergraduate students and ‘LinkedInTM’ discussion groups. This paper highlights a lack of sustainability skills and confidence between students, despite strong interest in the subject, and identifies potential issues, leading to a lack of sustainability literate graduates in the UK employment market

A Vortex Method for Bi-phasic Fluids Interacting with Rigid Bodies

We present an accurate Lagrangian method based on vortex particles, level-sets, and immersed boundary methods, for animating the interplay between two fluids and rigid solids. We show that a vortex method is a good choice for simulating bi-phase flow, such as liquid and gas, with a good level of realism. Vortex particles are localized at the interfaces between the two fluids and within the regions of high turbulence. We gain local precision and efficiency from the stable advection permitted by the vorticity formulation. Moreover, our numerical method straightforwardly solves the two-way coupling problem between the fluids and animated rigid solids. This new approach is validated through numerical comparisons with reference experiments from the computational fluid community. We also show that the visually appealing results obtained in the CG community can be reproduced with increased efficiency and an easier implementation

The Impact of Greek Crisis on the Western Balkan Countries

Greece is experiencing one of the deepest economic and financial crises in history and its tremendous impact is not affecting only the Eurozone countries but also the economies of all South and Eastern European countries. The crisis is especially visible in countries influenced by the movements and deviations of Greek economy like the main regional trade partners or the ones that have a relatively high percentage of foreign direct investments. Among these countries the most affected are Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Croatia. The main aim of this research paper is to investigate and identify the impact and spillover effect of Greek crisis on the main Western Balkan countries. The chances of a rapid improvement of Greek economy seem to be diminishing and the tremendous impact on these countries are resulting in currency devaluation, increase of unemployment rate, decrease of real GDP and decrease of remittances. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of the crisis based on the main macroeconomic variables such as real GDP, inflation and unemployment rate. By using E-views program, a regression model will be built to help understand which of these macroeconomic variables was mostly affected and what will be the short term and long term effect of the crisis on the whole region

Un paso adelante en la aplicación del derecho comunitario de la competencia por los jueces nacionales: el asunto Courage

El Tribunal de Justicia de las Comunidades Europeas (en adelante, TJCE), en su Sentencia de 20 de septiembre de 2001, Courage Ltd contra Bernard Crehan, asunto C-453/99, se ha pronunciado una vez más sobre el efecto directo del derecho comunitario y las consecuencias civiles de las infracciones de aquél: los particulares que han participado en una infracción del derecho comunitario de la competencia pueden ejercitar, ante el juez nacional, una acción indemnizatoria de daños y perjuicios contra los demás partícipes de dicha infracción siempre que los reclamantes de tales daños no hayan tenido una responsabilidad significativa en la distorsión de la competencia de que se trat

The Differences in Students’ Financial Literacy based on Financial Education

This paper examines the differences in Financial Literacy among Albanian university students based on their financial education. The main objectives of this study are: i) firstly, to assess the level of financial knowledge, financial attitude and financial behaviour, and to make relevant comparison based on students financial education; ii) secondly, to evaluate an overall score of financial literacy and to investigate its difference among students who are financially educated and their counterparts; iii) finally, to provide some conclusions and policy implications with regard to financial literacy. A total of 607 students from five public and three private universities in Albania participated in this research. The outcome shows that student’s financial behaviour does not differ based on their financial education. In addition, non-financially educated students appear to demonstrate better financial behaviour. Finally, students who have taken a personal financial course are shown to be more knowledgeable and financially literate than their counterparts. This study paves the way for future research in Albania

N-ary implicit blends with topology control

International audienceConstructive implicit surfaces are attractive for modeling and animation because they seamlessly handle shapes with complex and dynamic topology. However, the way they merge shapes is difficult to control. This paper introduces a solution: an improved blend operator that provides control over how topology changes are handled. It is based on a correction applied to the standard blending operator: the sum. Building on summation preserves the n-ary nature of the blend, providing the simplicity of arbitrary (e.g. flat) construction trees and segmentation invariance. The correction is based on projection to a reference case in the variation-space defined by the field and the norm of its gradient. It provides a single parameter, allowing for tuning behavior to achieve effects ranging from avoiding topological combination, through merging only during overlap, to merging at a distance. Dynamic adjustment of the parameter allows for context-dependent effects. Applications range from skeleton-based modeling, where shapes keep the topology of their skeleton, to objects that change topology during animation, with controllable merging. We illustrate the latter with Manga-style hair, where merging depends on the angle between hair wisps

Density-controlled crowds

International audienceWe present a novel algorithm for populating and animating an environment of a given density. Our algorithm considers two kind of densities: static density (when people doesn't move) and dynamic density (when people move). The resulting flows of characters are computed according to a density map provided by a user. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the proposed solution, as well as future work

The Line of Action: an Intuitive Interface for Expressive Character Posing

International audienceThe line of action is a conceptual tool often used by cartoonists and illustrators to help make their figures more consistent and more dramatic. We often see the expression of characters--may it be the dynamism of a super hero, or the elegance of a fashion model--well captured and amplified by a single aesthetic line. Usually this line is laid down in early stages of the drawing and used to describe the body's principal shape. By focusing on this simple abstraction, the person drawing can quickly adjust and refine the overall pose of his or her character from a given viewpoint. In this paper, we propose a mathematical definition of the line of action (LOA), which allows us to automatically align a 3D virtual character to a user specified LOA by solving an optimization problem. We generalize this framework to other types of lines found in the drawing literature, such as secondary lines used to place arms. Finally, we show a wide range of poses and animations that were rapidly created using our system

Generation of Folded Terrains from Simple Vector Maps

International audienceWhile several terrain generation methods focused on plausible watersheds, the fact that most mountains should not be isolated but rather be part of wider scale mountain ranges was seldom considered. In this work, we present the first procedural method that generates folded terrains from simple user input, in the form of some sparse peak distribution on a vector map. The key idea is to infer possible continental plates from this distribution and to use simplified plate tectonics to generate relevant terrain folds. The resulting terrain with large-scale folds, computed in real-time, can be further refined using standard erosion simulation. This leads to detailed terrains with plausible mountain ranges that match the peak distributions and main rivers specified on simple vector maps