Character modeling and animation for an horror themed game

Treball Final de Grau en Disseny i Desenvolupament de Videojocs. Codi: VJ1241. Curs acadèmic: 2016/2017Herein is presented the technical proposal for the development of the characters and animations of an horror themed game. There are three roles involved in this TFG according to “El libro blanco del desarrollo español de los videojuegos” [1] : “character modeler”, “rigging technician” and “character animator”. This technical proposal is on the field of 3D art and animation and will use 3D modeling software to generate characters, a game engine to develop game objects, a procedural animation system for the game objects and a demo of the animations in the game engine. The 3D modeling will consist of three models; a female celtic shaman, a nuckelavee (celtic monster half human half horse) and a banshee (celtic spirit). The animations included will be: walk, run, idle, attack, duck, pick up an item and set up a safe zone

MiRNAs in Cervical Cancer Radio- and Chemotherapy Response

Cervical cancer (CC) is a very frequent women disease with high mortality and morbidity incidence worldwide, being the developing countries the most affected. Persistent infection with an oncogenic high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) type is the primary cause of cervical cancer, but other etiologies are needed for complete malignancy such as patient immune response, genetic, and cellular factors, and/or environment. Radiotherapy in combination with cisplatinum is the standard treatment for invasive cervical cancer. Nevertheless, this conventional treatment is restricted due to eventual development of drug resistance and systemic toxicity. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that regulate the expression of protein-coding genes involved in various cellular processes including cancer where they play a very important role in the development and progression of malignancy. As part of this complex disease, miRNAs have been implicated in the process of drug and radiation resistance and sensitivity. Recent studies have been directed to understand how miRNAs under or over-expressed are determinants of clinical response, and other studies have focused to clarify how the process of radio and/or chemotherapy affects miRNA expression. These works could lead to the design of safer and more effective therapy approaches based on miRNA expression and their target regulation

Stochastic design of high altitude propellers

[EN] High-Altitude Platform Stations or High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellites (HAPS) use propulsion systems which are commonly based on propellers. In this paper, an algorithm for the design of those propellers considering uncertainties is developed and applied. The algorithm is based on the non intrusive polynomial chaos expansion scheme, which converts the stochastic design problem into an equivalent deterministic one. Two uncertainties are studied and characterized: 1) the stratospheric wind fluctuations using reanalysis datasets and 2) the variability of the aerodynamic coefficients caused by the low Reynolds number. The results of the method are analyzed to tackle how relevant the uncertainties are in the propulsion of the stratospheric platforms. The case of study is an ideal stratospheric airship that operates at a mean wind speed of 9 m/s and requires a thrust of 100 N, both uncertain magnitudes. The propeller is built on NACA4412 airfoils and the cost function to be maximized is the mean net propulsion efficiency. The new method provides a relevant gain in the mean efficiency when compared with the deterministic optimization.S

Advances in CFD Modeling of Urban Wind Applied to Aerial Mobility

[EN] The feasibility, safety, and efficiency of a drone mission in an urban environment are heavily influenced by atmospheric conditions. However, numerical meteorological models cannot cope with fine-grained grids capturing urban geometries; they are typically tuned for best resolutions ranging from 1 to 10 km. To enable urban air mobility, new now-casting techniques are being developed based on different techniques, such as data assimilation, variational analysis, machine-learning algorithms, and time series analysis. Most of these methods require generating an urban wind field database using CFD codes coupled with the mesoscale models. The quality and accuracy of that database determines the accuracy of the now-casting techniques. This review describes the latest advances in CFD simulations applied to urban wind and the alternatives that exist for the coupling with the mesoscale model. First, the distinct turbulence models are introduced, analyzing their advantages and limitations. Secondly, a study of the meshing is introduced, exploring how it has to be adapted to the characteristics of the urban environment. Then, the several alternatives for the definition of the boundary conditions and the interpolation methods for the initial conditions are described. As a key step, the available order reduction methods applicable to the models are presented, so the size and operability of the wind database can be reduced as much as possible. Finally, the data assimilation techniques and the model validation are presented.S

Burbuja inmobiliaria: estudio territorial de sus causas y consecuencias

España vivió la “década dorada” de su economía entre los años 1995 y 2007, con el sector inmobiliario como motor económico y reflejando datos y estadísticas que nunca antes se habían alcanzado. Paralelamente, el resto de la economía española gozaba de una salud inmejorable en este periodo. Sin embargo, dicho crecimiento se frenó repentinamente y dio lugar a una de las mayores crisis económicas que ha vivido nuestro país. Los motivos son abundantes y variados; no obstante, las entidades financieras jugaron un papel importante en la creación de la “burbuja inmobiliaria”, gracias a las malas decisiones en la prestación de créditos hipotecarios, tanto a las inmobiliarias como a los hogares. En la totalidad del país, se produjo una especulación en el mercado inmobiliario gracias a las facilidades que otorgaron los bancos, escenario que llegó a una situación límite en el año 2007. A partir de esta fecha, la construcción se paralizó y con ella, también la economía española. Sin embargo, aquellas regiones españolas con mayor actividad económica y donde la construcción de viviendas fue mayor, han sufrido mayores consecuencias del “pinchazo de la burbuja inmobiliaria”, mientras que otras comunidades que no otorgaron tanta importancia a este sector supieron sobreponerse en mejor medida a la caída de la actividad económica

Evaluating Activation and Absence of Negative Effect: Gamification and Escape Rooms for Learning

Innovation has allowed for and developed new ways of teaching and learning. Gamification is among the new training methodologies, which is a didactic approach based on the game structure with an attractive component for students. Within gamification, flipped learning and problem-based learning, escape rooms can be found as a technical aspect, which is focused on providing enigmas and tracks for the various educational content that students have assimilated through learning based on problem solving. The aim of this study is to identify how the use of gamification with the use of educational escape rooms affects activation and absence of a negative effect on students. 61 Master students of the Autonomous City of Ceuta participated in this case study. They were divided into three study groups (1 control group; 2 experimental groups) that followed different formative actions (control group—traditional; experimental groups—escape rooms). To achieve the objectives, a mixed research design based on quantitative and qualitative techniques was followed. The instrument used for data collection was the GAMEX (Gameful Experience Scale). The results reveal that the students who had taken a gamified formative action through escape rooms obtained better assessment results in the indicators concerning motivation, teamwork, commitment, activation, and absence of a negative effect on the learning process than those with the traditional methodology

Size and survival: an analysis of the university spin-offs

Universities have created USOs to exploit the research knowledge and contribute to the economic development of their regions in the last decades, leading to an extensive literature on the topic. However, this growing literature has widely overlooked the links between firm size and survival. This paper explores simultaneously the role of size and other firm characteristics on the likelihood of the USOs’ survival, mainly drawing on the RBV of the firm. The empirical study uses an unbalanced panel consisting of 2,220 observations from 465 Spanish USOs observed between 2005 and 2013 and event (survival) analysis techniques. The results confirm than firm size is positively associated with the USOs’ survival. Moreover, the empirical evidence seems to support the existence of a minimum size that, once reached, makes the failure risk of USOs not significantly dependent on size itself. The findings also confirm that the determinants of survival consistently differ between micro USOs and SML USOs. Thus, the survival of micro USOs is negatively affected by those activities that involve high needs of resources, like patent activity or debt payment. In contrast, exporting increases the survival probability of SML USOsS

Stochastic optimization of high-altitude airship envelopes based on kriging method

[EN] High-altitude airships can be used to transport substantial payloads to the stratosphere and remain there over long periods of time. In this paper, an algorithm for the design of high-altitude airship envelopes, accounting for uncertainties, is developed and applied. The algorithm is based on the non-intrusive polynomial chaos expansion scheme, which is employed to build a stochastic kriging metamodel. Two uncertainties are examined and characterized: 1) the stratospheric wind fluctuations using reanalysis datasets and 2) the variability in the turbulence levels. The method results are discussed to address the relevancy of the uncertainties. It is found that the drag coefficient of stratospheric envelopes can vary by as much as 30 percent. As a case of study, an ideal stratospheric airship is considered, operating at an altitude of 20 km, at a latitude of 30cN and carrying a payload of 250 kg. The baseline design follows the shape of the ZHIYUAN-1 envelope and the cost function to be minimized is the average mission drag coefficient. Due to the new method, a significant reduction (4%) of the average drag of the aircraft is achieved.S

An analysis and enhanced proposal of atmospheric boundary layer wind modelling techniques for automation of air traffic management

Production and hosting by Elsevier[EN] The air traffic management automation imposes stringent requirements on the weather models, in such a way that they should be able to provide reliable short-time forecasts in digital formats in almost real time. The atmospheric boundary layer is one of the regions where aircraft operation and coordination are critical and therefore atmospheric model performance is also vital. This paper presents conventional and innovative techniques to improve the accuracy in the forecasting of winds in the lower atmospheric layer, proposing mechanisms to develop better models including deterministic and stochastic simulations. Accuracy is improved by optimizing the grid, assimilating observations in cycling simulations and managing a number of ensemble members. An operation-driven post-processing stage helps to incorporate detailed terrain definitions and real-time observations without re-running the model. The improvements are checked against mesoscale weather simulations at different scales and a dedicated flight campaign. The results show good performance of the model without sensitively increasing the required throughput.SIBoeing Research & Technology Europ

Atmospheric Boundary Layer Wind Profile Estimation Using Neural Networks Applied to Lidar Measurements

[EN] This paper introduces a new methodology for estimating the wind profile within the ABL (Atmospheric Boundary Layer) using a neural network and a single-point near-ground measurement. An important advantage of this solution when compared with others available in the literature is that it only requires near surface measurements for the prognosis once the neural network is trained. Another advantage is that it can be used to study the wind profile temporal evolution. This work uses data collected by a lidar sensor located at the Universidad de León (Spain). The neural network best configuration was determined using sensibility analyses. The result is a multilayer perceptron with three layers for each altitude: the input layer has six nodes for the last three measurements, the second has 128 nodes and the third consists of two nodes that provide u and v. The proposed method has better performance than traditional methods. The obtained wind profile information obtained is useful for multiple applications, such as preliminary calculations of the wind resource or CFD models.S