Procedurally generated realistic virtual rural worlds

Manually creating virtual rural worlds is often a difficult and lengthy task for artists, as plant species selection, plant distributions and water networks must be deduced such that they realistically reflect the environment being modelled. As virtual worlds grow in size and complexity, climates vary on the terrain itself and a single ecosystem is no longer sufficient to realistically model all vegetation. Consequentially, the task is only becoming more difficult for these artists. Procedural methods are extensively used in computer graphics to partially or fully automate some tasks and take some of the burden off the user. Input parameters for these procedural algorithms are often unintuitive, however, and their impact on the final results, unclear. This thesis proposes, implements, and evaluates an approach to procedurally generate vegetation and water networks for realistic virtual rural worlds. Rather than placing these to reflect the environment being modelled, the work-flow is mirrored and the user models the environment directly by specifying the resources available. These intuitive input parameters are subsequently used to configure procedural algorithms and determine suitable vegetation, plant distributions and water networks. By design, the placeable plant species are configurable so any type of environment can be modelled at various levels of detail. The system has been tested by creating three ecosystems with little effort on the part of the user

Alien Registration- Long, Harry W. (Presque Isle, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/33463/thumbnail.jp

Exercise for Weight Loss: Further Evaluating Energy Compensation with Exercise

PURPOSE: This study assessed how individuals compensate for energy expended during a 12-wk aerobic exercise intervention, elucidating potential mechanisms and the role exercise dose plays in the compensatory response. PARTICIPANTS AND DESIGN: Three-arm, randomized controlled trial among sedentary adults age 18 to 40 yr, body mass index of 25 to 35. Groups included six exercise sessions per week, two sessions per week, and sedentary control. METHODS: Rate of exercise energy expenditure was calculated from a graded exercise test averaged across five heart rate zones. Energy compensation was calculated as the difference between expected weight loss (based on exercise energy expenditure) and changes in fat and fat-free mass (DXA). Resting energy expenditure was assessed via indirect calorimetry and concentrations of acylated ghrelin, leptin, insulin, and Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) were assessed fasting and postprandial (six timepoints over 2 h). RESULTS: The 6-d·wk−1 group expended more energy (2753.5 kcal) and exercised longer (320.5 min) per week than the 2-d·wk−1 group (1490.7 kcal, 1888.8 min, P \u3c 0.05), resulting in greater fat loss compared with the 2-d or control groups (P \u3c 0.05). Exercise groups did not differ in the % or total kcal compensated. Greater decreases in area under the curve (AUC) for acylated ghrelin predicted greater fat loss, regardless of group, energy expended per week, exercise duration, or exercise intensity. Changes in leptin AUC was the only independent predictor for energy compensation, with a greater decrease in leptin AUC predicting less energy compensation. Exercise frequency, energy expended, duration, or intensity did not influence energy compensation. CONCLUSIONS: Leptin is an important factor in successful weight loss through exercise, with greater postprandial decreases promoting less compensation. Greater amounts of exercise do not influence the compensatory response to an exercise-induced energy deficit

System Oriented Runway Management: A Research Update

The runway configuration used by an airport has significant implications with respect to its capacity and ability to effectively manage surface and airborne traffic. Aircraft operators rely on runway configuration information because it can significantly affect an airline's operations and planning of their resources. Current practices in runway management are limited by a relatively short time horizon for reliable weather information and little assistance from automation. Wind velocity is the primary consideration when selecting a runway configuration; however when winds are below a defined threshold, discretion may be used to determine the configuration. Other considerations relevant to runway configuration selection include airport operator constraints, weather conditions (other than winds) traffic demand, user preferences, surface congestion, and navigational system outages. The future offers an increasingly complex landscape for the runway management process. Concepts and technologies that hold the potential for capacity and efficiency increases for both operations on the airport surface and in terminal and enroute airspace are currently under investigation. Complementary advances in runway management are required if capacity and efficiency increases in those areas are to be realized. The System Oriented Runway Management (SORM) concept has been developed to address this critical part of the traffic flow process. The SORM concept was developed to address all aspects of runway management for airports of varying sizes and to accommodate a myriad of traffic mixes. SORM, to date, addresses the single airport environment; however, the longer term vision is to incorporate capabilities for multiple airport (Metroplex) operations as well as to accommodate advances in capabilities resulting from ongoing research. This paper provides an update of research supporting the SORM concept including the following: a concept of overview, results of a TRCM simulation, single airport and Metroplex modeling effort and a benefits assessment

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 18, No. 3

• The End of the Horse and Buggy Era • Moravian Architecture and Town Planning: A Review • Humor in a Friendly World • Chickens and Chicken Houses in Rural Pennsylvania • Eighteenth-Century Emigrants to America from the Duchy of Zweibrucken and the Germersheim District • Horse-Drawn Transportation: Folk-Cultural Questionnaire No. 11https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/1035/thumbnail.jp

Concentric mosaic(s), planar motion and 1D cameras

International audienceGeneral SFM methods give poor results for images captured by constrained motions such as planar motion of concentric mosaics (CM). In this paper, we propose new SFM algorithms for both images captured by CM and composite mosaic images from CM. We first introduce 1D affine camera model for completing 1D camera models. Then we show that a 2D image captured by CM can be decoupled into two 1D images: one 1D projective and one 1D affine; a composite mosaic image can by rebinned into a calibrated 1D panorama projective camera. Finally we describe subspace reconstruction methods and demonstrate both in theory and experiments the advantage of the decomposition method over the general SFM methods by incorporating the constrained motion into the earliest stage of motion analysis