Dynamic Facial Expression of Emotion Made Easy

Facial emotion expression for virtual characters is used in a wide variety of areas. Often, the primary reason to use emotion expression is not to study emotion expression generation per se, but to use emotion expression in an application or research project. What is then needed is an easy to use and flexible, but also validated mechanism to do so. In this report we present such a mechanism. It enables developers to build virtual characters with dynamic affective facial expressions. The mechanism is based on Facial Action Coding. It is easy to implement, and code is available for download. To show the validity of the expressions generated with the mechanism we tested the recognition accuracy for 6 basic emotions (joy, anger, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear) and 4 blend emotions (enthusiastic, furious, frustrated, and evil). Additionally we investigated the effect of VC distance (z-coordinate), the effect of the VC's face morphology (male vs. female), the effect of a lateral versus a frontal presentation of the expression, and the effect of intensity of the expression. Participants (n=19, Western and Asian subjects) rated the intensity of each expression for each condition (within subject setup) in a non forced choice manner. All of the basic emotions were uniquely perceived as such. Further, the blends and confusion details of basic emotions are compatible with findings in psychology

Limit on Br(b→sg)Br(b\to s g) in Two Higgs Doublet Models

Using the recent CLEO measurement of $Br(b\to s \gamma)$, we find that the branching ratio of $b\to s g$ cannot be larger than $10\%$ in two Higgs doublet models. The small experimental value of $Br(b\to e\bar{\nu}X)$ can no longer be explained by charged Higgs boson effects.Comment: 11 pages + 3 Figures (not included), ReVTeX, NTUTH-94-16 and NHCU-HEP-94-1

Deep ductile shear localization facilitates near-orthogonal strike-slip faulting in a thin brittle lithosphere

Some active fault systems comprise near-orthogonal conjugate strike-slip faults, as highlighted by the 2019 Ridgecrest and the 2012 Indian Ocean earthquake sequences. In conventional failure theory, orthogonal faulting requires a pressure-insensitive rock strength, which is unlikely in the brittle lithosphere. Here, we conduct 3D numerical simulations to test the hypothesis that near-orthogonal faults can form by inheriting the geometry of deep ductile shear bands. Shear bands nucleated in the deep ductile layer, a pressure-insensitive material, form at 45 degree from the maximum principal stress. As they grow upwards into the brittle layer, they progressively rotate towards the preferred brittle faulting angle, ~30 degree, forming helical shaped faults. If the brittle layer is sufficiently thin, the rotation is incomplete and the near-orthogonal geometry is preserved at the surface. The preservation is further facilitated by a lower confining pressure in the shallow portion of the brittle layer. For this inheritance to be effective, a thick ductile fault root beneath the brittle layer is necessary. The model offers a possible explanation for orthogonal faulting in Ridgecrest, Salton Trough, and Wharton basin. Conversely, faults nucleated within the brittle layer form at the optimal angle for brittle faulting and can cut deep into the ductile layer before rotating to 45 degree. Our results thus reveal the significant interactions between the structure of faults in the brittle upper lithosphere and their deep ductile roots

Peak Effect in Superconductors: Melting of Larkin Domains

Motivated by the recent observations of the peak effect in high-$T_c$ YBCO superconductors, we reexamine the origin of this unusual phenomenon. We show that the mechanism based on the $k$-dependence (nonlocality) of the vortex-lattice tilt modulus $C_{44}({\bf k})$ cannot account for the essential feature of the peak effect. We propose a scenario in which the peak effect is related to the melting of Larkin domains. In our model, the rise of critical current with increasing temperature is a result of a crossover from the Larkin pinning length to the length scale set by thermally excited free dislocations.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, REVTE

Coherent control of population transfer between vibrational states in an optical lattice via two-path quantum interference

We demonstrate coherent control of population transfer between vibrational states in an optical lattice by using interference between a one-phonon transition at $2\omega$ and a two-phonon transition at $\omega$. The $\omega$ and $2\omega$ transitions are driven by phase- and amplitude-modulation of the lattice laser beams, respectively. By varying the relative phase between these two pathways, we control the branching ratio of transitions to the first excited state and to the higher states. Our best result shows an improvement of the branching ratio by a factor of 3.5$\pm$0.7. Such quantum control techniques may find broad application in suppressing leakage errors in a variety of quantum information architectures.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Impact of Country Personality on Attitude Toward Foreign Products : Self-congruity as a Mediator

This research examines the direct effect of country personality (CP) on consumer product attitude and indirect effect through consumer self-congruity between CP and his/her own self-concept on product attitude in an emerging country- Turkey. We propose an integrated structural equation model to examine the relationships. Measurement scales for CP, self-congruity and attitude are developed whose validities and reliabilities are confirmed by exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analyses with data collected from a sample of consumers in Turkey on two countries: USA and China. The results reveal that four out of the original six dimensions of CP remain after a CFA is completed. The results show a direct effect of CP for two aspects of CP on product attitude as well as an indirect effect for one of the aspects of CP on product attitude through consumer’s self-congruity as the mediator. These results also suggest that the CP construct may require further testing in other emerging markets to confirm the generalizability of the construct