A Generative Model of People in Clothing

We present the first image-based generative model of people in clothing for the full body. We sidestep the commonly used complex graphics rendering pipeline and the need for high-quality 3D scans of dressed people. Instead, we learn generative models from a large image database. The main challenge is to cope with the high variance in human pose, shape and appearance. For this reason, pure image-based approaches have not been considered so far. We show that this challenge can be overcome by splitting the generating process in two parts. First, we learn to generate a semantic segmentation of the body and clothing. Second, we learn a conditional model on the resulting segments that creates realistic images. The full model is differentiable and can be conditioned on pose, shape or color. The result are samples of people in different clothing items and styles. The proposed model can generate entirely new people with realistic clothing. In several experiments we present encouraging results that suggest an entirely data-driven approach to people generation is possible

A theological critique of the military chaplaincy of the English-speaking churches

Bibliography: pages 330-359.The essence of this thesis is a critique of the structure and form of the military chaplaincy in South Africa in terms of theological presuppositions that can generally be associated with Karl Barth's understanding of ministry. It focuses on the military chaplaincy of the English-speaking churches of South Africa: the period selected is the past ten years. After surveying the rather scarce literature on the military chaplaincy in South Africa and several Western countries, the author briefly outlines those aspects of the theology of ministry of Karl Barth pertinent to this thesis. In addition, the author explains his own position on war and conscientious objection, which is generally speaking in keeping with what may be referred to as the Barthian perspective on ministry. The author then examines the South African Chaplains' Service. He finds several aspects incompatible with the theology of ministry outlined in Chapter 2: rank, uniform, military appointment of senior staff, command influence of the military over chaplains, the hierarchical structure of the Chaplains' Service, in-house training of chaplains, security clearance and secrecy. He argues that the real test of the freedom of the military chaplaincy is whether chaplains are free to convey the church's message of peace. The author concludes that the English-speaking churches cannot yet be assured of the freedom of their chaplains, and shows that the "complete freedom" to which most of the Permanent Force chaplains lay claim is illusory

Neural Body Fitting: Unifying Deep Learning and Model-Based Human Pose and Shape Estimation

Direct prediction of 3D body pose and shape remains a challenge even for highly parameterized deep learning models. Mapping from the 2D image space to the prediction space is difficult: perspective ambiguities make the loss function noisy and training data is scarce. In this paper, we propose a novel approach (Neural Body Fitting (NBF)). It integrates a statistical body model within a CNN, leveraging reliable bottom-up semantic body part segmentation and robust top-down body model constraints. NBF is fully differentiable and can be trained using 2D and 3D annotations. In detailed experiments, we analyze how the components of our model affect performance, especially the use of part segmentations as an explicit intermediate representation, and present a robust, efficiently trainable framework for 3D human pose estimation from 2D images with competitive results on standard benchmarks. Code will be made available at http://github.com/mohomran/neural_body_fittingComment: 3DV 201

Thermo-Mechanical Characterization of Copper Through-Wafer Interconnects

Copper through wafer interconnects (TWIs) have become a viable solution to providing interconnectivity between stacked die. In a world where minimizing chip real estate while increasing functionality is the goal for further miniaturization of electronics, TWIs hold a key role as new packaging schemes become critical for overall higher density. Little is known, however, about the impacts of mismatched coefficients of thermal expansion (CTEs) inherent to the materials used in their construction. CTE differences, if left unresolved, can pose reliability issues during TWI operation. This research focuses on providing insight into the stress levels experienced by TWI materials through finite element analysis to gain a better understanding of the possible failure mechanisms associated with the CTE differences

Interaction Effects of Slurry Chemistry on Chemical Mechanical Planarization of Electroplated Copper

Recent studies have been conducted investigating the effects of slurry chemistry on the copper CMP process. Slurry pH and hydrogen peroxide concentration are two important variables that must be carefully formulated in order to achieve desired removal rates and uniformity. In applications such as throughwafer vertical interconnects, slurry chemistry effects must be thoroughly understood when copper plating thicknesses can measure up to 20 microns thick. The species of copper present on the surface of the wafer can be controlled through formulation of the slurry chemistry resulting in minimizing non-uniformity while aggressively removing copper. Using a design of experiments (DOE) approach, this study was performed investigating the interaction between the two variables during CMP. Using statistical analysis techniques, a better understanding of the interaction behavior between the two variables and the effect on removal rate and uniformity is achieved