gMotion: A spatio-temporal grammar for the procedural generation of motion graphics

Creating by hand compelling 2D animations that choreograph several groups of shapes requires a large number of manual edits. We present a method to procedurally generate motion graphics with timeslice grammars. Timeslice grammars are to time what split grammars are to space. We use this grammar to formally model motion graphics, manipulating them in both temporal and spatial components. We are able to combine both these aspects by representing animations as sets of affine transformations sampled uniformly in both space and time. Rules and operators in the grammar manipulate all spatio-temporal matrices as a whole, allowing us to expressively construct animation with few rules. The grammar animates shapes, which are represented as highly tessellated polygons, by applying the affine transforms to each shape vertex given the vertex position and the animation time. We introduce a small set of operators showing how we can produce 2D animations of geometric objects, by combining the expressive power of the grammar model, the composability of the operators with themselves, and the capabilities that derive from using a unified spatio-temporal representation for animation data. Throughout the paper, we show how timeslice grammars can produce a wide variety of animations that would take artists hours of tedious and time-consuming work. In particular, in cases where change of shapes is very common, our grammar can add motion detail to large collections of shapes with greater control over per-shape animations along with a compact rules structure

A vision for a lightweight railway wheelset of the future

Rail vehicle lightweighting using fibre reinforced polymer composite materials is essential for the future of rail. This is recognised as a means of reducing carbon dioxide production through lower energy consumption, as well as reducing the impact on track degradation, thus delivering improved rail capacity and performance. This paper presents an overview of the work conducted within work package three of the NEXTGEAR project focused on the ‘wheelset of the future’. Three concepts for a hybrid metallic-composite railway axle are proposed and their strengths and weaknesses are assessed. A finite element analysis on the selected concept was conducted, including a solution for the bonded joints of the metallic collars which provide the interface to the wheels and bearings. An axle mass reduction of over 63% was shown. An overview is also provided regarding the analysis of manufacturability of the axle, non-destructive methods for axle inspection/structural health monitoring and effects of impacts from ballast stones. Finally, a preliminary evaluation of the benefits arising from the reduction of the unsprung masses is provided, based on multibody simulations of vehicle dynamics

Off-label long acting injectable antipsychotics in real-world clinical practice: a cross-sectional analysis of prescriptive patterns from the STAR Network DEPOT study

Introduction Information on the off-label use of Long-Acting Injectable (LAI) antipsychotics in the real world is lacking. In this study, we aimed to identify the sociodemographic and clinical features of patients treated with on- vs off-label LAIs and predictors of off-label First- or Second-Generation Antipsychotic (FGA vs. SGA) LAI choice in everyday clinical practice. Method In a naturalistic national cohort of 449 patients who initiated LAI treatment in the STAR Network Depot Study, two groups were identified based on off- or on-label prescriptions. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to test several clinically relevant variables and identify those associated with the choice of FGA vs SGA prescription in the off-label group. Results SGA LAIs were more commonly prescribed in everyday practice, without significant differences in their on- and off-label use. Approximately 1 in 4 patients received an off-label prescription. In the off-label group, the most frequent diagnoses were bipolar disorder (67.5%) or any personality disorder (23.7%). FGA vs SGA LAI choice was significantly associated with BPRS thought disorder (OR = 1.22, CI95% 1.04 to 1.43, p = 0.015) and hostility/suspiciousness (OR = 0.83, CI95% 0.71 to 0.97, p = 0.017) dimensions. The likelihood of receiving an SGA LAI grew steadily with the increase of the BPRS thought disturbance score. Conversely, a preference towards prescribing an FGA was observed with higher scores at the BPRS hostility/suspiciousness subscale. Conclusion Our study is the first to identify predictors of FGA vs SGA choice in patients treated with off-label LAI antipsychotics. Demographic characteristics, i.e. age, sex, and substance/alcohol use co-morbidities did not appear to influence the choice towards FGAs or SGAs. Despite a lack of evidence, clinicians tend to favour FGA over SGA LAIs in bipolar or personality disorder patients with relevant hostility. Further research is needed to evaluate treatment adherence and clinical effectiveness of these prescriptive patterns

The ABC130 barrel module prototyping programme for the ATLAS strip tracker

For the Phase-II Upgrade of the ATLAS Detector, its Inner Detector, consisting of silicon pixel, silicon strip and transition radiation sub-detectors, will be replaced with an all new 100 % silicon tracker, composed of a pixel tracker at inner radii and a strip tracker at outer radii. The future ATLAS strip tracker will include 11,000 silicon sensor modules in the central region (barrel) and 7,000 modules in the forward region (end-caps), which are foreseen to be constructed over a period of 3.5 years. The construction of each module consists of a series of assembly and quality control steps, which were engineered to be identical for all production sites. In order to develop the tooling and procedures for assembly and testing of these modules, two series of major prototyping programs were conducted: an early program using readout chips designed using a 250 nm fabrication process (ABCN-25) and a subsequent program using a follow-up chip set made using 130 nm processing (ABC130 and HCC130 chips). This second generation of readout chips was used for an extensive prototyping program that produced around 100 barrel-type modules and contributed significantly to the development of the final module layout. This paper gives an overview of the components used in ABC130 barrel modules, their assembly procedure and findings resulting from their tests.Comment: 82 pages, 66 figure

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure fl ux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defi ned as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium ) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the fi eld understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation it is imperative to delete or knock down more than one autophagy-related gene. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways so not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field

SceneGit: a practical system for diffing and merging 3D environments

Version control systems are the foundation of collaborative workflows for text documents. For 3D environments though, version control is still an open problem due to the heterogeneous data of 3D scenes and their size. In this paper, we present a practical version control system for 3D scenes comprised of shapes, materials, textures, and animations, combined together in scene graphs. We version objects at their finest granularity, to make repositories smaller and to allow artists to work concurrently on the same object. Since, for some scene data, computing an optimal set of changes between versions is not computationally feasible, version control systems use heuristics. Compared to prior work, we propose heuristics that are efficient, robust, and independent of the application. We test our system on a variety of large scenes edited with different workflows, and show that our approach can handle all cases well while remaining efficient as scene size increases. Compared to prior work, we are significantly faster and more robust. A user study confirms that our system aids collaboration

SceneGit: a practical system for diffing and merging 3D environments

Version control systems are the foundation of collaborative workflows for text documents. For 3D environments though, version control is still an open problem due to the heterogeneous data of 3D scenes and their size. In this paper, we present a practical version control system for 3D scenes comprised of shapes, materials, textures, and animations, combined together in scene graphs. We version objects at their finest granularity, to make repositories smaller and to allow artists to work concurrently on the same object. Since, for some scene data, computing an optimal set of changes between versions is not computationally feasible, version control systems use heuristics. Compared to prior work, we propose heuristics that are efficient, robust, and independent of the application. We test our system on a variety of large scenes edited with different workflows, and show that our approach can handle all cases well while remaining efficient as scene size increases. Compared to prior work, we are significantly faster and more robust. A user study confirms that our system aids collaboration

Yocto/GL: a data-oriented library for physically-based graphics

In this paper we present Yocto/GL, a software library for computer graphics research and education. The library is written in C++ and targets execution on the CPU, with support for basic math, geometry and imaging utilities, path tracing and file IO. What distinguishes Yocto/GL from other similar projects is its minimalistic design and data-oriented programming style, which makes the library readable, extendible, and efficient. We developed Yocto/GL to meet our need, as a research group, of a simple and reliable codebase that lets us experiment with ease on research projects of various kind. After many iterations carried out over a few years, we settled on a design that we find effective for our purposes. In the hope of making our efforts valuable for the community, we share our experience in the development and make the library publicly available

Grammar-based procedural animations for motion graphics

Abstact Motion graphics are a form of animation where several sets of shapes are choreographed together using a wide range of effects to produce compelling footage. We present a method to procedurally generate motion graphics. We formally model motion graphics with timeslice grammars, an extension of split and group grammars, that are able to control and manipulate both the temporal and spatial components of an animation. We are able to combine both these aspects by representing animations as sets of affine transformations sampled uniformly in both space and time. These transformations are controlled by the grammar. Shapes in our system are represented as highly tessellated polygons, and are animated by applying the affine transforms to each shape vertex given the vertex position and the animation time. We introduce a small set of operators showing how we can produce convincing animations, combining the expressive power of the grammar model, the composability of the operators with themselves, and the capabilities that derive from our shape representation. Throughout the paper, we show how timeslice grammars can, in few tens of seconds, produce a wide variety of animations that would take artists hours of tedious and time-consuming work