497 research outputs found
Agency Lawyers’ Answers to the Major Questions Doctrine
This Note addresses two questions: how does the major questions doctrine affect the way agency lawyers advise policymaking clients, and how does that advice affect agency statutory interpretation and regulation? I first describe the doctrine and discuss normative theories for the role agency lawyers should play in statutory interpretation. Second, I consider the effects the doctrine had during the rulemaking, litigation, and rescission of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the first ever federal regulation of power plants’ greenhouse-gas emissions. Finally, I identify four major concerns with the doctrine’s ex ante effects on agency statutory interpretation and regulatory processes. These critiques apply broadly, beyond the CPP
Patch-based Progressive 3D Point Set Upsampling
We present a detail-driven deep neural network for point set upsampling. A
high-resolution point set is essential for point-based rendering and surface
reconstruction. Inspired by the recent success of neural image super-resolution
techniques, we progressively train a cascade of patch-based upsampling networks
on different levels of detail end-to-end. We propose a series of architectural
design contributions that lead to a substantial performance boost. The effect
of each technical contribution is demonstrated in an ablation study.
Qualitative and quantitative experiments show that our method significantly
outperforms the state-of-the-art learning-based and optimazation-based
approaches, both in terms of handling low-resolution inputs and revealing
high-fidelity details.Comment: accepted to cvpr2019, code available at https://github.com/yifita/P3
CaosDB - Research Data Management for Complex, Changing, and Automated Research Workflows
Here we present CaosDB, a Research Data Management System (RDMS) designed to
ensure seamless integration of inhomogeneous data sources and repositories of
legacy data. Its primary purpose is the management of data from biomedical
sciences, both from simulations and experiments during the complete research
data lifecycle. An RDMS for this domain faces particular challenges: Research
data arise in huge amounts, from a wide variety of sources, and traverse a
highly branched path of further processing. To be accepted by its users, an
RDMS must be built around workflows of the scientists and practices and thus
support changes in workflow and data structure. Nevertheless it should
encourage and support the development and observation of standards and
furthermore facilitate the automation of data acquisition and processing with
specialized software. The storage data model of an RDMS must reflect these
complexities with appropriate semantics and ontologies while offering simple
methods for finding, retrieving, and understanding relevant data. We show how
CaosDB responds to these challenges and give an overview of the CaosDB Server,
its data model and its easy-to-learn CaosDB Query Language. We briefly discuss
the status of the implementation, how we currently use CaosDB, and how we plan
to use and extend it
Optical properties, physiologic parameters and tissue composition of the human uterine cervix as a function of hormonal status
The influence of sex hormones on the human uterine cervix is likely to be important in the process of cervical ripening. Frequency domain near-infrared spectroscopy (FD-NIRS) was used to investigate non-invasively the changes in the optical properties that reflect physiologic parameters and tissue composition of the uterine cervix in the different phases of the menstrual cycle. Twenty premenopausal and nine postmenopausal women were examined. Optical properties of the uterine cervix were measured, and physiological parameters [concentration of water, oxyhemoglobin (O2Hb) and deoxyhemoglobin (HHb), total hemoglobin (tHb), oxygen saturation (StO2), water, and scattering power] were calculated. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test for statistical significance. The optical properties of the anterior cervical lip did not differ from those of the posterior lip. HHb was significantly lower in cervices during menstrual bleeding than during the follicular, luteal, or postmenopausal phases. The ratio of O2Hb to HHb was highly significantly increased by a factor of 2 when cervices during the menstrual bleeding were compared with those during the follicular, luteal, or postmenopausal phases. The scattering power was significantly lower during menstrual bleeding than during the follicular or postmenopausal phases. We demonstrated that withdrawal of sex hormones during menstrual bleeding is associated with a significant decrease in HHb and scattering power, with stable values of O2Hb, tHb, StO2, and H2O compared with the values during the follicular, luteal or postmenopausal phases of the menstrual cycle. Cervical softening during menstrual bleeding seems to be different from cervical softening for labo
SENS: Sketch-based Implicit Neural Shape Modeling
We present SENS, a novel method for generating and editing 3D models from
hand-drawn sketches, including those of an abstract nature. Our method allows
users to quickly and easily sketch a shape, and then maps the sketch into the
latent space of a part-aware neural implicit shape architecture. SENS analyzes
the sketch and encodes its parts into ViT patch encoding, then feeds them into
a transformer decoder that converts them to shape embeddings, suitable for
editing 3D neural implicit shapes. SENS not only provides intuitive
sketch-based generation and editing, but also excels in capturing the intent of
the user's sketch to generate a variety of novel and expressive 3D shapes, even
from abstract sketches. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model compared
to the state-of-the-art using objective metric evaluation criteria and a
decisive user study, both indicating strong performance on sketches with a
medium level of abstraction. Furthermore, we showcase its intuitive
sketch-based shape editing capabilities.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figure
The Optimal Control Landscape for the Generation of Unitary Transformations with Constrained Dynamics
The reliable and precise generation of quantum unitary transformations is
essential to the realization of a number of fundamental objectives, such as
quantum control and quantum information processing. Prior work has explored the
optimal control problem of generating such unitary transformations as a surface
optimization problem over the quantum control landscape, defined as a metric
for realizing a desired unitary transformation as a function of the control
variables. It was found that under the assumption of non-dissipative and
controllable dynamics, the landscape topology is trap-free, implying that any
reasonable optimization heuristic should be able to identify globally optimal
solutions. The present work is a control landscape analysis incorporating
specific constraints in the Hamiltonian corresponding to certain dynamical
symmetries in the underlying physical system. It is found that the presence of
such symmetries does not destroy the trap-free topology. These findings expand
the class of quantum dynamical systems on which control problems are
intrinsically amenable to solution by optimal control.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Mathematical Physic
Ink-and-Ray: Bas-Relief Meshes for Adding Global Illumination Effects to Hand-Drawn Characters
We present a new approach for generating global illumination renderings of hand-drawn characters using only a small set of simple annotations. Our system exploits the concept of bas-relief sculptures, making it possible to generate 3D proxies suitable for rendering without requiring side-views or extensive user input. We formulate an optimization process that automatically constructs approximate geometry sufficient to evoke the impression of a consistent 3D shape. The resulting renders provide the richer stylization capabilities of 3D global illumination while still retaining the 2D handdrawn look-and-feel. We demonstrate our approach on a varied set of handdrawn images and animations, showing that even in comparison to ground truth renderings of full 3D objects, our bas-relief approximation is able to produce convincing global illumination effects, including self-shadowing, glossy reflections, and diffuse color bleeding
A prospective evaluation of atherosclerotic risk factors and hypercoagulability in young adults with premature lower extremity atherosclerosis
Purpose: Fifty-one consecutive patients with premature lower extremity atherosclerosis were prospectively evaluated for atherogenic risk factors and primary or acquired hypercoagulability, which might contribute to early ischemia and revascularization failure.Methods: Laboratory tests included plasma assays of (1) natural anticoagulants (NAC), lipoprotein (a) (Lp[a]), and anticardiolipin antibodies, and (2) fibrinolytic activators and inhibitors at baseline and stimulated after 20 minutes of upper extremity venous occlusion.Results: Forty-six (90%) of these 51 patients had laboratory abnormalities. One or more NAC deficiencies were found in 15 (30%) patients and included antithrombin III (n=5), protein C (n=8), protein S (n=4), and heparin cofactor II (n=2). Hypofibrinolysis was identified as a deficiency of stimulated tissue plasminogen activator in 22 (45%) patients and elevated plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) in 29 (59%). Elevated Lp(a) was found in 43 (86%) patients. Five (10%) patients had anticardiolipin antibodies. Ten patients had combined NAC deficiency and hypofibrinolysis. Five (10%) patients had no abnormality. NAC deficiencies, especially protein C deficiency, were associated with acute ischemia (p<0.01), prior vascular intervention (p<0.01), an increasing number of total vascular procedures (p<0.01), and major amputation (p<0.01). PAI-1 was associated with a history of heart disease (p<0.05) and prior vascular procedures (p<0.05). Elevated Lp(a) was associated with elevated PAI-1 (p<0.05). Retesting in 20 patients suggested that 80% of NAC deficiencies were acquired, but abnormalities persisted in 66% of patients with elevated PAI-1 and in 93% of those with elevated Lp(a).Conclusions: These data strongly support the hypothesis that the convergence of atherogenic risk factors and hypercoagulability play an important role in early ischemia and poor results reported for lower extremity vascular procedures in young adults
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