ELECTROCHEMICAL ENHANCEMENT OF BUTANOL PRODUCTION AND XYLOSE CONSUMPTION IN PURE AND MIXED CULTURE FERMENTATIONS

The volatility of foreign and domestic petroleum markets has prompted initiatives for the development of alternative liquid energy carriers which have the capacity to accommodate our current transportation infrastructure. Butanol, which has an energy density similar to that of gasoline and can be produced through the fermentation of carbohydrates by solventogenic Clostridia, has been investigated as a supplement or direct replacement to gasoline. However, most butanol fermentations rely on glucose as a feedstock which is in direct competition with our food supply, and this requires the exploration of alternative fermentable substrates. This study investigates the use of electrochemical fermentation modifications as “drop-in†strategies to stimulate bacterial solventogenesis (butanol) and the consumption of xylose, which is the second most abundant sugar contained within lignocellulosic biomass. Monoculture, solventogenic Clostridia and mixed consortia were challenged with electron shuttling compounds and/or a terminal electron acceptor in the form of ferric iron or solid state graphite electrodes. Results from this study indicate that electron shuttling to ferrihydrite stimulates concomitant increases in metabolite production and xylose consumption for both pure and mixed culture fermentations in which xylose was utilized as the sole fermentable substrate. Mediatorless electrochemical stimulation of solventogenesis and xylose consumption was observed in fermentations challenged with an economical, solid-state graphite electrode system. Data presented within this study indicate that extracellular electron transport to terminal electron acceptors has a global, favorable effect on fermentative bacterial metabolism

Interactive simulation of stylized human locomotion

Animating natural human motion in dynamic environments is difficult because of complex geometric and physical interactions. Simulation provides an automatic solution to parts of this problem, but it needs control systems to produce lifelike motions. This paper describes the systematic computation of controllers that can reproduce a range of locomotion styles in interactive simulations. Given a reference motion that describes the desired style, a derived control system can reproduce that style in simulation and in new environments. Because it produces high-quality motions that are both geometrically and physically consistent with simulated surroundings, interactive animation systems could begin to use this approach along with more established kinematic methods.Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game LabNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Fellowship 2007043041)Pixar (Firm

Guided Time Warping for Motion Editing

Time warping allows users to modify timing without affecting poses. It has many applications in animation systems for motion editing, such as refining motions to meet new timing constraints or modifying the acting of animated characters. However, time warping typically requires many manual adjustments to achieve the desired results. We present a technique which simplifies this process by allowing time warps to be guided by a provided reference motion. Given few timing constraints, it computes a warp that both satisfies these constraints and maximizes local timing similarities to the reference. The algorithm is fast enough to incorporate into standard animation workflows. We apply the technique to two common tasks: preserving the natural timing of motions under new time constraints and modifying the timing of motions for stylistic effects.Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game La

Practical Color-Based Motion Capture

Motion capture systems have been widely used for high quality content creation and virtual reality but are rarely used in consumer applications due to their price and setup cost. In this paper, we propose a motion capture system built from commodity components that can be deployed in a matter of minutes. Our approach uses one or more webcams and a color shirt to track the upper-body at interactive rates. We describe a robust color calibration system that enables our color-based tracking to work against cluttered backgrounds and under multiple illuminants. We demonstrate our system in several real-world indoor and outdoor settings

Face Transfer with Multilinear Models

Face Transfer is a method for mapping videorecorded performances of one individual to facial animations of another. It extracts visemes (speech-related mouth articulations), expressions, and three-dimensional (3D) pose from monocular video or film footage. These parameters are then used to generate and drive a detailed 3D textured face mesh for a target identity, which can be seamlessly rendered back into target footage. The underlying face model automatically adjusts for how the target performs facial expressions and visemes. The performance data can be easily edited to change the visemes, expressions, pose, or even the identity of the target---the attributes are separably controllable. This supports a wide variety of video rewrite and puppetry applications.Face Transfer is based on a multilinear model of 3D face meshes that separably parameterizes the space of geometric variations due to different attributes (e.g., identity, expression, and viseme). Separability means that each of these attributes can be independently varied. A multilinear model can be estimated from a Cartesian product of examples (identities x expressions x visemes) with techniques from statistical analysis, but only after careful preprocessing of the geometric data set to secure one-to-one correspondence, to minimize cross-coupling artifacts, and to fill in any missing examples. Face Transfer offers new solutions to these problems and links the estimated model with a face-tracking algorithm to extract pose, expression, and viseme parameters.Engineering and Applied Science

Effect of functional training on physical fitness among athletes: a systematic review

There is evidence that functional training is beneficial for the overall physical fitness of athletes. However, there is a lack of a systematic review focused on the effects of functional training on athletes’ physical fitness. Thus, the aimed of the present review is to clarify the effects of functional training on physical fitness among athletes. In accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes (PRISMA) Statement guidelines, the systematic search of PubMed, SCOPUS, EBSCOhost (SPORTDiscus), and CINAHL Plus databases was undertaken on the 2nd November 2020 to identify the reported studies, using a combination of keywords related to functional training, physical fitness, and athletes. From the 145 studies, only nine articles met all eligibility criteria and were included in the systematic review. The assessment was performed on the Pedro scale, and the quality of the study included in the nine studies was fair (ranging from 3 to 4). The results showed that speed (n = 6) was the aspect of physical fitness studied in functional training interventions, followed by muscular strength (n = 5), power (n = 4), balance (n = 3), body composition (n = 3), agility (n = 3), flexibility (n= 1) and muscular endurance (n = 1). Existing evidence concludes that functional training significantly impacts speed, muscular strength, power, balance, and agility. Furthermore, there are still limit numbers of evidence showing effect of functional training on flexibility and muscular endurance. In contrast, no significant improvement was found in body composition where functional training was conducted