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

Trade Coefficients and the Role of Elasticity in a Spatial CGE Model Based on the Armington Assumption

The Armington Assumption in the context of multi-regional CGE models is commonly interpreted as follows: Same commodities with different origins are imperfect substitutes for each other. In this paper, a static spatial CGE model that is compatible with this assumption and explicitly considers the transport sector and regional price differentials is formulated. Trade coefficients, which are derived endogenously from the optimization behaviors of firms and households, are shown to take the form of a potential function. To investigate how the elasticity of substitutions affects equilibrium solutions, a simpler version of the model that incorporates three regions and two sectors (besides the transport sector) is introduced. Results indicate: (1) if commodities produced in different regions are perfect substitutes, regional economies will be either autarkic or completely symmetric and (2) if they are imperfect substitutes, the impact of elasticity on the price equilibrium system as well as trade coefficients will be nonlinear and sometimes very sensitive.Armington Assumption, Spatial CGE, Elasticity of substitution, Trade coefficient, Econometric model

Application of the Input-Output Decomposition Technique to China\u27s Regional Economies

Structural decomposition techniques based on input-output table have become a widely used tool for analyzing long term economic growth. However, due to limitations of data, such techniques have never been applied to China\u27s regional economies. Fortunately, in 2003, China\u27s Interregional Input-Output Table for 1987 and Multi-regional Input-Output Table for 1997 were published, making decomposition analysis of China\u27s regional economies possible. This paper first estimates the interregional input-output table in constant price by using an alternative approach: the Grid-Search method, and then applies the standard input-output decomposition technique to China\u27s regional economies for 1987-97. Based on the decomposition results, the contributions to output growth of different factors are summarized at the regional and industrial level. Furthermore, interdependence between China\u27s regional economies is measured and explained by aggregating the decomposition factors into the intraregional multiplier-related effect, the feedback-related effect, and the spillover-related effect. Finally, the performance of China\u27s industrial and regional development policies implemented in the 1990s is briefly discussed based on the analytical results of the paper