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Unpredictable Ways (unpredictable + way)
Selected AbstractsInteractive animation of virtual humans based on motion capture dataCOMPUTER ANIMATION AND VIRTUAL WORLDS (PREV: JNL OF VISUALISATION & COMPUTER ANIMATION), Issue 5-6 2009Franck Multon Abstract This paper presents a novel, parameteric framework for synthesizing new character motions from existing motion capture data. Our framework can conduct morphological adaptation as well as kinematic and physically-based corrections. All these solvers are organized in layers in order to be easily combined together. Given locomotion as an example, the system automatically adapts the motion data to the size of the synthetic figure and to its environment; the character will correctly step over complex ground shapes and counteract with external forces applied to the body. Our framework is based on a frame-based solver. This ensures animating hundreds of humanoids with different morphologies in real-time. It is particularly suitable for interactive applications such as video games and virtual reality where a user interacts in an unpredictable way. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The role of P300 in the recovery of post-stroke global aphasiaEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY, Issue 4 2006G. Nolfe Seventeen right-handed patients suffering from global aphasia caused by a recent stroke in the left-hemisphere were studied. Passive P300 auditory event related potential paradigm was applied every months for 6 months. Aachen subtests were used for evaluating comprehension. Only a minority of the patients displayed the P300 at the baseline. Those patients had the best outcome at the Aachen comprehension subtest. Latency and amplitude changed over time in an unpredictable way. The number of patients presenting with the P300 also fluctuated, since some patients could regain the potential, whereas some other patients could lose that from month to month. Passive P300 is a monitor of recovery following global aphasia. A single passive P300 recording is useful for prognostic purposes. Repairing mechanisms in the first 6 months have a non-linear trend. [source] Active mode observation of switching systems based on set-valued estimation of the continuous stateINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ROBUST AND NONLINEAR CONTROL, Issue 14 2009M. Baglietto Abstract Mode observability is addressed for a class of discrete-time linear systems that may switch in an unknown and unpredictable way among different modes taken from a finite set. The possible a priori knowledge on the continuous state of the system and the presence of unknown but bounded noises affecting both the system and the measurement equations are explicitly taken into account. The mode observation is performed ,actively': control sequences (discerning control sequences) are searched, which allow to identify the switching sequence on the basis of the observations. Conditions that characterize discerning controls in a finite-horizon setting are obtained. Moreover, a procedure is proposed in order to derive ,persistently discerning' control sequences (over an infinite horizon). A numerical example is reported to clarify the approach. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Perturbations produced by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry in the speciation of aluminium(III)/1,6-dimethyl-4-hydroxy-3-pyridinecarboxylate aqueous solutionsRAPID COMMUNICATIONS IN MASS SPECTROMETRY, Issue 7 2010Valerio B. Di Marco Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) is very often employed to study metal/ligand equilibria in aqueous solution. However, the ionization process can introduce perturbations which affect the speciation results in an unpredictable way. It is necessary to identify these perturbations in order to correctly interpret the ESI-MS speciation results. Aluminium(III)/1,6-dimethyl-4-hydroxy-3-pyridinecarboxylate (DQ716) aqueous solutions at various pH were analysed by ESI-MS, and speciation results were compared with those obtained by equilibrium techniques. Differences observed were both qualitative and quantitative. The ESI-MS spectral changes due to different settings of the following instrumental parameters were analyzed: the solution flow rate (FS), the nebulizer gas flow rate (FG), the potential applied at the entrance capillary (EC), and the temperature of the drying gas (TG). The effects produced by FS and EC on the spectra strongly suggest the key role of surface activity in determining the relative fraction of the ions reaching the detector. The experimental effects of FS and TG were interpreted considering the presence of at least two reactions in the gas phase and a dimerization occurring in the droplets. These perturbations cannot be generalized because they appear to be chemical system-related and instrument-dependent. Therefore, the identification of perturbations is a required task for any metal-ligand equilibrium study performed by ESI-MS. Our results indicate that perturbations can be identified by evaluating the effects produced in the spectra by a change of instrumental parameters. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] An approach for quality of service adaptation in service-oriented GridsCONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION: PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE, Issue 5 2004Rashid Al-Ali Abstract Some applications utilizing Grid computing infrastructure require the simultaneous allocation of resources, such as compute servers, networks, memory, disk storage and other specialized resources. Collaborative working and visualization is one example of such applications. In this context, quality of service (QoS) is related to Grid services, and not just to the network connecting these services. With the emerging interest in service-oriented Grids, resources may be advertised and traded as services based on a service level agreement (SLA). Such a SLA must include both general and technical specifications, including pricing policy and properties of the resources required to execute the service, to ensure QoS requirements are satisfied. An approach for QoS adaptation is presented to enable the dynamic adjustment of behavior of an application based on changes in the pre-defined SLA. The approach is particularly useful if workload or network traffic changes in unpredictable ways during an active session. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Security Maintenance Mediation: a technology for preventing unintended security breachesCONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION: PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE, Issue 1 2004Roger (Buzz) KingArticle first published online: 4 DEC 200 Abstract Web-resident information is becoming ,smarter', in the sense that emerging technology will support the annotation of it with ontological terms, which will be used to locate and reuse information. This will pose a great security risk in the form of unintended breaches (as distinct from deliberate invasions). Web-resident information will be far more readily available and relevant, thus causing inadvertent releases of secure information to potentially cause it to be diffusely spread across the Internet. Then as this information is iteratively transformed and integrated with other information, it will become irretrievable and potentially used in a myriad of unpredictable ways. The problem is that ontological annotations, while making information more understandable in its original form, do not provide a means for easily capturing the complex semantics of information that has been transformed via abstraction, aggregation, and integration. This demands the development of a semantically rich way of specifying ,views' of Web information, to which security controls can be attached. Also needed is a way for users of secure information to easily and voluntarily blend,and thereby propagate,security controls as information is transformed. Information mediators designed by collaborative teams of experts are proposed as the vehicle for wrapping information, so that at each step of reuse, high-level views and their corresponding integrity controls can be made easily accessible to trusted users who will then be able to ensure their proper maintenance. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] 1,8-Bis(dialkylamino)-4,5-dinitronaphthalenes and 4,5-Bis(dimethylamino)naphthalene-1,8-dicarbaldehyde as "Push,Pull" Proton Sponges: When and Why Formyl Groups Become Stronger ,-Electron Acceptors than Nitro GroupsEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY, Issue 8 2009Valery A. Ozeryanskii Abstract Single-crystal X-ray studies of four representatives of "push,pull" proton sponges, namely 1,8-bis(dimethylamino)-, 1,8-bis(diethylamino)-, 1,8-bis(dipropylamino)-4,5-dinitronaphthalenes and 4,5-bis(dimethylamino)naphthalene-1,8-dicarbaldehyde have been performed at low and ambient temperatures. The most interesting and unexpected result is that the formyl groups in the peri -dialdehyde display stronger ,-acceptor effects than the nitro groups. This phenomenon is ascribed to smaller steric demands of the CHO groups, their lower electrostatic repulsion, and specific packing forces. The naphthalene cores of all but one of the molecules are markedly twisted (21,26°) while that of the diethylamino derivative is not (<5°), providing different and somewhat unpredictable ways of resonance stabilization and steric relaxation. The through-conjugation in the above compounds is also discussed for gas and solution phases on the basis of theoretical calculations, UV/Vis and 1H NMR spectra.(© Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2009) [source] Diet and social conditions during sexual maturation have unpredictable influences on female life history trade-offsJOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, Issue 3 2009E. L. B. BARRETT Abstract The trade-off between gametes and soma is central to life history evolution. Oosorption has been proposed as a mechanism by which females can redirect nutrients invested in oocytes into survival when conditions for reproduction are poor. Although positive correlations between oocyte degradation and lifespan have been documented in oviparous insects, the adaptive significance of this process in species with more complex reproductive biology has not been explored. Further, environmental condition is a multivariate state, and combinations of environmental stresses may interact in unpredictable ways. Previous work on the ovoviviparous cockroach, Nauphoeta cinerea, revealed that females manipulated to mate late relative to sexual maturation experience age-related loss in fecundity because of loss of viable oocytes via apoptosis. This loss in fecundity is correlated with a reduction in female mate choice. Food deprivation while mating is delayed further increases levels of oocyte apoptosis, but the relationship between starvation-induced apoptosis and life history are unknown. To investigate this, virgin females were either fed or starved from eclosion until provided with a mate at a time known to be suboptimal for fertility. Following mating, females were fed for the duration of their lifespan. We measured lifetime reproductive performance. Contrary to predictions, under conditions of delayed mating opportunity, starved females had greater fecundity, gave birth to more high-quality offspring and had increased longevity compared with that of fed females. We suggest that understanding proximal mechanisms underlying life history trade-offs, including the function of oocyte apoptosis, and how these mechanisms respond to varied environmental conditions is critical. [source] Loosing the Dragon: Charismatic Legal Action and the Construction of the Taiping Legal OrderLAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 2 2010Glenn A. Trager This article develops the notion of legal charisma by analyzing the Taiping Rebellion in mid-nineteenth-century China. The concept of legal charisma seeks to capture those normally inchoate aspects of law that transcend its institutionalized incarnations and empower its subjects to act out visions of the universal, often in anarchic and unpredictable ways. The article further suggests that such charismatic legal behavior, in spite of its anarchic qualities, provides an important means through which systems of legal authority revitalize and strengthen their hold over legal subjects. The Taiping Rebellion provides an example of both these facets of legal charisma; the rebellion drew on visions of collective empowerment inherent in a newly articulated legal code to act out a challenge to existing social institutions,even as this same code came to assert an ever-tightening grip on the lives of the Taiping population. [source] Towards an integrated environmental assessment for wetland and catchment managementTHE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, Issue 2 2003R Kerry Turner This paper develops a decision support system for evaluation of wetland ecosystem management strategy and examines its, so far partial, application in a case study of an important complex coastal wetland known as the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, in the east of England, UK. Most managed ecosystems are complex and often poorly understood hierarchically organized systems. Capturing the range of relevant impacts on natural and human systems under different management options will be a formidable challenge. Biodiversity has a hierarchical structure which ranges from the ecosystem and landscape level, through the community level and down to the population and genetic level. There is a need to develop methodologies for the practicable detection of ecosystem change, as well as the evaluation of different ecological functions. What is also required is a set of indicators (environmental, social and economic) which facilitate the detection of change in ecosystems suffering stress and shock and highlight possible drivers of the change process. A hierarchical classification of ecological indicators of sustainability would need to take into account existing interactions between different organization levels, from species to ecosystems. Effects of environmental stress are expressed in different ways at different levels of biological organization and effects at one level can be expected to impact other levels, often in unpredictable ways. The management strategy, evaluation methodologies and indicators adopted should also assess on sustainability grounds whether any given management option is supporting, or reducing, the diversity of functions which are providing stakeholders with the welfare benefits they require. [source] How Infants Learn About the Visual WorldCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 7 2010Scott P. Johnson Abstract The visual world of adults consists of objects at various distances, partly occluding one another, substantial and stable across space and time. The visual world of young infants, in contrast, is often fragmented and unstable, consisting not of coherent objects but rather surfaces that move in unpredictable ways. Evidence from computational modeling and from experiments with human infants highlights three kinds of learning that contribute to infants' knowledge of the visual world: learning via association, learning via active assembly, and learning via visual-manual exploration. Infants acquire knowledge by observing objects move in and out of sight, forming associations of these different views. In addition, the infant's own self-produced behavior,oculomotor patterns and manual experience, in particular,is an important means by which infants discover and construct their visual world. [source] | |||||||||||||