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Dynamic Transformation to an Original Creature
Full text linkThe artifact is a real-time animation of a normal human transforming into an original creature.
About the creature, I designed the creature which is Cthulhu-like, based on the plants and religion. The creature is more organic and human shaped. There is animation for the muscle pulsation and facial change.
Regarding real-time transformation, I used morph targets for the creation. I imported the original model into ZBrush or Blender for secondary sculpting, then utilized morph targets or blend shapes for the transformation
A Modern Approach to Classifying Medieval Latin Scripts
Full text linkPaleography, the study of historical handwriting, is essential for preserving societal understanding of cultural, social, and legal frameworks from the past. Medieval manuscripts, often exhibiting refined craftsmanship, present unique challenges to modern readers due to differences in handwriting conventions and the absence of standardized punctuation and spaces. These texts hold valuable insights into the evolution of written communication, literacy, and language development. However, interpreting them requires specialized knowledge and technological solutions. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) can be leveraged to classify scripts, an important step in Historical Document analysis. These models extract and analyze hierarchical features from images, addressing inconsistencies in script style and document quality. Furthermore, transfer learning and data augmentation techniques, like rotation and random cropping, enhance model robustness by mimicking the natural variability of handwritten texts
Flight Path to Accountability: A Legal Comparison of Boeing’s Shortcomings, Airbus’s Successes, and International Aviation Safety Regulations
Full text linkInvestigations following two separate and deadly crashes of Boeing 737 8 Max aircraft revealed that America’s most trusted manufacturer had failed to notify pilots and airliners alike of a new Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, commonly known as MCAS. What had first seemed like an accident unfortunately had a deeper and traceable history. Through relatively new United States legislation, Boeing was essentially permitted to oversee their own operations and grant airworthiness certifications for their own aircrafts. This practice is wholly unlike the detailed certification process of the European manufacturing giant, AirBus, by the European Aviation Safety Administration (EASA). This comment sheds light on the decades long build-up to these horrific crashes, how this series of events could have been prevented, and the ways in which the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing can follow EASA and AirBus’s lead and return to the gold standard of civil aviation. Analyses of United States Codes, Federal Regulations, and International Safety Agreements leads to the conclusion that the United States and the FAA must apply more scrutiny to manufacturers within the 50 states. Alterations to the agreements and codes mentioned in this comment will aid in the overall safety practice of civil aviation
Voxel-Based Physically Simulated Particle System for Realistic Smoke Effects with Responsive Interaction to Dynamic Objects
No full textThe Voxel-Based Physically Simulated Particle System is designed to provide a high-performance, interactive, and visually realistic smoke simulation for real-time applications. This system replicates the dynamic smoke effects seen in Counter-Strike 2, ensuring high visual fidelity and interactivity through advanced rendering and simulation techniques.
The system leverages compute shader-based ray marching for volumetric rendering, enabling physically-based lighting simulation with realistic shading and soft shadowing effects. To achieve efficient and scalable smoke propagation, it employs Intel SIMD-optimized flood fill algorithm, significantly accelerating the expansion calculations. With over 10,000+ dynamically interacting particles, the system maintains a stable 60FPS across a wide range of hardware, ranging from systems equipped with integrated graphics and entry-level CPUs (e.g., Intel UHD Graphics, Ryzen 3) to machines with dedicated GPUs and high-performance processors (e.g., RTX 3080+, Intel i9, or AMD Ryzen 9).This Technical Design Document (TDD) serves to define the system\u27s technical framework, outlines its core algorithms and optimizations, and provides guidelines for implementing the whole system
When Power Purchase Agreements Go Digital: The Role of Tokenization in Renewable Energy Markets
No full textTraditional Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), the conventional approach to renewable energy contracting, suffer from several drawbacks, including limited accessibility, lengthy durations, lack of transferability, and difficulty in matching projects with offtakers. Enabled by blockchain technology, contracts can be digitally recorded and stored in the form of crypto tokens, a process referred to as tokenization. This paper presents the first study on contract tokenization in the renewable energy market. Using a game-theoretic framework with evidence-based numerical calibrations, we compare traditional and tokenized PPAs and examine their implications for both energy project developers and offtakers. Our results reveal important trade-offs: tokenized PPAs require higher technological standards to achieve feasibility but, once feasible, support shorter contract lengths. Moreover, while tokenization enhances market efficiency and broadens access to renewable energy-particularly for smaller-scale energy consumers that are often excluded by traditional PPAs-it shifts surplus toward developers, increasing their profits at the expense of offtakers\u27 utility
Socially Responsible AI in the GPT Era
No full textRecent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) showcase its rapid evolution and promise, with the potential to profoundly transform decision-making, self-expression, and even the practice of law. However, AI also presents formidable challenges, including the further entrenchment of societal inequalities, widespread labor disruption, and existential threats to humanity. Modern AI systems show early signs of general intelligence, enabling them to perform a wide range of tasks beyond those of chatbots in both virtual and physical environments. Despite industry assurances of responsible AI development, these technologies are easily exploited and often exhibit troubling behaviors that even their creators struggle to understand.
This Article provides an accessible introduction to the current AI governance landscape, highlighting the intensifying AI development race alongside critical concepts such as model opacity and alignment mechanisms. It explores the novel ethical challenges introduced by generative AI, with an emphasis on societal-scale safety risks that have received minimal scholarly attention to date. The analysis further examines how judicial and regulatory systems attempt to address various AI-related issues, including discrimination, privacy, and intellectual property concerns. This Article concludes by arguing that the existing governance paradigm is inadequate to meet the unique challenges posed by advanced AI technologies. To transform the ideal of responsible AI from myth into reality, AI law and policy will need to transcend tenuous private-sector commitments and the narrow focus on model transparency
Blue Light Receptor 1: The Molecular Tale and Associated Mechanistic Interactions
No full textLight is a fundamental environmental cue that regulates growth, development, and circadian rhythms in fungi. In Trichoderma reesei, a filamentous fungus of industrial significance due to its cellulase production, light sensing coordinates both physiology and transcriptional regulation. Blue Light Receptor 1 (BLR1), a Light-Oxygen-Voltage (LOV) domain–containing photoreceptor and ortholog of Neurospora crassa White Collar 1 (WC1), plays a central role in these processes, yet its molecular mechanisms and interaction network remain incompletely understood. This dissertation investigates the structural and mechanistic activity of BLR1, with a focus on how the LOV domain mediates light-induced responses, how BLR1 participates in protein-protein interactions, and how it regulates transcription in concert with Blue Light Receptor 2 (BLR2) and Envoy (ENV1). The hypothesis is that BLR1 functions as the core photoreceptor of the Trichoderma reesei circadian system by forming light-dependent homodimers, interacting with BLR2 and ENV1 in heteromeric complexes analogous to WC1/WC2/VVD in N. crassa, and establishing conserved structural motifs critical for transcriptional regulation. vii To test this, a combination of biochemical, structural, and functional approaches was employed, including protein expression and purification, size exclusion chromatography to assess oligomerization, optogenetic assays to probe activation dynamics, sequence alignment, and structural modeling to identify conserved residues for mutational analysis, and comparative interaction assays with VVD homologs. The results demonstrate that BLR1 forms light induced homodimers, engages in heterodimeric interactions with ENV1 and VVD homologs across multiple species, and shows preliminary evidence for BLR1/BLR2 heterodimerization, with data also suggesting the existence of higher-order trimeric assemblies involving BLR1, ENV1, VVD, or BLR2. These findings position BLR1 as the central hub of the Trichoderma reesei light sensing system, paralleling the role of WC1 in N. crassa while revealing species specific structural and functional adaptations. By confirming conserved and novel protein:protein interactions, this work enhances understanding of fungal photoreception and circadian regulation and contributes to broader efforts to manipulate light signaling pathways for applications in industry, agriculture, and synthetic biology. Future studies resolving the structural basis of these complexes and mapping their transcriptional outputs in vivo will further elucidate BLR1’s role and advance both fundamental circadian biology and its biotechnological applications
Stereotypes as Character Evidence
Full text linkBase rate evidence often connects a defendant to an act through the defendant’s membership in a certain population. It includes evidence arising from forensic analysis, criminal profiling, statistical analysis, artificial intelligence, and many other common and emerging scientific methods. But while this evidence is prevalent in civil and criminal trials, it is poorly understood, and there is little predictability in how a court will decide its admissibility or even what standard the court will apply.
In this Article, I show that although some forms of base rate evidence are desirable and even critical to achieving an accurate case outcome, a common form of base rate evidence called profile evidence often constitutes unrecognized character evidence—evidence that a defendant acted in accordance with a certain character trait—which is prohibited by federal and state evidentiary rules. To show this, and to describe precisely the relationship between base rate evidence and ordinary character evidence, I draw on a statistical tool called Bayesian inference to define a concept that I call predictive character evidence. Predictive character evidence describes a behavioral propensity of a population to suggest that an individual member of the population acted in accordance with this propensity. I show that this evidence—a form of base rate evidence that involves behavioral stereotyping—relies on character reasoning and is therefore impermissible under the rule against character evidence.
Finally, I discuss critical implications of my analysis. First, I show how an understanding of predictive character evidence helps resolve longstanding confusion and inconsistency surrounding base rate evidence and profile evidence in particular. I then demonstrate that applying the rule against character evidence to determine the admissibility of profile evidence is essential to achieving correct and predictable evidentiary decisions, to minimizing the influence of implicit biases based on race and other personal characteristics of a defendant, and to reaching accurate verdicts
A Pastoral Music Response In Support Of The Universal Apostolic Preferences Of The Society Of Jesus
Full text linkThis thesis establishes the relationship between Catholic congregational song and the apostolic work of the Society of Jesus. The Society of Jesus is currently at the halfway mark of their ten-year plan guided by the Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs). These UAPs focus on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, marginalized communities, young people, and caring for the earth. Currently, there are no resources that exist that promote the UAPs through the lens of liturgical music. It is the hope that the suggested hymns, whether sung in the community or individually, deepen the spiritual journey of the participants as they explore the tenets of the UAPs and act upon the values they espouse