This paper analyses Gisaku (2005), a Spanish animated film directed by Baltasar Pedrosa, as a strategic exercise in cultural diplomacy and transnational media adaptation. Commissioned through a public competition organized by the Sociedad Estatal para Exposiciones Internacionales (SEEI), Gisaku was created to represent Spain at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan—an explicit gesture of soft power aimed at fostering cultural proximity through animated media, or, according to SEEI, at “selling the nation’s image”.
Importantly, the film emerges at a moment when anime consumption in Spain was becoming widespread through television, home video, and fan communities. Gisaku is also embedded in anime’s transnational cartography in the way it draws from this industrial infrastructure, employing veteran Spanish voice actors known for dubbing Japanese anime. This convergence of local talent and imported aesthetic codes reveals anime not only as a culturally determined form of Japanese popular culture but as a combination of both centralized and decentralized networks of production and convention.
Language and Literature, Drawing. Design. Illustration
Recent years have seen rapid advances in AI-driven image generation. Early diffusion models emphasized perceptual quality, while newer multimodal models like GPT-4o-image integrate high-level reasoning, improving semantic understanding and structural composition. Scientific illustration generation exemplifies this evolution: unlike general image synthesis, it demands accurate interpretation of technical content and transformation of abstract ideas into clear, standardized visuals. This task is significantly more knowledge-intensive and laborious, often requiring hours of manual work and specialized tools. Automating it in a controllable, intelligent manner would provide substantial practical value. Yet, no benchmark currently exists to evaluate AI on this front. To fill this gap, we introduce SridBench, the first benchmark for scientific figure generation. It comprises 1,120 instances curated from leading scientific papers across 13 natural and computer science disciplines, collected via human experts and MLLMs. Each sample is evaluated along six dimensions, including semantic fidelity and structural accuracy. Experimental results reveal that even top-tier models like GPT-4o-image lag behind human performance, with common issues in text/visual clarity and scientific correctness. These findings highlight the need for more advanced reasoning-driven visual generation capabilities.
Victor Mattos, João Henrique Schmidt, Amit Bhaya
et al.
Cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructures, such as water treatment facilities, represent significant threats to public health, safety, and the environment. This paper introduces a systematic approach for modeling and assessing covert man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks that leverage system identification techniques to inform the attack design. We focus on the attacker's ability to deploy a covert controller, and we evaluate countermeasures based on the Process-Aware Stealthy Attack Detection (PASAD) anomaly detection method. Using a second-order linear time-invariant with time delay model, representative of water treatment dynamics, we design and simulate stealthy attacks. Our results highlight how factors such as system noise and inaccuracies in the attacker's plant model influence the attack's stealthiness, underscoring the need for more robust detection strategies in industrial control environments.
Analog/mixed-signal circuits are key for interfacing electronics with the physical world. Their design, however, remains a largely handcrafted process, resulting in long and error-prone design cycles. While the recent rise of AI-based reinforcement learning and generative AI has created new techniques to automate this task, the need for many time-consuming simulations is a critical bottleneck hindering the overall efficiency. Furthermore, the lack of explainability of the resulting design solutions hampers widespread adoption of the tools. To address these issues, a novel agentic AI framework for sample-efficient and explainable analog circuit sizing is presented. It employs a multi-agent workflow where specialized Large Language Model (LLM)-based agents collaborate to interpret the circuit topology, to understand the design goals, and to iteratively refine the circuit's design parameters towards the target goals with human-interpretable reasoning. The adaptive simulation strategy creates an intelligent control that yields a high sample efficiency. The AnaFlow framework is demonstrated for two circuits of varying complexity and is able to complete the sizing task fully automatically, differently from pure Bayesian optimization and reinforcement learning approaches. The system learns from its optimization history to avoid past mistakes and to accelerate convergence. The inherent explainability makes this a powerful tool for analog design space exploration and a new paradigm in analog EDA, where AI agents serve as transparent design assistants.
The creative potential of computers has intrigued researchers for decades. Since the emergence of Generative AI (Gen AI), computer creativity has found many new dimensions and applications. As Gen AI permeates mainstream discourse and usage, researchers are delving into how it can improve and complement what humans do. Creative potential is a highly relevant notion to design practice and research, especially in the initial stages of ideation and conceptualisation. There is scope to improve creative potential in these stages, especially using machine intelligence. We propose a structured ideation session involving inspirational stimuli and utilise Gen AI in delivering this structure to designers through ALIA: Analogical LLM Ideation Agent, a tool for small-group ideation scenarios. The tool is developed by enabling speech based interactions with a Large Language Model (LLM) for inference generation. Inspiration is drawn from the synectic ideation method and the dialectics philosophy to design the optimal stimuli in group ideation. The tool is tested in design ideation sessions to compare the output of the AI-assisted ideation sessions to that of tradi tional ideation sessions. Preliminary findings showcase that participants have rated their ideas better when assisted by ALIA and respond favourably to speech-based interactions.
Testing prototypes with users is essential when developing new products. This qualitative study examines and organizes users’ (children) feedback on physical toy prototypes at various fidelity levels; the data collected comes from a multidisciplinary design studio class tasked with developing wooden toys for the company PlanToys. In this research, we use an organizational framework to categorize stakeholders’ feedback, which includes affirmative feedback, convergent critical feedback, and divergent critical feedback. In our analysis, the children’s feedback was compared by prototype fidelity in terms of both form and function, as well as by the feedback categorization. Findings suggest that form fidelity may bias children toward giving more divergent feedback, that function fidelity may have little impact on feedback given, that children tend to give more types of feedback on lower fidelity than higher fidelity models, and that play value, form, interaction, and function were the highest reported categories of feedback. Based on our observations, we encourage toy designers to be aware of their goals for testing with children before beginning to prototype. This paper is a resource for designers to understand how to prototype for children, as well as resource for researchers studying how specific end users influence the product design process.
Adriana Rossi, Claudio Formicola, Sara Gonizzi Barsanti
Si presenta un aspetto dell’attività di ricerca condivisa con gli studenti che hanno approcciato il tema di studio Analisi Comparative e Ricostruzioni Certificate per una corretta archeologia sperimentale delle artiglierie romane. L’occasione è sembrata utile per riflettere sulla tangibilità dei modelli in cui disgregare, alla luce delle attuali tecnologie, i confini tra valori materiali e immateriali. Allo scopo si presentano rilievi di prototipi fisici di catapulte di epoca repubblicana imperiale, ricostruite sulla base di tre tipologie di fonti e testate nel funzionamento. Passando dall’interpretazione delle acquisizioni fotogrammetriche al controllo numerico dei modelli “basati sulla realtà”, si guarda alla tensione dialettica che s’istaura tra opposti paradigmi passati e presenti: rilievo/progetto, analogico/digitale, tangibile/intangibile. Gli aspetti trasversali dei fenomeni legati alle ontologie che caratterizzano la commisurazione delle componenti e ai sistemi costruttivi, ovvero materiali, culturali e quindi storici, si prospettano come vettori multidimensionali potenzialmente in grado di indirizzare politiche culturali. Visualizzazioni avanzate, fondate sulla riscrittura di antiche storie ossidionali, promettono nel caso studio, di diventare volani per la riqualificazione di aree archeologiche anche di notevole fama.
A visualized graph is a powerful tool for data analysis and synthesis tasks. In this case, the task of visualization constitutes not only in displaying vertices and edges according to the graph representation, but also in ensuring that the result is visually simple and comprehensible for a human. Thus, the visualization process involves solving several problems, one of which is the problem of constructing a topological drawing of a planar part of a non-planar graph with a minimum number of removed edges. In this manuscript, we consider a mathematical model for representing the topological drawing of a graph, which is based on methods of the theory of vertex rotation with the induction of simple cycles that satisfy the Mac Lane planarity criterion. It is shown that the topological drawing of a non-planar graph can be constructed on the basis of a selected planar part of the graph. The topological model of a graph drawing allows us to reduce the brute-force enumeration problem of identifying a plane graph to a discrete optimization problem - searching for a subset of the set of isometric cycles of the graph that satisfy the zero value of the Mac Lane's functional. To isolate the planar part of the graph, a new computational method has been developed based on linear algebra and the algebra of structural numbers. The proposed method has polynomial computational complexity.
In the process of redistricting, one important metric is the number of competitive districts, that is, districts where both parties have a reasonable chance of winning a majority of votes. Competitive districts are important for achieving proportionality, responsiveness, and other desirable qualities; some states even directly list competitiveness in their legally-codified districting requirements. In this work, we discuss the problem of drawing plans with at least a fixed number of competitive districts. In addition to the standard, ``vote-band'' measure of competitivenesss (i.e., how close was the last election?), we propose a measure that explicitly considers ``swing voters'' - the segment of the population that may choose to vote either way, or not vote at all, in a given election. We present two main, contrasting results. First, from a computational complexity perspective, we show that the task of drawing plans with competitive districts is NP-hard, even on very natural instances where the districting task itself is easy (e.g., small rectangular grids of population-balanced cells). Second, however, we show that a simple hill-climbing procedure can in practice find districtings on real states in which all the districts are competitive. We present the results of the latter on the precinct-level graphs of the U.S. states of North Carolina and Arizona, and discuss trade-offs between competitiveness and other desirable qualities.
Досліджуються біографія та творчі пошуки народного художника України Юлія Скаканді, знакові графічні твори митця, щоб виявити характерні риси творчості, сформовані в результаті його пошуків. Наводяться основні факти із життя дизайнера-графіка й особистості, що справили особливий вплив на його мистецьке світосприйняття. Розглядаються основні стилі та техніки, у яких працює народний художник України Юлій Скаканді. Висвітлюються філософська позиція митця, його ставлення до мистецтва та художника-творця, проводиться аналіз художніх засобів і технологічних особливостей, а також окремі твори митця. Його найяскравішими знаковими творами є серія кольорових гравюр, що відображають побут українських гуцулів, а також кольорові офорти з історичної серії «Народні месники», серії офортів «Мрії назустріч» і «Шляхами війни». Основними творчими здобутками Юлія Скаканді є: перша премія Національної спілки художників України на виставці «Молодість країни»; Міжнародне бієнале в Італії – перша премія (графіка), 1993 рік; перша премія (живопис) у 1995 році; перша премія (акварель) у 2015 році. Митець є членом Національної спілки художників України з 1997 року, членом Спілки дизайнерів України із 2007 року, народним художником України із 2018 року. Він є професором кафедри дизайну Державного університету інфраструктури та технологій (місто Київ). Юлій Скаканді є щирим патріотом і з дитинства закоханий у широкі полонини Закарпаття, незважаючи на свої подорожі за кордон і дослідження інших культур, він ніколи не забуває про своє коріння. Навпаки, уважає, що кожен митець має подорожувати для естетичного збагачення, і таке життя допомагає глибше оцінити культурні скарби власної батьківщини. Мета. Дослідити біографію та творчі пошуки народного художника України Юлія Скаканді, проаналізувати знакові графічні твори митця, щоб виявити характерні риси творчості, сформовані у результаті його пошуків. Методологія. У статті використано традиційні наукові методи історичного аналізу, порівняльного аналізу, метод системно-структурного аналізу. Результати. Досліджено художні пошуки Юлія Скаканді, виявлені основні риси власного стилю. Наукова новизна. Уперше системно досліджуються творчі пошуки професора Юлія Скаканді для виявлення характерних рис його творчості. Проводиться узагальнювальний огляд його мистецьких здобутків. Практична значущість. Даний матеріал може бути використаний у культурно-освітньому процесі під час підготовки дизайнерів-графіків, мистецтвознавців, художників-живописців.
Dos Punts, un estudio de diseño gráfico y comunicación fundado por Neus Seguí y Anna Brullas. El color, la ilustración y una comunicación propia, directa y cercana son el sello de identidad en todos nuestros proyectos. Trabajamos de la mano con el cliente y colaboradores externos para llegar a soluciones gráficas a la medida de las
necesidades de cada encargo.
Sujoy Bhore, Robert Ganian, Liana Khazaliya
et al.
The task of finding an extension to a given partial drawing of a graph while adhering to constraints on the representation has been extensively studied in the literature, with well-known results providing efficient algorithms for fundamental representations such as planar and beyond-planar topological drawings. In this paper, we consider the extension problem for bend-minimal orthogonal drawings of planar connected graphs, which is among the most fundamental geometric graph drawing representations. While the problem was known to be \NP-hard, it is natural to consider the case where only a small part of the graph is still to be drawn. Here, we establish the fixed-parameter tractability of the problem when parameterized by the size of the missing subgraph. Our algorithm is based on multiple novel ingredients which intertwine geometric and combinatorial arguments. These include the identification of a new graph representation of bend-equivalent regions for vertex placement in the plane, establishing a bound on the treewidth of this auxiliary graph, and a global point-grid that allows us to discretize the possible placement of bends and vertices into locally bounded subgrids for each of the above regions.
A central challenge of the clean energy transition is the development of catalysts for low-emissions technologies. Recent advances in Machine Learning for quantum chemistry drastically accelerate the computation of catalytic activity descriptors such as adsorption energies. Here we introduce AdsorbRL, a Deep Reinforcement Learning agent aiming to identify potential catalysts given a multi-objective binding energy target, trained using offline learning on the Open Catalyst 2020 and Materials Project data sets. We experiment with Deep Q-Network agents to traverse the space of all ~160,000 possible unary, binary and ternary compounds of 55 chemical elements, with very sparse rewards based on adsorption energy known for only between 2,000 and 3,000 catalysts per adsorbate. To constrain the actions space, we introduce Random Edge Traversal and train a single-objective DQN agent on the known states subgraph, which we find strengthens target binding energy by an average of 4.1 eV. We extend this approach to multi-objective, goal-conditioned learning, and train a DQN agent to identify materials with the highest (respectively lowest) adsorption energies for multiple simultaneous target adsorbates. We experiment with Objective Sub-Sampling, a novel training scheme aimed at encouraging exploration in the multi-objective setup, and demonstrate simultaneous adsorption energy improvement across all target adsorbates, by an average of 0.8 eV. Overall, our results suggest strong potential for Deep Reinforcement Learning applied to the inverse catalysts design problem.
Itay Grinberg, Alexandra Bremers, Louisa Pancoast
et al.
In this demonstration, we exhibit the initial results of an ongoing body of exploratory work, investigating the potential for creative machines to communicate and collaborate with people through movement as a form of implicit interaction. The paper describes a Wizard-of-Oz demo, where a hidden wizard controls an AxiDraw drawing robot while a participant collaborates with it to draw a custom postcard. This demonstration aims to gather perspectives from the computational fabrication community regarding how practitioners of fabrication with machines experience interacting with a mixed-initiative collaborative machine.
Il Politecnico di Torino ha intrapreso azioni di promozione e diffusione del proprio patrimonio storico archivistico come sistema unitario di conoscenze tecniche e di informazioni.
L’utilizzo critico di metodologie gestionali dedicate e di tecnologie informatiche è il cardine per la valorizzazione dei suoi repertori. Il contributo illustra la predisposizione di un sistema informativo distribuito via web che lega insieme gli apparati dell’Archivio della Società G.A. Porcheddu nel periodo 1894-1927 – Agente e Concessionario Generale per l’Alta Italia del sistema brevettato da François Hennebique – conservato presso il Dipartimento di Ingegneria Strutturale, Edile e Geotecnica del Politecnico di Torino. Si tratta di patrimoni ricchi di elementi concettuali, resi vivi da supporti grafici espressamente concepiti, che sfruttano in modo efficace le prestazioni delle tecnologie digitali e ridonano valore agli studi più recenti sulla Città attraverso processi più efficienti di condivisione.
Purpose. To figure out the directions of development and origins of the modern photonbook on the examples dedicated to the effect of the Soviet culture on the formation of the post-Soviet urban environment.
Methodology. In the process of research, the following methods were used: art analysis, analysis of theoretical and historical preconditions for the development of the typology of a modern photobook that displays the urban environment; synthesis, generalization and systematization of the received information; methods of induction, deduction and comparative analysis.
Results. It is shown that photobooks, dedicated to the influence of Soviet heritage on the formation of urban environment and landscape, continue the traditions established by the Dusseldorf School of Photography with some differences affected by the rise of publishing and design technologies. It is determined, that the characteristic feature of a modern photobook is a wider freedom in the choice of the target objects, angles of view, shots. But the concept of documenting the same or similar objects remains. Minimalism in the design of the indoor unit and cover, concise use of several options for repeating modular grids - the trends that unite the latest published photobooks.
Scientific novelty. Typological features and principles of the design of one of the actual directions of the modern photobooks are revealed, which tend to continue the traditions of photographic typology as a form of presenting a photo project. Distinctive features in the formation of the design of such photobooks, associated with the development of modern digital technologies of photography and layout, are defined.
Practical significance. A retrospective art analysis of photobooks, dedicated to the reflection of the urban environment, was conducted. The research is an important link in the further study of the history of the development of the photobook, as the implementation of the creative project of the photographer.
Abstract A crime is a deliberate act that can cause physical or psychological harm, as well as property damage or loss, and can lead to punishment by a state or other authority according to the severity of the crime. The number and forms of criminal activities are increasing at an alarming rate, forcing agencies to develop efficient methods to take preventive measures. In the current scenario of rapidly increasing crime, traditional crime-solving techniques are unable to deliver results, being slow paced and less efficient. Thus, if we can come up with ways to predict crime, in detail, before it occurs, or come up with a “machine” that can assist police officers, it would lift the burden of police and help in preventing crimes. To achieve this, we suggest including machine learning (ML) and computer vision algorithms and techniques. In this paper, we describe the results of certain cases where such approaches were used, and which motivated us to pursue further research in this field. The main reason for the change in crime detection and prevention lies in the before and after statistical observations of the authorities using such techniques. The sole purpose of this study is to determine how a combination of ML and computer vision can be used by law agencies or authorities to detect, prevent, and solve crimes at a much more accurate and faster rate. In summary, ML and computer vision techniques can bring about an evolution in law agencies.
Drawing. Design. Illustration, Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics