Vision-as-inverse-graphics, the concept of reconstructing images into editable programs, remains challenging for Vision-Language Models (VLMs), which inherently lack fine-grained spatial grounding in one-shot settings. To address this, we introduce VIGA (Vision-as-Inverse-Graphics Agent), an interleaved multimodal reasoning framework where symbolic logic and visual perception actively cross-verify each other. VIGA operates through a tightly coupled code-render-inspect loop: synthesizing symbolic programs, projecting them into visual states, and inspecting discrepancies to guide iterative edits. Equipped with high-level semantic skills and an evolving multimodal memory, VIGA sustains evidence-based modifications over long horizons. This training-free, task-agnostic framework seamlessly supports 2D document generation, 3D reconstruction, multi-step 3D editing, and 4D physical interaction. Finally, we introduce BlenderBench, a challenging visual-to-code benchmark. Empirically, VIGA substantially improves accuracy compared with one-shot baselines in BlenderGym (35.32%), SlideBench (117.17%) and our proposed BlenderBench (124.70%).
José Peixoto, Alexis Gonzalez, Janki Bhimani
et al.
Programmable caching engines like CacheLib are widely used in production systems to support diverse workloads in multi-tenant environments. CacheLib's design focuses on performance, portability, and configurability, allowing applications to inherit caching improvements with minimal implementation effort. However, its behavior under dynamic and evolving workloads remains largely unexplored. This paper presents an empirical study of CacheLib with multi-tenant settings under dynamic and volatile environments. Our evaluation across multiple CacheLib configurations reveals several limitations that hinder its effectiveness under such environments, including rigid configurations, limited runtime adaptability, lack of quality-of-service support and coordination, which lead to suboptimal performance, inefficient memory usage, and tenant starvation. Based on these findings, we outline future research directions to improve the adaptability, fairness, and programmability of future caching engines.
What is an atmosphere? Does sensory fine tuning expand the understanding of reality? Can perceptions and atmospheres influence design and vice versa?
Multidisciplinary approaches that integrate sensory aspects are tools that open up possibilities for design. Nevertheless, design has often prioritized the visual, overlooking the crucial role of the other senses in shaping experiences. This essay explores academic practices and performances that cross disciplinary and synesthetic borders. Social design strategies and public initiatives that focus in particular on sensory atmospheres unveil different multifaceted points of view and narratives of the same place. This paper presents various communication/performative design tools including auditory/sensory training for design/architecture students and participatory workshops in peripheries. The paper also describes the methods of the research.
This article examines the central role of materials in shaping circular design practices and guiding sustainable transitions. Framed within the intersections of Transition Design, Advanced Design, and Circular Design, materials are considered not as passive inputs but as co-evolving actors that influence processes, supply chains, and cultural imaginaries. Through theoretical analysis and case studies, the article highlights how innovative approaches to material design can regenerate resources, enhance transparency through digital and AI-based technologies, enable collaborative supply chains, and foster new aesthetic and ethical values. By addressing materials as agents of change, design is positioned as a catalyst for systemic and cultural transformation in the face of current environmental and social crises. From this perspective, four operational implications emerge for design, outlining an integrated framework for action. As an introductory contribution to the Open Debate section of diid on design and materials, the article sets the stage for further reflections and discussions on the experimental trajectories shaping contemporary design cultures.
This contribution presents a reflection on the role of design as a dialogical and generative tool connecting place, nature, and community. The research context focuses on small-fortified towns, understood as living ecosystemic organisms, integrated into the landscape and inhabited by communities that serve as custodial souls.
Approaches and methodologies typical of Community Design emerge as valuable strategic tools for the understanding, protection, activation, communication, and enhancement of both environmental and social heritage—past and future.
The designer assumes multiple roles: guide, facilitator, producer, mediator, and narrator of meaningful and achievable relationships and outcomes; interpreter of tangible and intangible values; documentarian, informant, promoter, and co-designer of good practices in collaboration with local custodial communities.
A selective analysis of the most relevant and recent case studies, along with real-world applications, frames the thematic scope and highlights the participatory cross-pollination of disciplines, actors, and places.
کاتالیزورهای نوری با استفاده از انرژی خورشید میتوانند رنگزاهای آلی را تخریب کنند. امروزه علاقه به پژوهش در زمینه واکنشهای کاتالیزوری نوری آب رو به افزایش است. در تحقیق حاضر چندین روش برای سنتز اکسیدهای مختلط باریم- منگنز بررسی شد. نانوکامپوزیتهای BaMnO3 (Ba-Mn-O) با روش سنتز سل-ژل، با آزمونهای مشخصهیابی مختلف شناسایی و به عنوان کاتالیزور نوری برای حذف آلودگیهای رنگی آب استفاده شدند. بازده تخریب رنگزاهای آلی متیل اورانژ (MO)، آریوم کروم بلک تی (EBT)، رودآمین بی (RhB) و مالاکیت گرین (MG) در حضور کاتالیزورهای نوری سنتز شده مطالعه و شرایط بهینه برای بالا بردن میزان تخریب رنگزاها (شامل مقدار رنگزا و مقدار کاتالیزور نوری) بررسی شدند. بازده تخریب 88 درصد از MO و 69 درصد از EBT بعد از 90 دقیقه تابش مرئی در حضور این کاتالیزورهای نوری گزارش شدند. مقادیر ppm 10 رنگزا MO و 03/0 گرم فوتوکاتالیست بهعنوان شرایط بهینه برای به دست آمدن بالاترین تخریب رنگزا (88 درصد) گزارش شد.
The interview with Professor Pablo Sendra explores applying design-driven urban regeneration strategies—traditionally used in cities—to small towns and historic villages. Drawing on Designing Disorder, co-authored by Sendra and Richard Sennett, the discussion highlights how fostering adaptable, co-designed spaces can stimulate social connections and sustainable transformations. Sendra emphasizes the importance of combining physical and social interventions through an "assemblage" approach, where interconnected systems shape urban change. Prototypes, as temporary, low-cost solutions, are proposed to test and refine interventions. Collective care and co-creation emerge as critical for nurturing community ownership, social resilience, and climate adaptation. The interview underlines the potential of these methods to enhance fragile territories by prioritizing flexible, inclusive, and environmentally mindful designs.
The growing demand for sustainable food packaging is driven not only by consumer awareness of food safety but also by international strategies such as national development plans and European Union regulations, which emphasize the replacement of conventional plastics with bio-based and functional alternatives. In this context, active antioxidant packaging plays a critical role in extending food shelf life, reducing waste, and ensuring safer products. Hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) was selected as the matrix material due to its good film-forming properties, biodegradability, biocompatibility, odorlessness, and non-toxicity or low toxicity, while vitamin C (ascorbic acid), a natural antioxidant, was incorporated as the active agent. HEC solution was prepared by dissolving HEC powder in distilled water, and vitamin C was incorporated. The resulting mixtures were homogenized and cast onto glass plates, followed by drying to produce uniform films. The obtained films were systematically characterized in terms of contact angle (wettability), and antioxidant capacity. In addition, their surface performance was evaluated through IGT F1 flexographic test printing trials to assess practical applicability. The results demonstrated that the incorporation of vitamin C enhanced the antioxidant functionality of HEC films, while altering their barrier and surface properties depending on the concentration used. These findings suggest that HEC-based films containing vitamin C have significant potential as active packaging materials that meet both sustainability goals and food safety requirements.
This paper introduces SGL, a graphics language that is aesthetically similar to SQL. As a graphical counterpart to SQL, SGL enables specification of statistical graphics within SQL query interfaces. SGL is based on a grammar of graphics that has been customized to support a SQL aesthetic. This paper presents the fundamental components of the SGL language alongside examples, and describes SGL's underlying grammar of graphics via comparison to its closest predecessor, the layered grammar of graphics.
Successfully engineering interactive industrial DTs is a complex task, especially when implementing services beyond passive monitoring. We present here an experience report on engineering a safety-critical digital twin (DT) for beer fermentation monitoring, which provides continual sampling and reduces manual sampling time by 91%. We document our systematic methodology and practical solutions for implementing bidirectional DTs in industrial environments. This includes our three-phase engineering approach that transforms a passive monitoring system into an interactive Type 2 DT with real-time control capabilities for pressurized systems operating at seven bar. We contribute details of multi-layered safety protocols, hardware-software integration strategies across Arduino controllers and Unity visualization, and real-time synchronization solutions. We document specific engineering challenges and solutions spanning interdisciplinary integration, demonstrating how our use of the constellation reporting framework facilitates cross-domain collaboration. Key findings include the critical importance of safety-first design, simulation-driven development, and progressive implementation strategies. Our work thus provides actionable guidance for practitioners developing DTs requiring bidirectional control in safety-critical applications.
Model-driven engineering (MDE) is believed to have a significant impact in software quality. However, researchers and practitioners may have a hard time locating consolidated evidence on this impact, as the available information is scattered in several different publications. Our goal is to aggregate consolidated findings on quality in MDE, facilitating the work of researchers and practitioners in learning about the coverage and main findings of existing work as well as identifying relatively unexplored niches of research that need further attention. We performed a tertiary study on quality in MDE, in order to gain a better understanding of its most prominent findings and existing challenges, as reported in the literature. We identified 22 systematic literature reviews and mapping studies and the most relevant quality attributes addressed by each of those studies, in the context of MDE. Maintainability is clearly the most often studied and reported quality attribute impacted by MDE. Eighty out of 83 research questions in the selected secondary studies have a structure that is more often associated with mapping existing research than with answering more concrete research questions (e.g., comparing two alternative MDE approaches with respect to their impact on a specific quality attribute). We briefly outline the main contributions of each of the selected literature reviews. In the collected studies, we observed a broad coverage of software product quality, although frequently accompanied by notes on how much more empirical research is needed to further validate existing claims. Relatively, little attention seems to be devoted to the impact of MDE on the quality in use of products developed using MDE.
Reliable aero-engine anomaly detection is crucial for ensuring aircraft safety and operational efficiency. This research explores the application of the Fisher autoencoder as an unsupervised deep learning method for detecting anomalies in aero-engine multivariate sensor data, using a Gaussian mixture as the prior distribution of the latent space. The proposed method aims to minimize the Fisher divergence between the true and the modeled data distribution in order to train an autoencoder that can capture the normal patterns of aero-engine behavior. The Fisher divergence is robust to model uncertainty, meaning it can handle noisy or incomplete data. The Fisher autoencoder also has well-defined latent space regions, which makes it more generalizable and regularized for various types of aero-engines as well as facilitates diagnostic purposes. The proposed approach improves the accuracy of anomaly detection and reduces false alarms. Simulations using the CMAPSS dataset demonstrate the model's efficacy in achieving timely anomaly detection, even in the case of an unbalanced dataset.
This study consists of an ethnographic survey of 50 forms of finger food found by the author on the four continents of America, Europe, Africa and Asia, involving around 20 countries, presented under four morphological typologies wrapped, agglutinated, laminated and contained – and five construction systems – plate, oven, steam, water and bain-marie. The raw materials used in the collection are cereals (68%), pulses (16%), tubers (10%) and seaweed/leaves (6%). The literature review identifies exceptional qualities of combining whole grains with pulses as a dietary contribution to reducing obesity and improving public health. The results of this research will contribute to the author’s PhD thesis: design of plant-based mobile finger food, mitigating the hegemony of wheat.
In this work, we examined characteristics of the currently confirmed exoplanet population in order to characterize some of the crucial parameters for ocean formation. Two correlation heatmaps were created: one for the exoplanets in general, and one for exoplanets that can be found in the habitable zone according to calculations. Based on these, we found possible associations between planetary radius/mass, stellar metallicity, and multiple characteristics. We propose plans for further studies of possible proxies for exoplanetary ocean exploration.
Mechanical drawing. Engineering graphics, Physical and theoretical chemistry
We describe a method, based on Jennifer Nado's proposal for classification procedures as targets of conceptual engineering, that implements such procedures by prompting a large language model. We apply this method, using data from the Wikidata knowledge graph, to evaluate stipulative definitions related to two paradigmatic conceptual engineering projects: the International Astronomical Union's redefinition of PLANET and Haslanger's ameliorative analysis of WOMAN. Our results show that classification procedures built using our approach can exhibit good classification performance and, through the generation of rationales for their classifications, can contribute to the identification of issues in either the definitions or the data against which they are being evaluated. We consider objections to this method, and discuss implications of this work for three aspects of theory and practice of conceptual engineering: the definition of its targets, empirical methods for their investigation, and their practical roles. The data and code used for our experiments, together with the experimental results, are available in a Github repository.
Hydro-mechanical deep drawing (HMDD) process is comparatively a new technique in sheet metal forming. The present study focuses on the use of HMDD for bimetallic components comprising aluminum and steel sheets as well as aluminum and magnesium blanks. Carrying out both experiments and numerical simulations, the effects of process parameters such as drawing depth, the fluid pressure inside the die and the process temperature were profoundly investigated. To study the effect of the process temperature on the quality of the product, the specimens were formed at both the room temperature and 200°C. Considering the maximum thickness strain and thickness variation of the specimens as measures of product quality, various results, including those obtained from the design of experiments (DOE), illustrated significant impacts of all the considered factors on the quality of the final product. The findings also showed that for the bimetallic aluminum/steel specimen, the Al/St layer sequence offered a higher quality compared with the St/Al arrangement under the same process conditions. The amount of thickness strain and thickness variation in the Al/St arrangement, compared with the St/Al sequence, were respectively improved by 27.4% and 12.6%, for the optimal value of the maximum fluid pressure (150 bar). Moreover, the thickness variation of the Al/Mg specimen was smaller than that of Al/St bimetallic cup, regardless of the drawing depth.
Paula Visoná, Mágda Rodrigues da Cunha, César Kieling
Increasingly, environments that propose other relationships between different agents existing/acting in the city and territories and the reconnection with the place will design solutions for a complex daily life. In this work, we intend to approach these elements from a specific creative ecosystem, Armazém da Criatividade (Warehouse of Creativity), and one of its proposals presented this year, the MMA Challenge (Fashion, Music and Art). We aim to explore the pertinence of the existence of environments such as the Armazém da Criatividade in terms of stimulating, provoking and, sometimes, inducing the new in the territories/cities where they are located, producing other effects of meaning in the agents involved as well, who are provoked — directly or indirectly — into actions and projects for these spaces. Based on this relationship, we will also address potential connections between stimulating local creative vocations and reverberating this in terms of positive impacts in different contemporary territories.