This study examined the unfolding of family and adulthood across differing Korean family contexts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted on 27 Korean adolescents: 8 Korean Americans (KAs), 9 Transracially Adopted Korean Americans (KADs), and 10 South Koreans (SKs). KADs emphasized the importance of their family's shared journey in shaping their cultural identities. Alternatively, KAs and SKs more likely reported parental demandingness and paternal emotional/physical distance, with SKs often culturally equipped to interpret their fathers' communications. SKs and KAs demonstrated culturally infused adulthood perceptions based on traditional gender roles and collectivistic values, while recognizing their parents' timeless view of them as children.
Earth-abundant electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) able to work in acidic working conditions are elusive. While many first-row transition metal oxides are competitive in alkaline media, most of them just dissolve or become inactive at high proton concentrations where hydrogen evolution is preferred. Only noble-metal catalysts, such as IrO 2 , are fast and stable enough in acidic media. Herein, we report the excellent activity and long-term stability of Co 3 O 4 -based anodes in 1 M H 2 SO 4 (pH 0.1) when processed in a partially hydrophobic carbon-based protecting matrix. These Co 3 O 4 @C composites reliably drive O 2 evolution a 10 mA cm –2 current density for >40 h without appearance of performance fatigue, successfully passing benchmarking protocols without incorporating noble metals. Our strategy opens an alternative venue towards fast, energy efficient acid-media water oxidation electrodes.
The last few years have seen a decisive move of the movie making industry towards rendering using physically based methods, mostly implemented in terms of path tracing. While path tracing reached most VFX houses and animation studios at a time when a physically based approach to rendering and especially material modelling was already firmly established, the new tools brought with them a whole new balance, and many new workflows have evolved to find a new equilibrium. Letting go of instincts based on hard-learned lessons from a previous time has been challenging for some, and many different takes on a practical deployment of the new technologies have emerged. While the language and toolkit available to the technical directors keep closing the gap between lighting in the real world and the light transport simulations ran in software, an understanding of the limitations of the simulation models and a good intuition of the tradeoffs and approximations at play are of fundamental importance to make efficient use of the available resources. In this course, the novel workflows emerged during the transitions at a number of large facilities are presented to a wide audience including technical directors, artists, and researchers.
On many shows we are working on at MPC, we have to deal with shots containing a high number of FX elements of various types (particles, volumes, animated geometry). A large majority of these effects are rendered by the Lighting department in Katana and Renderman eventually. However, the FX elements are crafted in either Houdini or Maya where the FX artists are also doing their renders, using Renderman or Mantra. The FX artists would often take great care in the shaders and materials they are using for presenting their work as they can have an important impact in the perceived shape and behaviour of their simulation, especially for volumes and particles. The usage of different softwares and renderers to produce the renders between the FX and Lighting departments lead to important differences between the dailies presented by FX and the renders done in Lighting, requiring more time for the Lighting artists to match the look approved in FX. The KatanaForFX initiative put in place a new workflow to make it easy for FX artists to generate their final renders in Katana and Renderman, save their set up as a released asset and hand it to the Lighting artists without requiring any prior knowledge in Katana nor interrupting their usual workflows. KatanaForFX enables the FX artists to focus on the design of their simulation itself while presenting them with the look developed by the Lighting department. The Lighting artists can in turn receive exactly the settings defined by the FX departments to reproduce their renders as well as develop the materials and shaders for the FX elements simultaneously.
For Justice League MPC faced the challenge of creating an abandoned city nearly twelve square kilometers in size, and for A Wrinkle in Time a fast-moving forest sequence that required rapid iterations with closely managed art direction. To deliver the high quality that viewers expect with the control that film makers require we needed procedural, extensible tools - but still allow for detailed artistic control. In this paper we look at how MPC leveraged real time game engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity to produce massive environments, and speed up the iteration cycle of complex VFX.
