MicroGlam: Microscopic Skin Image Dataset with Cosmetics

In this paper, we present a cosmetic-specific skin image dataset. It consists of skin images from $45$ patches ($5$ skin patches each from $9$ participants) of size $8mm^*8mm$ under three cosmetic products (i.e., foundation, blusher, and highlighter). We designed a novel capturing device inspired by Light Stage. Using the device, we captured over $600$ images of each skin patch under diverse lighting conditions in $30$ seconds. We repeated the process for the same skin patch under three cosmetic products. Finally, we demonstrate the viability of the dataset with an image-to-image translation-based pipeline for cosmetic rendering and compared our data-driven approach to an existing cosmetic rendering method.Comment: Project Page: https://github.com/tobyclh/MicroGla

The Iray Light Transport Simulation and Rendering System

While ray tracing has become increasingly common and path tracing is well understood by now, a major challenge lies in crafting an easy-to-use and efficient system implementing these technologies. Following a purely physically-based paradigm while still allowing for artistic workflows, the Iray light transport simulation and rendering system allows for rendering complex scenes by the push of a button and thus makes accurate light transport simulation widely available. In this document we discuss the challenges and implementation choices that follow from our primary design decisions, demonstrating that such a rendering system can be made a practical, scalable, and efficient real-world application that has been adopted by various companies across many fields and is in use by many industry professionals today

A culture of silence: modes of objectification and the silencing of disabled bodies

Throughout history different practices have attempted to silence the experiences of disabled people. In this paper we explore some of these practices including the medical, familial, and self-subjugating practices English-speaking Canadian polio survivors experienced throughout their lives. We analyze participant’s experiences of silence and silencing through a Foucauldian lens, drawing on the three modes of objectification to explain the institutional and cultural discourses around polio subjects that acted upon and through the polio body to silence it. Participants’ oral history accounts demonstrate how sociocultural and medical practices effectively silenced survivors from speaking about their polio experiences. However, the trope of silence is also uprooted within oral history traditions. We will demonstrate how participants broke their silence and shifted their perspectives on polio and disability, and how this process contributed to their resistance of hegemonic conceptualizations of disability as defective

Single-shot layered reflectance separation using a polarized light field camera

We present a novel computational photography technique for single shot separation of diffuse/specular reflectance as well as novel angular domain separation of layered reflectance. Our solution consists of a two-way polarized light field (TPLF) camera which simultaneously captures two orthogonal states of polarization. A single photograph of a subject acquired with the TPLF camera under polarized illumination then enables standard separation of diffuse (depolarizing) and polarization preserving specular reflectance using light field sampling. We further demonstrate that the acquired data also enables novel angular separation of layered reflectance including separation of specular reflectance and single scattering in the polarization preserving component, and separation of shallow scattering from deep scattering in the depolarizing component. We apply our approach for efficient acquisition of facial reflectance including diffuse and specular normal maps, and novel separation of photometric normals into layered reflectance normals for layered facial renderings. We demonstrate our proposed single shot layered reflectance separation to be comparable to an existing multi-shot technique that relies on structured lighting while achieving separation results under a variety of illumination conditions

Physicality in Australian patent law

It is generally understood that the patent system exists to encourage the conception and disclosure of new and useful inventions embodied in machines and other physical devices, along with new methods that physically transform matter from one state to another. What is not well understood is whether, and to what extent, the patent system is to encourage and protect the conception and disclosure of inventions that are non-physical methods – namely those that do not result in a physical transformation of matter. This issue was considered in Grant v Commissioner of Patents. In that case the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia held that an invention must involve a physical effect or transformation to be patentable subject matter. In doing so, it introduced a physicality requirement into Australian law. What this article seeks to establish is whether the court’s decision is consistent with the case law on point. It does so by examining the key common law cases that followed the High Court’s watershed decision in National Research Development Corporation v Commissioner of Patents, the undisputed authoritative statement of principle in regard to the patentable subject matter standard in Australia. This is done with a view to determining whether there is anything in those cases that supports the view that the Australian patentable subject matter test contains a physicality requirement

On Non-Linear Actions for Massive Gravity

In this work we present a systematic construction of the potentially ghost-free non-linear massive gravity actions. The most general action can be regarded as a 2-parameter deformation of a minimal massive action. Further extensions vanish in 4 dimensions. The general mass term is constructed in terms of a "deformed" determinant from which this property can clearly be seen. In addition, our formulation identifies non-dynamical terms that appear in previous constructions and which do not contribute to the equations of motion. We elaborate on the formal structure of these theories as well as some of their implications.Comment: v3: 22 pages, minor comments added, version to appear in JHE

Implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act among fruit and vegetable processors in the North Central Region

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is a food safety law that changed the way food companies are regulated to prevent foodborne illnesses. The FSMA Preventive Controls for Human Food rule was released September 2016 for facilities in manufacturing, processing, packing, and holding of human food. The North Central Region (NCR) Center for FSMA Training, Extension and Technical Assistance was founded by the Food and Drug Administration to assist with the education of processors around the Midwest. The NCR Center funded a project with three phases designed to help small fruit and vegetable processors in the Midwest understand their relationship with FSMA. Phase one was an audit checklist, phase two was extension fact sheets, and phase three was a needs assessment survey for processors. A prior needs assessment disseminated to growers in the NCR identified checklists and fact sheets as preferred methods of receiving educational materials about FSMA. The results from the grower needs assessment were translated into a checklist for processors. An audit checklist for processors to use in their facilities was designed in phase one. This checklist provided processors with a tool to determine their compliance with several parts of FSMA. Extension facts sheets were developed in phase two to help processors know their state food safety regulations. Topics in the fact sheets were post-harvest processing methods such as freezing, dehydrating, fermenting, pickling, and canning of jam and jelly products. The final phase was the design and dissemination of a needs assessment survey to processors in the NCR to determine what additional materials can be provided to help the population. Questions were asked about the processor’s understanding of the FSMA. Food safety professionals representing each processor responded to the survey. The needs assessment identified Amendments to Registration of Food Facilities, validation of the food safety plan, and the supply-chain programs as specific areas of FSMA processors would like assistance with. The needs assessment also verified the interest in the previously developed materials. Overall, the project increases the knowledge of FSMA among fruit and vegetable processors in the NCR

Call Me Caitlyn: Making and making over the 'authentic' transgender body in Anglo-American popular culture

A conception of transgender identity as an ‘authentic’ gendered core ‘trapped’ within a mismatched corporeality, and made tangible through corporeal transformations, has attained unprecedented legibility in contemporary Anglo-American media. Whilst pop-cultural articulations of this discourse have received some scholarly attention, the question of why this 'wrong body' paradigm has solidified as the normative explanation for gender transition within the popular media remains underexplored. This paper argues that this discourse has attained cultural pre-eminence through its convergence with a broader media and commercial zeitgeist, in which corporeal alteration and maintenance are perceived as means of accessing one’s ‘authentic’ self. I analyse the media representations of two transgender celebrities: Caitlyn Jenner and Nadia Almada, alongside the reality TV show TRANSform Me, exploring how these women’s gender transitions have been discursively aligned with a cultural imperative for all women, cisgender or trans, to display their authentic femininity through bodily work. This demonstrates how established tropes of authenticity-via-bodily transformation, have enabled transgender to become culturally legible through the wrong body trope. Problematically, I argue, this process has worked to demarcate ideals of ‘acceptable’ transgender subjectivity: self-sufficient, normatively feminine, and eager to embrace the possibilities for happiness and social integration provided by the commercial domain