Real-time deep hair matting on mobile devices

Augmented reality is an emerging technology in many application domains. Among them is the beauty industry, where live virtual try-on of beauty products is of great importance. In this paper, we address the problem of live hair color augmentation. To achieve this goal, hair needs to be segmented quickly and accurately. We show how a modified MobileNet CNN architecture can be used to segment the hair in real-time. Instead of training this network using large amounts of accurate segmentation data, which is difficult to obtain, we use crowd sourced hair segmentation data. While such data is much simpler to obtain, the segmentations there are noisy and coarse. Despite this, we show how our system can produce accurate and fine-detailed hair mattes, while running at over 30 fps on an iPad Pro tablet.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, submitted to CRV 201

Recent trends in analytical methods to determine new psychoactive substances in hair

New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) belong to several chemical classes, including phenethylamines, piperazines, synthetic cathinones and synthetic cannabinoids. Development and validation of analytical methods for the determination of NPS both in traditional and alternative matrices is of crucial importance to study drug metabolism and to associate consumption to clinical outcomes and eventual intoxication symptoms. Among different biological matrices, hair is the one with the widest time window to investigate drug-related history and demonstrate past intake. The aim of this paper was to overview the trends of the rapidly evolving analytical methods for the determination of NPS in hair and the usefulness of these methods when applied to real cases. A number of rapid and sensitive methods for the determination of NPS in hair matrix has been recently published, most of them using liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Hair digestion and subsequent solid phase extraction or liquid-liquid extraction were described as well as extraction in organic solvents. For most of the methods limits of quantification at picogram per milligram hair were obtained. The measured concentrations for most of the NPS in real samples were in the range of picograms of drug per milligram of hair. Interpretation of the results and lack of cut-off values for the discrimination between chronic consumption and occasional use or external contamination are still challenging. Methods for the determination of NPS in hair are continually emerging to include as many NPS as possible due to the great demand for their detection

A framework for real-time physically-based hair rendering

Hair rendering has been a major challenge in computer graphics for several years due to the complex light interactions involved. Complexity mainly stems from two aspects: the number of hair strands, and the resulting complexity of their interaction with light. In general, theoretical approaches towards a realistic hair visualization aim to develop a proper scattering model on a per-strand level, which can be extended in practice to the whole hair volume with ray tracing even though it is usually expensive in computational terms. Aiming at achieving real-time hair rendering, I analyze each component contributing to it from both theoretical and practical points of view in this work. Most approaches, both real- and non-real-time build on top of the Marschner scattering model, such as recent efficient state-of-the-art techniques introduced in Unreal Engine and Frostbite, among others. Interactive applications cannot afford the complexity of ray tracing, and they target efficiency by explicitly dealing with each component involved in both single-strand and inter-strand light interactions, applying the necessary simplifications to match the time budget. I have further implemented a framework, separating the different components, which combines aspects of these approaches towards the best possible quality and performance. The implementation achieves real-time good-looking hair, and its flexibility has allowed to perform experiments on performance, scalability, and contribution to quality of the different components

Real-Time Hair Filtering with Convolutional Neural Networks

Rendering of realistic-looking hair is in general still too costly to do in real-time applications, from simulating the physics to rendering the fine details required for it to look natural, including self-shadowing.We show how an autoencoder network, that can be evaluated in real time, can be trained to filter an image of few stochastic samples, including self-shadowing, to produce a much more detailed image that takes into account real hair thickness and transparency

FM1-43 dye behaves as a permeant blocker of the hair-cell mechanotransducer channel

Hair cells in mouse cochlear cultures are selectively labeled by brief exposure to FM1-43, a styryl dye used to study endocytosis and exocytosis. Real-time confocal microscopy indicates that dye entry is rapid and via the apical surface. Cooling to 4°C and high extracellular calcium both reduce dye loading. Pretreatment with EGTA, a condition that breaks tip links and prevents mechanotransducer channel gating, abolishes subsequent dye loading in the presence of calcium. Dye loading recovers after calcium chelation with a time course similar to that described for tip-link regeneration. Myo7a mutant hair cells, which can transduce but have all mechanotransducer channels normally closed at rest, do not label with FM1-43 unless the bundles are stimulated by large excitatory stimuli. Extracellular perfusion of FM1-43 reversibly blocks mechanotransduction with half-blocking concentrations in the low micromolar range. The block is reduced by high extracellular calcium and is voltage dependent, decreasing at extreme positive and negative potentials, indicating that FM1-43 behaves as a permeant blocker of the mechanotransducer channel. The time course for the relief of block after voltage steps to extreme potentials further suggests that FM1-43 competes with other cations for binding sites within the pore of the channel. FM1-43 does not block the transducer channel from the intracellular side at concentrations that would cause complete block when applied extracellularly. Calcium chelation and FM1-43 both reduce the ototoxic effects of the aminoglycoside antibiotic neomycin sulfate, suggesting that FM1-43 and aminoglycosides enter hair cells via the same pathway

Twofold Hidden Conformal Symmetries of the Kerr-Newman Black Hole

In this paper, we suggest that there are two different individual 2D CFTs holographically dual to the Kerr-Newman black hole, coming from the corresponding two possible limits --- the Kerr/CFT and Reissner-Nordstr\"om/CFT correspondences, namely there exist the Kerr-Newman/CFTs dualities. A probe scalar field at low frequencies turns out can exhibit two different 2D conformal symmetries (named by $J$- and $Q$-pictures, respectively) in its equation of motion when the associated parameters are suitably specified. These twofold dualities are supported by the matchings of entropies, absorption cross sections and real time correlators computed from both the gravity and the CFT sides. Our results lead to a fascinating "microscopic no hair conjecture" --- for each macroscopic hair parameter, in additional to the mass of a black hole in the Einstein-Maxwell theory, there should exist an associated holographic CFT$_2$ description.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure, typos correcte

Trehalose increase proliferation and decrease apoptosis in hair cells induced by Hydrogen peroxides

BACKGROUND: Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) a key reactive oxygen species, which is made through redox procedure, can induce oxidative damage to several biological macromolecules and play critical role in neurodegenerative diseases. Aim: The current study examined the neuroprotective effect of Trehalose on hair cells death induced by H2O2. Material and method: Hair cells were co-treated by Trehalose and H2O2. The effects of Trehalose on BAX/BCL2 expression ratio and cell viability were assessed by Real time PCR and MTT assay, respectively.  Result:  The results of Real time PCR and MTT assay indicated that H2O2 induce cell death, and Trehalose have neuroprotective effect and decreases cell death. Conclusion: Our data showed that Trehalose has the protective effect on hair cells death induced by H20

An enhance framework on hair modeling and real-time animation

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC