Mitigating the Impact of Attribute Editing on Face Recognition

Through a large-scale study over diverse face images, we show that facial attribute editing using modern generative AI models can severely degrade automated face recognition systems. This degradation persists even with identity-preserving generative models. To mitigate this issue, we propose two novel techniques for local and global attribute editing. We empirically ablate twenty-six facial semantic, demographic and expression-based attributes that have been edited using state-of-the-art generative models, and evaluate them using ArcFace and AdaFace matchers on CelebA, CelebAMaskHQ and LFW datasets. Finally, we use LLaVA, an emerging visual question-answering framework for attribute prediction to validate our editing techniques. Our methods outperform the current state-of-the-art at facial editing (BLIP, InstantID) while improving identity retention by a significant extent.Comment: Under revie

Acoustic-Phonon Mediated Cyclotron Resonance Power Absorption in Zinc Oxide Free-Standing Nanostructure

157-162The phenomenon of cyclotron resonance power absorption when electrons are scattered by acoustic-phonons in ZnO free standing nanostructure (FSNS) is presented. The calculation is based on quantum mechanical perturbation technique. The dependence of power absorption on frequency, magnetic field, temperature and thickness of the FSNS is presented. FWHM or line-width of the resonance power absorption peaks is calculated using profile method and the influence of magnetic field, temperature and thickness of the FSNS is investigated, that the line-width is proportional to magnetic field whereas it is independent of temperature and thickness of FSNS. This theoretical analysis gives insights about magneto-optical properties of FSNS of ZnO which is essential for further experimental investigations

Trauma from Occlusion: Practical Management Guidelines

Occlusal trauma is trauma to the periodontium from functional or parafunctional force’s causing damage to the teeth and its attachment apparatus by exceeding its adaptive and reparative capacities. Occlusal instability is a common cause for trauma from occlusion, resulting in numerous complications. It often leads to interference which reflexively shifts or slides the jaw forward on one or both the side to find a spot where most teeth come together. This action protects the teeth from injury caused by chewing on just one tooth. Overtime, this shift can cause a whole host of problems from TMJ pain, post restorative complications, headache, tooth sensitivity, recession, broken and loss of teeth and orofacial pain. These occlusal interferences and bite discrepancies are treatable with minimally invasive dentistry. Occlusal equilibration is a therapy that is used when the cause of trauma is due to occlusal instability. This involves the reshaping of the teeth where the improper biting surfaces are located. The key lies in decoding the cause, but often treatment is only directed towards the effects. Only a thorough evaluation and occlusal analysis will lead to a definitive diagnosis that will help in better anticipation of the damages

Breeding chickpea for water limited environments: selection indices and strategies

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the one of the most important pulse crops in the world and its production is limited by terminal drought. Unlike conventional breeding for yield, it is more challenging and requires to be measured in terms of its manifestation towards changing performance of a genotype under stress. An evaluation of a panel developed for drought and breeding studies has clearly identified the presence of large variability for drought tolerance. A large number of traits have been screened and it has been inferred that drought susceptibility index is the best way to identify genotypes that have resilience to terminal drought. However, different genotypes possessed various physiological mechanisms to cope with the effects of drought and, hence, provide ample opportunities to breeders to combine them to develop drought-tolerant genotypes. The chickpea genotypes L550, PG112 and ICC92944 have shown higher mean values for yield traits under stress and have desirable terminal drought-tolerant mechanisms for yield and other associated characters such as lower DSI, higher HI, higher BY and higher grain yield. They have, thus, emerged as stable genotypes for yield under stress situations. Though MABC for root traits has been identified, rapid screening techniques using CTD and identification of markers for MSI and RWC to be used for screening segregating generations appears to be promising in north Indian conditions. This is because unlike in south India, drought in the north India develops abruptly after a cold period, giving little time for the root system to respond. Thus, breeding for terminal drought tolerance would require concentrating on these traits too

Expansion of the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) knowledge base and resources.

The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO)-a standardized vocabulary of phenotypic abnormalities associated with 7000+ diseases-is used by thousands of researchers, clinicians, informaticians and electronic health record systems around the world. Its detailed descriptions of clinical abnormalities and computable disease definitions have made HPO the de facto standard for deep phenotyping in the field of rare disease. The HPO\u27s interoperability with other ontologies has enabled it to be used to improve diagnostic accuracy by incorporating model organism data. It also plays a key role in the popular Exomiser tool, which identifies potential disease-causing variants from whole-exome or whole-genome sequencing data. Since the HPO was first introduced in 2008, its users have become both more numerous and more diverse. To meet these emerging needs, the project has added new content, language translations, mappings and computational tooling, as well as integrations with external community data. The HPO continues to collaborate with clinical adopters to improve specific areas of the ontology and extend standardized disease descriptions. The newly redesigned HPO website (www.human-phenotype-ontology.org) simplifies browsing terms and exploring clinical features, diseases, and human genes

A REVIEW ON THE TRADITIONAL DICOM C-STORE AND HTTP BASED REQUEST MECHANISMS

Digital Imaging and Communication in medicine (DICOM) standard promotes the communication of the digital image in medical imaging environment. Physicians can access this digitized images to diagnose critical patient’s information and access these images whenever required, thus, basically reducing the printing activity and going environmental friendly.  Increasingly, physicians have to access clinical images distributed over multiple healthcare organizations. The Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) is used to store, transfer and display images. One of the major problems that arise in institutions working with Imaging Diagnosis (Dx) in the interconnection network or equipment, are the "bottlenecks" caused by the high flow of network data. This flux is given by the transfer of images in DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) to the various devices that make up a DICOM network, called Service Class Users (SCU) and Service Class Providers (SCP). In response to these shortcomings, the Store over Web-Restful Services (STOW-RS) provides a way to store the medical images in PACS in an efficient and compacted manner. The STOW-RS is a methodology through which the images can be stored at PACS by SCP which is sent over to it by SCU. The STOW-RS Service provides the ability to STore Over the Web using RESTful Services

An evaluation and comparison of shear bond strength of composite resin to dentin, using newer dentin bonding agents

The purpose of this study was to assess the shear bond strength of Total etch Prime and Bond NT and self etch newer dentin bonding agents Clearfil S3, Xeno III Bond, Clearfil Protect Bond and G Bond used to bond composite resin to dentin, and to compare the difference in the shear bond strengths of the self etch newer dentin bonding agents. Hundred freshly extracted noncarious human maxillary premolar teeth were selected. The occlusal surfaces of each tooth were ground to prepare flat dentin surfaces at a depth of 1.5 mm and were randomly grouped, with twenty specimens in each: Group I - Prime and Bond NT, Group II - Clearfil Protect Bond, Group III - Xeno III Bond, Group IV - Clearfil S3 Bond, Group V - G Bond. Each group was treated with its respective bonding agents, as per the manufacturers' instructions Clearfill – Kuraray, Japan, G bond – GC Tokyo, Japan, Xeno- De Trey Densply, Germany. Blocks or Cylinders of composite resin were built up using Teflon mold and cured. Shear bond strengths were tested using Instron Universal testing machine and recorded in Mpa. The results were statistically analyzed using One-way anova and Tukeys HSD test. The total etch adhesive showed higher shear bond strength than self etching adhesives (P < 0.001). Within the limitations of this in vitro study, it can be concluded that all the adhesive agents evaluated showed optimal shear bond strength 17-20 Mpa, except G bond. However, shear bond strength of composite resin to dentin is better with one bottle total etch adhesive than with the newer self etching bonding agents

Bilateral Primary Angiosarcoma of the Breast

Primary breast sarcomas are very rare entities, accounting for 0.04% of all malignant neoplasms. Angiosarcoma of breast is infrequent and is an endothelial malignant tumor with bad prognosis because of the frequency of metastasis and recurrence. We present a case of a 30-year-old female who presented with an ulcerated left breast lesion which on further workup revealed to be a primary angiosarcoma of breast with metastasis to right breast

Early-life short-term environmental enrichment counteracts the effects of stress on anxiety-like behavior, brain-derived neurotrophic factor and nuclear translocation of glucocorticoid receptors in the basolateral amygdala

Early life is a decisive stage for the development of physiological and psychological characteristics of an individual. Any stress or disruption of healthy development at this stage has serious long-lasting consequences for the remaining life. Unfortunately, early life stress is a common occurrence in humans and other animals. In this context, we investigated if the provision of environmental enrichment during the pre-weaning phase of rat pups and dams could alter the consequences of early-life maternal-separation stress. Pre-weaning enrichment rescued the effects of maternal separation on the excess secretion of adrenal stress hormones and anxiety-like behavior during adulthood. Enrichment also reduced the effect of stress on the spine density of basolateral amygdala neurons, a brain region critical for stress-induced facilitation of emotional behaviors. Pre-weaning enrichment, provided during early-life, blunted the effects of maternal separation stress on decreased intra-nuclear translocation of glucocorticoid receptors within the amygdala neurons when tested later in adulthood. Early-life, pre-weaning environmental enrichment also increased the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor within adult basolateral amygdala. Our observations showed that environmental manipulation during early formative years could be utilized to build lifelong resilience to stress. Complex naturalistic housing and sensory enrichment is, thus, an useful buffer against an impoverished and stressful childhood.Ministry of Education (MOE)Published versionThis work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore (RG 144/17) to R.M. We thank Ajai Vyas for editing the manuscript