Facial reshaping operator for controllable face beautification

Posting attractive facial photos is part of everyday life in the social media era. Motivated by the demand, we propose a lightweight method to automatically and efficiently beautify the shapes of both portrait and non-portrait faces in photos, while allowing users to customize the beautification of individual facial features. Previous methods focus on the beautification of mostly frontal and neutral faces, without incorporating user controllability in the beautification process. To address these restrictions, we propose the Facial Reshaping Operator representation, which is affine-invariant, captures the pairwise geometric configuration of facial landmarks, and allows for efficient face beautification with the user-specified weights of individual facial parts. We also propose an unsupervised beautification method in the operator space of faces, where an input face is iteratively pulled towards a local nearby density mode with improved attractiveness. Our method distinguishes itself from the commercial beautification tools in that it mildly enhances facial shapes without altering makeups or complexions, which complements these tools that lack fine-grained control on the attractiveness of facial shapes for users. The experimental results show that our method improves facial shape attractiveness for a large range of poses and expressions, demonstrating the potential of applicability to photos seen on the social media such as Facebook and Instagram everyday

Coupled Effects of Strain Rate and Temperature on Deformation Twinning in Cu-Zn Alloy

Cu-Zn alloy is an advanced material, but its deformation twinning mechanism still keeps unknown so far, especially the couple effects of temperature and strain rate. In this paper, a theoretical model of Cu-Zn alloy is proposed by considering the coupled effects of strain rate and temperature. The model can predict the experimentally observed tendency of the spacing evolution of twin boundary (TB) accurately, and it is known that low temperature and high strain rate will promote deformation twinning. Moreover, deformation twining is more susceptible to low temperature than to high strain rate, and TB spacing and twin layer thickness will decrease with high strain rate and low temperature

Gamma rays from dark matter annihilation in the Draco and observability at ARGO

The CACTUS experiment recently observed a gamma ray excess above 50 GeV from the direction of the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Considering that Draco is dark matter dominated the gamma rays may be generated through dark matter annihilation in the Draco halo. In the framework of the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model we explore the parameter space to account for the gamma ray signals at CACTUS. We find that the neutralino mass is constrained to be approximately in the range between 100 GeV ~ 400 GeV and a sharp central cuspy of the dark halo profile in Draco is necessary to explain the CACTUS results. We then discuss further constraints on the supersymmetric parameter space by observations at the ground based ARGO detector. It is found that the parameter space can be strongly constrained by ARGO if no excess from Draco is observed above 100 GeV.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

Ionic liquid extraction unveils previously occluded humic-bound iron in peat soil pore water

Globally, peatland ecosystems store tremendous amounts of C relative to their extent on the landscape, largely owing to saturated soils which limit decomposition. While there is still considerable uncertainty regarding CO2 production potential below the water table in peatland ecosystems, extracellular Fe reduction has been suggested as a dominant pathway for anaerobic metabolism. However, colorimetric methods commonly used to quantitate Fe and partition between redox species are known to be unreliable in the presence of complex humic substances, which are common in peatland pore water. We evaluated both the standard o-phenanthroline (o-P) Method and an ionic liquid extraction (ILE) Method followed by quantitation with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP–OES) to compare total Fe recovery and Fe2+/Fe3+ ratios in four distinct peatland ecosystems, ranging from rich fen to bog. While total Fe concentrations measured with ILE and o-P were correlated, the ILE method proved to be superior in both total Fe quantitation and in separately quantifying ferric (Fe3+) and ferrous (Fe2+) iron. In peat pore water, the o-P Method underestimated Fe3+ by as much as 100%. A multivariate approach utilizing fluorescence- and ultraviolet (UV)–visable (Vis) spectroscopy identified indices of dissolved organic matter (DOM) humification and redox status that correlated with poor performance of the o-P Method in peat pore water. Where these interferences are present, we suggest that site-specific empirical correction factors for quantitation of total Fe by o-P can be created from ILE of Fe, but recommend ILE for accurate appraisals of iron speciation and redox processes

Simulating (electro)hydrodynamic effects in colloidal dispersions: smoothed profile method

Previously, we have proposed a direct simulation scheme for colloidal dispersions in a Newtonian solvent [Phys.Rev.E 71,036707 (2005)]. An improved formulation called the ``Smoothed Profile (SP) method'' is presented here in which simultaneous time-marching is used for the host fluid and colloids. The SP method is a direct numerical simulation of particulate flows and provides a coupling scheme between the continuum fluid dynamics and rigid-body dynamics through utilization of a smoothed profile for the colloidal particles. Moreover, the improved formulation includes an extension to incorporate multi-component fluids, allowing systems such as charged colloids in electrolyte solutions to be studied. The dynamics of the colloidal dispersions are solved with the same computational cost as required for solving non-particulate flows. Numerical results which assess the hydrodynamic interactions of colloidal dispersions are presented to validate the SP method. The SP method is not restricted to particular constitutive models of the host fluids and can hence be applied to colloidal dispersions in complex fluids

Radiating black hole solutions in arbitrary dimensions

We prove a theorem that characterizes a large family of non-static solutions to Einstein equations in $N$-dimensional space-time, representing, in general, spherically symmetric Type II fluid. It is shown that the best known Vaidya-based (radiating) black hole solutions to Einstein equations, in both four dimensions (4D) and higher dimensions (HD), are particular cases from this family. The spherically symmetric static black hole solutions for Type I fluid can also be retrieved. A brief discussion on the energy conditions, singularities and horizons is provided.Comment: RevTeX 9 pages, no figure

The role of proteomics in defining the human embryonic secretome

Non-invasive gamete and embryo assessment is considered an important focus in assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Currently, the selection of embryos for transfer is based on morphological indices. Though successful, the field of ART would benefit from a non-invasive quantitative method of viability determination. Omics technologies, including transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, have already begun providing evidence that viable gametes and embryos possess unique molecular profiles with potential biomarkers that can be utilized for developmental and/or viability selection. Unlike the human genome that is relatively fixed and steady throughout the human body, the human proteome, estimated at over a million proteins, is more complex, diverse and dynamic. It is the proteins themselves that contribute to the physiological homeostasis in any cell or tissue. Of particular interest in ART is the secretome, those proteins that are produced within the embryo and secreted into the surrounding environment. Defining the human embryonic secretome has the potential to expand our knowledge of embryonic cellular processes, including the complex dialogue between the developing embryo and its maternal environment, and may also assist in identifying those embryos with the highest implantation potential. Advances in proteomic technologies have allowed the non-invasive profiling of the human embryonic secretome with ongoing research focused on correlation with outcome. From a clinical perspective, embryo selection based on morphological assessment and non-invasive analysis of the human embryonic secretome may improve IVF success and lead to routine single embryo transfers

Electron spin as a spectrometer of nuclear spin noise and other fluctuations

This chapter describes the relationship between low frequency noise and coherence decay of localized spins in semiconductors. Section 2 establishes a direct relationship between an arbitrary noise spectral function and spin coherence as measured by a number of pulse spin resonance sequences. Section 3 describes the electron-nuclear spin Hamiltonian, including isotropic and anisotropic hyperfine interactions, inter-nuclear dipolar interactions, and the effective Hamiltonian for nuclear-nuclear coupling mediated by the electron spin hyperfine interaction. Section 4 describes a microscopic calculation of the nuclear spin noise spectrum arising due to nuclear spin dipolar flip-flops with quasiparticle broadening included. Section 5 compares our explicit numerical results to electron spin echo decay experiments for phosphorus doped silicon in natural and nuclear spin enriched samples.Comment: Book chapter in "Electron spin resonance and related phenomena in low dimensional structures", edited by Marco Fanciulli. To be published by Springer-Verlag in the TAP series. 35 pages, 9 figure