Toward Fine-grained Facial Expression Manipulation

Facial expression manipulation aims at editing facial expression with a given condition. Previous methods edit an input image under the guidance of a discrete emotion label or absolute condition (e.g., facial action units) to possess the desired expression. However, these methods either suffer from changing condition-irrelevant regions or are inefficient for fine-grained editing. In this study, we take these two objectives into consideration and propose a novel method. First, we replace continuous absolute condition with relative condition, specifically, relative action units. With relative action units, the generator learns to only transform regions of interest which are specified by non-zero-valued relative AUs. Second, our generator is built on U-Net but strengthened by Multi-Scale Feature Fusion (MSF) mechanism for high-quality expression editing purposes. Extensive experiments on both quantitative and qualitative evaluation demonstrate the improvements of our proposed approach compared to the state-of-the-art expression editing methods. Code is available at \url{https://github.com/junleen/Expression-manipulator}

LEED: Label-Free Expression Editing via Disentanglement

Recent studies on facial expression editing have obtained very promising progress. On the other hand, existing methods face the constraint of requiring a large amount of expression labels which are often expensive and time-consuming to collect. This paper presents an innovative label-free expression editing via disentanglement (LEED) framework that is capable of editing the expression of both frontal and profile facial images without requiring any expression label. The idea is to disentangle the identity and expression of a facial image in the expression manifold, where the neutral face captures the identity attribute and the displacement between the neutral image and the expressive image captures the expression attribute. Two novel losses are designed for optimal expression disentanglement and consistent synthesis, including a mutual expression information loss that aims to extract pure expression-related features and a siamese loss that aims to enhance the expression similarity between the synthesized image and the reference image. Extensive experiments over two public facial expression datasets show that LEED achieves superior facial expression editing qualitatively and quantitatively.Comment: Accepted to ECCV 202

Human Centric Facial Expression Recognition

Facial expression recognition (FER) is an area of active research, both in computer science and in behavioural science. Across these domains there is evidence to suggest that humans and machines find it easier to recognise certain emotions, for example happiness, in comparison to others. Recent behavioural studies have explored human perceptions of emotion further, by evaluating the relative contribution of features in the face when evaluating human sensitivity to emotion. It has been identified that certain facial regions have more salient features for certain expressions of emotion, especially when emotions are subtle in nature. For example, it is easier to detect fearful expressions when the eyes are expressive. Using this observation as a starting point for analysis, we similarly examine the effectiveness with which knowledge of facial feature saliency may be integrated into current approaches to automated FER. Specifically, we compare and evaluate the accuracy of ‘full-face’ versus upper and lower facial area convolutional neural network (CNN) modelling for emotion recognition in static images, and propose a human centric CNN hierarchy which uses regional image inputs to leverage current understanding of how humans recognise emotions across the face. Evaluations using the CK+ dataset demonstrate that our hierarchy can enhance classification accuracy in comparison to individual CNN architectures, achieving overall true positive classification in 93.3% of cases

Investigating the Relationship Between Managers Capabilities and Performance of Consumer Cooperatives in Kerman City

The objective of the current article is to identify the relation between managers' capabilities and performance of consumer cooperative in Kerman city. This study was carried out in correlating method and research method was library study and reviewing annual performance and document reports. Statistical population of this study consisted of 21 managers of consumer cooperative in Kerman in 2010. Statistical analysis was conducted using SPSS 16 to calculate descriptive statistics, correlation and regression. Based on literature, for performance evaluation, the paper used financial indicators such as ROA, ROE and profit margin. Also managers' capabilities were examined by three variables: education, working experience and education disciplines related to cooperative activity. According to correlation analysis, working experience and education disciplines related to cooperative activity have significant positive relationship with cooperative performance but there is no significant relationship between education and cooperative performance. The result of multiple regression analysis indicated that work experience is the most effective variable on cooperative performance. 35.2% of the changes in performance is caused by work experience and education disciplines related to cooperative activity

Novel functionalized carbon nanotubes for improving the surface properties and performance of polyethersulfone (PES) membrane

Amine functionalized Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (F-MWCNTs)/polyethersulfone (PES) membranes were prepared using phase inversion induced by immersion precipitation. Crude MWCNTs were chemically treated using strong acids (H2SO4/HNO3) and 1,3-phenylenediamine (mPDA) to produce the functional amine groups (single bondNH2) on their surfaces. F-MWCNTs with different concentration were blended in the casting solution containing PES, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and dimethylacetamide (DMAC). Pure water was used as non-solvent. The FTIR spectra indicated that the amine functional groups were produced on the surface of MWCNTs. The membranes prepared with different concentrations of F-MWCNTs were characterized using contact angle, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and permeation tests. The surface hydrophilicity of membranes was significantly improved by addition of F-MWCNTs in the casting solution. An increment in the porosity, pore size and surface roughness of the membranes was observed by increasing F-MWCNTs content up to 1 wt.%. Further addition of F-MWCNTs caused a reduction in porosity and roughness of formed membrane. The membranes prepared with 0.5 and 1 wt.% of F-MWCNTs showed higher performance than neat membrane. Addition of F-MWCNTs in the casting solution improved the BSA rejection and antifouling properties of PES membrane

Feasibility of membrane processes for the recovery and purification of bio-based volatile fatty acids: A comprehensive review

Volatile fatty acids (VFAs) can be produced from fermentation/anaerobic digestion of wastes and are a valuable substrate for numerous applications, such as those related to the food, tanning, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and chemicals industry. They are also inexpensive raw materials for developing alternative sources of energy. However, the separation and purification of VFAs produced from fermented wastewaters are not straightforward goals, due to the low concentration of these compounds in the fermentation broths and owing to the complexity of these mixtures. Cost-effective and sustainable technologies must be developed to recover VFAs efficiently and allow their beneficial use. In this paper, a comprehensive review of VFAs recovery/purification methods is provided, with focus on membrane-based processes. First, the VFAs production methods, application, and conventional processes (distillation, precipitation, adsorption, and extraction) for their recovery are briefly reviewed. Then, the ability of various membrane-based techniques to separate and purify VFAs are evaluated and discussed in detail. This discussion includes the processes of microfiltration/ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, forward osmosis, membrane distillation, electrodialysis, membrane contractor, and pervapo- ration. Extensive background and examples of applications are also provided to show the effectiveness of membrane processes. Finally, challenges and future research directions are highlighted

Fullerene-Assisted Photoinduced Charge Transfer of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes through a Flavin Helix

One of the greatest challenges with single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) photovoltaics and nanostructured devices is maintaining the nanotubes in their pristine state (i.e., devoid of aggregation and inhomogeneous doping) so that their unique spectroscopic and transport characteristics are preserved. To this effect, we report on the synthesis and self-assembly of a C₆₀-functionalized flavin (FC₆₀), composed of PCBM and isoalloxazine moieties attached on either ends of a linear, C-12 aliphatic spacer. Small amounts of FC₆₀ (up to 3 molar %) were shown to coassembly with an organic soluble derivative of flavin (FC12) around SWNTs and impart effective dispersion and individualization. A key annealing step was necessary to perfect the isoalloxazine helix and expel the C₆₀ moiety away from the nanotubes. Steady-state and transient absorption spectroscopy illustrate that 1% or higher incorporation of FC₆₀ allows for an effective photoinduced charge transfer quenching of the encased SWNTs through the seamless helical encase. This is enabled via the direct π–π overlap between the graphene sidewalls, isoalloxazine helix, and the C₆₀ cage that facilitates SWNT exciton dissociation and electron transfer to the PCBM moiety. Atomistic molecular simulations indicate that the stability of the complex originates from enhanced van der Waals interactions of the flexible spacer wrapped around the fullerene that brings the C₆₀ in π–π overlap with the isoalloxazine helix. The remarkable spectral purity (in terms of narrow <i>E</i>^S_<i>ii</i> line widths) for the resulting ground-state complex signals a new class of highly organized supramolecular nanotube architecture with profound importance for advanced nanostructured devices

Fullerene-Assisted Photoinduced Charge Transfer of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes through a Flavin Helix

One of the greatest challenges with single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) photovoltaics and nanostructured devices is maintaining the nanotubes in their pristine state (i.e., devoid of aggregation and inhomogeneous doping) so that their unique spectroscopic and transport characteristics are preserved. To this effect, we report on the synthesis and self-assembly of a C₆₀-functionalized flavin (FC₆₀), composed of PCBM and isoalloxazine moieties attached on either ends of a linear, C-12 aliphatic spacer. Small amounts of FC₆₀ (up to 3 molar %) were shown to coassembly with an organic soluble derivative of flavin (FC12) around SWNTs and impart effective dispersion and individualization. A key annealing step was necessary to perfect the isoalloxazine helix and expel the C₆₀ moiety away from the nanotubes. Steady-state and transient absorption spectroscopy illustrate that 1% or higher incorporation of FC₆₀ allows for an effective photoinduced charge transfer quenching of the encased SWNTs through the seamless helical encase. This is enabled via the direct π–π overlap between the graphene sidewalls, isoalloxazine helix, and the C₆₀ cage that facilitates SWNT exciton dissociation and electron transfer to the PCBM moiety. Atomistic molecular simulations indicate that the stability of the complex originates from enhanced van der Waals interactions of the flexible spacer wrapped around the fullerene that brings the C₆₀ in π–π overlap with the isoalloxazine helix. The remarkable spectral purity (in terms of narrow <i>E</i>^S_<i>ii</i> line widths) for the resulting ground-state complex signals a new class of highly organized supramolecular nanotube architecture with profound importance for advanced nanostructured devices