AgingMapGAN (AMGAN): High-Resolution Controllable Face Aging with Spatially-Aware Conditional GANs

Existing approaches and datasets for face aging produce results skewed towards the mean, with individual variations and expression wrinkles often invisible or overlooked in favor of global patterns such as the fattening of the face. Moreover, they offer little to no control over the way the faces are aged and can difficultly be scaled to large images, thus preventing their usage in many real-world applications. To address these limitations, we present an approach to change the appearance of a high-resolution image using ethnicity-specific aging information and weak spatial supervision to guide the aging process. We demonstrate the advantage of our proposed method in terms of quality, control, and how it can be used on high-definition images while limiting the computational overhead.Comment: Project page: https://despoisj.github.io/AgingMapGAN

Reflectance confocal microscopy and optical coherence tomography for the diagnosis of bullous pemphigoid and pemphigus

Introduction & Objectives: Bullous pemphigoid (BP) and pemphigus (P) are autoimmune diseases characterized by the presence of blisters on the skin and/or the mucous membranes. The diagnosis of these bullous diseases is based on a combination of criteria encompassing clinical features, histology, immunofluorescence and laboratory data. The aim of this study was to evaluate features of BP and P at reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) in order to provide a rapid non-invasive bed-side diagnosis. Secondary objective was to evaluate the detectability of clinically non-visible lesions. Material & Methods: This was an observational, retrospective, multicentre study (University of Modena, Italy and University of Saint-Etienne, France) in which patients with suspicious lesions for BP or P underwent clinical assessment, RCM, OCT, blood tests and skin biopsy for histological and direct immunofluorescence examinations. A total of 72 lesions in 24 patients (16 with PB and 8 with P) were evaluated. Apparently unaffected skin was examined in order to test sub-clinical lesion detectability in all patients. Data analysis was performed from January 2014 to December 2015. Results: RCM was able to detect sub-epidermal and intra-epidermal blisters respectively in 75% and 50% of the patients affected by BP and P. At OCT the exact blister level was identified in all BP and P cases’. Acantholytic cells were observed only at RCM in P (62.5%). Fibrin deposition inside the blisters was only found in PB, evidenced both at RCM and OCT. Subclinical bullae were revealed on clinically healthy skin at OCT in some cases of BP and P. Conclusions: RCM and/or OCT can assist the clinician in providing rapid information through a non-invasive procedure for a rapid diagnosis of BP and P. Combined use of RCM and OCT for a real-time examination of the skin lesions associates the higher resolution of RCM with the greater penetration depth in cross-sectional view of OCT, providing in vivo quasi-histologic information

Uso della microscopia laser confocale e della tomografia a coerenza ottica nella diagnosi del pemfigoide bolloso e del pemfigo

Il pemfigoide bolloso (PB) ed il pemfigo (P) sono malattie autoimmuni caratterizzate dalla formazione di bolle sulla pelle e/o sulle mucose. La diagnosi di queste patologie viene posta sulla base della valutazione clinica, dei dati di laboratorio, dell\u2019istologia, dell\u2019immunofluorescenza diretta ed indiretta. Nel nostro studio osservazionale multicentrico sono stati valutati con la microscopia laser confocale (RCM) e con la tomografia a coerenza ottica (OCT) di 16 pazienti con PB e di 8 con P sia la cute apparentemente sana che tre lesioni bollose. L\u2019OCT \ue8 risultato essere pi\uf9 preciso del RCM nella definizione della localizzazione delle bolle e nell\u2019identificazione delle lesioni subcliniche. Grazie al potere risolutivo maggiore, l\u2019RCM \ue8 in grado di visualizzare strutture a risoluzione quasi istologica e pertanto \ue8 risultato essere capace di valutare pi\uf9 parametri rispetto all\u2019OCT, dimostrando di essere un ottimo strumento nella diagnosi differenziale con altre patologie bollose come ad esempio quelle di natura virale

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Real-time Monitoring for the Next Core-Collapse Supernova in JUNO

Core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is one of the most energetic astrophysical events in the Universe. The early and prompt detection of neutrinos before (pre-SN) and during the SN burst is a unique opportunity to realize the multi-messenger observation of the CCSN events. In this work, we describe the monitoring concept and present the sensitivity of the system to the pre-SN and SN neutrinos at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), which is a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector under construction in South China. The real-time monitoring system is designed with both the prompt monitors on the electronic board and online monitors at the data acquisition stage, in order to ensure both the alert speed and alert coverage of progenitor stars. By assuming a false alert rate of 1 per year, this monitoring system can be sensitive to the pre-SN neutrinos up to the distance of about 1.6 (0.9) kpc and SN neutrinos up to about 370 (360) kpc for a progenitor mass of 30$M_{\odot}$ for the case of normal (inverted) mass ordering. The pointing ability of the CCSN is evaluated by using the accumulated event anisotropy of the inverse beta decay interactions from pre-SN or SN neutrinos, which, along with the early alert, can play important roles for the followup multi-messenger observations of the next Galactic or nearby extragalactic CCSN.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Applications of the low-background gamma spectroscopy to the geographical origin of salts and prunes

International audienc

Ge measurements for SuperNEMO

Etat des lieux des mesures germanium pour SuperNEMO (verre des PM, sources double beta)