Video-driven Neural Physically-based Facial Asset for Production

Production-level workflows for producing convincing 3D dynamic human faces have long relied on an assortment of labor-intensive tools for geometry and texture generation, motion capture and rigging, and expression synthesis. Recent neural approaches automate individual components but the corresponding latent representations cannot provide artists with explicit controls as in conventional tools. In this paper, we present a new learning-based, video-driven approach for generating dynamic facial geometries with high-quality physically-based assets. For data collection, we construct a hybrid multiview-photometric capture stage, coupling with ultra-fast video cameras to obtain raw 3D facial assets. We then set out to model the facial expression, geometry and physically-based textures using separate VAEs where we impose a global MLP based expression mapping across the latent spaces of respective networks, to preserve characteristics across respective attributes. We also model the delta information as wrinkle maps for the physically-based textures, achieving high-quality 4K dynamic textures. We demonstrate our approach in high-fidelity performer-specific facial capture and cross-identity facial motion retargeting. In addition, our multi-VAE-based neural asset, along with the fast adaptation schemes, can also be deployed to handle in-the-wild videos. Besides, we motivate the utility of our explicit facial disentangling strategy by providing various promising physically-based editing results with high realism. Comprehensive experiments show that our technique provides higher accuracy and visual fidelity than previous video-driven facial reconstruction and animation methods.Comment: For project page, see https://sites.google.com/view/npfa/ Notice: You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, display, perform, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any such content, nor may you distribute any part of this content over any network, including a local area network, sell or offer it for sale, or use such content to construct any kind of databas

Alzheimer’s Disease and Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Mendelian Randomization Study

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease. In recent years, multiple pathway analyses of AD genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been conducted, and provided strong support for immune pathways in AD. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease. It is reported that antirheumatic drugs had protective effect on dementia in RA patients. However, observational studies have reported a controversial inverse relationship between AD and RA. In addition, Mendelian randomization studies have also been performed to evaluate the association of RA with AD. However, these studies reported inconsistent association of RA with AD. Until now, it is still unclear that AD is a causally associated with RA. Here, we performed a Mendelian randomization study to investigate the causal association of AD with RA. We analyzed the large-scale AD GWAS dataset (74,046 individuals) and RA GWAS dataset (58,284 individuals) from the European descent. However, we did not identify any significant association of AD with RA using inverse-variance weighted meta-analysis (IVW), weighted median regression and MR-Egger regression

PHF8 and REST/NRSF co-occupy gene promoters to regulate proximal gene expression

Chromatin regulators play an important role in the development of human diseases. In this study, we focused on Plant Homeo Domain Finger protein 8 (PHF8), a chromatin regulator that has attracted special concern recently. PHF8 is a histone lysine demethylase ubiquitously expressed in nuclei. Mutations of PHF8 are associated with X-linked mental retardation. It usually functions as a transcriptional co-activator by associating with H3K4me3 and RNA polymerase II. We found that PHF8 may associate with another regulator, REST/NRSF, predominately at promoter regions via studying several published PHF8 chromatin immunoprecipitation-sequencing (ChIP-Seq) datasets. Our analysis suggested that PHF8 not only activates but may also repress gene expression

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

Dealuminated Hβ zeolite for selective conversion of fructose to furfural and formic acid

The fructose-to-furfural transformation is facing major challenges in the selectivity and high efficiency. Herein, we have developed a simple and effective approach for the selective conversion of fructose to furfural using Hβ zeolite modified by organic acids for dealuminization to regulate its textural and acidic properties. It was found that citric acid-dealuminized Hβ zeolite possessed high specific surface areas, wide channels and high Brønsted acid amount, which facilitated the selective conversion of fructose to furfural with a maximum yield of 76.2% at 433 K for 1 h in the γ-butyrolactone (GBL)-H2O system, as well as the concomitant formation of 83.0% formic acid. The 13C-isotope labelling experiments and the mechanism revealed that the selective cleavage of C1–C2 or C5–C6 bond on fructose was firstly occurred to form pentose or C5 intermediate by weak Brønsted acid, which was then dehydrated to furfural by strong Brønsted acid. Also this dealuminized Hβ catalyst showed the great recycling performance and was active for the conversion of glucose and mannose

Microwave-Assisted Oxalic Acid Pretreatment for the Enhancing of Enzyme Hydrolysis in the Production of Xylose and Arabinose from Bagasse

In this study, highly-efficient hydrolysis of bagasse into xylose and arabinose sugars (C5 sugars) was developed by microwave-assisted oxalic acid pretreatment under mild reaction conditions. The effects of acid and hydrolysis conditions on the C5 sugar yields were discussed. The results showed that oxalic acid performed better than hydrochloric acid and maleic acid, and was a promising alternative to sulfuric acid for xylose production at the same acid concentration. The maximum yields of xylose (95.7%) and arabinose (91.5%) were achieved via the microwave-assisted oxalic acid pretreatment (120 °C, 10 min, 0.4 mol/L, solid–liquid ratio of 1:50 g/mL), indicating that almost all xylan-type hemicelluloses were released from the cell wall and hydrolyzed into C5 sugars. After pretreatment, more than 90% of the cellulose in the residual bagasse was converted to glucose (92.2%) by enzymatic hydrolysis. This approach could realize the highly-efficient hydrolysis of xylan from bagasse into C5 sugars, which would enhance the enzyme hydrolysis of treated bagasse into glucose

Synthesis of an osmafuran from photochemical hydrolysis of OsCl2(CH=C(PPh3)C(O)-eta(2)-CH=CH2)(PPh3)(2)

National Science Foundation of China [20772100]; program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of China [NCET-08-0471]; Program for New Century Excellent Talents in Fujian Province University; Young Talent Project of the Department of Science anThe eta(2)-alkene coordinated alpha,beta-unsaturated ketone complex Os(CH=C(PPh3)C(O)-eta(2)-CH=CH2)Cl-2(PPh3)(2) (3) is very stable even at elevated temperature due to the strong steric hindrance effect of PPh3 ligands. However, compound 3 in a chloroform solution can be almost quantitatively converted into the corresponding osmafuran [OsCl(CO)(PPh3)(2)(CHC(PPh3)C(CH3)O)]Cl (6) via hydrolysis of the eta(2)-coordinated olefin under photochemical conditions Osmafuran 6 has been characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis, NMR spectroscopy and elemental analysis data The UV-induced reaction provides a new highly efficient method for preparation of osmafurans by hydrolysis of eta(2)-alpha,beta-unsaturated ketone complexes (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserve

Effect of Hydrogen Bond Interaction on the Decomposition Temperature, Aromaticity, and Bond Order of Nonmetallic Pentazolate Salts

Nonmetallic pentazolate (cyclo-N5–) salts are novel polynitrogen high-energy-density materials with great potential and application prospects. Hydrogen bond networks play a vital role in improving the thermal stability of these compounds. In order to further increase the decomposition temperature (Td) and attain a more thorough exploration of these compounds, we evaluated and visualized the energy of hydrogen bonds (E_HBs) and the effects of HBs on Td, aromaticity, and the Mayer bond order (MBO). The increase in the total E_HBs can increase the Td, such as with 3,6,7-triamino-7H-[1,2,4]­triazolo­[4,3-b]­[1,2,4]­triazol-2-ium and biguanidinium pentazolates. Moreover, an increase in the maximum E_HBs can reduce the aromaticity of the cyclo-N5– anion and increase the difference between the maximum and minimum MBO, like 3,9-diamino-6,7-dihydro-5H-bis­([1,2,4]­triazolo)­[4,3-e:3′,4′-g]­[1,2,4,5]­tetrazepine-2,10- diium and O-(carboxymethyl)­hydroxylammonium pentazolates. In addition, increasing the number of donors of hydrogen bonds, especially the proportion of O–H bonds, can significantly increase the Td of pentazolate salts

Corncob Biorefinery for Platform Chemicals and Lignin Coproduction: Metal Chlorides as Catalysts

A facile approach to a corncob biorefinery, focusing on both carbohydrate valorization and lignin stabilization, was proposed to coproduce platform chemicals (glucose, xylose, arabinose, and furfural) and lignin. Different metal chloride prehydrolyses of corncob in the biphasic system (2-methyltetrahydrofuran/H2O) were first carried out, followed by enzymatic hydrolysis of treated corncob. It was found that the dissolution and recovery of carbohydrate and lignin were dependent on the prehydrolysis conditions (metal chloride concentration, temperature, and time); 82.9% xylose with 56.2% arabinose was produced at 140 degrees C for 20 min using 25 mM FeCl3, and subsequently, furfural was generated in a yield of 60.0% from this hydrolysate-containing biphasic system by increasing the temperature to 180 degrees C for 120 min. The FeCl3 prehydrolysis of corncob released 99% xylan, retained 91% cellulose, and showed a significant enhancement in the cellulose enzymatic hydrolysis rate of 4.9-fold as compared to that for raw corncob. The chemical structure of the leftover lignin-linked tricin was similar to that of native lignin according to gas permeation chromatography and two-dimensional C-13-H-1 correlation heteronuclear single-quantum coherence nuclear magnetic resonance characterization, which provided a useful substrate for the production of fine and bulk chemicals