Line drawings for face portraits from photos using global and local structure based GANs

Despite significant effort and notable success of neural style transfer, it remains challenging for highly abstract styles, in particular line drawings. In this paper, we propose APDrawingGAN++, a generative adversarial network (GAN) for transforming face photos to artistic portrait drawings (APDrawings), which addresses substantial challenges including highly abstract style, different drawing techniques for different facial features, and high perceptual sensitivity to artifacts. To address these, we propose a composite GAN architecture that consists of local networks (to learn effective representations for specific facial features) and a global network (to capture the overall content). We provide a theoretical explanation for the necessity of this composite GAN structure by proving that any GAN with a single generator cannot generate artistic styles like APDrawings. We further introduce a classification-and-synthesis approach for lips and hair where different drawing styles are used by artists, which applies suitable styles for a given input. To capture the highly abstract art form inherent in APDrawings, we address two challenging operations — (1) coping with lines with small misalignments while penalizing large discrepancy and (2) generating more continuous lines — by introducing two novel loss terms: one is a novel distance transform loss with nonlinear mapping and the other is a novel line continuity loss, both of which improve the line quality. We also develop dedicated data augmentation and pre-training to further improve results. Extensive experiments, including a user study, show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods, both qualitatively and quantitatively

Diploid mycelia of Ustilago esculenta fails to maintain sustainable proliferation in host plant

Smut fungi display a uniform life cycle including two phases: a saprophytic phase in vitro and a parasitic phase in host plants. Several apathogenic smut fungi are found, lacking suitable hosts in their habitat. Interestingly, MT-type Ustilago esculenta was found to maintain a parasitic life, lacking the saprophytic phase. Its long period of asexual proliferation in plant tissue results in severe defects in certain functions. In this study, the growth dynamics of U. esculenta in plant tissues were carefully observed. The mycelia of T- and MT-type U. esculenta exhibit rapid growth after karyogamy and aggregate between cells. While T-type U. esculenta successfully forms teliospores after aggregation, the aggregated mycelia of MT-type U. esculenta gradually disappeared after a short period of massive proliferation. It may be resulted by the lack of nutrition such as glucose and sucrose. After overwintering, infected Zizania latifolia plants no longer contained diploid mycelia resulting from karyogamy. This indicated that diploid mycelia failed to survive in plant tissues. It seems that diploid mycelium only serves to generate teliospores. Notably, MT-type U. esculenta keeps the normal function of karyogamy, though it is not necessary for its asexual life in plant tissue. Further investigations are required to uncover the underlying mechanism, which would improve our understanding of the life cycle of smut fungi and help the breeding of Z. latifolia

GAN-based multi-style photo cartoonization

Cartoon is a common form of art in our daily life and automatic generation of cartoon images from photos is highly desirable. However, state-of-the-art single-style methods can only generate one style of cartoon images from photos and existing multi-style image style transfer methods still struggle to produce high-quality cartoon images due to their highly simplified and abstract nature. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-style generative adversarial network (GAN) architecture, called MS-CartoonGAN, which can transform photos into multiple cartoon styles. We develop a multi-domain architecture, where the generator consists of a shared encoder and multiple decoders for different cartoon styles, along with multiple discriminators for individual styles. By observing that cartoon images drawn by different artists have their unique styles while sharing some common characteristics, our shared network architecture exploits the common characteristics of cartoon styles, achieving better cartoonization and being more efficient than single-style cartoonization. We show that our multi-domain architecture can theoretically guarantee to output desired multiple cartoon styles. Through extensive experiments including a user study, we demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method, outperforming state-of-the-art single-style and multi-style image style transfer methods

Long-term effects of biochar application on the growth and physiological characteristics of maize

Biochar, as a soil conditioner, has been widely used to promote the growth of maize, but most of the current research is short-term experiments, which limits the research on the long-term effects of biochar, especially the physiological mechanism of biochar on maize growth in aeolian sandy soil is still unclear. Here, we set up two groups of pot experiments, respectively after the new biochar application and one-time biochar application seven years ago (CK: 0 t ha-1, C1: 15.75 t ha-1, C2: 31.50 t ha-1, C3: 63.00 t ha-1, C4: 126.00 t ha-1), and planted with maize. Subsequently, samples were collected at different periods to explore the effect of biochar on maize growth physiology and its after-effect. Results showed that the plant height, biomass, and yield of maize showed the highest rates of increase at the application rate of 31.50 t ha-1 biochar, with 22.22% increase in biomass and 8.46% increase in yield compared with control under the new application treatment. Meanwhile, the plant height and biomass of maize increased gradually with the increase of biochar application under the one-time biochar application seven years ago treatment (increased by 4.13%-14.91% and 13.83%-58.39% compared with control). Interestingly, the changes in SPAD value (leaf greenness), soluble sugar and soluble protein contents in maize leaves corresponded with the trend of maize growth. Conversely, the changes of malondialdehyde (MDA), proline (PRO), catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POD) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) manifested an opposite trend to the growth of maize. In conclusion, 31.50 t ha-1 biochar application can promote the growth of maize by inducing changes in its physiological and biochemical characteristics, but excessive biochar application rates ranging from 63.00-126.00 t ha-1 inhibited the growth of maize. After seven years of field aging, the inhibitory effect of 63.00-126.00 t ha-1 biochar amount on maize growth disappeared and changed to promoting effect

Cell memory in tissue defect repair and regeneration

Aim or Purpose: To prove that cells have the ability to learn and memory, thus, “super-cells” can be fabricated for tissue engineering meeting different demands. Materials and Methods: The c2c12 myoblasts are trained by a combination of electrical and thermal stimulation by several cycles. For the experimental group, electrical stimulation is followed by thermal stimulation, while the opposite is true for the control group. After the training, electrical stimulation served as a reminder in later cell cultures. The ability of cells to memory is shown by differences in the nuclear localization of heat shock protein 70(hsp70). The myogenic and neural differentiation markers are detected. Then, the trained cells are made into cell sheets for directional culture, and the composite of multilayer cell sheets is prepared using GelMA hydrogel to repair tissue defects. Tissue regeneration was characterized by HE stains, Masson stains, immunofluorescence and functional detection. All data are presented as the mean ± standard deviation (SD). Significant differences between the groups were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Student's t test. Results: The cells in the experimental group have higher nuclear localization of hsp70, better myogenic differentiation, and achieve neurotization muscle repair in tissue regeneration. Conclusions: The c2c12 myoblasts have the ability to learn and memory, and the combination of thermal stimulation and electrical stimulation can realize the electrical stimulation to better promote the repair and regeneration of muscle defects

3D-CariGAN: An End-to-End Solution to 3D Caricature Generation from Face Photos

Caricature is a type of artistic style of human faces that attracts considerable attention in the entertainment industry. So far a few 3D caricature generation methods exist and all of them require some caricature information (e.g., a caricature sketch or 2D caricature) as input. This kind of input, however, is difficult to provide by non-professional users. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end deep neural network model that generates high-quality 3D caricatures directly from a normal 2D face photo. The most challenging issue for our system is that the source domain of face photos (characterized by normal 2D faces) is significantly different from the target domain of 3D caricatures (characterized by 3D exaggerated face shapes and textures). To address this challenge, we: (1) build a large dataset of 5,343 3D caricature meshes and use it to establish a PCA model in the 3D caricature shape space; (2) reconstruct a normal full 3D head from the input face photo and use its PCA representation in the 3D caricature shape space to establish correspondences between the input photo and 3D caricature shape; and (3) propose a novel character loss and a novel caricature loss based on previous psychological studies on caricatures. Experiments including a novel two-level user study show that our system can generate high-quality 3D caricatures directly from normal face photos.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphic

Emerg Infect Dis

We analyzed prospective data on 17,228 European patients who sought treatment at GeoSentinel sites from 1997 to 2007. Gastrointestinal illness (particularly in tourists), fever (those visiting friends and relatives [VFRs]), and skin disorders (in tourists) were the most common reasons for seeking medical care. Diagnoses varied by country of origin, region visited, or categories of travelers. VFRs who returned from sub-Saharan Africa and Indian Ocean islands were more likely to experience falciparum malaria than any other group. Multiple correspondence analysis identified Italian, French, and Swiss VFRs and expatriate travelers to sub-Saharan Africa and Indian Ocean Islands as most likely to exhibit febrile illnesses. German tourists to Southeast and south-central Asia were most likely to seek treatment for acute diarrhea. Non-European travelers (12,663 patients from other industrialized countries) were less likely to acquire certain travel-associated infectious diseases. These results should be considered in the practice of travel medicine and development of health recommendations for European travelers.2009U50 CI000359/CI/NCPDCID CDC HHS/United States677

An MBSE Tool to Support Architecture Design for Spacecraft Electrical Power System

Since difficulty and complexity of spaceflight missions are increasing, current electric systems in the spacecraft become increasingly complicated challenging the spacecraft electrical power system (EPS) development. By using a traditional approach, architectures of EPS are managed by document collections including various reports, documents and data chats. Due to lack of unified visualization of system architectures in such document collections, consistency and traceability among documents, data and related system developers are difficult to be managed, particular in supporting verification of system architectures. This paper presents a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) solution emphasis on domain-specific modeling (DSM), architecture visualization, model transformation and Modelica. The aim of this MBSE tool is to support management of specifications and architecture models, realize architecture-driven system verification &amp; validation of EPS by using Modelica language and visualization of architectural hierarchy inspired by related techniques of Google Earth. Finally, through a case study of EPS, we evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of our solutions.QC 20180416</p

Substrate Effect on Band Bending of MoSe2 Monolayer Near Mirror‐Twin Domain Boundaries

Abstract Band bending near mirror twin domain boundaries (MTBs) in a MoSe2 monolayer grown on different substrates, i.e., highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG), graphene‐on‐SiC, and crystalline Au(110), is investigated by low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. Upshift bending of the valence band edge near MTB is observed on both graphene and HOPG substrates, whereas a downshift bending is found on Au(110). For the former, the magnitudes of bending are different. This is explained based on the static charge model, where an accumulative charge exists at MTBs due to both the electrical dipole discontinuity across the MTB as well as charge transfer between the substrate and MoSe2 epilayer. The relevance of the static electric model is further affirmed by noting a geometric effect on the band bending, where it is asymmetric across the vertex of an MTB loop