Superior and Pragmatic Talking Face Generation with Teacher-Student Framework

Talking face generation technology creates talking videos from arbitrary appearance and motion signal, with the "arbitrary" offering ease of use but also introducing challenges in practical applications. Existing methods work well with standard inputs but suffer serious performance degradation with intricate real-world ones. Moreover, efficiency is also an important concern in deployment. To comprehensively address these issues, we introduce SuperFace, a teacher-student framework that balances quality, robustness, cost and editability. We first propose a simple but effective teacher model capable of handling inputs of varying qualities to generate high-quality results. Building on this, we devise an efficient distillation strategy to acquire an identity-specific student model that maintains quality with significantly reduced computational load. Our experiments validate that SuperFace offers a more comprehensive solution than existing methods for the four mentioned objectives, especially in reducing FLOPs by 99\% with the student model. SuperFace can be driven by both video and audio and allows for localized facial attributes editing

Replication Inhibition of Hepatitis B Virus and Hepatitis C Virus in Co-Infected Patients in Chinese Population.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) co-infections contributes to a substantial proportion of liver disease worldwide. The aim of this study was to assess the clinical and virological features of HBV-HCV co-infection.Demographic data were collected for 3238 high-risk people from an HCV-endemic region in China. Laboratory tests included HCV antibody and HBV serological markers, liver function tests, and routine blood analysis. Anti-HCV positive samples were analyzed for HCV RNA levels and subgenotypes. HBsAg-positive samples were tested for HBV DNA.A total of 1468 patients had chronic HCV and/or HBV infections. Among them, 1200 individuals were classified as HCV mono-infected, 161 were classified as HBV mono-infected, and 107 were classified as co-infected. The HBV-HCV co-infected patients not only had a lower HBV DNA positive rate compared to HBV mono-infected patients (84.1% versus 94.4%, respectively; P < 0.001). The median HCV RNA levels in HBV-HCV co-infected patients were significantly lower than those in the HCV mono-infected patients (1.18[Interquartile range (IQR) 0-5.57] versus 5.87[IQR, 3.54-6.71] Log10 IU/mL, respectively; P < 0.001). Furthermore, co-infected patients were less likely to have detectable HCV RNA levels than HCV mono-infected patients (23.4% versus 56.5%, respectively; P < 0.001). Those HBV-HCV co-infected patients had significantly lower median HBV DNA levels than those mono-infected with HBV (1.97[IQR, 1.3-3.43] versus 3.06[IQR, 2-4.28] Log10 IU/mL, respectively; P < 0.001). The HBV-HCV co-infection group had higher ALT, AST, ALP, GGT, APRI and FIB-4 levels, but lower ALB and total platelet compared to the HBV mono-infection group, and similar to that of the HCV mono-infected group.These results suggest that co-infection with HCV and HBV inhibits the replication of both viruses. The serologic results of HBV-HCV co-infection in patients suggests more liver injury compared to HBV mono-infected patients, but is similar to HCV mono-infection

Comprehensive mapping of antigen specific T cell responses in hepatitis C virus infected patients with or without spontaneous viral clearance

<div><p>Elucidating protective immunity against HCV is important for the development of a preventative vaccine. We hypothesize that spontaneous resolution of acute HCV infection offers clue to protective immune responses, and that DAA therapy affects the quality and quantity of HCV-specific T cell responses. To test these hypotheses, we performed T cell epitope mapping in 111 HCV-infected individuals including 61 chronically HCV-1b (CHC-1b) infected, 24 chronically HCV-2a (CHC-2a) infected and 26 spontaneously recovered (SPR) patients with 376 overlapping peptides covering the entire HCV polyprotein. Selected T cell epitopes were then used to evaluate T cell responses in another 22 chronically HCV-1b infected patients on DAA therapy. Results showed that SPR had better HCV-specific T cell responses than CHC, as manifested by higher response rate, greater magnitude and broader epitope coverage. In addition, SPR recognized novel epitopes in Core, E1, E2, NS4B, NS5A regions that were not present in the CHC. Furthermore, during the first 24 weeks of DAA therapy, there was no functional immune reconstitution of HCV-specific T cells. These results indicate that T cell responses may be a correlate of protection. Therefore, effective preventative vaccines should elicit a robust T cell response. Although various DAA regimens efficiently cleared viruses from the blood of HCV-infected patients, there was no contemporaneous early T cell immune reconstitution, suggesting that early treatment is needed for preserving the functions of HCV-specific T cells.</p></div

Two complementary genes in a presence-absence variation contribute to indica-japonica reproductive isolation in rice

Abstract Understanding the evolutionary forces in speciation is a central goal in evolutionary biology. Asian cultivated rice has two subspecies, indica and japonica, but the underlying mechanism of the partial reproductive isolation between them remains obscure. Here we show a presence-absence variation (PAV) at the Se locus functions as an indica-japonica reproductive barrier by causing hybrid sterility (HS) in indica-japonica crosses. The locus comprises two adjacent genes: ORF3 encodes a sporophytic pollen killer, whereas ORF4 protects pollen in a gametophytic manner. In F1 of indica-japonica crosses, pollen with the japonica haplotype, which lacks the sequence containing the protective ORF4, is aborted due to the pollen-killing effect of ORF3 from indica. Evolutionary analysis suggests ORF3 is a gene associated with the Asian cultivated rice species complex, and the PAV has contributed to the reproductive isolation between the two subspecies of Asian cultivated rice. Our analyses provide perspectives on rice inter-subspecies post-zygotic isolation, and will promote efforts to overcome reproductive barriers in indica-japonica hybrid rice breeding

Characteristics of HCV chronic-infected patients enrolled in clinical trials.

<p>Characteristics of HCV chronic-infected patients enrolled in clinical trials.</p