A Theoretically Guaranteed Quaternion Weighted Schatten p-norm Minimization Method for Color Image Restoration

Inspired by the fact that the matrix formulated by nonlocal similar patches in a natural image is of low rank, the rank approximation issue have been extensively investigated over the past decades, among which weighted nuclear norm minimization (WNNM) and weighted Schatten $p$-norm minimization (WSNM) are two prevailing methods have shown great superiority in various image restoration (IR) problems. Due to the physical characteristic of color images, color image restoration (CIR) is often a much more difficult task than its grayscale image counterpart. However, when applied to CIR, the traditional WNNM/WSNM method only processes three color channels individually and fails to consider their cross-channel correlations. Very recently, a quaternion-based WNNM approach (QWNNM) has been developed to mitigate this issue, which is capable of representing the color image as a whole in the quaternion domain and preserving the inherent correlation among the three color channels. Despite its empirical success, unfortunately, the convergence behavior of QWNNM has not been strictly studied yet. In this paper, on the one side, we extend the WSNM into quaternion domain and correspondingly propose a novel quaternion-based WSNM model (QWSNM) for tackling the CIR problems. Extensive experiments on two representative CIR tasks, including color image denoising and deblurring, demonstrate that the proposed QWSNM method performs favorably against many state-of-the-art alternatives, in both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. On the other side, more importantly, we preliminarily provide a theoretical convergence analysis, that is, by modifying the quaternion alternating direction method of multipliers (QADMM) through a simple continuation strategy, we theoretically prove that both the solution sequences generated by the QWNNM and QWSNM have fixed-point convergence guarantees.Comment: 46 pages, 10 figures; references adde

Direct fiber vector eigenmode multiplexing transmission seeded by integrated optical vortex emitters

Spatial modes have received substantial attention over the last decades and are used in optical communication applications. In fiber-optic communications, the employed linearly polarized modes and phase vortex modes carrying orbital angular momentum can be synthesized by fiber vector eigenmodes. To improve the transmission capacity and miniaturize the communication system, straightforward fiber vector eigenmode multiplexing and generation of fiber-eigenmode-like polarization vortices (vector vortex modes) using photonic integrated devices are of substantial interest. Here, we propose and demonstrate direct fiber vector eigenmode multiplexing transmission seeded by integrated optical vortex emitters. By exploiting vector vortex modes (radially and azimuthally polarized beams) generated from silicon microring resonators etched with angular gratings, we report data-carrying fiber vector eigenmode multiplexing transmission through a 2-km large-core fiber, showing low-level mode crosstalk and favorable link performance. These demonstrations may open up added capacity scaling opportunities by directly accessing multiple vector eigenmodes in the fiber and provide compact solutions to replace bulky diffractive optical elements for generating various optical vector beams

DisCO: Portrait Distortion Correction with Perspective-Aware 3D GANs

Close-up facial images captured at short distances often suffer from perspective distortion, resulting in exaggerated facial features and unnatural/unattractive appearances. We propose a simple yet effective method for correcting perspective distortions in a single close-up face. We first perform GAN inversion using a perspective-distorted input facial image by jointly optimizing the camera intrinsic/extrinsic parameters and face latent code. To address the ambiguity of joint optimization, we develop optimization scheduling, focal length reparametrization, starting from a short distance, and geometric regularization. Re-rendering the portrait at a proper focal length and camera distance effectively corrects perspective distortions and produces more natural-looking results. Our experiments show that our method compares favorably against previous approaches qualitatively and quantitatively. We showcase numerous examples validating the applicability of our method on portrait photos in the wild. We will release our system and the evaluation protocol to facilitate future work.Comment: Project website: https://portrait-disco.github.io

Impact of endoscopic thoracic R4 sympathicotomy combined with R3 ramicotomy for primary palmar hyperhidrosis

BackgroundEndoscopic thoracoscopic sympathectomy (ETS) is the preferred method for treating primary palmar hyperhidrosis (PPH) that bears the risk of compensatory hyperhidrosis (CH) following surgery. The current study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of an innovative surgical procedure of ETS.MethodsA survey of the clinical data of 109 patients with PPH who underwent ETS in our department from May 2018 to August 2021 was retrospectively conducted. The patients were organized into two groups. Group A underwent R4 sympathicotomy combined with R3 ramicotomy. Group B underwent R3 sympathicotomy. Patients were followed up to evaluate the safety, effectiveness and the incidence of postoperative CH of the modified surgical approach.ResultsA total of 102 patients completed follow-up, and seven of the total enrolled patients were lost to follow-up, with a loss rate of 6% (7/109). Among these, Group A constitutes 54 cases, group B constitutes 48 cases, and the mean follow-up was 14 months (interquartile range 12–23 months). There was no statistically difference in surgical safety, postoperative efficacy, and postoperative quality of life (QoL) score between group A and group B (p > 0.05). The score of the psychological assessment was higher (p = 0.004) in group A (14.15 ± 2.06) compared to group B (13.30 ± 1.86). The incidence of CH in group A was lower than in group B (p = 0.019).ConclusionR4 sympathicotomy combined with R3 ramicotomy is safe and effective for PPH treatment, along with a reduced incidence of postoperative CH rate and improved postoperative psychological satisfaction

Aerosols in the E3SM Version 1: New Developments and Their Impacts on Radiative Forcing

The new Energy Exascale Earth System Model Version 1 (E3SMv1) developed for the U.S. Department of Energy has significant new treatments of aerosols and lightâ absorbing snow impurities as well as their interactions with clouds and radiation. This study describes seven sets of new aerosolâ related treatments (involving emissions, new particle formation, aerosol transport, wet scavenging and resuspension, and snow radiative transfer) and examines how they affect global aerosols and radiative forcing in E3SMv1. Altogether, they give a reduced total aerosol radiative forcing (â 1.6 W/m2) and sensitivity in cloud liquid water to aerosols, but an increased sensitivity in cloud droplet size to aerosols. A new approach for H2SO4 production and loss largely reduces a low bias in small particles concentrations and leads to substantial increases in cloud condensation nuclei concentrations and cloud radiative cooling. Emitting secondary organic aerosol precursor gases from elevated sources increases the column burden of secondary organic aerosol, contributing substantially to global clearâ sky aerosol radiative cooling (â 0.15 out of â 0.5 W/m2). A new treatment of aerosol resuspension from evaporating precipitation, developed to remedy two shortcomings of the original treatment, produces a modest reduction in aerosols and cloud droplets; its impact depends strongly on the model physics and is much stronger in E3SM Version 0. New treatments of the mixing state and optical properties of snow impurities and snow grains introduce a positive presentâ day shortwave radiative forcing (0.26 W/m2), but changes in aerosol transport and wet removal processes also affect the concentration and radiative forcing of lightâ absorbing impurities in snow/ice.Plain Language SummaryAerosol and aerosolâ cloud interactions continue to be a major uncertainty in Earth system models, impeding their ability to reproduce the observed historical warming and to project changes in global climate and water cycle. The U.S. DOE Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 1 (E3SMv1), a stateâ ofâ theâ science Earth system model, was developed to use exascale computing to address the grand challenge of actionable predictions of variability and change in the Earth system critical to the energy sector. It has been publicly released with new treatments in many aspects, including substantial modifications to the physical treatments of aerosols in the atmosphere and lightâ absorbing impurities in snow/ice, aimed at reducing some known biases or correcting model deficiencies in representing aerosols, their life cycle, and their impacts in various components of the Earth system. Compared to its predecessors (without the new treatments) and observations, E3SMv1 shows improvements in characterizing global distributions of aerosols and their radiative effects. We conduct sensitivity experiments to understand the impact of individual changes and provide guidance for future development of E3SM and other Earth system models.Key PointsA description and assessment of new aerosol treatments in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model Version 1 (E3SMv1) is providedContributions to the total aerosolâ related radiative forcing by individual new treatments and different processes are quantifiedSome of the new treatments are found to depend on model physics and require further improvement for E3SM or other Earth system modelsPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153241/1/jame21034-sup-0001-Figure_SI-S01.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153241/2/jame21034.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153241/3/jame21034_am.pd