Temporal face feature progression with cycle GAN

The aging process creates significant changes in the appearances of people’s faces. When compared to other causes of variation in face imaging, aging-related variation has specific distinct properties. Facial Aging variations, for example, is unique for each person; it occurs gradually and is significantly influenced by other characteristics including health, gender, and life-style. As a result, the proposed effort will use Generative Adversarial Networks to address these critical concerns (GANs). Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN’s) is made up of a generator and a discriminator network. The generator model generates images that a discriminator model analyses to determine if they are real or fake. This paper provides a Temporal Face Feature Progressive framework with Cycle GAN, which maintains the initial appearance and identity in the elderly aspect of their facial structure. To address aging concerns, our goal is to transform an initial age category image into a targeted age with age progression. We show that our temporal face features progressive cycle GAN learns and transfers facial traits from the source group to the targeted group by training various images. The IMDB-WIKI Face dataset has been used to obtain the results for the same.

Evolution of the Video Game Market

The videogame industry had evolved since its initial appearance, and along with it, so has target market. This study attempts to analyse the trends throughout the years through observation of marketing materials such as printed and video advertisement commercials. The analysis is done by applying standard practice values employed in advertising communication on chosen samples of said commercial ads from each era of video game history.

Psychotic Features Among Patients in the Prodromal Stage of Dementia with Lewy Bodies During Longitudinal Observation

Background: Many cases of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) present with various psychotic features, including hallucinations, depression, catatonia, and delusions before the onset of cognitive impairment. However, the characteristic features of these psychotic symptoms in prodromal DLB have not been sufficiently described. Objective: To clarify and describe the psychotic features of prodromal DLB before overt cognitive impairment. Methods: The authors analyzed the characteristic psychotic features of prodromal DLB in 21 subjects who developed severe psychotic symptoms without dementia and were diagnosed as DLB after the longitudinal observation period. They were then confirmed to have DLB through indicative and supportive biomarkers of scintigraphy. Results: The psychotic features included a wide variety of symptoms, but convergent to three principal categories: catatonia, delusions-hallucinations, and depression and/or mania. Catatonia was observed in nine cases, five were delusional-hallucinatory, and seven were manic and/or depressive. Seven of the 21 cases exhibited delirium during longitudinal observation. A psychotic state repeatedly appeared without any trigger in 20 of the 21 patients. All subjects developed cognitive impairment at 9.1±4.6 (mean±SD) years after the initial appearance of psychotic symptoms, and subsequently diagnosed with DLB at 71.3±6.1 (mean±SD) years. Conclusion: Elderly patients with psychotic symptoms, such as catatonia, delusion-hallucination, manic and/or depressive features, and delirium without dementia, could indicate symptomatic psychosis or a prodromal stage of any neurocognitive disorder such as DLB. Therefore, further extensive workout (e.g., radioisotope neuroimaging) is required to avoid misdiagnosis.

Forensic science and fractal nature analysis

Forensic photography, also referred to as crime scene photography, is an activity that records the initial appearance of the crime scene and physical evidence in order to provide a permanent record for the court. Nowadays, we cannot imagine a crime scene investigation without photographic evidence. Crime or accident scene photographs can often be reanalyzed in cold cases or when the images need to be enlarged to show critical details. Fractals are rough or fragmented geometric shapes that can be subdivided into parts, each of which is a reduced copy of the whole. Fractal dimension (FD) is an important fractal geometry feature. There are many applications of fractals in various forensic fields, including image processing, image analysis, texture segmentation, shape classification, and identifying the image features such as roughness and smoothness of an image. Fractal analysis is applicable in forensic archeology and paleontology, as well. The damaged image can be reviewed, analyzed, and reconstructed by fractal nature analysis.

Natural Gums to Improve the Physicochemical Stability of Cake Creams

The physicochemical properties of pastry and confectionery products greatly influence the aesthetic design of a cake topping, since they can be susceptible to physicochemical changes in a very short time, so maintaining a good appearance and texture of the topping becomes a challenge. Generally, cake creams deteriorate over time. The evaluation of the physicochemical properties of natural gums (arabic gum, tara gum, carrageenan, and pectin) is proposed in this work as a way to improve the physicochemical stability of butter-based cake creams (coverage creams) to maintain the initial appearance of the cream and to lengthen the separation time of their phases. For this purpose, some parameters related to the physicochemical stability of the cream, such as viscosity, density, bubble size, syneresis, volume and rheological behavior were measured. The result of the ANOVA and Tukey’s tests displayed significant differences for the measured parameters, which shows that natural gums substantially improve the stability of butter cream. The best natural gum found was the tara gum (TG) which improved viscosity 5.6 times with respect to that of the cream without gums (η¯ without gums = 15.49 Pa·s, η¯ with TG = 87.09 Pa·s), while the bubble size remained small, 1.6 times smaller compared to that of the cream without gum (BS¯) without gums = 57 μm, (BS¯) with TG = 35 μm), and the volume loss decreased two times when compared to that of the cream without gums ((ΔV¯) without gums = 1.57 cm3, (ΔV¯) with TG = 0.80 cm3). The cream with TG showed better rheology compared to that of the cream without gums (the cream without gums exhibited a plastic and thixotropic behavior, with permanent elastic deformation, while cream with TG exhibited thixotropic behavior without permanent elastic deformation). Finally, it was found that the cream with TG acquired a higher thixotropic index (TI) compared to that of the cream without gums (TI max. without gums = 17.40 y 71.78 q.u., TI max. with TG = 74.67 and 1559.90 q.u., at 4 °C and 25 °C, respectively) which demonstrates the effective contribution of cream with TG in 66.67% of the measured parameters.

Evolution of human behaviour and societies

Early in their book A story of us, the evolutionary psychologists Leslie Newson and Peter Richerson remark of very early hominins that “we can't know what it is like to experience life with a brain so very different from our own” (p. 34). These words neatly encapsulate an unfortunate reality that confronts anyone who tries to understand or reconstruct the evolution of human cognition: we humans are so completely imprisoned within our own cognitive style as to be incapable of fully imagining what was going on in the minds of extinct hominins who were behaviourally highly sophisticated, but who nonetheless did not think like us—which basically includes all of them. The reason for this difficulty is that we modern Homo sapiens are entirely unique in the living world in the way in which we manipulate information about our exterior and internal worlds. We do this symbolically, which is to say that we deconstruct those worlds into vocabularies of mental symbols that we can then combine and recombine in our minds, according to rules, to make statements not only about the world as it is, but as it might be. And evidence in the archaeological record for the routinely symbolic behaviours that are our best proxies for the apprehension of the world in this fashion is at best very sparse indeed prior—and even for some time subsequent—to the initial appearance of Homo sapiens.

Degradation of insulin amyloid by antibiotic minocycline and formation of toxic intermediates

Insulin balls, localized insulin amyloids formed at subcutaneous insulin-injection sites in patients with diabetes, cause poor glycemic control owing to impairments in insulin absorption. Our previous study has shown that some insulin balls are cytotoxic, but others are not, implying amyloid polymorphism. Interestingly, the patient with toxic insulin balls had been treated with antibiotic minocycline, suggesting a possible relationship between toxicity of insulin balls and minocycline. However, the direct effect of minocycline on the structure and cytotoxicity of the insulin amyloid is still unclear. Herein, we demonstrated that that minocycline at physiological concentrations induced degradation of insulin amyloids formed from human insulin and insulin drug preparations used for diabetes patients. Interestingly, the process involved the initial appearance of the toxic species, which subsequently changed into less-toxic species. It is also shown that the structure of the toxic species was similar to that of sonicated fragments of human insulin amyloids. Our study shed new light on the clarification of the revelation of insulin balls and the development of the insulin analogs for diabetes therapy.

Adaptasi Masyarakat Terhadap COVID-19 Di Desa Genting Tanah, Kecamatan Kembang Janggut, Kalimantan Timur

The initial appearance of the Corona Virus is thought to be pneumonia, with symptoms similar to flu in general. These symptoms include coughing, fever, fatigue, shortness of breath and no appetite. The global COVID-19 pandemic has created new problems for the nation-state, especially regarding how the state's efforts to prevent and stop the spread of this virus from spreading. Genting Tanah Village is a village located in Kembang Janggut District, Kutai Kartanegara Regency. The selection and determination of Genting Tanah Village as the research location was based on the consideration that this village was one of the villages that had never been a red zone during the pandemic. Data collection was carried out by direct survey to respondents who were at the research location. Sampling was carried out randomly, with 35 respondents from all areas of the Genting Tanah village. Data collection was carried out by directly interviewing respondents in order to obtain more valid information and to deepen the discussion. The variables used consisted of religion, education, work, income, social and economic interactions. The Covid-19 pandemic has not affected this pattern of life.

Bio-VLab: Virtual Laboratory Based on Android Educational Game

Virtual reality has a lot of potentials to be applied in the field of education and learning, known as virtual learning. For some learning activities there is quite a lot of interest in research about virtual learning. However, at present there is little virtual learning in the packaging of a virtual laboratory based on an Android educational game that presents a series of practical activities as a form of verification or confirmation of concepts learned by students. For this reason, this research aims to develop Bio-VLab, a game-based android mobile application, by adopting some of the ADDIE development procedures covering the analysis and design stages. Technical analysis was carried out descriptively qualitatively based on prototypes generated from the design of the development including initial appearance, class choices, list of materials, learning objectives, display of teaching aids, and practical content.

Degradation of Insulin Amyloid by Antibiotic Minocycline and Formation of Toxic Intermediates

Insulin balls, localized insulin amyloids formed at subcutaneous insulin-injection sites in patients with diabetes, cause poor glycemic control owing to impairments in insulin absorption. Our previous study has shown that some insulin balls are cytotoxic, but others are not, implying amyloid polymorphism. Interestingly, the patient with toxic insulin balls had been treated with antibiotic minocycline, suggesting a possible relationship between toxicity of insulin balls and minocycline. However, the direct effect of minocycline on the structure and cytotoxicity of the insulin amyloid is still unclear. Herein, we demonstrated that that minocycline at physiological concentrations induced degradation of insulin amyloids formed from human insulin and insulin drug preparations used for diabetes patients. Interestingly, the process involved the initial appearance of the toxic species, which subsequently changed into less-toxic species. It is also shown that the structure of the toxic species was similar to that of sonicated fragments of human insulin amyloids. Our study shed new light on the clarification of the revelation of insulin balls and the development of the insulin analogs for diabetes therapy.