Objective and automatic grading system of facial signs from smartphones' pictures in South African men: Validation versus dermatologists and characterization of changes with age.

Objective: To evaluate the capacity of the automatic detection system to accurately grade, from selfie pictures, the severity of eight facial signs in South African men.

Methods: Selfie pictures (obtained from frontal and back cameras) of 281 South African men differently aged (20-70 years) were obtained and analyzed by an automatic artificial intelligence (AI)-based automatic grading system. Data were compared with the clinical gradings made by experts and dermatologists.

Active exterior cloaking for the two-dimensional Helmholtz equation with complex wavenumbers and application to thermal cloaking.

We design sources for the two-dimensional Helmholtz equation that can cloak an object by cancelling out the incident field in a region, without the sources completely surrounding the object to hide. As in previous work for real positive wavenumbers, the sources are also determined by the Green identities. The novelty is that we prove that the same approach works for complex wavenumbers which makes it applicable to a variety of media, including media with dispersion, loss and gain.

A 5-hour follow-up of the impact on ageing facial signs of some foundations in Japanese women through automatically analysed selfie pictures.

Objective: To explore the possibility of an automatic grading algorithm to detect and quantify, from selfie pictures, the subtle changes of facial signs brought by the application of a foundation.

Material And Methods: A total of 270 Japanese differently aged women (30-54y) living in four different Japanese cities took selfies before, immediately and 5 h after having applied their own foundation, with their own routine.

Results: The analysis of 810 selfie pictures revealed (3 times × 270 women) that, prior to applications, all women presented a low grade of facial ageing.

Objective and automatic grading system of facial signs from selfie pictures of South African women: Characterization of changes with age and sun-exposures.

Objective: To evaluate the capacity of the automatic detection system to accurately grade, from smartphones' selfie pictures, the severity of fifteen facial signs in South African women and their changes related to age and sun-exposure habits.

Methods: A two-steps approach was conducted based on self-taken selfie images. At first, to assess on 306 South African women (20-69 years) enrolled in Pretoria area (25.

Active thermal cloaking and mimicking.

We present an active cloaking method for the parabolic heat (and mass or light diffusion) equation that can hide both objects and sources. By active, we mean that it relies on designing monopole and dipole heat source distributions on the boundary of the region to be cloaked. The same technique can be used to make a source or an object look like a different one to an observer outside the cloaked region, from the perspective of thermal measurements.

Skin moisture assessment using Hydration Sensor Patches coupled with smartphones via Near Field Communication (NFC). A pilot study with the first generation of patches that allow self-recordings of skin hydration.

Objectives: To evaluate the potency of a new skin hydration sensor patch in the fast self-recording of skin hydration.

Material And Methods: The Skin Hydration Sensor Patch (SHSP) turns the user's smartphone into a wireless skin moisture measuring device. The SHSP combines a capacitive measurement unit and Near Field Communication technology (NFC) for transmitting data and energy.

Testing COVID-19 in Brazil: fragmented efforts and challenges to expand diagnostic capacity at the Brazilian Unified National Health System.

Since the first recorded case of COVID-19 on February 26, 2020, Brazil has seen an exponential growth in the number of cases and deaths. The national testing approach has been insufficient to correctly use this tool in the support of containing the epidemic in the country. In this communication, we discuss efforts and challenges to scale-up COVID-19 testing at the Brazilian Unified National Health System (SUS).

The respective weights of facial signs on the perception of age and a tired-look among differently aged Korean men.

Objectives: To determine the respective weights of certain facial signs on the assessment of the perceived age and a tired-look on Korean men of different ages.

Material And Methods: Photographs were taken of the faces of 101 Korean men (20-80 years) under standardized conditions. These photographs allowed to define 16 signs, which were then graded by 15 experts/dermatologists, using standardized scales provided by a referential Skin Aging Atlas.

Value regimes and pricing in the pharmaceutical industry: financial capital inflation (hepatitis C) versus innovation and production capital savings for malaria medicines.

The idea of this paper is to draw a parallel between two diametrically opposed political economies of medicine that coexist today. The first is embodied in the invention, appropriation, and distribution of antivirals for hepatitis C, particularly sofosbuvir, which was commercialized at an initial price of $85,000 in the United States, €56,000 in France, and $8000 in Brazil. These prices destabilized payers in both the North and the South.

Japanese experiment of a complete and objective automatic grading system of facial signs from selfie pictures: Validation with dermatologists and characterization of changes due to age and sun exposures.

Objective: To evaluate the capacity of the automatic detection system to accurately grade, from smartphones' selfie pictures, the severity of ten facial signs in Japanese women and their changes due to age and sun exposures.

Methods: A three-step approach was conducted, based on self-taken selfie images. At first, to check on 310 Japanese women (18-69 years) enrolled in the northerner Hokkaido area (latitude 43.

Changes in facial signs due to age and their respective weights on the perception of age and skin plumpness among differently aged Korean women.

Objective: To determine the respective weights of certain facial signs on the assessment of perceived age and plumpness on Korean women of different ages.

Material And Methods: Photographs were taken of the faces of 112 Korean women of different ages (18-80 years) under standardized conditions. These photographs allowed to focus and define 19 facial signs, which were then graded by 15 experts and dermatologists, using standardized scales provided by a reference Skin Aging Atlas.

Seasonally-induced alterations of some facial signs in Caucasian women and their changes induced by a daily application of a photo-protective product.

Objectives: These were two-fold: (i) to assess the possible changes in some facial signs induced in a 6-month period by the periodical shift from winter to summer in Caucasian women and (ii) to appraise the preventive effects of a strong photo-protective product.

Methods: The facial signs of two cohorts of French women (N= 40 and 42), of comparable ages were graded between winter to summer. One group was left unprotected whereas the other daily applied a strong photo-protective product for 6 months.

Producing, controlling, and stabilizing Pasteur's anthrax vaccine: creating a new industry and a health market.

When Pasteur and Chamberland hastily set up their small biological industry to meet the agricultural demand for the anthrax vaccine, their methods for preparation and production had not yet been stabilized. The process of learning how to standardize biological products was accelerated in 1882 when vaccination accidents required the revision of production norms as the first hypotheses on fixity, inalterability, and transportability of vaccines were invalidated and replaced by procedures for continuous monitoring of the calibration of vaccines and the renewal of vaccine strains. Initially, the incompleteness and ongoing development of production standards justified Pasteur's monopoly on the production of the anthrax vaccine under his immediate supervision.

Appropriation and commercialization of the Pasteur anthrax vaccine.

Whereas Pasteur patented the biotechnological processes that he invented between 1857 and 1873 in the agro-food domain, he did not file any patents on the artificial vaccine preparation processes that he subsequently developed. This absence of patents can probably be explained by the 1844 patent law in France that established the non-patentable status of pharmaceutical preparations and remedies, including those for use in veterinary medicine. Despite the absence of patents, the commercial exploitation of the anthrax vaccine in the 1880s and 1890s led to a technical and commercial monopoly by Pasteur's laboratory as well as the founding of a commercial company to diffuse the vaccine abroad.

[Opposition to Myriad Genetics patents and their total or partial revocation in Europe: early conclusions].

The proceedings instituted against three European patents held by the US company Myriad Genetics, on the BRCA1 gene and the breast cancer diagnosis gene, resulted in the total or partial revocation of these patents. These decisions put an end to the legal monopoly claimed by Myriad Genetics on the BRCA1 gene and on breast cancer gene tests, and left the field open to European geneticists to develop and implement their test methods within the framework of a clinical not-for-profit organization. The opposition procedure, through which any actor is allowed to challenge European patents, was used by geneticists doctors in Europe to refuse the emergence of an industrial monopoly on a medical service offered in a clinical context.