Pixel brightness variations in an image sequence depend both on the objects’ surface reflectance and on the motion of the camera and object. In the case of rigid shapes some proposed models have been very successful explaining the relation among these strongly coupled components. On the other hand, shapes which deform pose new challenges since the relation between pixel brightness variation wit...

We present a framework for shape alignment that generalizes several existing methods. We assume that the shape is a closed genus zero surface. Our framework requires a diffeomorphic surface mapping to the 2-sphere which preserves rotation. Our similarity measure is a global spherical cross-correlation function of surface-intrinsic scalar attributes, weighted by the cross-correlation of the para...

We propose a method of using shape adaptation for compression of light fields of 3-D objects. Shape adaptation is incorporated into two light field coders, both applying disparity compensation with an explicit geometry model, to improve the compression efficiency. The shape information can be derived at the decoder from an accurate geometry model. If the available geometry is inaccurate, we pro...

Three different reformulations of a free surface problem as shape optimization problems are considered. These give rise to three different cost functionals which apparently have not been exploited in literature. The shape derivatives of the cost functionals are explicitly determined. The gradient information is combined with the boundary variation method in a steepest descent algorithm to solve...

This paper deals with the problem of General Shape Analysis. Simple shape measures based on a minimum bounding rectangle are investigated so as to obtain and compare general shape characteristics. The goal of General Shape Analysis is to find for each test object the one or few most similar templates. Thanks to this we can determine general information about a shape, such as how rectangular it ...

Buccal tablets of ritodrine (RD) hydrochloride (HCl), called RD-HCl, were prepared using the direct compression method with alginate (AL), lactose (LC), magnesium stearate (ST), and microcrystalline cellulose (MC) as excipients. The tablets were evaluated based on hardness, and tablets weighing 80 mg and with hardness of greater than 30 N were chosen as appropriate ones. As a result, tablets co...

Hypophosphatasia (HPP) is an inherited disease caused by genetic mutations in the gene encoding tissue-nonspecific alkaline phosphatase (TNALP). This results in defects in bone and tooth mineralization. We recently demonstrated that TNALP-deficient (Akp2 (-/-) ) mice, which mimic the phenotype of the severe infantile form of HPP, can be treated by intravenous injection of a recombinant adeno-as...

Vaccinia virus (VACV) encodes enzymes that cap the 5' end of viral mRNAs, which enhances their stability and translation. Nevertheless, recent studies demonstrated that the VACV D10 protein (VACV-WR_115) decaps mRNA, an enzymatic activity not previously shown to be encoded by a virus. The decapping activity of D10 is dependent on a Nudix hydrolase motif that is also present in the VACV D9 prote...

Recombinant modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) has been used to deliver vaccine candidate antigens against infectious diseases and cancer. MVA is a potent viral vector for inducing high magnitudes of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells; however the cellular immune responses to a recombinant antigen in MVA could be further enhanced by increasing transgene expression. Previous reports showed the impo...

We present a novel method that uses shape skeletons, and associated quantities, for feature-preserving smoothing of shapes in digital images. We preserve, or smooth out, features based on a saliency measure that relates feature size to local object size, both computed using the shape’s skeleton. Low-saliency convex features (cusps) are smoothed out, and low-saliency concave features (dents) are...