Hair Color Research Articles

Increasing Amount of Hair Reduction using Laser Correlates with Lower Probability of Recurrence in Patients with Pilonidal Disease

BackgroundHair at the gluteal cleft plays a key role in the development and recurrence of pilonidal disease (PD). We hypothesized that more hair reduction achieved using laser could correlate with lower chance of PD recurrence. MethodsPD patients who underwent laser epilation (LE) were categorized by Fitzpatrick skin type, hair color, and hair thickness. Photos taken at LE sessions were compared to determine hair reduction amount. LE sessions completed prior to the recurrences were recorded. Groups were compared using multivariate T-test. Results198 PD patients had mean age 18.1 ± 3.6 years. 21, 156, and 21 patients had skin types 1/2, 3/4, and 5/6, respectively. 47 patients had light- and 151 had dark-colored hair. 29 patients had fine hair, 129 medium, and 40 thick. Median follow-up was 217 days. 95%, 70%, 40%, and 19% of patients reached 20%, 50%, 75%, and 90% hair reduction after mean LE sessions of 2.6, 4.3, 6.6, 7.8 sessions, respectively. To reach 75% hair reduction, patients require a mean of 4.8–6.8 LE sessions, depending on different skin/hair characteristics. PD recurrence rate was 6%. Probability of recurrence after 20%, 50%, 75% hair reduction was decreased by 50%, 78%, 100%, respectively. Dark hair and skin type 5/6 were associated with higher recurrence rates. ConclusionPatients with dark-color and thick hair require more LE sessions to achieve certain degree of hair reduction. Patients with dark hair and skin type 5/6 were more likely to recur; more hair reduction correlated with lower chance of recurrence. Level of EvidenceLevel IV.

The Efficacy of Anterior Capsulotomy and Basal Capsulectomy Adherent to Expanded Scalp Flap During Alopecia Reconstruction in Pediatric Burned Patients.

Scalp expansion is an optimal treatment for alopecia resulting from burn injuries, especially in the pediatric population through providing highly vascularized adjacent local tissues with optimal hair density, color matching, texture, and hair-bearing characteristics. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of anterior capsulotomy and basal capsulectomy adherent to expanded scalp flap during alopecia reconstruction with scalp expansion in pediatric burned patients. The study was conducted on 127 patients with an age range of 5 to 19 years who presented with postburn alopecia accompanied by hairline loss. The patients were divided into 2 groups: group I consisted of 58 patients who were operated on using conventional technique, and group II consisted of 69 patients who were operated using modified technique including basal capsulectomy on the skull side and anterior capsulotomy on the expanded scalp flap. The Hairdex, a validated questionnaire of Hair-Specific Health-Related Quality of Life measures, showed that percentage of satisfaction concerning outcomes was 91.50%, psychological well-being was 95%, and self-confidence was 84.30% in group II, compared with 63%, 55.70%, and 66.20%, respectively, in group I. This significant values had a great positive effect on patient satisfaction, changing child's behavior and self-confidence. Although physiological background of tissue expansion is the same, proper flap design with anterior capsulotomy on flap undersurface and basal capsulectomy on the skull side improve results of the traditional method significantly and minimize the complication rate. These surgical modifications provide maximum benefits from expanded tissue, with restoration of the hairline and a uniform hair direction. Level III, case-control study.

Application of Forensic DNA Phenotyping for Prediction of Eye, Hair and Skin Colour in Highly Decomposed Bodies.

In the last few years, predicting externally visible characteristics (EVCs) by adopting informative DNA molecular markers has become a method in forensic genetics that has increased its value, giving rise to an interesting field called "Forensic DNA Phenotyping" (FDP). The most meaningful forensic applications of EVCs prediction are those in which, having only a DNA sample isolated from highly decomposed remains, it is essential to reconstruct the physical appearance of a person. Through this approach, we set out to evaluate 20 skeletal remains of Italian provenance in order to associate them with as many cases of missing persons as possible. To achieve the intended goal, in this work we applied the HIrisPlex-S multiplex system through the conventional short tandem repeats (STR) method to confirm the expected identity of subjects by evaluating phenotypic features. To investigate the reliability and accuracy of the DNA-based EVCs prediction, pictures of the cases were compared as they were available to researchers. Results showed an overall prediction accuracy greater than 90% for all three phenotypic features-iris, hair, and skin colour-at a probability threshold of 0.7. The experimental analysis showed inconclusive results in only two cases; this is probably due to the characteristics of subjects who had an intermediate eye and hair colour, for which the DNA-based system needs to improve the prediction accuracy.

Genomic Analysis of the Endangered Fonni’s Dog Breed: A Comparison of Genomic and Phenotypic Evaluation Scores

The Fonni's dog is an ancient Sardinian breed for livestock and property guarding. In recent years, the number of new registrations to the breeding book has slumped and, thus, this breed risks being lost forever. This work refocuses attention to the Fonni's dog, analysing its genomic makeup and comparing different phenotypical and genetic evaluation scores. Thirty Fonni's dogs were ranked by their general accordance to the breed typicality (typicality score) and to the provisional standard by official judges (judges' score). They were genotyped with a 230K SNP BeadChip and compared with 379 dogs of 24 breeds. Genomically, the Fonni's dogs placed themselves near shepherd dogs and showed a unique genetic signature, which was used to create the genomic score. This score better correlated with typicality (ρ = 0.69, p < 0.0001) than the judges' score (ρ = 0.63, p = 0.0004), which showed little variability among the included dogs. Hair texture or colour were significantly associated in the three scores. The Fonni's dog is confirmed as a well-distinguished breed, despite being selected mainly for its work abilities. The evaluation criteria used during dog expositions can be improved to increase their variability and include elements typical of the breed. The recovery of the Fonni's dog would be possible only with a shared vision between the Italian kennel club and breeders, and the support of regional programs.

Forensic Phenotyping

Forensic DNA phenotyping [FDP] is a new approach that uses DNA to create probabilistic inferences about a person’s observable traits. It is an amazing fact that helps us to learn about something from the object that they left behind at the scene of crime. The most discarded items like cigarette buds, chewing gums, Tobacco residue and bidi. From this discarded waste, it helps to extract a trace amount of DNA evidence to create a DNA profile of a person which helps to reconstruct a person’s face. This process can be done, with the identification of hair colour, height, eye colour, sex, age, and even morphology of the face, and the ancestry of criminal and accused persons with the help of their genetic constituents.

Pharmaceutical Study of Kayyonyadi Taila

Background: Sneha Kalpana is a unique preparation of oleaginous medicine which is included under Bhaishajya Kalpana. It is again of two types Ghrita and Taila Kalpana. Kayyonyadi Taila is one such formulation which is mentioned in Chikitsa Manjari, Sahasrayogam for the management of Palithya. Kayyonnyadi Taila contains Bhringaraja, Guduchi, Amalaki, Goksheera, Tila Taila, Yastimadhu and Neelanjana. Aim: To prepare Kayyonyadi Taila, pharmaceutical study of Kayyonyadi Taila. Methods: Kayyonyadi Taila was prepared according to the general method of preparation of Taila. The pharmaceutical procedures which were adopted in this study include Swarasa Nirmana, Shodhana, Churna Nirmana, preparation of Kalka and preparation of Kayyonyadi Taila. Results: 10L of Taila was obtained as the final product with a loss of 500ml. Conclusion: The main cause of Palithya/greying of hair is due to the vitiated Pitta Dosha. Colour of hair is mainly due to melanocytes present in hair cells. Contemporary medicine does not offer any satisfactory treatment for Canities. Kayyonyadi Taila is beneficial in Palithya and the pharmaceutical study results was considered as a standard for the preparation of Taila.

MicroRNA-370-5p inhibits pigmentation and cell proliferation by downregulating mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase 8 expression in sheep melanocytes

In mammals, microRNAs (miRNAs) play key roles in multiple biological processes by regulating the expression of target genes. Studies have found that the levels of miR-370-5p expression differ significantly in the skins of sheep with different hair colors; however, its function remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the roles of miR-370-5p in sheep melanocytes and found that the overexpression of miR-370-5p significantly inhibited cell proliferation (P<0.01), tyrosinase activity (P=0.001) and significantly reduced (P<0.001) melanin production. Functional prediction revealed that the 3´-untranslated region (UTR) of MAP3K8 has a putative miR-370-5p binding site, and the interaction between these two molecules was confirmed using luciferase reporter assays. In situ hybridization assays revealed that MAP3K8 is expressed in the cytoplasm of melanocytes. The results of quantitative RT-PCR and Western blotting analyses revealed that overexpression of miR-370-5p in melanocytes significantly inhibits (P<0.01) MAP3K8 expression via direct targeting of its 3´ UTR. Inhibition of MAP3K8 expression by siRNA-MAP3K8 transfection induced a significant inhibition (P<0.01) of melanocyte proliferation and significant reduction (P<0.001) in melanin production, which is consistent with our observations for miR-370-5p. Target gene rescue experiments indicated that the expression of MAP3K8 in melanocytes co-transfected with miR-370-5p and MAP3K8-cDNA (containing sites for the targeted binding to miR-370-5p) was significantly rescued (P≤0.001), which subsequently promoted significant increases in cell proliferation (P<0.001) and melanin production (P<0.01). Collectively, these findings indicate that miR-370-5p plays a functional role in inhibiting sheep melanocyte proliferation and melanogenesis by downregulating the expression of MAP3K8.

A Comprehensive Review of Mammalian Pigmentation: Paving the Way for Innovative Hair Colour-Changing Cosmetics

The natural colour of hair shafts is formed at the bulb of hair follicles, and it is coupled to the hair growth cycle. Three critical processes must happen for efficient pigmentation: (1) melanosome biogenesis in neural crest-derived melanocytes, (2) the biochemical synthesis of melanins (melanogenesis) inside melanosomes, and (3) the transfer of melanin granules to surrounding pre-cortical keratinocytes for their incorporation into nascent hair fibres. All these steps are under complex genetic control. The array of natural hair colour shades are ascribed to polymorphisms in several pigmentary genes. A myriad of factors acting via autocrine, paracrine, and endocrine mechanisms also contributes for hair colour diversity. Given the enormous social and cosmetic importance attributed to hair colour, hair dyeing is today a common practice. Nonetheless, the adverse effects of the long-term usage of such cosmetic procedures demand the development of new methods for colour change. In this context, case reports of hair lightening, darkening and repigmentation as a side-effect of the therapeutic usage of many drugs substantiate the possibility to tune hair colour by interfering with the biology of follicular pigmentary units. By scrutinizing mammalian pigmentation, this review pinpoints key targetable processes for the development of innovative cosmetics that can safely change the hair colour from the inside out.

Additional predictions for forensic DNA phenotyping of externally visible characteristics using the ForenSeq and Imagen kits.

Multiplex DNA typing methods using massively parallel sequencing can be used to predict externally visible characteristics (EVCs) in forensic DNA phenotyping through the analysis of single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The focus of EVC determination has focused on hair color, eye color, and skin tone as well as visible biogeographical ancestry features. In this study, we researched off-label applications beyond what is currently marketed by the manufacturer of the Verogen ForenSeq kit primer set B and Imagen primer set E SNP loci. We investigated additional EVC predictions by examining published genome wide sequencing studies and reported allele-specific gene expression and predictive values. We have identified 15 SNPs included in the ForenSeq kit panel and Imagen kits that have additional EVC prediction capabilities beyond what is published in the Verogen manuals. The additional EVCs that can be predicted include hair graying, ephelides hyperpigmented spots, dermatoheliosis, facial pigmented spots, standing height, pattern balding, helix-rolling ear morphology, hair shape, hair thickness, facial morphology, eyebrow thickness, sarcoidosis, obesity, vitiligo, and tanning propensity. The loci can be used to augment and refine phenotype predictions with software such as MetaHuman for missing persons, cold case, and historic case investigations.

Towards private stylists via personalized compatibility learning

Personalized outfit compatibility learning is an emerging yet challenging task. Most of the existing methods focus on general outfit compatibility learning. Although a few works have been proposed for personalized fashion compatibility, they either considered user preference on fashion items with specific patterns or design elements or recommended outfits based on the overall visual similarity according to the users’ preferred collections. This paper adopts physical and fashion attributes for effective personalized fashion compatibility evaluation and recommendation. The physical attributes are concluded into seven aspects: body shape, skin color, hairstyle, hair color, height, breast size (breasts), and color contrast. The personalized outfit compatibility problem in this paper is a multi-label classification problem and formulated as an optimization function with outfit images, fashion attributes, and physical attributes as input. It is the first attempt to solve the problem by discovering the correlation between visual image features, fashion attributes, and physical attributes. Specifically, the correlation is learned with two transformer encoders by updating attention weights of different embedding pairs during the training process. The model can not only predict the fashion attributes of the outfit’s top, bottom, shoes, and bag items, but also predict the incompatible physical attributes of an individual towards the given outfit. It can be used to recommend outfits that best fit an individual and the predicted fashion attributes can be used for result explanation. The O4U dataset, which contains rich annotations of fashion item attributes and human physical attributes of the outfits, is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The quantitative and qualitative results show that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods for personalized outfit compatibility evaluation.

Towards a Controllable and Reversible Privacy Protection System for Facial Images through Enhanced Multi-Factor Modifier Networks

Privacy protection data processing has been critical in recent years when pervasively equipped mobile devices could easily capture high-resolution personal images and videos that may disclose personal information. We propose a new controllable and reversible privacy protection system to address the concern in this work. The proposed scheme can automatically and stably anonymize and de-anonymize face images with one neural network and provide strong security protection with multi-factor identification solutions. Furthermore, users can include other attributes as identification factors, such as passwords and specific facial attributes. Our solution lies in a modified conditional-GAN-based training framework, the Multi-factor Modifier (MfM), to simultaneously accomplish the function of multi-factor facial anonymization and de-anonymization. It can successfully anonymize face images while generating realistic faces satisfying the conditions specified by the multi-factor features, such as gender, hair colors, and facial appearance. Furthermore, MfM can also de-anonymize de-identified faces to their corresponding original ones. One crucial part of our work is design of physically meaningful information-theory-based loss functions, which include mutual information between authentic and de-identification images and mutual information between original and re-identification images. Moreover, extensive experiments and analyses show that, with the correct multi-factor feature information, the MfM can effectively achieve nearly perfect reconstruction and generate high-fidelity and diverse anonymized faces to defend attacks from hackers better than other methods with compatible functionalities. Finally, we justify the advantages of this work through perceptual quality comparison experiments. Our experiments show that the resulting LPIPS (with a value of 0.35), FID (with a value of 28), and SSIM (with a value of 0.95) of MfM demonstrate significantly better de-identification effects than state-of-the-art works. Additionally, the MfM we designed can achieve re-identification, which improves real-world practicability.

DNA Phenotyping of Remains from Elite Burials of the Khazar Period of Southern Russia

Ancient DNA analyses help to solve the problems related to the genogeographic origin and migration patterns of populations. The Khazar Khaganate is a subject of controversy among researchers. Its complex historical development, lack of a sufficient number of artistic and written sources, the disappearance of representatives of Khazar culture leaves open the question of the appearance of the Khazars. DNA phenotyping of bone remains from elite burials of the Khazar period of Southern Russia was carried out with respect to eye color, hair color, skin color, and AB0 blood groups. Eight out of 10 individuals had brown eyes, dark hair (to varying degrees), and a predominantly dark skin during their lifetime. Individuals from two burials had gray-blue eyes, and one individual had blond hair. The most probable AB0 blood group was identified in eight people, of which five blood group 0 (I) group, four had blood group A (II), and one had blood group B (III). The allele frequency distribution was assessed for ten population-specific autosomal markers and suggested high heterogeneity for the ethnogeographic origin of the Khazars examined. The results are evidence for ethnocultural, genetic, and phenotypic diversity of the Khazar Khaganate.

AMPK Phosphorylates ZDHHC13 to Increase MC1R Activity and Suppress Melanomagenesis.

Phosphorylation of ZDHHC13 by AMPK at S208 promotes MC1R activation and suppresses melanocyte transformation, indicating activation of AMPK as a potential approach to prevent melanoma in people with red hair.

Evaluating the discriminating power of amino acid ratios on distinguishing dark colored hair samples

Human hairs are one of the most commonly encountered items of trace evidence. Currently, conventional methods for hair analysis include microscopic comparison and DNA analysis (nuclear and mitochondrial). Each approach has its own drawbacks. Hair proteins are stable and offer an alternative to DNA testing, as demonstrated with proteomics for distinguishing humans. However, proteomics is complicated and requires identifying peptides to remain intact following harsh sample preparation methods. Alternatively, the actual amino acid content of a hair sample may also offer important identifying information and actually requires proteins and peptides to be broken down completely rather than remaining intact. This study evaluated the discriminating power of using hair amino acid ratios to differentiate hair samples from 10 unrelated individuals with dark colored hair. Hair proteins were digested, derivatized, and analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Amino acid ratios were calculated for each individual and comparisons using ANOVA and post-hoc pairwise t-test with Bonferroni correction were made with amino acid ratios for individuals. Overall, out of the 45 possible pairwise comparisons between all hair samples, 38 (84%) were differentiable. Out of the 36 possible pairwise comparisons between brown haired individuals, 32 (89%) were considered differentiable using univariate statistics. Multivariate statistics were also attempted but, overall, univariate models were sufficient for exclusionary purposes. These results indicate that amino acid ratio analysis can potentially be used as an exclusionary method using hair if DNA analysis cannot be performed, or to corroborate conclusions made following microscopic analysis.

Anatomical and functional differences of the skin in various ethnic groups

Besides the differences in skin and hair color among different ethnic groups, morphological and functional differences in skin and hair have also been demonstrated. The color of skin and hair is determined by two types of melanin, eumelanin (brown to black pigment) and phaeomelanin (red to yellow pigment). In addition to the individual mixture of these pigment types, there are also differences in the melanosome arrangement of Caucasian, Asian, and African skin. Although the epidermis thickness is the same in all people, darker skin has ahigher number of stratum corneum layers and athicker dermis with ahigher number of fibroblasts. The hairs of different ethnic groups also vary regarding shape and thickness: they are round in Asians, elliptical in Blacks and intermediate in Whites. Hair diameter is the greatest in Asians, followed by Blacks and is the smallest in Whites, whereas the number of hairs is highest in Whites, followed by that in Asians and Blacks.

Die Geschichte der Hautfarbe ist die Geschichte der Menschheit!

In the early days of mankind, at atime when various other human species populated the earth coexisting with Homo sapiens, the genetic mixing of mankind had already begun. Today, paleogenetics-as abranch of human genetic research-can prove that individuals from the most diverse human species already produced offspring together long before our era. This intermixing was supported from the beginning by massive migratory movements that started in East Africa and led first Homo neanderthalensis and much later also Homo sapiens to as far as Europe-two human species of which we know today that they were lighter-skinned than their ancestors. The adaptation to life in different climatic zones led to development of specific characteristics, which, in addition to physique and physiognomy, also affect specific features of the skin and the integumentary system. The most striking feature among these is the skin color and all associated skin-specific characteristics. These characteristics ensure special protection, but can also be the origin for specific diseases. Any division of Homo sapiens into races has been scientifically refuted. Due to ongoing genetic mixing of mankind, skin color, hair color and all associated characteristics should always be considered individually.

Ectolife: A New Age of Ai-Assisted Conception

A facility for creating artificial wombs for genetically altered lab infants has been invented by German biotechnologist Hashem Algeli, owner of EctoLife. Babies in which every characteristic was carefully chosen by the parents from conception to birth. According to Hashem, this is a good choice for women who had their wombs surgically removed due to cancer or other reasons, as well as those who do not want to undergo a C-Section, go through the IVF process or even use a surrogate. Artificially created baby foetuses are growing within life-sized pods at this facility. It also presents an elite package that allows the parents to select the baby’s skin tone, hair colour, and even eye colour. Building a prototype by merging all the elements into a single gadget will help to carry out the genetic erections in cases of hereditary health issues. According to the researchers involved, this facility will permit extremely intelligent children. The facility has 30,000 baby-growing capacity. Using this facility will re-evaluate Darwin’s idea of the survival of the fittest.

Where Does Elsie's Hair Color Come From? A "De-Simplified" Pedigree Lesson

Where Does Elsie's Hair Color Come From? A "De-Simplified" Pedigree Lesson

Information-Containing Adversarial Perturbation for Combating Facial Manipulation Systems

With the development of deep learning technology, the facial manipulation system has become powerful and easy to use. Such systems can modify the attributes of the given facial images, such as hair color, gender, and age. Malicious applications of such systems pose a serious threat to individuals’ privacy and reputation. Existing studies have proposed various approaches to protect images against facial manipulations. Passive defense methods aim to detect whether the face is real or fake, which works for posterior forensics but can not prevent malicious manipulation. Initiative defense methods protect images upfront by injecting adversarial perturbations into images to disrupt facial manipulation systems but can not identify whether the image is fake. To address the limitation of existing methods, we propose a novel two-tier protection method named Information-containing Adversarial Perturbation (IAP), which provides more comprehensive protection for facial images. We use an encoder to map a facial image and its identity message to a cross-model adversarial example which can disrupt multiple facial manipulation systems to achieve initiative protection. Recovering the message in adversarial examples with a decoder serves passive protection, contributing to provenance tracking and fake image detection. We introduce a feature-level correlation measurement that is more suitable to measure the difference between the facial images than the commonly used mean squared error. Moreover, we propose a spectral diffusion method to spread messages to different frequency channels, thereby improving the robustness of the message against facial manipulation. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our proposed IAP can recover the messages from the adversarial examples with high average accuracy and effectively disrupt the facial manipulation systems.

POVNet: Image-Based Virtual Try-On Through Accurate Warping and Residual.

Virtual dressing room applications help online shoppers visualize outfits. Such a system, to be commercially viable, must satisfy a set of performance criteria. The system must produce high quality images that faithfully preserve garment properties, allow users to mix and match garments of various types and support human models varying in skin tone, hair color, body shape, and so on. This paper describes POVNet, a framework that meets all these requirements (except body shapes variations). Our system uses warping methods together with residual data to preserve garment texture at fine scales and high resolution. Our warping procedure adapts to a wide range of garments and allows swapping in and out of individual garments. A learned rendering procedure using an adversarial loss ensures that fine shading, etc. is accurately reflected. A distance transform representation ensures that hems, cuffs, stripes, and so on are correctly placed. We demonstrate improvements in garment rendering over state of the art resulting from these procedures. We demonstrate that the framework is scalable, responds in real-time, and works robustly with a variety of garment categories. Finally, we demonstrate that using this system as a virtual dressing room interface for fashion e-commerce websites has significantly boosted user-engagement rates.