Mouth Region Research Articles

Hydrodynamic and TS Structure Dataset of the São Francisco and Parnaiba Brazilian Rivers

Running a numerical simulation with the ROMS model in the regions of the mouths and plumes of the São Francisco and Parnaiba rivers, this dataset was obtained. It is the result of two scenarios, one of them taking into account the tides and the other not. It consists of 50 files (in NetCDF format) divided into 25 for each of the mentioned scenarios. Among the 25 files, 1 corresponds to the spatial discretization parameters of the input; 12 corresponds to the numer-ical simulation in the Parnaiba River and the remaining 12 to the São Francisco River. These files contain the daily average of all input and output parameters of the simulations. The ROM-STOOLS scripting package was used to prepare the input data. The ROMS model input was the surface forcings from the COADS dataset; the WOA09 and SODA datasets were used as initial and lateral boundary conditions, respectively. The bathymetry was taken from ETOPO2 and the tide was acquired from the TPXO7 satellite product. The hydrodynamics and TS structure data contained in this dataset are useful for physical oceanographers to study the thermodynamics of the waters and other physical processes occurring in the mouth and plume region of the São Francisco and Parnaiba Rivers. It is also useful for chemical and biological oceanographers to study the behavior of nutrients, chlorophyll and primary productivity.

Intranasal oxytocin alters attention to emotional facial expressions, particularly for males and those with depressive symptoms

Intranasal oxytocin (OT) can enhance emotion recognition, perhaps by promoting increased attention to social cues. Some studies indicate that individuals with difficulties processing social information, including those with psychopathology, show more pronounced effects in response to OT. As such, there is interest in the potential therapeutic use of OT in populations with deficits in social cognition. The present study examined the effects of intranasal OT on the processing of facial features and selective attention to emotional facial expressions, as well as whether individual differences in depressive symptom severity predict sensitivity to intranasal OT. In a double-blind placebo-controlled within-subject design, eye tracking was used to measure attention to facial features in an emotional expression appraisal task, and attention to emotional expressions in a free-viewing task with a quadrant of multiple faces. OT facilitated the processing of positive cues, enhancing the maintenance of attention to the mouth region of happy faces and to happy faces within a quadrant, with similar effect sizes, despite the latter effect not being statistically significant. Further, persons with depressive symptoms, and particularly males, were sensitive to OT’s effects. For males only, OT, relative to placebo, increased attentional focus to the mouth region of all faces. Individuals with depressive symptoms showed less attentional focus on angry (males only) and sad facial expressions, and more attention to happy faces (particularly for males). Results indicate increased sensitivity to OT in males and persons at risk for depression, with OT administration promoting a positive bias in selective attention to social stimuli.

Esthetic perception of gummy smile with the application of botulinum toxin, via eye-tracking

We aimed to evaluate laypeople’s visual perception of the gingival smile before and after botulinum-toxin application, using eye-tracking technology. Two frontal photographs of a female volunteer’s face with a gingival smile were used. One before and another 30 days after the toxin application in the upper lip elevator muscle region. The images were evaluated by 58 participants. Using the OGAMA software, visualization data were obtained in three areas of interest (AOI) through eye-tracking. A visual analog scale (VAS) was used to assess facial attractiveness, and a questionnaire to assess the perception of sympathy, satisfaction with the smile, dissatisfaction with dental and gingival exposure, and shyness. Heat and point maps showed that the participants visually concentrated on the mouth region, with a small transition to the nose and eyes in the pre-procedure image. The mouth region was the AOI where the first visualization occurred in a shorter time compared to the latter areas (p<0.05). VAS revealed that attractiveness increased in the image with less gingival exposure (p<0.05). After the toxin application, satisfaction with the smile increased (p<0.05), and dissatisfaction with gingival exposure decreased (p<0.05). However, dissatisfaction with dental exposure increased (p<0.05). We discovered that the mouth attracted greater attention from participants in less time compared to other AOI. The decrease in gingival exposure after the botulinum toxin application resulted in improved facial esthetics. There was a perceptible increase in “satisfaction with the smile” and a decrease in “dissatisfaction with gingival exposure.” Conversely, the “dissatisfaction with dental exposure” increased.

Riverine barrier hypothesis explains the structure of dung beetle communities in Brazilian Coastal Sand-dune forests

The Riverine Barrier Hypothesis (RBH) predicts that tropical rivers can be effective barriers to species dispersion, affecting different scales of biological organization, from genes to assemblages. We disentangled the latitudinal from the river presence effect to test the hypothesis that the Doce river mouth acted as a geographical, historical barrier for insects through North and South directions of the Brazilian coast, affecting the current community structure. We sampled dung beetle communities. In 16 Coastal Sand-dune Forest (“Restinga”) patches, across the Doce River Basin in the Brazilian coastline, nine through the South and seven through the North direction of the Doce River's mouth. We analyzed the relationship between the community composition and richness relative to the river (North and South regions) and latitude using linear modeling over a distance matrix (DistLM) approach. The latitude explained 17.74% of the total variation in dung beetle species composition, and the regional position relative to Doce River's mouth exhibited a significant effect (Pseudo F = 2.8479; p = 0.005) only after removing the latitudinal effect, here representing the habitat filtering. Both variables explained together with a total of 32.52% of the variability in dung beetles composition at coastal sand dune forests. The geographical position alone explained 48% of the richness difference between the North and South regions of the Doce River's mouth (Pseudo F = 16.534; p < 0.01). Meanwhile, the latitudinal position of the sites exhibited no significant relationship with species richness. Our findings highlight the role of Doce River as a biogeographical filter in the Doce river basin, while it represents the primary determinant of geographical segregation of the two key-species central to the dung beetle community structure.

Mass nesting of sea turtles along the east coast of India: A sustainable environmental management approach

We analyzed the marine environmental setting to characterize the mass nesting habitat of Olive ridley sea turtles from three locations of the river mouth region i.e., Gahirmatha, Devi, and Rushikulya along the coast, of the Bay of Bengal. The environmental variables such as sea surface temperature (SST), ocean current, mixed layer depth, and chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) were analyzed to examine its influence on the mass nesting of sea turtles. The clear pattern of the mass population shows the nearshore and river mouth region of the nesting site throughout the inter-nesting range. The population was dense at the river mouth of Gahirmatha followed by Devi and Rushikulya. We found a significant linear relationship between the Chl-a and nesting population (r = 0.98, p ≤ 0.0001); and the SST and nesting population (r = 0.78, p ≤ 0.0001) at all river mouths. The conducive environmental threshold limit of SST and Chl-a was ≤29 0C and ≤ 0.5 mg m-3 respectively. The mass nesting, breeding, and migration of Olive ridley are attributed to the geomorphologic basin structure, physicochemical parameters, and feeding potential grounds in the coastal water. Inter nesting of movements in relation to the influential environment variables, the present and proposed regions for Olive ridley need to be implemented to provide comprehensive protection to both nesting populations and locations. The present study provides new knowledge on the linkage between the marine ecosystem and the mass nesting habitat of the sea turtle population for long-term monitoring, conservation application, and sustainable ecosystem management.

Featural vs. Holistic processing and visual sampling in the influence of social category cues on emotion recognition

ABSTRACT Past research demonstrates that emotion recognition is influenced by social category cues present on faces. However, little research has investigated whether holistic processing is required to observe these influences of social category information on emotion perception, and no studies have investigated whether different visual sampling strategies (i.e. differences in the allocation of attention to different regions of the face) contribute to the interaction between social cues and emotional expressions. The current study aimed to address this. Participants categorised happy and angry expressions on own- and other-race faces, and male and female faces. In Experiments 1 and 2, holistic processing was disrupted by presenting inverted faces (Experiment 1) or part faces (Experiment 2). In Experiments 3 and 4 participants’ eye-gaze to eye and mouth regions was also tracked. Disrupting holistic processing did not alter the moderating influence of sex and race cues on emotion recognition (Experiments 1, 2, 4). Gaze patterns differed as a function of emotional expression, and social category cues, however, eye-gaze patterns did not reflect response time patterns (Experiments 3 and 4). Results indicate that the interaction between social category cues and emotion does not require holistic processing and is not driven by differences in visual sampling.

Seasonal variability in environmental parameters influence bacterial communities in mangrove sediments along an estuarine gradient

Mangrove ecosystems are repositories of divergent microbial communities which respond differently to environmental characteristics. Hence, it is important to understand the community structure with respect to pertinent controlling environmental factors. Seasonal down-core variations in bacterial communities were investigated at 3 mangrove sites at upstream, mid-stream and mouth region along the economically-important Mandovi estuary, west coast of India. Genomic DNA extracted from 45 sediment samples were analyzed by 454 pyrosequencing. A total of 15008 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were assigned to 54 phyla and 127 classes re-affirming mangroves to be biodiversity hotspots. Members of class Alphaproteobacteria constituted up to 35% of the tag sequences and showed marked seasonal variability at all locations (Kruskal-Wallis test, p < 0.05). Occurrence of other abundant phyla like Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi and Acidobacteria at the study sites indicated their participation in biogeochemical cycling. Seasonal fluctuations in the environmental variables influenced the bacterial communities. Statistical analysis revealed that during the monsoon, bacterial communities proximal to the mouth region were largely influenced by pore water NH4+ concentrations due to its accumulation in the sub-surface sediments. At the upstream site, elevated organic carbon and NO2− content during the post-monsoon caused variations in the bacterial community.

Audiovisual synchrony detection for fluent speech in early childhood: An eye-tracking study.

During childhood, the ability to detect audiovisual synchrony gradually sharpens for simple stimuli such as flashbeeps and single syllables. However, little is known about how children perceive synchrony for natural and continuous speech. This study investigated young children's gaze patterns while they were watching movies of two identical speakers telling stories side by side. Only one speaker's lip movements matched the voices and the other one either led or lagged behind the soundtrack by 600 ms. Children aged 3-6 years (n= 94, 52.13% males) showed an overall preference for the synchronous speaker, with no age-related changes in synchrony-detection sensitivity as indicated by similar gaze patterns across ages. However, viewing time to the synchronous speech was significantly longer in the auditory-leading (AL) condition compared with that in the visual-leading (VL) condition, suggesting asymmetric sensitivities for AL versus VL asynchrony have already been established in early childhood. When further examining gaze patterns on dynamic faces, we found that more attention focused on the mouth region was an adaptive strategy to read visual speech signals and thus associated with increased viewing time of the synchronous videos. Attention to detail, one dimension of autistic traits featured by local processing, has been found to be correlated with worse performances in speech synchrony processing. These findings extended previous research by showing the development of speech synchrony perception in young children, and may have implications for clinical populations (e.g., autism) with impaired multisensory integration.

Motion Fatigue State Detection Based on Neural Networks.

Aiming at the problem of fatigue state detection at the back of sports, a cascade deep learning detection system structure is designed, and a convolutional neural network fatigue state detection model based on multiscale pooling is proposed. Firstly, face detection is carried out by a deep learning model MTCNN to extract eye and mouth regions. Aiming at the problem of eye and mouth state representation and recognition, a multiscale pooling model (MSP) based on RESNET is proposed to train the eye and mouth state. In real-time detection, the state of the eye and mouth region is recognized through the trained convolution neural network model. Finally, the athlete's fatigue is determined based on PERCLOS and the proposed mouth opening and closing frequency (FOM). The experimental results show that in the training process, we set the batch_size = 100 and the initial learning rate = 0.01. When the evaluation index is no longer improved, the learning rate is reduced by 10 times to 0.001, and a total of 50 epochs are trained. The precision and recall of the system are high. Compared with the infrared image simulating the night state, the RGB image taken by the ordinary camera in the daytime has higher precision and recall. It is proven that the neural network has high detection accuracy, meets the real-time requirements, and has high robustness in complex environments.

Impacts of tailings of Fundão dam (Brazil) rupture on marine fish: Metals bioaccumulation and physiological responses

This study evaluated the impacts of the mining tailings after the rupture of the Fundão dam on fish communities on the Atlantic Ocean southeast coast. Four sample collections were carried out over two years (2018–2020), in seasonal periods. Omnivorous/herbivorous and carnivorous fish were collected for analysis of metal bioaccumulation, multibiomarkers of environmental contamination and histopathology. Metal bioaccumulation was stronger correlated in carnivorous fish in the dry-2018 collection, besides higher activity of antioxidant enzymes, energy metabolism and higher morphological damage; however, there was less oxidative damage and less metallothioneins induction, and these variables were strongly associated with the wet-2020 collection. In a temporal view, it was possible to observe a reduction in metal levels in fish, except in the mouth of the Doce River. These events can be explained by seasonal natural events, which tend the resuspension and boost metal levels, mainly in the mouth region during the rainy season.

An eye region-specific cross-dimension covariation enhancement effect in facial featural and configural information change detection

<p id=C2>Recent studies on face processing have shown our sensitivity to changes in facial configural and featural information. However, to our knowledge, the integration of the two types of facial information is poorly understood. To this end, this study explored the integration of facial information cross configural and featural dimensions within specific facial regions (i.e., eyes and mouth). <break/>The theoretical hypothesis includes (1) If participants can integrate facial information in both facial configural and featural dimensions, they should be more sensitive to changes in dual-dimension information as opposed to those in a single-dimension, that is a <italic>cross-dimension covariation enhancement effect</italic>; (2) The “cross-dimension covariation enhancement effect” should be face region-selective: It is expected to be stronger in the eyes region than the mouth region; (3) Face inversion should impair the “cross-dimension covariation enhancement effect”. To test these predictions, we designed two 3 (facial information type: configural change, featural change, both change) × 2 (face orientation: upright, inversion) experiments for eye region and mouth region information change respectively. Participants sensitivity to information change was measured in a 2-face discrimination task. <break/>Results revealed that (1) participants were more sensitive to “dual” change in eye region as compared to changes in either single configural or featural information; (2) this effect is both orientation-specific (i.e., no effect was found in eye region when faces were inverted) and region-specific (i.e., no effect was found in mouth region regardless of face orientation), suggesting that this effect cannot be simply explained by the extra facial information changes in the “dual” condition; (3) When single facial information was altered, face inversion reduced the detection of facial information changes in the mouth region, but not those changes in the eyes region. <break/>In sum, our findings showed that face cross-dimension (i.e., configural and featural) information integration occurred in the eye region of upright faces, but not in the mouth region or inverted faces. The face orientation-specificity and facial region-specificity suggested that the integration happens at facial-region level, possibly involving face holistic processing. The traditional face holistic processing hypothesis emphasized integrating facial information across whole face region. The current findings suggest that face region might act as a key component in the framework of holistic face processing theory. Finally, by revisiting the “perceptual field” hypothesis, the “expertise area” hypothesis, and the “region-selective holistic processing” hypothesis, we discussed an eye region-centered, hierarchical, multi-dimensional information integration hypothesis.

A Pipeline-based Low Complexity Dual Thresholds and Multiresolution Mouth Detection Method

Mouth detection is a basic step in the automatic diagnosis of buccal diseases. This paper proposes a method of using FPGA(Field Prog ram mable Gate Array) to detect the human mouth region in images, which adopts a pipelined design for high-speed operating. Thus, it can be applied to mouth motion detection as well. After an original image is processed regularly by median filtering, color conversion is performed to obtain its corresponding H component, which is used to create a partitioned binary image. Each constituent region of the binary image uses two thresholds for regional processing separately, which results in two binary images: one comprises the mouth and some other regions with a color close to that of the mouth, and the other indicates the position of the mouth. A logical AND is performed on these two binary images to calculate the border of mouth region with reduced resolution, which is then superimposed on the buffered original image to confirm the mouth region eventually. An FPGA-based scheme is presented, which shows the method could detect the whole mouth properly, with a maximum clock speed of 150MHz. In addition, processing an image of 200*200 only consumes 2178 Slice LUTs(Look Up Table), which is a relatively low resource consumption.

Examination of jet growth and jet-drive in the recorder by means of linearized numerical and lumped models

Physical modeling of the sound generation in recorder-like instruments is a challenging task due to the complex interaction of the air jet and the acoustical field occurring in the mouth region of the instrument. On one hand, simplified, lumped models were shown to capture some of the key properties of the process, while on the other hand, well-resolved direct computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation of the sound production is becoming more and more feasible thanks to the increasing computational capacity being available at hand. In this paper, the results of two-dimensional CFD simulations are combined with a one-dimensional acoustical system and a lumped jet-drive model as an attempt to bridge the gap between fully lumped models and direct CFD computations. A linearized model of the propagation of perturbation waves along the jet is proposed which takes the real velocity profile of the jet into account. Then, the Orr–Sommerfeld equation is solved for attaining the growth rate and phase speed of the perturbations in the frequency domain. The results are inserted into state-of-the-art lumped jet-drive models and are coupled to an acoustical waveguide. One novel model also accounts for the transient growth. Finally, the coupled system is utilized for predicting the playing frequencies of a tenor recorder as a function of the blowing pressure in the case of both steady-state and transient operation. Comparisons with experimental results show the validity of both the flow and acoustical models and also demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed fully linear model with respect to the prediction of the sounding frequencies and register change thresholds.

The Effect of Surgical Masks on the Featural and Configural Processing of Emotions.

From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of surgical masks became widespread. However, they occlude an important part of the face and make it difficult to decode and interpret other people’s emotions. To clarify the effect of surgical masks on configural and featural processing, participants completed a facial emotion recognition task to discriminate between happy, sad, angry, and neutral faces. Stimuli included fully visible faces, masked faces, and a cropped photo of the eyes or mouth region. Occlusion due to the surgical mask affects emotion recognition for sadness, anger, and neutral faces, although no significative differences were found in happiness recognition. Our findings suggest that happiness is recognized predominantly via featural processing.

Driver drowsiness detection system based on infinite feature selection algorithm and support vector machine

In recent times, driver drowsiness is one of the major reasons for road accidents that leads to severe physical injuries, deaths and significant economic losses. Hence, the existing driver drowsiness detection systems require a countermeasure device for the prevention of sleepiness related accident. This research paper aims to perform drowsiness detection with the help of driver’s eye state, head pose, and mouth state information. Initially, the input data were collected from the public drowsy driver database. Then, the Camera Response Model (CRM) was applied to improve the quality of collected data. Also, viola-jones, and Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi (KLT) approaches were used to detect and track the driver’s face, eye, and mouth regions from the input video. In this research study, Online Region-Based Active Contour Model (ORACM) algorithm was used to segment the driver’s mouth region in order to obtain the threshold value. Successively, feature extraction; Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) was applied to extract the features from the detected eye region. The extracted features of the eye region were combined with the threshold value of mouth region and head pose angle. After extracting the feature vectors, infinite approach was utilized to choose the relevant feature vectors. Finally, the selected features were classified using Support Vector Machine (SVM) for classifying the stages of drowsiness detection. Simulation outcome illustrated that the proposed system increased the classification accuracy up to 5.52% as related to hybrid Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM).

Binding sites of miRNA on the overexpressed genes of oral cancer using 7mer-seed match.

The microRNAs having a length of ~ 19-22 nucleotides are the small, non-coding RNAs. The evolution of microRNAs in many disorders may hold the key to tackle complex challenges. Oral cancer belongs to the group of head and neck cancer. It occurs in the mouth region that appears as an ulcer. In this study, we collected information on the overexpressed genes of oral cancer. The coding sequences of the genes were derived from NCBI and the entire set of human microRNAs present in miRBASE 21 was retrieved. The human microRNAs that can target the overexpressed genes of oral cancer were determined with the aid of our in-house software. The interaction between microRNAs and the overexpressed genes was evaluated with 7mer-m8 model of microRNA targeting. The genes DKK1 and APLN paired with only one miRNA i.e., miR-447 and miR-6087, respectively. But the genes INHBA and MMP1 were found to be targeted by 2 miRNAs, while the genes FN1, FAP, TGFPI, COL4A1, COL4A2, and LOXL2 were found to be targeted by 16, 5, 9, 18, 29, and 11 miRNAs. Subsequently, several measures such as free energy, translation efficiency, and cosine similarity metric were used to estimate the binding process. It was found that the target region's stability was higher than the upstream and downstream zones. The overexpressed genes' GC contents were calculated, revealing that the codons in target miRNA region were overall GC rich as well as GC3 rich. Lastly, gene ontology was performed to better understand each gene's involvement in biological processes, molecular function, and cellular component. Our study showed the role of microRNAs in gene repression, which could possibly aid in the prognosis and diagnosis of oral cancer.

Aloin isoforms (A and B) selectively inhibits proteolytic and deubiquitinating activity of papain like protease (PLpro) of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro

The most common host entry point of human adapted coronaviruses (CoV) including SARS-CoV-2 is through the initial colonization in the nostril and mouth region which is responsible for spread of the infection. Most recent studies suggest that the commercially available oral and nasal rinse products are effective in inhibiting the viral replication. However, the anti-viral mechanism of the active ingredients present in the oral rinses have not been studied. In the present study, we have assessed in vitro enzymatic inhibitory activity of active ingredients in the oral mouth rinse products: aloin A and B, chlorhexidine, eucalyptol, hexetidine, menthol, triclosan, methyl salicylate, sodium fluoride and povidone, against two important proteases of SARS-CoV-2 PLpro and 3CLpro. Our results indicate only aloin A and B effectively inhibited proteolytic activity of PLpro with an IC50 of 13.16 and 16.08 μM. Interestingly, neither of the aloin isoforms inhibited 3CLpro enzymatic activity. Computational structural modelling of aloin A and B interaction with PLpro revealed that, both aloin isoforms form hydrogen bond with Tyr268 of PLpro, which is critical for their proteolytic activity. Furthermore, 100 ns molecular dynamics (MD) simulation studies predicted that both aloin isoforms have strong interaction with Glu167, which is required for PLpro deubiquitination activity. Our results from the in vitro deubiquitinase inhibition assay show that aloin A and B isomers exhibit deubiquitination inhibitory activity with an IC50 value of 15.68 and 17.51 µM, respectively. In conclusion, the isoforms of aloin inhibit both proteolytic and the deubiquitinating activity of SARS-CoV-2 PLpro, suggesting potential in inhibiting the replication of SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Disseminated tense bullae on newborn

Disseminated tense bullae on newborn

VR facial expression tracking via action unit intensity regression model

Virtual Reality (VR) Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs), also known as VR headsets, are powerful devices that provide interaction between people and the virtual 3D world generated by a computer. For an immersive VR experience, the realistic facial animation of the participant is crucial. However, facial expression tracking has been one of the major challenges of facial animation. Existing face tracking methods often rely on a statistical model of the entire face, which is not feasible as occlusions arising from HMDs are inevitable. In this paper, we provide an overview of the current state of VR facial expression tracking and discuss bottlenecks for VR expression re-targeting. We introduce a baseline method for expression tracking from single view, partially occluded facial infrared (IR) images, which are captured by the HP reverb G2 VR headset camera. The experiment shows good visual prediction results for mouth region expressions from a single person.

Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma of Palate

Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ADCC) is one of the malignant salivary gland neoplasm and constitutes for 1% of head and neck malignancies and 22% of all salivary gland malignancies. Palate is the most common site to be involved in the oral cavity followed by parotid region, tongue, and floor of mouth. It is commonly seen in middle age population with slight female predilection. It usually appears as asymptomatic, slow growing infiltrative growth with high recurrence, often presence of perineural invasion which appears as pain. In this present case of ADCC, a 65-year-old female patient reported with a swelling on the left side of hard palatal area since 3 months with occasional pain and history of epistaxis, which was diagnosed clinically, radiographically, and histopathologically and confirmed by immunohistochemistry as Grade III solid variety of ADCC with a poor prognosis.