Patent Picks—Ethnic Hair and Skin Research, Product Development

By: Rachel Grabenhofer

Posted: September 8, 2010

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Transforming a submitted image of a person based on a condition of the person
US Patent 7792379
Publication date: Sept. 7, 2010
Assignee: Accenture Global Services GmbH (Germany)

The present patent describes apparatuses, computer media and methods for altering a submitted image of a person that can be associated with various data parameters including ethnic group, e.g. Caucasian of English extraction or Asian of Chinese extraction; health condition; age; weight; height; sex and dietary information. According to the patent, the submitted image is transformed in accordance with the associated data and processed to obtain cluster information; the transformation parameter is then determined from cluster information and applied to a portion of the submitted image to render a transformed image. In addition, a transformation parameter may include a texture alteration parameter, a hair descriptive parameter, or a reshaping parameter. An error measure may be determined that gauges a discrepancy between a transformed image and an actual image.

Amplification methods and compositions
US Patent 7790393
Publication date: Sept. 7, 2010
Assignee: Third Wave Technologies Inc.

With the completion of the nucleic acid sequencing of the human genome, the demand for fast, reliable, cost-effective and user-friendly tests for genomics research and related drug design efforts has greatly increased. A number of institutions are actively mining the available genetic sequence information to identify correlations between genes, gene expression and phenotypes (e.g., disease states, metabolic responses, and the like). These analyses include an attempt to characterize the effect of gene mutations and genetic and gene expression heterogeneity in individuals and populations.

However, despite the wealth of sequence information available, information on the frequency and clinical relevance of many polymorphisms and other variations has yet to be obtained and validated. The human genome sequence generated was based on DNA samples collected from five donors who identified themselves as Hispanic, Asian, Caucasian, or African-American. The small number of human samples used to generate the reference sequences does not reflect the genetic diversity among population groups and individuals, thus attempts to analyze individuals based on the genome sequence information often fail because the target sequence for many individuals differs from the reference sequence. Differences may be on an individual-by-individual basis, but many follow regional population patterns, e.g., many correlate highly to race, ethnicity, geographic local, age, environmental exposure, etc.