Evaluation of the Human Visual System in Cosmetics Foundation Colour Selection

Colour is one of the most important appearance attributes in a variety of fields including both science and industry. The focus of this work is on cosmetics field and specifically on the performance of the human visual system on the selection of foundation makeup colour that best matches with the human skin colour. In many cases, colour evaluations tend to be subjective and vary from person to person thereby producing challenging problems to quantify colour for objective evaluations and measurements. Although many researches have been done on colour quantification in last few decades, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate objectively a consumer's visual system in skin colour matching through a psychophysical experiment under different illuminations exploiting spectral measurements. In this paper, the experiment setup is discussed and the results from the experiment are presented. The correlation between observers' skin colour evaluations by using PANTONE Skin Tone Guide samples and spectroradiometer is assessed. Moreover, inter and intra observer variability are considered and commented. The results reveal differences between nine ethnic groups, between two genders, and between the measurements under two illuminants (i.e.D65 and F (fluorescent)). The results further show that skin colour assessment was done better under D65 than under F illuminant. The human visual system was three times worse than instrument in colour matching in terms of colour difference between skin and PANTONE Skin Tone Guide samples. The observers tend to choose lighter, less reddish, and consequently paler colours as the best match to their skin colour. These results have practical applications. They can be used to design, for example, an application for foundation colour selection based on correlation between colour measurements and human visual system based subjective evaluations.

Evaluation of laccases and melanization in clinical and environmental Cryptococcus neoformans samples by non-denaturing PAGE

The increased incidence of infections caused by the opportunistic pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans, which mainly affects immunocompromised patients but can also infect immunocompetent individuals, has needed additional studies on this micro-organism's pathogenicity and factors related to virulence, such as enzyme production, for a better understanding of the aetiology of cryptococcosis. The aim of this study was to verify the applicability of non-denaturing PAGE for analysis of laccases by quantification of the amount of melanin pigment produced by clinical and environmental strains of C. neoformans. After incubation of the gel with the substrate l-dopa, strains produced melanin spots of a bright brown to black colour. Quantification of these spots was performed by densitometry analysis and the amount of melanin produced was calculated and compared among the strains. All strains showed laccase activity. Serotype B strains showed a higher melanin intensity than serotype A strains. Over half of the clinical strains (56.2 %) showed the lowest melanin intensities, suggesting that melanin production may not be the main virulence factor against host defence. The clinical strain ICB 88 revealed two melanin spots on the gel, indicating the presence of two laccase isoforms. The environmental strains showed the highest values of melanin intensity, which may be related to previous exposure to environmental stress conditions.