The field of banana-string detection has taken a big or little step with publication of this new study: “Target detection of banana string and fruit stalk based on YOLOv3 deep learning network,” Rihong Zhang, Xiaomin Li, Lixue Zhu, Maokun Zhong, and Yihua Gao, in 2021 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and […]
If you savor the savoring of bullshit, here are two useful essays. Each was published in The Last Word on Nothing: “Yoga & the Bullshit Prevention Protocol” by Ann Finkbeiner. and “The Pocket Guide to Bullshit Prevention” by Michelle Nijhuis. The ‘Pocket Guide’ includes this graphic: An older guide, harmonious with the Nujhuis “Pocket Guide”, […]
You might find that reading comic books is complex and confusing, if you are a machine. If both of those ifs afflict you, you might seek relief by reading this new study: “Deep CNN-based Speech Balloon Detection and Segmentation for Comic Books,” David Dubray, Jochen Laubrock, arXiv:1902.08137v1, 2019. (Thanks to Mason Porter for bringing this […]
News.com.au reports: Nobel winner’s device listens to your gut A non-invasive way for detecting gut disorders could replace the dreaded colonoscopy, West Australian researchers say Gut disorders could be detected without the need for dreaded, invasive colonoscopies thanks to an invention by West Australian researchers, led by a Nobel Prize laureate. A University of WA […]
Acoustic detection of mouse scratching has been automated at least once. This report tells about the mice involved, and about their scratching, and about the detection — done acoustically — of that scratching: “Automated Acoustic Detection of Mouse Scratching,” Peter Elliott, Max G’Sell, Lindsey M. Snyder, Sarah E. Ross, and Valérie Ventura, PLoS ONE, vol. […]
Ig Nobel Prize winners Marie Dacke and Emily Baird are now exploring how how bees collide or don’t is different from how fish collide or don’t. They and their colleagues have just published a study of the matter. The 2013 Ig Nobel Prize jointly in the fields of biology and astronomy was awarded to Marie Dacke, Emily […]
Bit by bit, people work to devise improvements in procedures related to explosions. This study tells of one such effort: “Landmine-detection rats: An evaluation of reinforcement procedures under simulated operational conditions,” Amanda Mahoney, Kate Lalonde, Timothy Edwards, Christophe Cox, Bart Weetjens and Alan Poling [pictured here], Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, epub March […]
Dr. Khiet Truong, who is a post-doctoral researcher at the Human Media Interaction (HMI) group of the University of Twente, The Netherlands, is not only one of the co-authors of the ‘Laughing Mirror‘ paper featured here recently, but is also a key figure in a number of other laughter-centric research projects. See for example : […]
Eric Keeand Hany Farid created algorithms to detect which portions of a photograph have been monkeyed with, and how much monkeying was done to each portion. Their study is “A Perceptual Metric for Photo Retouching,” Eric Kee [pictured here — we leave it to you to determine whether the image has been enhanced] and Hany Farid, […]
Men who drop their trousers and display their genitals on the internet can now be detected more reliably and automatically, is the thrust of this new study: “SafeVchat: Detecting Obscene Content and Misbehaving Users in Online Video Chat Services“, Xinyu Xing, Yu-Li Liang, Hanqiang Cheng, Jianxun Dang, Sui Huang, Richard Han, Xue Liu, Qin Lv, […]