Can state-of -the-art visual analysis software always be relied on to find the elephant in an image? Akshay Raj Dhamija and colleagues at the VAST lab (Vision And Security Technology) at the Department of Computer Science, at University of Colorado, at Colorado Springs, US. have recently investigated the robustness of automated elephant detector systems. The team […]
Tag: Elephant
Elephant Trunk (new patent)
Robert Dale Beadles of Lodi, California, US, has just been granted a new US patent. Clues to its intended function can be seen in the drawing : 704 being a handle, and 703 being a wheel. “In summary, the present container for items and personal effects for travel will be seen to provide not only […]
Sheep Also Yawn (contagiously)
The 2011 Ig Nobel Physiology Prize was shared by Anna Wilkinson (of the UK), Natalie Sebanz (of the Netherlands, Hungary, and Austria), Isabella Mandl (of Austria) and Ludwig Huber (of Austria) for their study ‘No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise.’ (published in Current Zoology, vol. 57, no. 4, 2011. pp. 477-84.) Since then, […]
Things researchers do with ping-pong balls
If you are one of those who thinks that a ping-pong (table tennis) ball is only good for playing ping-pong (table tennis) then you’d be wrong. Researchers across the globe have found them useful in many ways – for example: ○ To simulate snow avalanches (videos here in .avi format) ○ As a surgical aid […]
How now, warm cow [Podcast 50]
Heat loss from a cow — that’s the deal in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams —with dramatic readings by Daniel Rosenberg — tells about: Heat loss from a cow — Khan, Zahid A., Irfan Anjum Badruddin, G. A. Quadir, and K. N. Seetharamu (2006). ‘A Quick and Accurate […]
The role of flapping elephant ears in heat dissipation
Elephants are big, and they get hot. Especially in Africa. Thus, from the elephant’s point of view, there’s sometimes an urgent necessity to dissipate excess heat. Some investigators have suggested that flapping their large ears (strictly, their ‘pinnae’) could provide a significant heat-loss mechanism. (e.g. Buss, I. O., and Estes, J. A., 1971, ‘The Functional […]
Elephant Trumpets, the Acoustics of
“Because trumpeting is often associated with intensely social events, expressing the very high level of excitement and importance of the event, it is not easy to ask elephants for trumpet calls!” But that did not deter a research team at the Laboratoire d’Acoustique de l’Université du Maine, Le Mans, France (assisted by the Zoo de […]
Another Possible Use, to the Elephant, of Elephant Hair
Elephant hair — the hair found on elephants — poses intricate puzzles for those who are inclined to look closely. This study works at solving one set of those puzzles: “What Is the Use of Elephant Hair?” Conor L. Myhrvold, Howard A. Stone, Elie Bou-Zeid [pictured here], PLoS ONE, 7(10), 2012, e47018. The authors, at […]
‘The night Dublin dissected an elephant’
Mary Mulvihill did a five-minute talk about ‘The night Dublin dissected an elephant’. It (the night Dublin dissected an elephant — not Mulvihill’s talk!) was was a big, smelly moment in the history of science. Here’s video of her talk: Allen Mullin did the dissection, way back when, in 1681. He described it in a […]
Tony and Dali and an elephant
Mechanical engineering, history, art, and semiotics all come together or fall apart in this automaton called “The Temptation of St. Anthony, After Salvadore Dali“: