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: image
Cigarettes That Are Visually Offputting (research study)
A number of countries have passed laws which require cigarette manufacturers to show ‘denormalising’ images on their packaging. To take things a step further, why not make the cigarettes themselves more unappealing? This was the question tackled by a joint Australian – New Zealand research team in 2015. A set of potentially unpleasant cigarette designs […]
Looking at Tyrells potato crisp packets (image ecology study)
Within the academic field of aesthetics, there aren’t all that many essays written on about potato crisp packets. There is, however, at least one. Karin Wagner, who is professor and associate head of department for research in art history and visual studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, specialises in the areas […]
Examining Bits from the Brains of Jugglers
The international effort to see what, if anything, special might happen to, in, or with the brains of jugglers continues. Jugglers in Germany are the subject of this study. At the time of the study, each juggler stopped juggling and instead clambered into an imaging machine: “Juggling revisited – a voxel based morphometry study with […]
A technological way to create temporary images in/on a head of hair
Everyone with a head of hair—not just the members of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS)—is likely to be intrigued by this new patent for creating images in/on a head of hair. Think of the images as nano-patterned temporary tattoos, if you like: “Hair treatment process providing dispersed colors by light diffraction,” US patent […]
A grave puzzling incident in Britain
The Chester (UK) Chronicle reports, on October 17, 2013: A grieving family is upset after being ordered to remove personalised inscriptions from their loved one’s headstone comprising a Sudoku puzzle and mathematical equation. Widow Angela Robinson of Barton Road, Farndon, is prepared to fight Farndon Parish Council all the way over its request that engravings […]
An inside, moving look at beatboxing body parts
MRI, a tool used to make images of all sorts of body parts (and sometimes, video of the motions thereof) has been used to look at beatboxing: “Para-Linguistic Mechanisms of Production in Human ‘Beatboxing’: a Real-time Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study“, Michael I. Proctor, Shrikanth Narayanan [pictured here], and Krishna Nayak, In Interdisciplinary Workshop on Singing […]
Virtual Muscularity
Nicole Martins who is Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Telecommunications,Indiana University, US, has undertaken (along with colleagues from the University of Southern California, and the University of Illinois) a unique investigation into ‘Virtual muscularity’. The study sought to quantify the body sizes of male video-game characters to determine whether such images reflect actual bodies […]