#vision
Dragonflies can see by switching “on” and “off”
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have discovered a novel and complex visual circuit in a dragonfly’s brain that could one day help to improve vision systems for robots.
Dr Steven Wiederman and Associate Professor David O'Carroll from the University’s Centre for Neuroscience Research have been studying the underlying processes of insect vision and applying that knowledge in robotics and artificial vision systems.
Their latest discovery, published this month in The Journal of Neuroscience, is that the brains of dragonflies combine opposite pathways - both an ON and OFF switch - when processing information about simple dark objects.
“To perceive the edges of objects and changes in light or darkness, the brains of many animals, including insects, frogs, and even humans, use two independent pathways, known as ON and OFF channels,” says lead author Dr Steven Wiederman.
“Most animals will use a combination of ON switches with other ON switches in the brain, or OFF and OFF, depending on the circumstances. But what we show occurring in the dragonfly’s brain is the combination of both OFF and ON switches. This happens in response to simple dark objects, likely to represent potential prey to this aerial predator.
"Although we’ve found this new visual circuit in the dragonfly, it’s possible that many other animals could also have this circuit for perceiving various objects,” Dr Wiederman says.
The researchers were able to record their results directly from ‘target-selective’ neurons in dragonflies’ brains. They presented the dragonflies with moving lights that changed in intensity, as well as both light and dark targets.
“We discovered that the responses to the dark targets were much greater than we expected, and that the dragonfly’s ability to respond to a dark moving target is from the correlation of opposite contrast pathways: OFF with ON,” Dr Wiederman says.
“The exact mechanisms that occur in the brain for this to happen are of great interest in visual neurosciences generally, as well as for solving engineering applications in target detection and tracking. Understanding how visual systems work can have a range of outcomes, such as in the development of neural prosthetics and improvements in robot vision.
"A project is now underway at the University of Adelaide to translate much of the research we’ve conducted into a robot, to see if it can emulate the dragonfly’s vision and movement. This project is well underway and once complete, watching our autonomous dragonfly robot will be very exciting,” he says.
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Absolutely stellar work by Michael Cho!
Wanda Supermacy
so i had my eyes checked today. ive had horrible vision since…. elementary school. mostly a combination of genertics (thanks dad) and a LOT of reading, computer usage, etc. (and i mean lots.)
but something i learned today is that due to my absolutely abysmal vision, i have a higher chance of retinal detachment, which is about as fun as it sounds. (treatment rate is about 95% but still… i dont want it…) how much of a higher chance, you may ask? 1 in 20 as opposed to the typical 1 in 300 chance! which sucks! so i want to talk about measures for reducing eye strain and consequentially, letting people keep better vision.
large print: its associated with old people who can’t read the small print, but why not just help people from getting bad eyes in the first place by making everything available in large, easy to read fonts. e readers also let ppl do this, but then there’s the fact that screens cause more eye strain so… idk
audio: i love that @solarpunkpress is already doing this but people dont need to read as much when they can listen to things. obviously not as good for academic texts etc but still. imagine solarpunk audio gardens, where people go to listen to audiobooks of short stories or poetry or w/e, in a garden with flowers, tables, maybe a café. they could also be designed to be especially friendly to the visually impaired, taking advantage of scent in garden design idk
thats the extent of my ideas feel free to comment, add, etc
I’m doing a set of park designs for my final in one of my classes and I’m definitely running with the idea of audio gardens. –Watson
cool! you’re at hampshire right? tell me what you come up with!
Yeah! It’s for my Green Cities class, which is all about the architecture of parks. I’m going to design a proposed set of new public parks for my home town. (It’ll be pretty ambitious for a town that probably doesn’t want to build new parks anyway, but I have every intention of sending it to the local planning people when I’m done, regardless.)
I’m really excited about this project, because it’s going to be a lot of fun, and really interesting, to try and develop an idea of a whole system of parks for a complete community, that meets as many needs as possible. It feels like a very solarpunk project to me – and even if it ends up not being (because I have to be at least a little realistic about technology, budgets, and what I could persuade even an imaginary town council to agree to) I think it’ll still be a really good learning experience for the details of those problems.
Building green spaces that are specifically optimized for use by blind or visually impaired people, and green spaces that are built with use of personal technology in mind, are two big areas of function that I hadn’t really thought about yet.
cool!
This iconic song was used in the trailers, which I suspect was itself a pop-culture reference to an X-Files episode that featured the song prominently as the kill switch to an evil A.I. not unlike Ultron and a girl who sacrificed herself to join her dead boyfriend in cyberspace. Sound similar? Mulder and Scully even debate at the end on whether sentient artificial life is the same as human life.
I just came back from Infinity War. What can I say? If you didn’t buy tickets yet - do it. I love you all ♥️
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HAS SHE BEEN FUCKING VISIONS REANIMATED C O R P S E ?!?
Dear God,
please give me a vision (or thank you for the vision you have given me) for what you want to accomplish through me. I pray that you will open my eyes, give me wisdom and guidance, and prevent me from putting the “cart before the horse.” Help me to wait when I should wait and to act when I should act. Thank you for finding me worthy, through the blood and righteousness of Christ, to be a child of yours and to be a participant in your plans for today.
I praise you God.
In Jesus’ name,
amen.
Marvel, Wandavision, Episode 6: Here, have some Quicksilver
Me:N E A T!
Marvel, Wandavision, Episode 9: So, uh, it was a double, dude, have a nice day
Me: I kinda have a hard time believing a single word you’re saying
So, to summarize the Wandavision’s season’s finale. It was G R E A TandN E A T and I absolutely adored every second of the episode, but I kinda have a hard time believing three things and also, spoilers:
A) Agatha Harkness is just a small-series villain.
No. I think she’ll show up in the future movies/series and will not only play some (smaller or greater) role in Wanda’s future. I even dare to say that she won’t only show up, but she’ll move on the heroes/ally side of the deal. In the comics, she’s not all bad. Wanda even calls her Aunt Agatha in some instances and since Marvel stays more or less true to all the comics they use as a reference for this series, I think this isn’t the last we’ve seen of her.
B) Quicksilver wasn’t ever in the series since it was ‘a doppelganger’.
Okay, stick with me for a while. I surely need to admit that I am a huge “X-Men Quicksilver” fan, it’s kinda obvious. But… Marvel ain’t be pulling ‘they’re just extremely similar, haha’ trick on me. It’s entirely plausible that Doctor Strange had already discovered the multiverse (including mutants and X-Men), so why Agatha woudln’t have the skill to simply snatch someone from the other dimension if she’s such a powerful witch? Also, it would’ve served as a great introduction to the multiverse, rather than just ‘oh, it, in fact, isn’t the real Quicksilver from another dimension, I’m so random, lolz’ - literally, what would be its point then?
I think Marvel is playing another school play on the audience, we’ve seen this shit in the past - like manipulating the trailers to seem the story look different, playing the ‘oh no, Loki’s dead’ charade for quite a long time and I think they’re manipulating the Falcon and Winter Soldier trailers now as well. I think there’s another explanation of what happened just around the corner somewhere.
C)So, Vision is technically alive, right?
As we’ve all witnessed, Wanda’s Vision quite literally transfered/reapparated the memories into/inside Hayward’s Vision’s head, which quite literally means that the old Vision is more or less back into the play as well. The question is, where the fuck did he go after the intellectual big brain battle Vision and the Vision had? Where is he and when is he going to pop back in?
Wandavision is crushing my heart
Hi! Enjoy these stupid limericks I just wrote:
There once was a woman named Wanda
Of her robot husband she was fonda.
But he was dead
And she saw red
Tossing your ass into the great beyond-a
There once was a man named Buck
Who had shit-all kind of luck
He lost his left arm
And most of his charm
And always woke up asking “What the fuck?”
There was a pipsqueak name Steve
Whose friends could hardly believe
He’d get his ass beat
And would think it neat
Even when Bucky et al. told him to leave
There once was a soldier named Sam
Who found himself on the lam
Thanks to Steve
Who would up and leave
And leave him to get Bucky out of a jam
Okay, off to continue to avoid the WIPs I have. Byeeeee!
okay so I know some of these are Guardians of the Galaxy and then characters like Dr. Strange belong to entirely different groups but whatever this was fun to make
Vivi - Vision
- in the Loonaverse, Vivi is an android just like Vision
- is the oldest member, which could correlate to Vision being sort of created by the Mind Stone (I don’t know how to phrase that better)
Yves - Scarlet Witch
- her color is burgundy
- apparently her and Vivi are a popular ship (I don’t really know, I’m not big into shipping)
Jinsoul - Thor
- wears an eyepatch (at least in the Sweet Crazy Love mv)
- gorgeous blonde hair
Haseul - Captain America
- the leader
- mv takes place in a frozen landscape with a crashed plane
Kim Lip - Quicksilver
- her power as part of Odd Eye Circle is super speed
- close with Yves (Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are siblings)
Chuu - Hawkeye
- archery plays a big role in the mv for Heart Attack
- tbh she’s my bias and Hawkeye is my favorite Avenger so that played a small part in me pairing them up
Heejin - Iron Man
- was the first of the group to be introduced
- was kind of the de facto leader for a while
Hyunjin - Black Panther
- her representative animal is a cat
- speaks a language no one else understands (“Hyunjinese” vs isiXhosa)
Gowon - Gamora
- her color is eden green basically the color of Gamora’s skin
- in the Luv4eva mv, she’s the one who looks back while leaving Olivia Hye behind
Choerry - Dr. Strange
- has the ability to travel between worlds
- her animal being a fruit bat reminds me of Dr. Strange’s cape for some reason
Olivia Hye - Nebula
- left behind by Gowon and the others in the Luv4eva mv, like Nebula was left by Gamora
- in the Loonaverse she comes to forgive the others and love herself later (according to several fan theories I’ve read)
Yeojin - Spiderman
- the baby of the group, must be protected at all times
- also super sassy and cute
i actually had this done a while ago, don’t know why i’m only getting around to putting it up now
Vision tribute cause damn, that was a wonderful book, it juist got a hardcover edition too, go get it even if you’re not a marvel fan. ITS HELLA GOOD
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Seer cat sees good things in your near-future~
