Distortion

Smell loss, or anosmia, is a well-known symptom of COVID. Some people don’t experience full-blown loss but rather changes in or distortion of smell, a condition known as parosmia. Studies estimate that between 25 and 75 percent of those with a COVID infection experience long-term parosmia. Now an injection that blocks nerve pain could potentially provide relief for some people.The technique, known as a stellate ganglion block, has been used for decades to treat all sorts of pain conditions. During the procedure,…

Social Distortion will return to the road in 2024 after frontman Mike Ness offered a positive update on his battle with tonsil cancer.  The SoCal punk band will kick off a co-headlining run with Epitaph peers Bad Religion — and additional support from the Lovebombs — April 9 in Bakersfield, California. The tour will wrap May 19 in Columbus, Ohio. Artist pre-sale tickets are available starting today, Dec. 12, while a general on-sale is slated for Dec. 15th at 10 a.m. local time. Full info is available on Social…

Morphological Operations in DetailMorphological operation is a technique to process an image based on its shape. It works on comparing the neighboring pixels to structure an image. The process is preferable for binary images ({0,1} or {0,255}).How does the process work?Before getting familiar with morphological operations, we need to have knowledge about some basic terminologies — Structuring Element, Miss, Hit and Fit.Figure 1: Morphological Operation’s Elements (Image By Author)Structuring ElementIt’s a small piece of…

How to characterize the radial distortion of a camera-lens pair, based on a simple modelPhoto by Charl Folscher on UnsplashConsumer-grade cameras and lenses are cheap and ubiquitous. Unfortunately, unlike their industrial counterparts, they were not designed to be used as tools for precise measurements in computer vision applications.Among the various types of distortion, the most visible one affecting a low-grade camera and lens is radial distortion. Radial distortion is a nonlinearity between the viewing angle of an…

By Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy Sciences September 9, 2022Lattice distortion in lead halide perovskite quantum dots leads to a fine structure gap and coherent exciton quantum beating. Credit: DICPScientists just reported the utilization of lattice distortion in lead halide perovskite quantum dots to control their exciton fine structure. The researchers were led by Prof. Kaifeng Wu from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with…

Arturia has been building out its collection of effects plugins over the last few years. One notable blind spot was distortion. It wasn't until FX Collection 3 launched in June that the company would introduce its first dedicated distortion plugins. Dist OpAmp-21 and Dist Tube-Culture are solid, if unspectacular entries in the world of dirt effects. But the new Dist Coldfire is something different. It might just be the most interesting and most versatile distortion plugin I've ever used.  Where OpAmp-21 and Tube-Culture…

It’s useful to have some tools and skills to clean up a noisy audio file. Perhaps when digitizing an old and precious family tape recording or when you have captured that amazing interview for your podcast but there’s an annoying background noise.Whilst you can’t make everything perfect there are lots of approaches to improving an audio file and, rather excellently, lots of these tools are found already built into the free and open source audio editor Audacity. Audacity can be used as an audio recorder with multiple…