Mondrian: An Agile Visualization Framework

Data visualization is the process of representing data as pictures to support reasoning about the underlying data. For the interpretation to be as easy as possible, we need to be as close as possible to the original data. As most visualization tools have an internal meta-model, which is different from the one for the presented data, they usually need to duplicate the original data to conform to their meta-model. This leads to an increase in the resources needed, increase which is not always justified. In this work we argue for the need of having an engine that is as close as possible to the data and we present our solution of moving the visualization tool to the data, instead of moving the data to the visualization tool. Our solution also emphasizes the necessity of reusing basic blocks to express complex visualizations and allowing the programmer to script the visualization using his preferred tools, rather than a third party format. As a validation of the expressiveness of our framework, we show how we express several already published visualizations and describe the pros and cons of the approach.

Early - Late Miocene palaeoclimate data and palaefloras of 48 samples from Southern China

Southern China, especially Yunnan, has undergone high tectonic activity caused by the uplift of Himalayan Mountains during the Neogene, which led to a fast changing palaeogeography. Previous study shows that Southern China has been influenced by the Asian Monsoon since at least the Early Miocene. However, it is yet not well understood how intense the Miocene monsoon system was. In the present study, 63 fossil floras of 16 localities from Southern China are compiled and evaluated for obtaining available information concerning floristic composition, stratigraphic age, sedimentology, etc. Based on such reliable information, selected mega- and micro-floras have been analysed with the coexistence approach to obtain quantitative palaeoclimate data. Visualization of climate results in maps shows a distinct spatial differentiation in Southern China during the Miocene. Higher seasonalities of temperature and precipitation occur in the north and south parts of Southern China, respectively. During the Miocene, most regions of Southern China and Europe were both warm and humid. Central Eurasia was likely to be an arid center, which gradually spread westward and eastward. Our data provide information about Miocene climate patterns in Southern China and about the evolution of these patterns throughout the Miocene, and is also crucial to unravel and understand the climatic signals of global cooling and tectonic uplift.

Methods of visualization and analysis of cardiac depolarization in the three dimensional space

The master thesis presents methods for intellectual analysis and visualization 3D EKG in order to increase the efficiency of ECG analysis by extracting additional data. Visualization is presented as part of the signal analysis tasks considered imaging techniques and their mathematical description. Have been developed algorithms for calculating and visualizing the signal attributes are described using mathematical methods and tools for mining signal. The model of patterns searching for comparison purposes of accuracy of methods was constructed, problems of a clustering and classification of data are solved, the program of visualization of data is also developed. This approach gives the largest accuracy in a task of the intellectual analysis that is confirmed in this work. Considered visualization and analysis techniques are also applicable to the multi-dimensional signals of a different kind.

Music Notes: Exploring Music Listening Data as a Visual Representation of Self

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

What Google Maps can do for Biomedical Data Dissemination: Examples and a Design Study

Background: Biologists often need to assess whether unfamiliar datasets warrant the time investment required for more detailed exploration. Basing such assessments on brief descriptions provided by data publishers is unwieldy for large datasets that contain insights dependent on specific scientific questions. Alternatively, using complex software systems for a preliminary analysis may be deemed as too time consuming in itself, especially for unfamiliar data types and formats. This may lead to wasted analysis time and discarding of potentially useful data. Results: We present an exploration of design opportunities that the Google Maps interface offers to biomedical data visualization. In particular, we focus on synergies between visualization techniques and Google Maps that facilitate the development of biological visualizations which have both low-overhead and sufficient expressivity to support the exploration of data at multiple scales. The methods we explore rely on displaying pre-rendered visualizations of biological data in browsers, with sparse yet powerful interactions, by using the Google Maps API. We structure our discussion around five visualizations: a gene co-regulation visualization, a heatmap viewer, a genome browser, a protein interaction network, and a planar visualization of white matter in the brain. Feedback from collaborative work with domain experts suggests that our Google Maps visualizations offer multiple, scale-dependent perspectives and can be particularly helpful for unfamiliar datasets due to their accessibility. We also find that users, particularly those less experienced with computer use, are attracted by the familiarity of the Google Maps API. Our five implementations introduce design elements that can benefit visualization developers. Conclusions: We describe a low-overhead approach that lets biologists access readily analyzed views of unfamiliar scientific datasets. We rely on pre-computed visualizations prepared by data experts, accompanied by sparse and intuitive interactions, and distributed via the familiar Google Maps framework. Our contributions are an evaluation demonstrating the validity and opportunities of this approach, a set of design guidelines benefiting those wanting to create such visualizations, and five concrete example visualizations.

Classificazione e selezione di tecniche di visualizzazione per Big Data Analytics

La tesi presenta uno studio della libreria grafica per web D3, sviluppata in javascript, e ne presenta una catalogazione dei grafici implementati e reperibili sul web. Lo scopo è quello di valutare la libreria e studiarne i pregi e difetti per capire se sia opportuno utilizzarla nell'ambito di un progetto Europeo. Per fare questo vengono studiati i metodi di classificazione dei grafici presenti in letteratura e viene esposto e descritto lo stato dell'arte del data visualization. Viene poi descritto il metodo di classificazione proposto dal team di progettazione e catalogata la galleria di grafici presente sul sito della libreria D3. Infine viene presentato e studiato in maniera formale un algoritmo per selezionare un grafico in base alle esigenze dell'utente.

RDA and Linked Data: A New Way to Look at the Henson Collection

In 2005, the University of Maryland acquired over 70 digital videos spanning 35 years of Jim Henson’s groundbreaking work in television and film. To support in-house discovery and use, the collection was cataloged in detail using AACR2 and MARC21, and a web-based finding aid was also created. In the past year, I created an "r-ball" (a linked data set described using RDA) of these same resources. The presentation will compare and contrast these three ways of accessing the Jim Henson Works collection, with insights gleaned from providing resource discovery using RIMMF (RDA in Many Metadata Formats).

Sextant. A spatial data infrastructure for marine environments

At national and European levels, in various projects, data products are developed to provide end-users and stakeholders with homogeneously qualified observation compilation or analysis. Ifremer has developed a spatial data infrastructure for marine environment, called Sextant, in order to manage, share and retrieve these products for its partners and the general public. Thanks to the OGC and ISO standard and INSPIRE compliance, the infrastructure provides a unique framework to federate homogeneous descriptions and access to marine data products processed in various contexts, at national level or European level for DG research (SeaDataNet), DG Mare (EMODNET) and DG Growth (Copernicus MEMS). The discovery service of Sextant is based on the metadata catalogue. The data description is normalized according to ISO 191XX series standards and Inspire recommendations. Access to the catalogue is provided by the standard OGC service, Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW 2.0.2). Data visualization and data downloading are available through standard OGC services, Web Map Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS). Several OGC services are provided within Sextant, according to marine themes, regions and projects. Depending on the file format, WMTS services are used for large images, such as hyperspectral images, or NcWMS services for gridded data, such as climatology models. New functions are developped to improve the visualization, analyse and access to data, eg : data filtering, online spatial processing with WPS services and acces to sensor data with SOS services.

Use of advanced technology videotapes in the delivery of structural engineering courses

A teaching and learning development project is currently under way at Queensland University of Technology to develop advanced technology videotapes for use with the delivery of structural engineering courses. These tapes consist of integrated computer and laboratory simulations of important concepts, and behaviour of structures and their components for a number of structural engineering subjects. They will be used as part of the regular lectures and thus will not only improve the quality of lectures and learning environment, but also will be able to replace the ever-dwindling laboratory teaching in these subjects. The use of these videotapes, developed using advanced computer graphics, data visualization and video technologies, will enrich the learning process of the current diverse engineering student body. This paper presents the details of this new method, the methodology used, the results and evaluation in relation to one of the structural engineering subjects, steel structures.

Use of advanced technology videotapes in the delivery of structual engineering courses

A teaching and learning development project is currently under way at Queensland University of Technology to develop advanced technology videotapes for use with the delivery of structural engineering courses. These tapes consist of integrated computer and laboratory simulations of important concepts, and behaviour of structures and their components for a number of structural engineering subjects. They will be used as part of the regular lectures and thus will not only improve the quality of lectures and learning environment, but also will be able to replace the ever-dwindling laboratory teaching in these subjects. The use of these videotapes, developed using advanced computer graphics, data visualization and video technologies, will enrich the learning process of the current diverse engineering student body. This paper presents the details of this new method, the methodology used, the results and evaluation in relation to one of the structural engineering subjects, steel structures.

Every One, Every Day

Creative Statement: “There are those who see Planet Earth as a gigantic living being, one that feeds and nurtures humanity and myriad other species – an entity that must be cared for. Then there are those who see it as a rock full of riches to be pilfered heedlessly in a short-term quest for over-abundance. This ‘cradle to grave’ mentality, it would seem, is taking its toll (unless you’re a virulent disbeliever in climate change). Why not, ask artists Priscilla Bracks and Gavin Sade, take a different approach? To this end they have set out on a near impossible task; to visualise the staggering quantity of carbon produced by Australia every year. Their eerie, glowing plastic cube resembles something straight out of Dr Who or The X Files. And, like the best science fiction, it has technical realities at its heart. Every One, Every Day tangibly illustrates our greenhouse gas output – its 27m3 volume is approximately the amount of green-house gas emitted per capita, daily. Every One, Every Dayis lit by an array of LED’s displaying light patterns representing energy use generated by data from the Australian Energy Market. Every One, Every Day was formed from recycled, polyethylene – used milk bottles – ‘lent’ to the artists by a Visy recycling facility. At the end of the Vivid Festival this plastic will be returned to Visy, where it will re-enter the stream of ‘technical nutrients.’ Could we make another world? One that emulates the continuing cycles of nature? One that uses our ‘technical nutrients’ such as plastic and steel in continual cycles, just like a deciduous tree dropping leaves to compost itself and keep it’s roots warm and moist?” (Ashleigh Crawford. Melbourne – April, 2013) Artistic Research Statement: The research focus of this work is on exploring how to represent complex statistics and data at a human scale, and how produce a work where a large percentage of the materials could be recycled. The surface of Every One, Every Day is clad in tiles made from polyethylene, from primarily recycled milk bottles, ‘lent’ to the artists by the Visy recycling facility in Sydney. The tiles will be returned to Visy for recycling. As such the work can be viewed as an intervention in the industrial ecology of polyethylene, and in the process demonstrates how to sustain cycles of technical materials – by taking the output of a recycling facility back to a manufacturer to produce usable materials. In terms of data visualisation, Every One, Every Day takes the form of a cube with a volume of 27 cubic meters. The annual per capita emissions figures for Australia are cited as ranging between 18 to 25 tons. Assuming the lower figure, 18tons per capital annually, the 27 cubic meters represents approximately one day per capita of CO2 emissions – where CO2 is a gas at 15C and 1 atmosphere of pressure. The work also explores real time data visualisation by using an array of 600 controllable LEDs inside the cube. Illumination patterns are derived from a real time data from the Australian Energy Market, using the dispatch interval price and demand graph for New South Wales. The two variables of demand and price are mapped to properties of the illumination - hue, brightness, movement, frequency etc. The research underpinning the project spanned industrial ecology to data visualization and public art practices. The result is that Every One, Every Day is one of the first public artworks that successfully bring together materials, physical form, and real time data representation in a unified whole.

The ECOS Project. An interactive simulation to promote an ECO-friendly universe.

Custom designed for display on the Cube Installation situated in the new Science and Engineering Centre (SEC) at QUT, the ECOS project is a playful interface that uses real-time weather data to simulate how a five-star energy building operates in climates all over the world. In collaboration with the SEC building managers, the ECOS Project incorporates energy consumption and generation data of the building into an interactive simulation, which is both engaging to users and highly informative, and which invites play and reflection on the roles of green buildings. ECOS focuses on the principle that humans can have both a positive and negative impact on ecosystems with both local and global consequence. The ECOS project draws on the practice of Eco-Visualisation, a term used to encapsulate the important merging of environmental data visualization with the philosophy of sustainability. Holmes (2007) uses the term Eco-Visualisation (EV) to refer to data visualisations that ‘display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy’. EVs are commonly artifacts of interaction design, information design, interface design and industrial design, but are informed by various intellectual disciplines that have shared interests in sustainability. As a result of surveying a number of projects, Pierce, Odom and Blevis (2008) outline strategies for designing and evaluating effective EVs, including ‘connecting behavior to material impacts of consumption, encouraging playful engagement and exploration with energy, raising public awareness and facilitating discussion, and stimulating critical reflection.’ Consequently, Froehlich (2010) and his colleagues also use the term ‘Eco-feedback technology’ to describe the same field. ‘Green IT’ is another variation which Tomlinson (2010) describes as a ‘field at the juncture of two trends… the growing concern over environmental issues’ and ‘the use of digital tools and techniques for manipulating information.’ The ECOS Project team is guided by these principles, but more importantly, propose an example for how these principles may be achieved. The ECOS Project presents a simplified interface to the very complex domain of thermodynamic and climate modeling. From a mathematical perspective, the simulation can be divided into two models, which interact and compete for balance – the comfort of ECOS’ virtual denizens and the ecological and environmental health of the virtual world. The comfort model is based on the study of psychometrics, and specifically those relating to human comfort. This provides baseline micro-climatic values for what constitutes a comfortable working environment within the QUT SEC buildings. The difference between the ambient outside temperature (as determined by polling the Google Weather API for live weather data) and the internal thermostat of the building (as set by the user) allows us to estimate the energy required to either heat or cool the building. Once the energy requirements can be ascertained, this is then balanced with the ability of the building to produce enough power from green energy sources (solar, wind and gas) to cover its energy requirements. Calculating the relative amount of energy produced by wind and solar can be done by, in the case of solar for example, considering the size of panel and the amount of solar radiation it is receiving at any given time, which in turn can be estimated based on the temperature and conditions returned by the live weather API. Some of these variables can be altered by the user, allowing them to attempt to optimize the health of the building. The variables that can be changed are the budget allocated to green energy sources such as the Solar Panels, Wind Generator and the Air conditioning to control the internal building temperature. These variables influence the energy input and output variables, modeled on the real energy usage statistics drawn from the SEC data provided by the building managers.

Contours in Motion

My practice-led research explores and maps workflows for generating experimental creative work involving inertia based motion capture technology. Motion capture has often been used as a way to bridge animation and dance resulting in abstracted visuals outcomes. In early works this process was largely done by rotoscoping, reference footage and mechanical forms of motion capture. With the evolution of technology, optical and inertial forms of motion capture are now more accessible and able to accurately capture a larger range of complex movements. The creative work titled “Contours in Motion” was the first in a series of studies on captured motion data used to generating experimental visual forms that reverberate in space and time. With the source or ‘seed’ comes from using an Xsens MVN - Inertial Motion Capture system to capture spontaneous dance movements, with the visual generation conducted through a customised dynamics simulation. The aim of the creative work was to diverge way from a standard practice of using particle system and/or a simple re-targeting of the motion data to drive a 3d character as a means to produce abstracted visual forms. To facilitate this divergence a virtual dynamic object was tether to a selection of data points from a captured performance. The proprieties of the dynamic object were then adjusted to balance the influences from the human movement data with the influence of computer based randomization. The resulting outcome was a visual form that surpassed simple data visualization to project the intent of the performer’s movements into a visual shape itself. The reported outcomes from this investigation have contributed to a larger study on the use of motion capture in the generative arts, furthering the understanding of and generating theories on practice.

A brief guide to synchrotron radiation-based microtomography in (structural) geology and rock mechanics

This contribution outlines Synchrotron-based X-ray micro-tomography and its potential use in structural geology and rock mechanics. The paper complements several recent reviews of X-ray microtomography. We summarize the general approach to data acquisition, post-processing as well as analysis and thereby aim to provide an entry point for the interested reader. The paper includes tables listing relevant beamlines, a list of all available imaging techniques, and available free and commercial software packages for data visualization and quantification. We highlight potential applications in a review of relevant literature including time-resolved experiments and digital rock physics. The paper concludes with a report on ongoing developments and upgrades at synchrotron facilities to frame the future possibilities for imaging sub-second processes in centimetre-sized samples.

Visualização dos dados estatísticos da Uerj: proposta de dashboards baseados no trabalho de Jacques Bertin

Os painéis de gráficos estatísticos conhecidos como dashboards são utilizados comumente naárea de Business Intelligence (BI) para a visualização de grandes sistemas organizados de dados. A presente dissertação propõe embasar o projeto de dashboards pelas teorias de Jacques Bertin, formuladas nas obras Sémiologie Graphique e La Graphique et le Traitement Graphique de linformation. Considerando este referencial, e ainda parâmetros do design de informação e da visualização de dados, foram desenvolvidos dashboards que apresentam dados sobre a política de reserva de vagas da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, sistematizados pelo projeto de BI dessa instituição. O objetivo foi não apenas o de atender aos requisitos convencionais de um dashboard, mas sobretudo o de apresentar outras perspectivas informativas. Nesse sentido, investigam-se as especificidades dos métodos de Bertin e sua expansão para o domínio dos sistemas interativos.