DevLan/vispubs huggingface dataset:
Visualizing sequential patterns for text mining
Authors: Pak Chung Wong, Wendy Cowley, Harlan Foote, Elizabeth Jurrus, James J. Thomas
Published at InfoVis, 2000

A sequential pattern in data mining is a finite series of elements such as A/spl rarr/B/spl rarr/C/spl rarr/D where A, B, C, and D are elements of the same domain. The mining of sequential patterns is designed to find patterns of discrete events that frequently happen in the same arrangement along a timeline. Like association and clustering, the mining of sequential patterns is among the most popular knowledge discovery techniques that apply statistical measures to extract useful information from large datasets. As out computers become more powerful, we are able to mine bigger datasets and obtain hundreds of thousands of sequential patterns in full detail. With this vast amount of data, we argue that neither data mining nor visualization by itself can manage the information and reflect the knowledge effectively. Subsequently, we apply visualization to augment data mining in a study of sequential patterns in large text corpora. The result shows that we can learn more and more quickly in an integrated visual data-mining environment.
Enriching buyers' experiences: the SmartClient approach
Authors: Pearl Pu, Boi Faltings
Published at CHI, 2000

In electronic commerce, a satisfying buyer experience is a key competitive element. We show new techniques for better adapting interaction with an electronic catalog system to actual buying behavior. Our model replaces the sequential separation of needs identification and product brokering with a conversation in which both processes occur simultaneously. This conversation supports the buyer in formulating his or her needs, and in deciding which criteria to apply in selecting a product to buy. We have experimented with this approach in the area of travel planning and developed a system called SmartClient Travel which supports this process. It includes tools for need identification, visualization of alternatives, and choosing the most suitable one. We describe the system and its implementation, and report on user studies showing its advantages for electronic catalogs.
HandSCAPE: a vectorizing tape measure for on-site measuring applications
Authors: Jay Lee, Victor Su, Sandia Ren, Hiroshi Ishii 0001
Published at CHI, 2000

We introduce HandSCAPE, an orientation-aware digital tape measure, as an input device for digitizing field measurements, and visualizing the volume of the resulting vectors with computer graphics. Using embedded orientation-sensing hardware, HandSCAPE captures relevant vectors on each linear measurements and transmits this data wirelessly to a remote computer in real-time. To guide us in design, we have closely studied the intended users, their tasks, and the physical workplaces to extract the needs from real worlds. In this paper, we first describe the potential utility of HandSCAPE for three on-site application areas: archeological surveys, interior design, and storage space allocation. We then describe the overall system which includes orientation sensing, vector calculation, and primitive modeling. With exploratory usage results, we conclude our paper for interface design issues and future developments.
The cubic mouse: a new device for three-dimensional input
Authors: Bernd Fröhlich 0001, John Plate
Published at CHI, 2000

We have developed a new input device that allows users to intuitively specify three-dimensional coordinates in graphics applications. The device consists of a cube-shaped box with three perpendicular rods passing through the center and buttons on the top for additional control. The rods represent the X, Y, and Z axes of a given coordinate system. Pushing and pulling the rods specifies constrained motion along the corresponding axes. Embedded within the device is a six degree of freedom tracking sensor, which allows the rods to be continually aligned with a coordinate system located in a virtual world. We have integrated the device into two visualization prototypes for crash engineers and geologists from oil and gas companies. In these systems the Cubic Mouse controls the position and orientation of a virtual model and the rods move three orthogonal cutting or slicing planes through the model. We have evaluated the device with experts from these domains, who were enthusiastic about its ease of use.
The scent of a site: a system for analyzing and predicting information scent, usage, and usability of a Web site
Authors: Ed Huai-hsin Chi, Peter Pirolli, James E. Pitkow
Published at CHI, 2000

Designers and researchers of users' interactions with the World Wide Web need tools that permit the rapid exploration of hypotheses about complex interactions of user goals, user behaviors, and Web site designs. We present an architecture and system for the analysis and prediction of user behavior and Web site usability. The system integrates research on human information foraging theory, a reference model of information visualization and Web data-mining techniques. The system also incorporates new methods of Web site visualization (Dome Tree, Usage Based Layouts), a new predictive modeling technique for Web site use (Web User Flow by Information Scent, WUFIS), and new Web usability metrics.
"Whole field modelling". Effective real-time and post-survey visualization of underwater pipelines
Authors: Paul Chapman, Derek Wills, Peter Stevens, Graham R. Brookes
Published at Vis, 1999

The detailed underwater bathymetric data provided by Sonar Research and Development's high speed multi-frequency sonar transducer system provides new challenges in the development of interactive seabed visualization tools. The paper introduces a "Whole Field Modelling" system developed at Sonar Research and Development Ltd and The Department of Computer Science, University of Hull. This system provides the viewer with a new 3D underwater visualization environment that allows the user to pilot a virtual underwater vehicle around an accurate seabed model. We consider two example case studies that use the Whole Field Modelling system for visualizing sonar data. Both case studies, visualizing real time pipeline dredging and pipe restoration visualization, are implemented using real survey data.
A computer animation representing the molecular events of G protein-coupled receptor activation
Authors: Zoya Maslak, Douglas J. Steel, Robert J. McDermott
Published at Vis, 1999

The molecular events involved in the activation of G protein-coupled receptors, represent a fundamental biochemical process. These events were selected for animation because the mechanism involves both a ligand-receptor conformational shape change, and an enzyme-substrate conformational shape change. Expository animation brought this biochemical process to life.
A distributed graphics system for large tiled displays
Authors: Greg Humphreys, Pat Hanrahan
Published at Vis, 1999

Recent interest in large displays has led to renewed development of tiled displays, which are comprised of several individual displays arranged in an array and used as one large logical display. Stanford's "Interactive Mural" is an example of such a display, using an overlapping four by two array of projectors that back-project onto a diffuse screen to form a 6' by 2' display area with a resolution of over 60 dpi. Writing software to make effective use of the large display space is a challenge because normal window system interaction metaphors break down. One promising approach is to switch to immersive applications; another approach, the one we are investigating, is to emulate office, conference room or studio environments which use the space to display a collection of visual material to support group activities. We describe a virtual graphics system that is designed to support multiple simultaneous rendering streams from both local and remote sites. The system abstracts the physical number of computers, graphics subsystems and projectors used to create the display. We provide performance measurements to show that the system scales well and thus supports a variety of different hardware configurations. The system is also interesting because it uses transparent "layers", instead of windows, to manage the screen.
A fast volume rendering algorithm for time-varying fields using a time-space partitioning (TSP) tree
Authors: Han-Wei Shen, Ling-Jan Chiang, Kwan-Liu Ma
Published at Vis, 1999

We present a fast volume rendering algorithm for time-varying fields. We propose a new data structure, called time-space partitioning (TSP) tree, that can effectively capture both the spatial and the temporal coherence from a time-varying field. Using the proposed data structure, the rendering speed is substantially improved. In addition, our data structure helps to maintain the memory access locality and to provide the sparse data traversal so that our algorithm becomes suitable for large-scale out-of-core applications. Finally, our algorithm allows flexible error control for both the temporal and the spatial coherence so that a trade-off between image quality and rendering speed is possible. We demonstrate the utility and speed of our algorithm with data from several time-varying CFD simulations. Our rendering algorithm can achieve substantial speedup while the storage space overhead for the TSP tree is kept at a minimum.
A framework for assisted exploration with collaboration
Authors: Eric A. Wernert, Andrew J. Hanson
Published at Vis, 1999

We approach the problem of exploring a virtual space by exploiting positional and camera-model constraints on navigation to provide extra assistance that focuses the user's explorational wanderings on the task objectives. Our specific design incorporates not only task-based constraints on the viewer's location, gaze, and viewing parameters, but also a personal "glide" that serves two important functions: keeping the user oriented in the navigation space, and "pointing" to interesting subject areas as they are approached. The guide's cues may be ignored by continuing in motion, but if the user stops, the gaze shifts automatically toward whatever the guide was interested in. This design has the serendipitous feature that it automatically incorporates a nested collaborative paradigm simply by allowing any given viewer to be seen as the "guide" of one or more viewers following behind; the leading automated guide (we tend to select a guide dog for this avatar) can remind the leading live human guide of interesting sites to point out, while each real human collaborator down the chain has some choices about whether to follow the local leader's hints. We have chosen VRML as our initial development medium primarily because of its portability, and we have implemented a variety of natural modes for leading and collaborating, including ways for collaborators to attach to and detach from a particular leader.
A multi-threaded streaming pipeline architecture for large structured data sets
Authors: C. Charles Law, Ken Martin, William J. Schroeder, Joshua Temkin
Published at Vis, 1999

Computer simulation and digital measuring systems are now generating data of unprecedented size. The size of data is becoming so large that conventional visualization tools are incapable of processing it, which is in turn is impacting the effectiveness of computational tools. In this paper we describe an object-oriented architecture that addresses this problem by automatically breaking data into pieces, and then processes the data piece-by-piece within a pipeline of filters. The piece size is user specified and can be controlled to eliminate the need for swapping (i.e., relying on virtual memory). In addition, because piece size can be controlled, any size problem can be run on any size computer, at the expense of extra computational time. Furthermore pieces are automatically broken into sub-pieces and each piece assigned to a different thread for parallel processing. This paper includes numerical performance studies and references to the source code which is freely available on the Web.
Accelerating 3D convolution using graphics hardware
Authors: Matthias Hopf, Thomas Ertl
Published at Vis, 1999

Many volume filtering operations used for image enhancement, data processing or feature detection can be written in terms of three-dimensional convolutions. It is not possible to yield interactive frame rates on todays hardware when applying such convolutions on volume data using software filter routines. As modern graphics workstations have the ability to render two-dimensional convoluted images to the frame buffer, this feature can be used to accelerate the process significantly. This way generic 3D convolution can be added as a powerful tool in interactive volume visualization toolkits.
An interactive framework for visualizing foreign currency exchange options
Authors: Donna L. Gresh, Bernice E. Rogowitz, M. S. Tignor, E. J. Mayland
Published at Vis, 1999

Analyzing options is a complex, multi-variate process. Option behavior depends on a variety of market conditions which vary over the time course of the option. The goal of this project is to provide an interactive visual environment which allows the analyst to explore these complex interactions, and to select and construct specific views for communicating information to non-analysts (e.g., marketing managers and customers). In this paper we describe an environment for exploring 2- and 3-dimensional representations of options data, dynamically varying parameters, examining how multi-variate relationships develop over time, and exploring the likelihood of the development of different outcomes over the life of the option. We also demonstrate how this tool has been used by analysts to communicate to non-analysts how particular options no longer deliver the behavior they were originally intended to provide.
Animating wrinkles on clothes
Authors: Sunil Hadap, Endre Bangerter, Pascal Volino, Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann
Published at Vis, 1999

This paper describes a method to simulate realistic wrinkles on clothes without fine mesh and large computational overheads. Cloth has very little in-plane deformations, as most of the deformations come from buckling. This can be looked at as area conservation property of cloth. The area conservation formulation of the method modulates the user defined wrinkle pattern, based on deformation of individual triangle. The methodology facilitates use of small in-plane deformation stiffnesses and a coarse mesh for the numerical simulation, this makes cloth simulation fast and robust. Moreover, the ability to design wrinkles (even on generalized deformable models) makes this method versatile for synthetic image generation. The method inspired from cloth wrinkling problem, being geometric in nature, can be extended to other wrinkling phenomena.
Anisotropic nonlinear diffusion in flow visualization
Authors: Tobias Preußer, Martin Rumpf
Published at Vis, 1999

Vector field visualization is an important topic in scientific visualization. Its aim is to graphically represent field data in an intuitively understandable and precise way. Here a new approach based on anisotropic nonlinear diffusion is introduced. It enables an easy perception of flow data and serves as an appropriate scale space method for the visualization of complicated flow patterns. The approach is closely related to nonlinear diffusion methods in image analysis where images are smoothed while still retaining and enhancing edges. An initial noisy image is smoothed along streamlines, whereas the image is sharpened in the orthogonal direction. The method is based on a continuous model and requires the solution of a parabolic PDE problem. It is discretized only in the final implementational step. Therefore, many important qualitative aspects can already be discussed on a continuous level. Applications are shown in 2D and 3D and the provisions for flow segmentation are outlined.
Automating transfer function design for comprehensible volume rendering based on 3D field topology analysis
Authors: Issei Fujishiro, Taeko Azuma, Yuriko Takeshima
Published at Vis, 1999

This paper describes initial results of a 3D field topology analysis for automating transfer function design aiming at comprehensible volume rendering. The conventional Reeb graph-based approach to describing topological features of 3D surfaces is extended to capture the topological skeleton of a volumetric field. Based on the analysis result, which is represented in the form of a hyper Reeb graph, a procedure is proposed for designing appropriate color/opacity transfer functions. Two analytic volume datasets are used to preliminarily prove the feasibility of the present design methodology.
Automation or interaction: what's best for big data?
Authors: David N. Kenwright, David C. Banks, Steve Bryson, Robert Haimes, Robert van Liere, Samuel P. Uselton
Published at Vis, 1999

“Automation Suffices for 80% of Visualization” In the late 1800’s telephone exchanges were manually operated and could only process a few callers a minute. As the volume of calls grew, a single operator could not handle the demand and manual exchanges gave way to automated ones. Today, operators still connect some calls, usually when the caller needs additional information (or money), but the vast majority can be handled by automated systems. History is littered with examples of systems that have become automated as technology improves. This panel questions whether we, the visualization community, are on the right track by concentrating our research and development on interactive visualization tools and systems. After all, research programs like the Department of Energy’s Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) run computer simulations that produce terabytes of data every day. This raises the following questions: Interactive visualization would be essential to those scientists who pursue unfettered exploration of unfamiliar data, the scientists who discover new phenomena in their simulation that they never suspected were there, the scientists who like to try new tools that other people have created for their use. As many of us have experienced first-hand, these scientists exist in the realm of science fiction and PBS specials, not in real life. There are two primary applications of computer graphics in scientific computing: debugging and presentation. Tom Crockett (ICASE) champions the paradigm of visualization as a 3D print statement to let you Is it feasible to analyze terabyte data sets using interactive techniques? quickly hunt down an offending segment of code. An interactive debugger is great for finding errors, but _. most people only use one as a last resort. The automatically-generated compiler messages catch the large fraction of simple bugs, and print statements reveal * Has visualization reached a level of maturity where most of the tasks can be automated?
C1-interpolation for vector field topology visualization
Authors: Gerik Scheuermann, Xavier Tricoche, Hans Hagen
Published at Vis, 1999

An application of C/sup 1/ scalar interpolation for 2D vector field topology visualization is presented. Powell-Sabin and Nielson interpolants are considered which both make use of Nielson's Minimum Norm Network for the precomputation of the derivatives in our implementation. A comparison of their results to the commonly used linear interpolant underlines their significant improvement of singularity location and topological skeleton depiction. Evaluation is based upon the processing of polynomial vector fields with known topology containing higher order singularities.
Collapsing Flow Topology Using Area Metrics
Authors: Wim C. de Leeuw, Robert van Liere
Published at Vis, 1999

Visualization of topological information of a vector field can provide useful information on the structure of the field. However, in turbulent flows standard critical point visualization will result in a cluttered image which is difficult to interpret. This paper presents a technique for collapsing topologies. The governing idea is to classify the importance of the critical points in the topology. By only displaying the more important critical points, a simplified depiction of the topology can be provided. Flow consistency is maintained when collapsing the topology, resulting in a visualization which is consistent with the original topology. We apply the collapsing topology technique to a turbulent flow field.
Construction of vector field hierarchies
Authors: Bjørn Heckel, Gunther H. Weber, Bernd Hamann, Kenneth I. Joy
Published at Vis, 1999

Presents a method for the hierarchical representation of vector fields. Our approach is based on iterative refinement using clustering and principal component analysis. The input to our algorithm is a discrete set of points with associated vectors. The algorithm generates a top-down segmentation of the discrete field by splitting clusters of points. We measure the error of the various approximation levels by measuring the discrepancy between streamlines generated by the original discrete field and its approximations based on much smaller discrete data sets. Our method assumes no particular structure of the field, nor does it require any topological connectivity information. It is possible to generate multi-resolution representations of vector fields using this approach.
Cracking the cracking problem with Coons patches
Authors: Gregory M. Nielson, Dave J. Holliday, Tom Roxborough
Published at Vis, 1999

We present a novel approach to solving the cracking problem. The cracking problem arises in many contexts in scientific visualization and computer graphics modeling where there is need for an approximation based upon domain decomposition that is fine in certain regions and coarse in others. This includes surface rendering approximation of images and multiresolution terrain visualization. In general, algorithms based upon adaptive refinement strategies must deal with this problem. The approach presented here is simple and general. It is based upon the use of a triangular Coons patch. Both the basic idea of using a triangular Coons patch in this context and the particular Coons patch that is used constitute the novel contributions of the paper.
DELTA's Virtual Physics Laboratory: a comprehensive learning platform on physics and astronomy
Authors: Sepideh Chakaveh, Udo Zlender, Detlef Skaley, Konstantinos Fostiropoulos, Dieter Breitschwerdt
Published at Vis, 1999

Perhaps the most effective instrument to simplify and to clarify the comprehension of any complex mathematical or scientific theory is through visualisation. Moreover using interactivity and 3D real time representations, one can easily explore and hence learn quickly in the virtual environments. The concept of virtual and safe laboratories has vast potentials in education. With the aid of computer simulations and 3D visualisations, many dangerous or cumbersome experiments may be implemented in the virtual environments, with rather small effort. Nonetheless visualisation alone is of little use if the respective simulation is not scientifically accurate. Hence a rigorous combination of precise computation as well as sophisticated visualisation, presented through some intuitive user interface is required to realise a virtual laboratory for education. We introduce Delta's Virtual Physics Laboratory, comprising a wide range of applications in the field of physics and astronomy, which can be implemented and used as an interactive learning tool on the World Wide Web.
Design and implementation of an immersive geoscience toolkit
Authors: Christophe Winkler, Fabien Bosquet, Xavier Cavin, Jean-Claude Paul
Published at Vis, 1999

Having a better way to represent and to interact with large geological models are topics of high interest in geoscience, and especially for oil and gas companies. We present the design and implementation of a visualization program that involves two main features. It is based on the central data model, in order to display in real time the modifications caused by the modeler. Furthermore, it benefits from the different immersive environments which give the user a much more accurate insight of the model than a regular computer screen. Then, we focus on the difficulties that come in the way of performance.