visualization

4K: The Future of Collaboration and Visualization

Jerry Sheehan — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:01:01 -0700

Description

High definition video content is broadcast daily into millions of American homes.
While various flavors of HD exists (720p, 1080i,1080p) there has been an undeniable trend towards higher resolution and better fidelity.

4K Resolution Beyond the current commodity high definition (best resolution of 1440*1080) is the world of digital cinema, aka as 4K. 4K offer resolution of 4096*1714 with an average of ~8 million pixels. [1] As Theo Mayer notes, "Whereas new formats typically represent some 50-70% improvement in resolution to the previous generation, 4K represent an over 325% leap in a single step over the just establishing 1080p (1920h X 1080v) standard. It represents an incredible 500% leap over the current DLP based SXGA+ (1400h X 1050v) format!"

While 4K technologies are not yet common the costs for both the cameras necessary for content creation and the projectors for display are rapidly declining. Within a three year period, we will likely see 4K in commercial movie theaters and within six years our homes.

4K VTC What changes will 4K technologies have on collaboration and science? First, the ability to stream 4K real-time video will finally realize the often hyped promise of video being "just as good as being there." The 4k resolution will allow our collaborations at a distance to occur at the resolution of digital cinema. As these types of collaborations become more common they will act as an application driver for broadband networks. To date most tests with uncompressed real-time 4K video teleconferences have relied on multiple 1 gigabit lambdas.[3]

Second, 4K technologies will change the nature of scientific visualization. One of the challenges of high performance computing is how to deal with the massive data sets produced. Regardless of application area, the reality is the most plausible way to understand terabytes of data is through interactive visualization.[4] Best available display technologies today require us to "dumb down" visualizations so they can be viewed on the desktop. 4k will remove this barrier and allow us to have much richer interactive visualizations. We will finally be able to see what we have been able to compute.

Third, our paradigm for approaching sources and displays has been a one to one relationship. We have done this so we can combine multivariate data without compromising resolution. 4K projectors are currently designed in such a way as to break this paradigm. Put simply, a 4K projector can be fed by multiple inputs which are then simultaneously displayed.[2] Tomorrow scientists will be able to create desktops as large as movie screens and feed data at high definition resolution to auditoriums of colleagues.

Computer & Information Science

Source

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions#Television.2Fmovies
[2] "The 4K Format Implications for Visualization, VR, Command & Control And Special Venue Application", ACM International Conference Proceedings Series, Vol 252, 2007.
[3]"World’s First International Real-time Streaming of 4K Digital Cinema over Gigabit IP Optical Fiber Networks", http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=694
[4]"Ultrascale Visualization-Gleaning Insight Through Scientific Visualization", John Rosendale,

Aggregating crystallography: overlay journals and new databases

Andrew Walkingshaw — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:17:38 -0700

Description

A lot of science is published every year, and much of it is only available by subscription. That's inflated one of the favourite political footballs among scientists - the whole Open Access debate . It mostly concentrates on the copyright/access status of the journal articles themselves, because they're often perceived to be the major part of scientific output. But that neglects the data which gives rise to the articles, which is often as valuable. In crystallography, this is usually posted on journal websites alongside the papers, but unlike the papers the raw data's uncopyrightable; it's "just" a collection of facts. So it's not subject to the same restrictions as the articles, and you can build new databases by aggregating it.

One example of this kind of thing is CrystalEye, which brings together the latest small-molecule crystallography data, converts it to CML, and puts it up on the web in a more searchable and browsable form. But what it also does is give us a resource we can mine; it exports its data using the Atom protocol, making it easier for informaticists to write new tools to perform analyses over these streams of crystallographic data. In other words, it makes the data more amenable to programming - whether that's machine learning techniques, visualization, social filtering or something new.

The big noise in the Web world, when it comes to open data and the Semantic Web, is the Linking Open Data project. It uses RDF to make very large open datasets - and, as importantly, the links between them - accessible. Through the links, each dataset builds on the previous one, and resources like CrystalEye can be pulled into the cloud; that lets us begin to build new analyses and visualizations of that data, like this map of the global distribution of crystallography papers. As we get more data, and more connected data, then more subtle and complex relationships will be thrown up; and through that we'll get to new science.

Future of chemistry

Source

http://www.prismcoalition.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access
http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/CrystalEye/
http://inkdroid.org/journal/2007/08/27/linking-open-data/
http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/walkingshaw/?p=53

Open Geospatial Consortium Approves Google KML as Open Standard

Michael Liebhold — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:28:11 -0700

Description

The members of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced the approval of the OpenGIS KML Encoding Standard (OGC KML), marking KML's transition into an open standard which will be maintained by the OGC. Developers will now have a standard approach for using KML to code and share visual geographic content in existing or future web-based online maps and 3D geospatial browsers like Google EarthTM.

KML is an XML-based programming language, originally developed to manage the display of geospatial data in Google Earth. It's still used heavily in Google Earth but is also supported by a variety of vendors' tools and mapping websites including Microsoft.

The OpenGIS KML 2.2 Encoding Standard formalizes the KML 2.2 model and language while remaining backwards compatible with existing KML 2.2 files and tools. In comparison with the GoogleTM KML 2.2 Reference, the standard defines:

* the KML 2.2 geometry encoding and interpolation model
* an extension model in support of application profiles
* conformance requirements and test cases

The adopted OpenGIS KML 2.2 Encoding Standard (OGC KML) is available at
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/kml/.

Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology

Source

http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/857

XML and Open Scientific Publishing

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:19:49 -0700

Description

Philip E. Bourne1, J. Lynn Fink, and Mark Gerstein make the argument for the wider use of XML in open publishing systems (over PDF or HMTL), and the need to create virtuous circles between XML adoption and the creation of tools-- e.g., visualizations to create high-level views of literatures, mashups that blur "the distinction between databases and journals," and editing tools to add semantic information to content early on. As they put it, open publishing has mainly been about cost containment to date, and not about exploiting the opportunities that open semantic frameworks offer:

For most of you, open access may imply free access to read the journals, but nothing more. There is a far greater potential, but, up to now, little to point to that highlights its tangible benefits. We would argue that, as yet, the full promise of open access has not been realized.

Plausible Accuracy comments,

the authors echo the call of Science Commons to work on creating applications which can leverage open scientific content. They describe some of the benefits and current shortcomings of producing manuscripts with XML markup (which provides for more facile machine reading and data extraction). They then go on to argue that the only way to convince people to go through the trouble of creating the machine-readable file is to demonstrate what can be done with the current level of markup and then drawing a picture of what expanding this would do.

Source

http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000037
http://www.plausibleaccuracy.com/2008/03/31/leveraging-scientific-data-using-the-power-of-the-semantic-web-who-wants-to-start/

3-D Modeling From Single Photo/Image

Matt Daniels — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:01:48 -0700

Description

3-D Modeling Advance
A single photo can be reconstructed into a 3-D scene with Make3D.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a Web service called Make3D that lets users turn a single two-dimensional image of an outdoor scene into an immersive 3-D model. This gives users the ability to easily create a more realistic visual representation of a photo--one that lets viewers fly around the scene.

To convert the still images into 3-D visualizations, Andrew Ng, an assistant professor of computer science, and Ashutosh Saxena, a doctoral student in computer science, developed a machine-learning algorithm that associates visual cues, such as color, texture, and size, with certain depth values based on what they have learned from studying two-dimensional photos paired with 3-D data. For example, says Ng, grass has a distinctive texture that makes it look very different close up than it does from far away. The algorithm learns that the progressive change in texture gives clues to the distance of a patch of grass.

Physics & Space Science

Source

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20385/?a=f

GRAVITAS: Portraits of a Universe in Motion

Matt Daniels — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:37:56 -0800

NOTE: This content was aggregated from RSS feed. Original source is http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.3664

GRAVITAS: Portraits of a Universe in Motion
Authors: John Dubinski, John Kameel Farah
(Submitted on 25 Feb 2008)

GRAVITAS is a self-published DVD that presents a visual and musical
celebration of the beauty in a dynamic universe driven by gravity. Animations
from supercomputer simulations of forming galaxies, star clusters, galaxy
clusters, and galaxy interactions are presented as moving portraits of cosmic
evolution. Billions of years of complex gravitational choreography are
presented in 9 animations - each one interpreted with an original musical
composition inspired by the exquisite movements of gravity. The result is an
emotive and spiritually uplifting synthesis of science and art. The GRAVITAS
DVD has been out for two years now but I am now making the DVD disk image
freely available for personal and educational use through a bittorrent
download. Download and burn at your leisure. The animations are also
downloadable in various video formats.

Check it out!
http://www.galaxydynamics.org/gravitas.html

Physics & Space Science

An updatable holographic three-dimensional display

Matt Daniels — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:27:55 -0800

Description

An updatable holographic three-dimensional display demonstrated:

Holographic three-dimensional (3D) displays provide realistic images without the need for special eyewear, making them valuable tools for applications that require situational awareness, such as medical, industrial and military imaging. Currently commercially available holographic 3D displays use photopolymers that lack image-updating capability, resulting in restricted use and high cost. Photorefractive polymers are dynamic holographic recording materials that allow updating of images and have a wide range of applications, including optical correlation, imaging through scattering media and optical communication. To be suitable for 3D displays, photorefractive polymers need to have nearly 100% diffraction efficiency, fast writing time, hours of image persistence, rapid erasure, and large area—a combination of properties that has not been shown before. Here, we report an updatable holographic 3D display based on photorefractive polymers with such properties, capable of recording and displaying new images every few minutes. This is the largest photorefractive 3D display to date (4 times 4 inches in size); it can be recorded within a few minutes, viewed for several hours without the need for refreshing, and can be completely erased and updated with new images when desired.

Physics & Space Science

Source

Nature 451, 694-698 (7 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature06596; Received 24 August 2007; Accepted 18 December 2007
Savas Tay et al.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7179/abs/nature06596.html

Shakemovie and the visualization of scientific events in real time

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:06:49 -0800

Description

Caltech's Near Real Time Simulation of Southern California Seismic Events Portal... has been designed to present the public with near real time visualizations of recent significant seismic events in the Southern California Region. These movies are the results of simulations carried out on a large computer cluster. Earthquake movies will be available for download approximately 45 mins after the occurrence of a quake of magnitude 3.5 or greater.

The data comes from the Southern California Earthquake Data Center, which maintains several hundred earthquake monitoring stations; the data is then run through a 3D wave simulation, and a movie is generated.

It's an example of what interesting things you can do with real-time environmental data, ample processing power, and an Internet connection. It's easy to imagine amateur scientists creating things like this, or environmental groups generating visualizations of deforestation or soil erosion, or neighborhood activists creating movies highlighting local polluters.

Shakemovie screen shot: 3.7 magnitude earthquake, 16 miles NNW of Tehachapi, CA, 12:05:11pm Jan 11 2008.

Source

http://shakemovie.caltech.edu/
http://future.iftf.org/2006/08/shakemovie_the_.html

Illuminating the Path: The R&D Agenda for Visual Analytics

Jess Hemerly — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:23:12 -0800

Description

From the website:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security chartered the National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC™) in 2004 with the goal of helping to counter future terrorist attacks in the U.S. and around the globe. A major objective for NVAC is to define a five-year research and development agenda for visual analytics to address the most pressing needs in R&D to facilitate advanced analytical insight.
Under the leadership of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and top researchers on the R&D Agenda Panel, a Research and Development Agenda for visual analytics was developed to define the directions and priorities for future research and development programs focused on visual analytics tools. This R&D Agenda, Illuminating the Path, provides a coordinated technical vision for government and industrial investments, and ensures that a continued stream of technology and tools enter the hands of analysts and emergency responders.

The R&D Agenda presents recommendations to advance the state of the art in the major visual analytics research areas:

The science of analytical reasoning

Visual representations and interaction techniques

Data representations and transformations

Production, presentation, and dissemination.

The R&D Agenda also includes recommendations to accelerate the ability to move the most promising research into practice and set the stage for an enduring visual analytics research community through a combination of education and research collaboration.

Source

National Visualization and Analytics Center (2005). Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics.” Richland, WA: U.S. Department of Energy, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Google Earth: Geodata everywhere, for everyone

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:31:16 -0700

Description

Google Earth may do for geographical information, and users' ability to understand the spatial dimensions of information, what the early Web browser did for the World Wide Web. Google Earth allows users to view geographically-coded information atop satellite photos of the Earth, and create new place-specific information that can be shared with other users. The rapid growth in Google Earth's popularity suggests comparison with the early 1990s, and the Mosaic and Netscape browsers.

In both cases, growth was driven largely by word-of-mouth and enthusiastic early adopters. Likewise, popular uptake was supported by the conversion of large quantities of extant information (digital texts and pictures in the 1990s, geocoded data in the 2000s). Finally, in both cases, user-driven innovation was seen as a significant driver of growth, or even a potentially revolutionary disruptor.

In the near future, Google Earth may move from the early adopter phase, and will attract both conventional content providers (e.g., publishers, governments), and communities of ordinary users. (Unlike the Web, however, Google Earth seems unlikely to promote visions of "virtual worlds" or electronic communities that replace real-world ones.) As with the Internet, it is also likely to give rise to experiments in malicious activity, as well as new forms of activism and political protest.

http://www.ogleearth.com/

visualization

4K: The Future of Collaboration and Visualization

Description

Source

Aggregating crystallography: overlay journals and new databases

Description

Source

Open Geospatial Consortium Approves Google KML as Open Standard

Description

Source

XML and Open Scientific Publishing

Description

Source

3-D Modeling From Single Photo/Image

Description

Source

GRAVITAS: Portraits of a Universe in Motion

An updatable holographic three-dimensional display

Description

Source

Shakemovie and the visualization of scientific events in real time

Description

Source

Illuminating the Path: The R&D Agenda for Visual Analytics

Description

Source

Google Earth: Geodata everywhere, for everyone

Description

Signals