Spring 2005

VISUALIZATION FRIDAY FORUM

Fridays 12-1pm LSRC D106

Lunch Served


Jan 21 - Elements of Effective Visualization


Rachael Brady
Visualization Technology Group

For this opening session, I'll give an informal update on the CAVE installation timeline and status.
The talk this week is based on a nice case study paper by Colleen Bushell and Poly Baker, called "After the Storm." It revisits the classic NCSA severe storm visualization and applies some Edward Tufte design principles. This exercise reminds us of the 2-3 items that we should all remember when creating an image for a publication.


Jan 28- Computational Morse Theory and Persistence for Segmentation and Removal of "Noise" in 2d and 3d data

John Harer
Center for Computational Science, Engineering and Medicine

This talk will discuss how some core ideas in Topology (a 150-year old branch of "pure" Mathematics) can be applied to the search for structure in different kinds of datasets. Computational Morse Theory begins with sampled data, and simulates the global pattern of the gradient flow for the imagined smooth function - without using traditional methods to actually construct an approximation of the function. This global pattern contains useful tools, e.g. a nice segmentation with one region for each local minima. By adding the concept of persistence (due to Herbert Edelsbrunner) we can get a hierarchical representation of our data - allowing us to vary our threshold for "noise" in the search for the best representation. The examples I'll show are terrains and protein interfaces, but we'll talk about current efforts to create software for 2d and 3d medical images.


Feb 4- Sonification and the Road to soundSense [PDF Presentation]

John Bower
Center for Computational Science, Engineering and Medicine

A reprisal of an earlier talk, an overview of sonification will be presented including conceptual, historical, and methodological issues. Example sonifications will be critically discussed. These concepts will then be contextualized in relation to the soundSense event held at Duke in November, 2004. Both technical and aesthetic considerations in soundSense will be presented.


Feb 11 - Interfacing Duke: The ISIS 200 Online Campus Map Project

Jessica Mitchell and Casey Alt
OIT and ISIS

On Febrary 21, 2003, Mike Pickett from the Office of Information Technology presented a fledgling initiative to visualize the physical spaces of Duke. In his talk, Mike motivated the project by describing the uses of having all Duke facilities information readily available to the Duke community, such as
. Where can you find wireless network access on campus?
. How much lab space do we have (and where is it!)?
. "Let me explain why - I - need more lab space to do my work."
. How is Duke property used and how is it represented on Durham County's tax maps?
. Show me how the space in the new building is going to be used.
. Where is the other end of this wire...?

This week's Friday Forum will describe a collaboration between ISIS, OIT and Duke Facilities in actually making this project a reality. The ISIS 200 Research Capstone course is building a prototype of an online campus map for Duke. Casey Alt and Jessica MItchell will discuss the structure of the course curriculum, University participation in the project, and the initial information design strategy proposed by the students.


Feb 18 - What is HASTAC? [PowerPoint Presentation]

Cathy Davidson
Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies

A group of humanities institutes, arts organizations, and science and computational institutes (Duke, Stanford, USC, SDSC, NCSA, Citris/Berkeley, etc) has been working together on varied projects since 2002. These include a 3-D visualization project and virtual museum, social software to enhance distance collaborations, a global grid project with the government of Costa Rica, and a variety of educational and lobbying projects aimed at including humanities and arts projects in technology funding and encouraging technological innovation to handle the massive amounts of data required by multimedia applications. Duke's ISIS program was the local forerunner of HASTAC. In 2006-2007, four HASTAC institutions--including Duke's John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute--will be running concurrent and collaborative faculty and graduate student seminars, a public lecture series, workshops, conferences, and research projects. Duke's topic for the year is "Interface."


Feb 25 - Developments with the DELTA Smart House

Mark Younger
 DELTA Smart House, Pratt School of Engineering

The DELTA Smart House is an interdisciplinary initiative designed to bring practical design experience to Duke undergraduates. Over the past three semesters, students have undertaken projects to build devices for the home of the future ranging from microphone arrays to grey-water heat recovery systems. In this talk, we will look at the nearly-finalized plans for this research facility (with ground-breaking approaching in two months), several current technologies being prototyped by students, and the vision for this project into the future at Duke. **RESCHEDULED FOR APRIL 15TH**


Mar 4 -Visualization Techniques for Multivariate Discrete and Continuous Data [PowerPoint Presentation]

Rachael Brady
Visualization Technology Group

This talk is in response to a request, during a participant survey, that a Friday Forum be devoted to the effective presentation of high dimensional data. The most effective method of presenting high dimensional data is to understand the data well enough that the problem can be recast into a lower dimensional space. In the continuous case, one could use principle component or independent component analysis as a first step. In the case of discrete multivariate data, we do not have this option. This Friday Forum will describe how different graphics elements interact (color, shape, lighting, texture) and when they can be combined in showing many variables. I will also introduce glyphs, parrallel coordinates, and cluster plots. The visualization of tensor data is a particularly interesting area of visualization research at the moment. If time perimts, I will show some results from work being done by various groups across the country in tensor visualization.


Mar11- Modeling forest canopy elements with L-systems

[PowerPoint Presentation] [MPG of rotating pine shoot] [MPG of pine shoot snapshots]

Mathieu Therezien

Nicholas School

L-systems, in addition to generating funky fractal pictures, are efficient to describe and represent the growth of living organisms. In this study, we use L-systems to model forest canopies, both at the shoot or tree level. The different steps in modeling shoots with L-systems, from a very basic pine twig-and-needles structure to a photo-realistic model allowing actual measurements, will be presented in this Friday forum.


Mar18- Spring Break


Mar25- Spatial Data Structures and Algorithms for Simulating a

Forest Growth Model - [PDF Presentation]

Sathish Govindarajan

Department of Computer Science

In this talk, I will describe our individual-based, spatially-explicit forest growth model. Our model is highly realistic and is quite complex compared to most forest models. Thus, simulating our model is computationally intensive. We have developed a hierarchical quad-tree based dispersal algorithm using monopole approximation and a graphics hardware-based algorithm for computing light. Finally, I will present results of an ecological experiment using model simulations to evaluate the impact of random, individual effects on biodiversity.


April 1- NO FORUM SCHEDULED


April 8 - Multimedia at Duke

Jessica Mitchell [PowerPoint Presentation]
Office of Information Technology

This talk will present some of the work being done by OIT to bring the multimedia services at the University together. OIT's multimedia services (what they are and how they complement the larger University multimedia community) will be discussed. I will outline the strategy for building collaboration among the existing services on campus, discuss the efficiency of this model, as well as showcase some new services and projects intended to support these efforts.


April 15 - Developments with the DELTA Smart House

Mark Younger
 DELTA Smart House, Pratt School of Engineering

The DELTA Smart House is an interdisciplinary initiative designed to bring practical design experience to Duke undergraduates. Over the past three semesters, students have undertaken projects to build devices for the home of the future ranging from microphone arrays to grey-water heat recovery systems. In this talk, we will look at the nearly-finalized plans for this research facility (with ground-breaking approaching in two months), several current technologies being prototyped by students, and the vision for this project into the future at Duke.


April 22 - Gaming, Simulation, and Learning

Jeff Taekman [PDF Presentation]
 Department of Anesthesiology

Medicine is an information-rich profession. The amount of medical information doubles every 5 years. The information explosion demands new ways of educating and assessing medical professionals. Successfully navigating information has profound implications for patient safety and professional job satisfaction. Simulation has revolutionized the training and assessment of professionals in many high risk fields and is now working its way into the fabric of health professional education and assessment.
In this forum, we will briefly discuss the activities of the Duke University Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center. We will then consider the strengths and weaknesses of the state-of-the-art in healthcare simulation. We will conclude with a discussion of how "serious games" and 3-dimensional immersive environments could revolutionize healthcare education and assessment.

For more information, please contact
Rachael Brady or
Edward Shanken

Organized by
Computational Science, Engineering, and Medicine (CSEM),
Visualization Technology Group (VTG), and
Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS)