Fall 2009

VISUALIZATION FRIDAY FORUM

Fridays 12-1pm LSRC D106

Lunch Served


September 4 - Introducing the Friday Forum

Rachael Brady

Visualization Technology Group

I like to start each semester off with an overview/welcome talk. After reviewing the services and facilities of the Visualization Technology Group, I will discuss some projects that happened through the VTG group over the summer, such as new Group members (Todd Berreth), change in software support (Amira turns into Avizio), continuation of our Avatar Creation Ensemble (Wayne Godwin), and enhances to the DiVE, the LINK Media Wall, and the soundSpace installation at the Museum of Life and Science.

see a video of the talk


September 11 - Whole-body mapping and visualization of physiologically-relevant data

Rocky Goldsmith

EPA

The Exposure Dose Research Branch of the US-EPA's National Exposure Research Laboratory has been developing various approaches for quantitative modeling of biological disposition of human-produced chemicals in support of chemical risk management. These models, aptly named Physiologically-Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling approaches are used to simulate chemical-specific absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination (ADME) processes that provide information on how tissues/organs absorb chemicals over time (dosimetry). The data these models provide are quantitatively akin to what one could "see" using whole-body autoradiographic studies performed on animals or humans in vivo.  In this spirit, we describe and demonstrate a platform independent web-accessible tool  PAVA (Physiological and Anatomical Visual Analytics) that can be used to map biological data onto human anatomy and physiology including but not limited to: (1) simulated and experimental tissue dosimetry (2) tissue specific gene expression (3) temporal changes in % organ weight (4) changes in organ-specific chemical partitioning as a function of chemical space descriptors (lipophilicity), or (5) simulation of whole-body autoradiographs. The advantages that these visualization methods afford pay homage to the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand charts”.

 
Joint work with Thomas R. Transue, Daniel T. Chang, Rogelio Tornero-Valez, and Curtis C. Dary
  see a video of the talk

September 18 -Policy-based Distributed Data Management

Reagan Moore

Data Intensive Cyber Environments (DICE) Center at UNC

The integrated Rule Oriented Data System (iRODS) is used to organize distributed data into a sharable collection.  The iRODS software is the basic technology for building data grids, digital libraries, and preservation environments.  iRODS differentiates between these applications by encoding management policies as computer actionable rules.  Examples of these applications will be presented.

see a video of the talk


September 25 -Raman Microscopic Imaging of Pharmaceuticals

Lucinda Buhse

Pharmaceutical Analysis, FDA

Raman microscopic imaging shows potential as a tool for chemically specific particle sizing of pharmaceutical products, but additional image processing techniques are needed to facilitate particle size and shape determination.  Imaging of pharmaceutical products will be shown along with an approach of how to accurately determine spatial resolution.  

see a video of the talk

 October 2 - Fall Break


October 9 -Beautiful Code for Beautiful Evidence

Jeff Heard

Renci

In this lecture, I will discuss the principles behind purely functional visualization in Haskell and a real-world case study where
I put the principles into practice.  Purely functional visualization attempts to elucidate the visual semantics of data as opposed to concentrating on the procedure of drawing.  This tends to result in code that is well-segmented, shorter than imperative code, and clear
about how data maps to visuals.
 
see a video of this talk
 

October 16 -Tiled-displays, Art Walls and CGLX: an introduction to an Open-GL based framework for distributed rendering on tiled-wall display systems

Todd Berreth

Visual Studies Inititive

Tiled-display clusters allow the visualization of gigapixel/large data-set imagery and output of multimedia exhibits at an interactive, human scale.  They overcome inherent performance issues associated with displaying such material by distributing rendering tasks among the nodes of a computing cluster and then coordinating the output in a real-time, seamless fashion. As part of the Visual Studies Initiative, the Visualization Technology Group has implemented a software library on a number of tile-walls around Duke's campus, which allows the easy deployment of OpenGL applications in a tiled-wall environment.  This software, CGLX, was originally developed at CALIT/UC San Diego.

We will discuss tiled-wall displays, CGLX, and the future potential of these technologies.

 
see a video of the talk  or see the slides

October 23 -Conserving endangered species: The art of tracking and the science of footprint identification

Zoe Jewell & Sky Alibhai

Wildtrack and SAS

Endangered species need protection if populations are to recover, and this depends on knowledge of their numbers and distribution.  Working with indigenous trackers in Africa we developed a footprint identification technique which can identify at the species, individual, sex and age-class levels.  We are in North Carolina on sabbatical at SAS and seeking productive partnerships with researchers in computer vision and engineering science to further the development of this technique.
 
see a video of the talk
 

October 30 - Exploring Processing

Casey Alt

Visual Studies

Processing is a Java-based open source programming language and environment for creating images, animations, and interactions. Over the past few years, Processing has attracted an enthusiastic international community of artists, designers, and researchers who have greatly extended the scope of the original project. Casey's presentation will introduce Processing, discuss its interface and affordances, and explore examples of innovative professional and student work using Processing. 

see a video of the talk


November 6 - How to make a poster

Bill Fick

Art, Art History and Visual Studies

Designing an effective poster isn’t always easy – especially if you don’t have a lot of time. This presentation will cover some of the basic concepts of good poster design and discuss techniques that will help in the layout process. Typography and contemporary design resources (color, line style, form, balance) will also be covered.
 

see a video of the talk


November 13 - Highlights from IEEE VisWeek 2009

Eric Monson

Visualization Technology Group

I will present some brief highlights from the recent IEEE VisWeek 2009 conference (which included Vis, InfoVis & Visual Analytics). I will focus on a couple of my favorite talks and spend some time discussing the increased emphasis on visualizations of unstructured text sources and tools for creating custom scientific visualization applications.

see a video of the talk

vgtc.org has videos of the VisWeek sessions

The conference proceedings are published in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

 


November 20 -Mapping Exclusionary Urban Spaces:  building the archives of historical redlining and racial discrimination

Richard Marciano and Chien-Yi Hou

School of Information and Library Science, UNC

This presentation unveils the results of a 2-year IMLS grant entitled T-RACES (Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California's Exclusionary Spaces), in partnership with David Theo Goldberg at the University of California Humanities Research Institute, a HASTAC partner with Duke University.  This project documents the New Deal Home Owners' Loan Corporation confidential security maps and surveys of the 1930s that form the genesis of neighborhood discrimination and restricted mortgage lending, known as redlining.  A digitial library interface based on interactive databases and Google Map and Google Earth interfaces is demonstrated for cities such as  Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland.
 
 A Link to the T-RACES website
 
see a video of the talk


November 27 - Thanksgiving

 

For more information, please contact Rachael Brady

Organized by The Visualization Technology Group (VTG),

Sponsored by the Visual Studies Initiative (VSI)

and The Department of Computer Science