207,605 research outputs found
Analytics-Driven Digital Platform for Regional Growth and Development: A Case Study from Norway
In this paper, we present the growth barometer (Vekstbarometer in Norwegian),
which is a digital platform that provides the development trends in the
regional context in a visual and user-friendly way. The platform is developed
to use open data from different sources that is presented mainly in five main
groups: goals, premises or prerequisites for growth, industries, growth, and
expectations. Furthermore, it also helps to improve decision-making and
transparency, as well as provide new knowledge for research and society. The
platform uses sensitive and non-sensitive open data. In contrast to other
similar digital platforms from Norway, where the data is presented as raw data
or with basic level of presentations, our platform is advantageous since it
provides a range of options for visualization that makes the statistics more
comprehensive.Comment: The Thirteenth International Conference on Digital Society and
eGovernments (ICDS 2019
Visualization in spatial modeling
This chapter deals with issues arising from a central theme in contemporary computer modeling - visualization. We first tie visualization to varieties of modeling along the continuum from iconic to symbolic and then focus on the notion that our models are so intrinsically complex that there are many different types of visualization that might be developed in their understanding and implementation. This focuses the debate on the very way of 'doing science' in that patterns and processes of any complexity can be better understood through visualizing the data, the simulations, and the outcomes that such models generate. As we have grown more sensitive to the problem of complexity in all systems, we are more aware that the twin goals of parsimony and verifiability which have dominated scientific theory since the 'Enlightenment' are up for grabs: good theories and models must 'look right' despite what our statistics and causal logics tell us. Visualization is the cutting edge of this new way of thinking about science but its styles vary enormously with context. Here we define three varieties: visualization of complicated systems to make things simple or at least explicable, which is the role of pedagogy; visualization to explore unanticipated outcomes and to refine processes that interact in unanticipated ways; and visualization to enable end users with no prior understanding of the science but a deep understanding of the problem to engage in using models for prediction, prescription, and control. We illustrate these themes with a model of an agricultural market which is the basis of modern urban economics - the von Thünen model of land rent and density; a model of urban development based on interacting spatial and temporal processes of land development - the DUEM model; and a pedestrian model of human movement at the fine scale where control of such movements to meet standards of public safety is intrinsically part of the model about which the controllers know intimately. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006
The interaction of polymer dispersed liquid crystal sensors with ultrasound
Polymer dispersed liquid crystals (PDLCs) have been shown to be sensitive to ultrasound through the acousto-optic effect. The acousto-optic response of PDLCs was studied over a broad frequency range (0.3–10 MHz). We demonstrate that the displacements required to produce acousto-optic clearing of PDLC films can be as low as a few nanometers, which is at least 103 times smaller than the PDLC droplet size, is 105 times smaller than the PDLC layer thickness, and of the order of the molecular size of the liquid crystal constituents. This suggests that the acousto-optic effect in PDLCs is due to the microscopic effects of the LC reorientation under torques or flows rather than the LC reorientation through macroscopic droplet deformation. The displacement required for clearing is related to the frequency of operation via an exponential decay. We attribute the observed frequency response to a freezing out of the rotational motion around the short axis of the liquid crystal. The reported frequency dependence and displacements required indicate that the effects and materials described here could be used for ultrasound visualization in a non-destructive testing context
Visual parameter optimisation for biomedical image processing
Background: Biomedical image processing methods require users to optimise input parameters to ensure high quality
output. This presents two challenges. First, it is difficult to optimise multiple input parameters for multiple
input images. Second, it is difficult to achieve an understanding of underlying algorithms, in particular, relationships
between input and output.
Results: We present a visualisation method that transforms users’ ability to understand algorithm behaviour by
integrating input and output, and by supporting exploration of their relationships. We discuss its application to a
colour deconvolution technique for stained histology images and show how it enabled a domain expert to
identify suitable parameter values for the deconvolution of two types of images, and metrics to quantify
deconvolution performance. It also enabled a breakthrough in understanding by invalidating an underlying
assumption about the algorithm.
Conclusions: The visualisation method presented here provides analysis capability for multiple inputs and outputs
in biomedical image processing that is not supported by previous analysis software. The analysis supported by our
method is not feasible with conventional trial-and-error approaches
The Transitivity of Trust Problem in the Interaction of Android Applications
Mobile phones have developed into complex platforms with large numbers of
installed applications and a wide range of sensitive data. Application security
policies limit the permissions of each installed application. As applications
may interact, restricting single applications may create a false sense of
security for the end users while data may still leave the mobile phone through
other applications. Instead, the information flow needs to be policed for the
composite system of applications in a transparent and usable manner. In this
paper, we propose to employ static analysis based on the software architecture
and focused data flow analysis to scalably detect information flows between
components. Specifically, we aim to reveal transitivity of trust problems in
multi-component mobile platforms. We demonstrate the feasibility of our
approach with Android applications, although the generalization of the analysis
to similar composition-based architectures, such as Service-oriented
Architecture, can also be explored in the future
Data Portraits and Intermediary Topics: Encouraging Exploration of Politically Diverse Profiles
In micro-blogging platforms, people connect and interact with others.
However, due to cognitive biases, they tend to interact with like-minded people
and read agreeable information only. Many efforts to make people connect with
those who think differently have not worked well. In this paper, we
hypothesize, first, that previous approaches have not worked because they have
been direct -- they have tried to explicitly connect people with those having
opposing views on sensitive issues. Second, that neither recommendation or
presentation of information by themselves are enough to encourage behavioral
change. We propose a platform that mixes a recommender algorithm and a
visualization-based user interface to explore recommendations. It recommends
politically diverse profiles in terms of distance of latent topics, and
displays those recommendations in a visual representation of each user's
personal content. We performed an "in the wild" evaluation of this platform,
and found that people explored more recommendations when using a biased
algorithm instead of ours. In line with our hypothesis, we also found that the
mixture of our recommender algorithm and our user interface, allowed
politically interested users to exhibit an unbiased exploration of the
recommended profiles. Finally, our results contribute insights in two aspects:
first, which individual differences are important when designing platforms
aimed at behavioral change; and second, which algorithms and user interfaces
should be mixed to help users avoid cognitive mechanisms that lead to biased
behavior.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. To be presented at ACM Intelligent User
Interfaces 201
Superheat: An R package for creating beautiful and extendable heatmaps for visualizing complex data
The technological advancements of the modern era have enabled the collection
of huge amounts of data in science and beyond. Extracting useful information
from such massive datasets is an ongoing challenge as traditional data
visualization tools typically do not scale well in high-dimensional settings.
An existing visualization technique that is particularly well suited to
visualizing large datasets is the heatmap. Although heatmaps are extremely
popular in fields such as bioinformatics for visualizing large gene expression
datasets, they remain a severely underutilized visualization tool in modern
data analysis. In this paper we introduce superheat, a new R package that
provides an extremely flexible and customizable platform for visualizing large
datasets using extendable heatmaps. Superheat enhances the traditional heatmap
by providing a platform to visualize a wide range of data types simultaneously,
adding to the heatmap a response variable as a scatterplot, model results as
boxplots, correlation information as barplots, text information, and more.
Superheat allows the user to explore their data to greater depths and to take
advantage of the heterogeneity present in the data to inform analysis
decisions. The goal of this paper is two-fold: (1) to demonstrate the potential
of the heatmap as a default visualization method for a wide range of data types
using reproducible examples, and (2) to highlight the customizability and ease
of implementation of the superheat package in R for creating beautiful and
extendable heatmaps. The capabilities and fundamental applicability of the
superheat package will be explored via three case studies, each based on
publicly available data sources and accompanied by a file outlining the
step-by-step analytic pipeline (with code).Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure
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