How to Read a Visualization Research Paper: Extracting the Essentials

Introduction. Women's sexual pain disorders include dyspareunia and vaginismus and there is need for state-of-the-art information in this area. Aim. To update the scientific evidence published in 2004, from the 2nd International Consultation on Sexual Medicine pertaining to the diagnosis and treatment of women's sexual pain disorders. Methods. An expert committee, invited from six countries by the 3rd International Consultation, was comprised of eight researchers and clinicians from biological and social science disciplines, for the purpose of reviewing and grading the scientific evidence on nosology, etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of women's sexual pain disorders. Main Outcome Measure. Expert opinion was based on grading of evidence-based medical literature, extensive internal committee discussion, public presentation, and debate. Results. A comprehensive assessment of medical, sexual, and psychosocial history is recommended for diagnosis and management. Indications for general and focused pelvic genital examination are identified. Evidence-based recommendations for assessment of women's sexual pain disorders are reviewed. An evidence-based approach to management of these disorders is provided. Conclusions. Continued efforts are warranted to conduct research and scientific reporting on the optimal assessment and management of women's sexual pain disorders, including multidisciplinary approaches. van Lankveld JJDM, Granot M, Weijmar Schultz WCM, Binik YM, Wesselmann U, Pukall CF, Bohm-Starke N, and Achtrari C. Women's sexual pain disorders. J Sex Med 2010;7:615-631

Visualização de informação

O relatório está dividido em duas partes. Na primeira parte, é abordado o problema da visualização exactamente no que diz respeito à subtil correlação existente entre as técnicas (e respectivas metáforas), o utilizador e os dados. Na segunda parte, são analisadas algumas aplicações, projectos, ferramentas e sistemas de Visualização de Informação. Para categorizalos, serão considerados sete tipos de dados básicos subjacentes a eles: unidimensional, bidimensional, tridimensional, multi-dimensional, temporal, hierárquico, rede e workspace.O tema deste relatório é a visualização da informação. Esta é uma área actualmente muito activa e vital no ensino, na pesquisa e no desenvolvimento tecnológico. A ideia básica é utilizar imagens geradas pelo computador como meio para se obter uma maior compreensão e apreensão da informação que está presente nos dados (geometria) e suas relações (topologia). É um conceito simples, porém poderoso que tem criado imenso impacto em diversas áreas da engenharia e ciência.The theme of this report is information visualization. Nowadays, this is a very active and vital area of research, teaching and development. The basic idea of using computer generated pictures to gain information and understanding from data and relationships is the key concept behind it. This is an extremely simple, but very important concept which is having a powerful impact on methodology of engineering and science. This report is consisted of two parts. The first one, is an overview of the subtle correlation between the visual techniques, the user perception and the data. In the second part, several computer applications, tools, projects and information visualization systems are analyzed. In order to categorize them, seven basic types of data are considered: onedimensional, two- dimensional, three-dimensional, multidimensional, temporal, hierarchic, network and workspace

Virtualising visualisation: A distributed service based approach to visualisation on the Grid

Context: Current visualisation systems are not designed to work with the large quantities of data produced by scientists today, they rely on the abilities of a single resource to perform all of the processing and visualisation of data which limits the problem size that they can investigate. Objectives: The objectives of this research are to address the issues encountered by scientists with current visualisation systems and the deficiencies highlighted in current visualisation systems. The research then addresses the question:” How do you design the ideal service oriented architecture for visualisation that meets the needs of scientists?” Method: A new design for a visualisation system based upon a Service Oriented Architecture is proposed to address the issues identified, the architecture is implemented using Java and web service technology. The implementation of the architecture also realised several case study scenarios as demonstrators. Evaluation: Evaluation was performed using case study scenarios of scientific problems and performance data was conducted through experimentation. The scenarios were assessed against the requirements for the architecture and the performance data against a base case simulating a single resource implementation. Conclusion: The virtualised visualisation architecture shows promise for applications where visualisation can be performed in a highly parallel manner and where the problem can be easily sub-divided into chunks for distributed processing

Analysis of (iso)surface reconstructions: Quantitative metrics and methods

Due to sampling processes volumetric data is inherently discrete and most often knowledge of the underlying continuous model is not available. Surface rendering techniques attempt to reconstruct the continuous model, using isosurfaces, from the discrete data. Therefore, it natural to ask how accurate the reconstructed isosurfaces are with respect to the underlying continuous model. A reconstructed isosurface may look impressive when rendered ( photorealism ), but how well does it reflect reality ( physical realism )?;The users of volume visualization packages must be aware of the short-comings of the algorithms used to produce the images so that they may properly interpret, and interact with, what they see. However, very little work has been done to quantify the accuracy of volumetric data reconstructions. Most analysis to date has been qualitative. Qualitative analysis uses simple visual inspection to determine whether characteristics, known to exist in the real world object, are present in the rendered image. Our research suggests metrics and methods for quantifying the physical realism of reconstructed isosurfaces.;Physical realism is a many faceted notion. In fact, a different metric could be defined for each physical property one wishes to consider. We have defined four metrics--Global Surface Area Preservation (GSAP), Volume Preservation (VP), Point Distance Preservation (PDP), and Isovalue Preservation (IVP). We present experimental results for each of these metrics and discuss their validity with respect to those results.;We also present the Reconstruction Quantification (sub)System (RQS). RQS provides a flexible framework for measuring physical realism. This system can be embedded in existing visualization systems with little modification of the system itself. Two types of analysis can be performed; reconstruction analysis and algorithm analysis. Reconstruction analysis allows users to determine the accuracy of individual surface reconstructions. Algorithm analysis, on the other hand, allows developers of visualization systems to determine the efficacy of the visualization system based on several reconstructions

Runtime visualisation of object-oriented software

Software is a complex and invisible entity, yet one which is core to modem life. The development and maintenance of such software includes one staple task, the need to understand the software at the implementation level. This process of program comprehension is difficult and time consuming. Yet, despite its importance, there remains very limited tool support for program comprehension activities. The results of this research show the role that runtime visualisation can play in aiding the comprehension of object-oriented software by highlighting both its static and dynamic structure. Previous work in this area is discussed, both in terms of the representations used and the methods of extracting runtime information. Building on this previous work, this thesis develops new representations of object-oriented software at runtime, which are then implemented in a proof of concept tool. This tool allowed the representations to be investigated on real software systems. The representations are evaluated against two feature-based evaluation frameworks. The evaluation focuses on generic software visualisation criteria, due to the lack of any specific frameworks for visualising dynamic information. The evaluation also includes lessons learnt in the implementation of a prototype visualisation tool. The object-oriented paradigm continues to grow in popularity and provides advantages to program comprehension activities. However, it also brings a number of new challenges to program comprehension due to the discrepancies between its static definition and its runtime structure. Therefore, techniques that highlight both the static definition and the runtime behaviour of object-oriented systems offer benefits to their comprehension. Software visualisation offers an approach to aid program comprehension activities through providing a means to deal with the size and complexity of the software and its invisible nature. This thesis highlights the generic issues that software visualisation faces, before focusing on how the visualisation of runtime information affects these issues. Many of the issues are compounded by the dynamic nature of the information to be visualised and the explosive growth in the volume of information that this dynamism can bring. Wider results of this research have allowed the proposal of the necessary concepts that should be considered in the design and evaluation of runtime visualisations. Software visualisation at runtime is still a relatively unexplored area and there remains many research challenges within it. This thesis aims to act as a first step to addressing these challenges and aims to promote interest and future development within this area

Virtual software in reality

Software visualisation is an important weapon in the program comprehension armoury. It is a technique that can, when designed and used effectively, aid in understanding existing program code. It can achieve this by displaying information in new and different forms, which may make obvious something missed in reading the code. It can also be used to present many aspects of the data at once. Software, despite many software engineering advances in requirements, design and implementation techniques, continues to be complex and large and if anything seems to be growing in these respects. This means that techniques that failed to aid comprehension and maintenance are certainly not going to be able to deal with the current software. Therefore this area requires research to be able to suggest solutions to deal with the information overload that is sure to occur. There are several issues that this thesis addresses; all of them related to the creation of software visualisation systems that are capable of being used and useful well into the next generation of software systems. The scale and complexity of software are pressing issues, as is the associated information overload problem that this brings. In an attempt to address this problem the following are considered to be important: abstractions, representations, mappings, metaphors, and visualisations. These areas are interrelated and the first four enable the final one, visualisations. These problems are not the only ones that face software visualisation systems. There are many that are based on the general theory of the applicability of the technique to such tasks as program comprehension, rather than the detail of how a particular code fragment is shown. These problems are also related to the enabling technology of three- dimensional visualisations; virtual reality. In summary the areas of interest are: automation, evolution, scalability, navigation and interaction, correlation, and visual complexity. This thesis provides an exploration of these identified areas in the context of software visualisation. Relationships that describe, and distinguish between, existing and future software visualisations are presented, with examples based on recent software visualisation research. Two real world metaphors (and their associated mappings and representations) are defined for the purpose of visualising software as an aid to program comprehension. These metaphors also provide a vehicle for the exploration of the areas identified above. Finally, an evaluation of the visualisations is presented using a framework developed for the comparative evaluation of three-dimensional, comprehension oriented, software visualisations. This thesis has shown the viability of using three-dimensional software visualisations. The important issues of automation, evolution, scalability, and navigation have been presented and discussed, and their relationship to real world metaphors examined. This has been done in conjunction with an investigation into the use of such real world metaphors for software visualisation. The thesis as a whole has provided an important examination of many of the issues related to these types of visualisation in the context of software and is therefore a valuable basis for future work in this area

Protótipo de ambiente virtual educacional para atividade típica da construção civil brasileira

Resumo: Atualmente, a indústria brasileira de construção está passando ao processo econômico que resulta em um polo atrativo para os jovens. Eles estão se esforçando para aprender profissões como Arquitetura, Engenharia E Construção. Eles pertencem a uma geração onde o computador está presente em suas vidas para acessar informações e conhecimento. Esta geração não é mais um receptor passivo de conteúdos transmitidos, mas um produtor do seu conhecimento através de mídias interativas nos dias de hoje. Mas, a educação no Brasil nas áreas da Arquitetura, Engenharia e Construção ainda estão baseadas em um paradigma onde o conhecimento está centrado na figura do educador. O educador brasileiro não explora os recursos que são familiares a esta nova geração. Isso ressalta a necessidade de mudar este paradigma, utilizando recursos da aprendizagem medida por tecnologias da informação e comunicação. Pesquisando contextos de aprendizagem em Arquitetura, Engenharia e Construção pode-se notar que a Realidade Virtual se apresenta como uma poderosa ferramenta educacional. O objetivo da dissertação de mestrado é o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta para analisar e complementar o processo de ensino e aprendizagem. É apresentado um protótipo de ambiente virtual educacional para simular atividades típicas da construção civil brasileira que foi testado por alunos e docente do curso de graduação em Engenharia Civil da Universidade Federal do Paraná, demonstrando sua usabilidade e eficácia como ferramenta de treinamento e aprendizagem. Conclui-se que através da experiência com o ambiente virtual protótipo um aprendiz possa entender a tarefa simulada de maneira mais intuitiva e menos opressora do que as metodologias usuais em sala de aula, ao mesmo tempo em que visa incentivar os educadores a buscar pedagogias mais inovadoras e motivadoras