Interactive time series analytics powered by ONEX

Modern applications in this digital age collect a staggering amount of time series data from economic growth rates to electrical household consumption habits. To make sense of it, domain analysts interactively sift through these time series collections in search of critical relationships between and recurring patterns within these time series. The ONEX (Online Exploration of Time Series) system supports effective exploratory analysis of time series collections composed of heterogeneous, variable-length and misaligned time series using robust alignment dynamic time warping (DTW) methods. To assure real-time responsiveness even for these complex and compute-intensive analytics, ONEX precomputes and then encodes time series relationships based on the inexpensive-to-compute Euclidean distance into the ONEX base. Thereafter, based on a solid formal foundation, ONEX uses DTW-enhanced analytics to correctly extract relevant time series matches on this Euclidean-prepared ONEX base. Our live interactive demonstration shows how our ONEX exploratory tool, supported by a rich array of visual interactions and expressive visualizations, enables efficient mining and interpretation of the MATTERS real data collection composed of economic, social, and education data trends across the fifty American states. © 2017 ACM

Social Impact of Time Series Visualization

In this Interactive Qualifying Project we explore the social impact of supporting time series mining with visual technology. Based on literature research, we develop a visual analytics system for time series mining. Our system enables users to explore and interact with time series datasets, while also offering guidance for parameter tuning and for selecting similarity measures. Together the powerful interactions and the rich visual displays empower users to find insights in time series datasets. Built as a web service, the system increases accessibility to public datasets. Evaluation based on user studies with over 400 subjects as well as interviews with domain experts led to improvements in user experience and insight into the social impact of time series analysis

Mapping Scholarly Communication Infrastructure: A Bibliographic Scan of Digital Scholarly Communication Infrastructure

This bibliography scan covers a lot of ground. In it, I have attempted to capture relevant recent literature across the whole of the digital scholarly communications infrastructure. I have used that literature to identify significant projects and then document them with descriptions and basic information. Structurally, this review has three parts. In the first, I begin with a diagram showing the way the projects reviewed fit into the research workflow; then I cover a number of topics and functional areas related to digital scholarly communication. I make no attempt to be comprehensive, especially regarding the technical literature; rather, I have tried to identify major articles and reports, particularly those addressing the library community. The second part of this review is a list of projects or programs arranged by broad functional categories. The third part lists individual projects and the organizations—both commercial and nonprofit—that support them. I have identified 206 projects. Of these, 139 are nonprofit and 67 are commercial. There are 17 organizations that support multiple projects, and six of these—Artefactual Systems, Atypon/Wiley, Clarivate Analytics, Digital Science, Elsevier, and MDPI—are commercial. The remaining 11—Center for Open Science, Collaborative Knowledge Foundation (Coko), LYRASIS/DuraSpace, Educopia Institute, Internet Archive, JISC, OCLC, OpenAIRE, Open Access Button, Our Research (formerly Impactstory), and the Public Knowledge Project—are nonprofit.Andrew W. Mellon Foundatio

Employee experience –the missing link for engaging employees: Insights from an MNE 's AI ‐based HR ecosystem

Abstract: Analyzing multiple data sources from a global information technology (IT) consulting multinational enterprise (MNE), this research unpacks the configuration of a digitalized HR ecosystem of artificial intelligence(AI)‐assisted human resource management (HRM) applications and HR platforms. This study develops a novel theoretical framework mapping the nature and purpose of a digitalized AI‐assisted HR ecosystem for delivering exceptional employee experience (EX), an antecedent to employee engagement (EE). Employing the theoretical lenses of EX, EE, AI‐mediated social exchange, and engagement platforms, this study's overarching aim of this article is to establish how AI‐assisted HRM fits into an organization's ecosystem and, second, how it impacts EX and EE. Our findings show that AI‐assisted applications for HRM enhance EX and, thus, EE. We also see increases in employee productivity and HR function's effectiveness. Implications for research and practice are also discussed

Power Consumption Analysis, Measurement, Management, and Issues:A State-of-the-Art Review of Smartphone Battery and Energy Usage

The advancement and popularity of smartphones have made it an essential and all-purpose device. But lack of advancement in battery technology has held back its optimum potential. Therefore, considering its scarcity, optimal use and efficient management of energy are crucial in a smartphone. For that, a fair understanding of a smartphone's energy consumption factors is necessary for both users and device manufacturers, along with other stakeholders in the smartphone ecosystem. It is important to assess how much of the device's energy is consumed by which components and under what circumstances. This paper provides a generalized, but detailed analysis of the power consumption causes (internal and external) of a smartphone and also offers suggestive measures to minimize the consumption for each factor. The main contribution of this paper is four comprehensive literature reviews on: 1) smartphone's power consumption assessment and estimation (including power consumption analysis and modelling); 2) power consumption management for smartphones (including energy-saving methods and techniques); 3) state-of-the-art of the research and commercial developments of smartphone batteries (including alternative power sources); and 4) mitigating the hazardous issues of smartphones' batteries (with a details explanation of the issues). The research works are further subcategorized based on different research and solution approaches. A good number of recent empirical research works are considered for this comprehensive review, and each of them is succinctly analysed and discussed

Impact of Imaging and Distance Perception in VR Immersive Visual Experience

Virtual reality (VR) headsets have evolved to include unprecedented viewing quality. Meanwhile, they have become lightweight, wireless, and low-cost, which has opened to new applications and a much wider audience. VR headsets can now provide users with greater understanding of events and accuracy of observation, making decision-making faster and more effective. However, the spread of immersive technologies has shown a slow take-up, with the adoption of virtual reality limited to a few applications, typically related to entertainment. This reluctance appears to be due to the often-necessary change of operating paradigm and some scepticism towards the "VR advantage". The need therefore arises to evaluate the contribution that a VR system can make to user performance, for example to monitoring and decision-making. This will help system designers understand when immersive technologies can be proposed to replace or complement standard display systems such as a desktop monitor. In parallel to the VR headsets evolution there has been that of 360 cameras, which are now capable to instantly acquire photographs and videos in stereoscopic 3D (S3D) modality, with very high resolutions. 360° images are innately suited to VR headsets, where the captured view can be observed and explored through the natural rotation of the head. Acquired views can even be experienced and navigated from the inside as they are captured. The combination of omnidirectional images and VR headsets has opened to a new way of creating immersive visual representations. We call it: photo-based VR. This represents a new methodology that combines traditional model-based rendering with high-quality omnidirectional texture-mapping. Photo-based VR is particularly suitable for applications related to remote visits and realistic scene reconstruction, useful for monitoring and surveillance systems, control panels and operator training. The presented PhD study investigates the potential of photo-based VR representations. It starts by evaluating the role of immersion and user’s performance in today's graphical visual experience, to then use it as a reference to develop and evaluate new photo-based VR solutions. With the current literature on photo-based VR experience and associated user performance being very limited, this study builds new knowledge from the proposed assessments. We conduct five user studies on a few representative applications examining how visual representations can be affected by system factors (camera and display related) and how it can influence human factors (such as realism, presence, and emotions). Particular attention is paid to realistic depth perception, to support which we develop target solutions for photo-based VR. They are intended to provide users with a correct perception of space dimension and objects size. We call it: true-dimensional visualization. The presented work contributes to unexplored fields including photo-based VR and true-dimensional visualization, offering immersive system designers a thorough comprehension of the benefits, potential, and type of applications in which these new methods can make the difference. This thesis manuscript and its findings have been partly presented in scientific publications. In particular, five conference papers on Springer and the IEEE symposia, [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], and one journal article in an IEEE periodical [6], have been published

Videos in Context for Telecommunication and Spatial Browsing

The research presented in this thesis explores the use of videos embedded in panoramic imagery to transmit spatial and temporal information describing remote environments and their dynamics. Virtual environments (VEs) through which users can explore remote locations are rapidly emerging as a popular medium of presence and remote collaboration. However, capturing visual representation of locations to be used in VEs is usually a tedious process that requires either manual modelling of environments or the employment of specific hardware. Capturing environment dynamics is not straightforward either, and it is usually performed through specific tracking hardware. Similarly, browsing large unstructured video-collections with available tools is difficult, as the abundance of spatial and temporal information makes them hard to comprehend. At the same time, on a spectrum between 3D VEs and 2D images, panoramas lie in between, as they offer the same 2D images accessibility while preserving 3D virtual environments surrounding representation. For this reason, panoramas are an attractive basis for videoconferencing and browsing tools as they can relate several videos temporally and spatially. This research explores methods to acquire, fuse, render and stream data coming from heterogeneous cameras, with the help of panoramic imagery. Three distinct but interrelated questions are addressed. First, the thesis considers how spatially localised video can be used to increase the spatial information transmitted during video mediated communication, and if this improves quality of communication. Second, the research asks whether videos in panoramic context can be used to convey spatial and temporal information of a remote place and the dynamics within, and if this improves users' performance in tasks that require spatio-temporal thinking. Finally, the thesis considers whether there is an impact of display type on reasoning about events within videos in panoramic context. These research questions were investigated over three experiments, covering scenarios common to computer-supported cooperative work and video browsing. To support the investigation, two distinct video+context systems were developed. The first telecommunication experiment compared our videos in context interface with fully-panoramic video and conventional webcam video conferencing in an object placement scenario. The second experiment investigated the impact of videos in panoramic context on quality of spatio-temporal thinking during localization tasks. To support the experiment, a novel interface to video-collection in panoramic context was developed and compared with common video-browsing tools. The final experimental study investigated the impact of display type on reasoning about events. The study explored three adaptations of our video-collection interface to three display types. The overall conclusion is that videos in panoramic context offer a valid solution to spatio-temporal exploration of remote locations. Our approach presents a richer visual representation in terms of space and time than standard tools, showing that providing panoramic contexts to video collections makes spatio-temporal tasks easier. To this end, videos in context are suitable alternative to more difficult, and often expensive solutions. These findings are beneficial to many applications, including teleconferencing, virtual tourism and remote assistance

NASA Tech Briefs, June 1994

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