Cosmic cookery : making a stereoscopic 3D animated movie.

This paper describes our experience making a short stereoscopic movie visualizing the development of structure in the universe during the 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to the present day. Aimed at a general audience for the Royal Society's 2005 Summer Science Exhibition, the movie illustrates how the latest cosmological theories based on dark matter and dark energy are capable of producing structures as complex as spiral galaxies and allows the viewer to directly compare observations from the real universe with theoretical results. 3D is an inherent feature of the cosmology data sets and stereoscopic visualization provides a natural way to present the images to the viewer, in addition to allowing researchers to visualize these vast, complex data sets. The presentation of the movie used passive, linearly polarized projection onto a 2m wide screen but it was also required to playback on a Sharp RD3D display and in anaglyph projection at venues without dedicated stereoscopic display equipment. Additionally lenticular prints were made from key images in the movie. We discuss the following technical challenges during the stereoscopic production process; 1) Controlling the depth presentation, 2) Editing the stereoscopic sequences, 3) Generating compressed movies in display speci¯c formats. We conclude that the generation of high quality stereoscopic movie content using desktop tools and equipment is feasible. This does require careful quality control and manual intervention but we believe these overheads are worthwhile when presenting inherently 3D data as the result is signi¯cantly increased impact and better understanding of complex 3D scenes

Structured Data Storage for Data-Driven Process Optimisation in Bioprinting

Bioprinting is a method to fabricate 3D models that mimic tissue. Future fields of application might be in pharmaceutical or medical context. As the number of applicants might vary between only one patient to manufacturing tissue for high-throughput drug screening, designing a process will necessitate a high degree of flexibility, robustness, as well as comprehensive monitoring. To enable quality by design process optimisation for future application, establishing systematic data storage routines suitable for automated analytical tools is highly desirable as a first step. This manuscript introduces a workflow for process design, documentation within an electronic lab notebook and monitoring to supervise the product quality over time or at different locations. Lab notes, analytical data and corresponding metadata are stored in a systematic hierarchy within the research data infrastructure Kadi4Mat, which allows for continuous, flexible data structuring and access management. To support the experimental and analytical workflow, additional features were implemented to enhance and build upon the functionality provided by Kadi4Mat, including browser-based file previews and a Python tool for the combined filtering and extraction of data. The structured research data management with Kadi4Mat enables retrospective data grouping and usage by process analytical technology tools connecting individual analysis software to machine-readable data exchange formats

Deceptive Previews: A Study of the Link Preview Trustworthiness in Social Platforms

Social media has become a primary mean of content and information sharing, thanks to its speed and simplicity. In this scenario, link previews play the important role of giving a meaningful first glance to users, summarizing the content of the shared webpage within their title, description and image. In our work, we analyzed the preview-rendering process, observing how it is possible to misuse it to obtain benign-looking previews for malicious links. Concrete use-case of this research field is phishing and spam spread, considering targeted attacks in addition to large-scale campaigns. We designed a set of experiments for 20 social media platforms including social networks and instant messenger applications and found out how most of the platforms follow their own preview design and format, sometimes providing partial information. Four of these platforms allow preview crafting so as to hide the malicious target even to a tech-savvy user, and we found that it is possible to create misleading previews for the remaining 16 platforms when an attacker can register their own domain. We also observe how 18 social media platforms do not employ active nor passive countermeasures against the spread of known malicious links or software, and that existing cross-checks on malicious URLs can be bypassed through client and server-side redirections. To conclude, we suggest seven recommendations covering the spectrum of our findings, to improve the overall preview-rendering mechanism and increase users’ overall trust in social media platforms

Store submission automation : effects of user centred design on organizational learning

In this thesis, we study an automation tool implemented using user-centred design- paradigm. The aim of this thesis is to study how the user-centred design affects organisational learning. The tool is used for uploading application packages and marketing assets to the Apple and Google digital distribution services. User-centred design focuses on understanding user’s tasks and requirements. Organisational learning is used to describe the learning that happens inside an organisation on individual or group level, which helps the organisation to accumulate long lasting knowledge. In the initial literary search, there was no earlier research focusing on this particular question. In this thesis, we will go through in detail the organisational structure, the requirements set for the digital distribution services and the implementation of the automation tool for this case. This will enable us to scrutinize the interviews and results in this context. This thesis was carried out using qualitative research methodology. Interviews were conducted with users from the company for which the tool was implemented. These interviews seem to bear no strong correlation between organisational learning and user- centric design. However, the results indicate for the research question that further inspection to the subject could be worthwhile.Tässä tutkielmassa perehdytään yrityksen sisäiseen käyttäjäkeskeisesti suunniteltuun automaatiotyökaluun, jonka tarkoituksena on lähettää sovellustiedostoja ja markkinointiassetteja Applen sekä Googlen digitaalisiin sisältöpalveluihin. Tarkoituksena on selvittää, onko käyttäjkeskeisellä suunnittelulla vaikutusta organisaation oppimiseen. Käyttäjäkeskeisessä suunnittelussa lähtökohtana on käyttäjien tarpeiden ymmärtäminen sekä vaatimusten määrittely. Organisaation oppiminen puolestaan viittaa organisaation sisällä tapahtuvaan informaation tai osaamisen kasvamiseen, joko ryhmässä tai henkilökohtaisella tasolla. Näiden kahden kohtaamisesta ei lähdehaun perusteella löytynyt aikaisempaa tutkimusta. Tutkielmassa käydään läpi yksityiskohtaisesti organisaation rakenne, digitaalisten sisältöpalveluiden asettamat vaatimukset sekä miten toteutettiin työkalu vastaamaan tämän luomaa kysyntää, jotta aiheen ja haastatteluiden tulkitseminen tässä kontekstissa olisi mahdollisimman yksityiskohtaista. Tämä tutkielma käyttää lähtökohtanaan laadullisen tutkimuksen menetelmäsuuntausta. Tutkimuksen yhteydessä haastateltiin käyttäjiä yrityksestä, jolle kyseinen työkalu toteutettiin. Haastatteluiden perusteella ei löydetty suoraa korrelaatiota käyttäjäkeskeisen suunnittelun ja organisaation oppimisen välillä. Pieniä viitteitä niiden välillä kuitenkin löytyi, jonka perusteella lisätutkimus aiheesta olisi paikallaan

MZmine 2: Modular framework for processing, visualizing, and analyzing mass spectrometry-based molecular profile data

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mass spectrometry (MS) coupled with online separation methods is commonly applied for differential and quantitative profiling of biological samples in metabolomic as well as proteomic research. Such approaches are used for systems biology, functional genomics, and biomarker discovery, among others. An ongoing challenge of these molecular profiling approaches, however, is the development of better data processing methods. Here we introduce a new generation of a popular open-source data processing toolbox, MZmine 2.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A key concept of the MZmine 2 software design is the strict separation of core functionality and data processing modules, with emphasis on easy usability and support for high-resolution spectra processing. Data processing modules take advantage of embedded visualization tools, allowing for immediate previews of parameter settings. Newly introduced functionality includes the identification of peaks using online databases, MSⁿdata support, improved isotope pattern support, scatter plot visualization, and a new method for peak list alignment based on the random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm. The performance of the RANSAC alignment was evaluated using synthetic datasets as well as actual experimental data, and the results were compared to those obtained using other alignment algorithms.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>MZmine 2 is freely available under a GNU GPL license and can be obtained from the project website at: <url>http://mzmine.sourceforge.net/</url>. The current version of MZmine 2 is suitable for processing large batches of data and has been applied to both targeted and non-targeted metabolomic analyses.</p

Structuring a Modern Web Service for Users and Search Engines

This thesis aims to study how search engines should be taken into account when developing an early stage web service. The thesis introduces practical methods for improving the presentation of a web service’s pages in search engine results and a general overview of the working principles of search engines is provided. The thesis also goes over the history of web search engines in general before covering the history of Google in a bit more detailed manner. The practical aspect of this thesis is conducted as a case study, where search engine legibility related improvements are made to the Skole application. Skole is a very early stage web service, were higher educations students can share knowledge and discuss their studies. The case study aims to get information about how and what kind of improvements can be made, and how they make a difference in practice. The case study also seeks to find out how important it is to follow the guidelines of search engine providers, when doing development for this kind of very early stage web service. The results of the case study will mainly be measured by documenting how the application’s pages show up in Google before and after changes have been made. Some aggregated data from analytics providers is also used to see how the made improvements have affected the usage of the application