Special issue introduction: Approaching spatial uncertainty visualization to support reasoning and decision making

While research on uncertainty and decision-making has a long history across several disciplines, recent technological developments compel researchers to rethink how to best address and advance the understanding of how humans reason and make decisions under spatial uncertainty. This introduction presents a visual summary graphic to provide an overview of each article in this special issue. Upon viewing these visual summaries, the reader will find that each of these articles covers different topics in the uncertainty visualization domain, offering complementary research in this field. Extending this body of research and finding new ways to explore how these visualizations may help or hinder the analytical and reasoning process of humans continues to be a necessary step towards designing more effective uncertainty visualizations to support reasoning and decision-making

Toward flexible visual analytics augmented through smooth display transitions

Visualizing big and complex multivariate data is challenging. To address this challenge, we propose flexible visual analytics (FVA) with the aim to mitigate visual complexity and interaction complexity challenges in visual analytics, while maintaining the strengths of multiple perspectives on the studied data. At the heart of our proposed approach are transitions that fluidly transform data between user-relevant views to offer various perspectives and insights into the data. While smooth display transitions have been already proposed, there has not yet been an interdisciplinary discussion to systematically conceptualize and formalize these ideas. As a call to further action, we argue that future research is necessary to develop a conceptual framework for flexible visual analytics. We discuss preliminary ideas for prioritizing multi-aspect visual representations and multi-aspect transitions between them, and consider the display user for whom such depictions are produced and made available for visual analytics. With this contribution we aim to further facilitate visual analytics on complex data sets for varying data exploration tasks and purposes based on different user characteristics and data use contexts

Are Hylobates lar Extirpated from China?

The Nangunhe Nature Reserve in Southwest Yunnan (PRC) has long been presumed to be the last stronghold of lar (or white-handed) gibbons (Hylobates lar) in China and the likely last place of occurrence of Hylobates lar yunnanensis. We conducted a comprehensive survey to assess the status of lar gibbons at Nangunhe. We found no visual or auditory evidence of them still residing at the reserve and therefore tentatively conclude that lar gibbons have become extinct in China. It appears that large-scale destruction of primary forests in the 1960s and 1970s brought about an initial decline in their numbers, and subsequent uncontrolled hunting has resulted in their extirpation. The situation for the six Chinese ape taxa is nothing less than disastrous, with 1 taxon assumed to have become extinct during the last few years, 1 taxon not having been confirmed since the 1980s, and 2 species at the very brink of extinction with only tens of individuals remaining in China

Encouraging and supporting children's voices

Children are considered not to be full members of society and that their participation should be limited. Further, that this limitation is imposed by adults. In order to counter these views it is key to afford space for children’s voices and that these are facilitated in some way. Philosophy with Children, in all its variety of approaches and practices, lays claim to being a tool that allows children to develop the skills necessary for citizenship such as participation and airing their views. The chapter focuses on the role of Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI), a specific method of practical philosophy with children, to empower children and give them a voice. CoPI has a series of distinctive features that make it especially apt in meeting this goal. Children are able articulate their views on a particular topic and this is supported by the structure of the dialogue itself. In addition, though, their statements must build on previous statements by demonstrating dis/agreement and the participants must provide reasons to justify that dis/agreement. The method also emphasises the primacy of the children’s thinking and the facilitator works to juxtapose speakers in order to drive the dialogue further philosophically. In this chapter, these features of CoPI are illustrated by examples from dialogues on the Good Life, stimulated by the question "What kind of society would you like to live in?" CoPI is shown to give children voice with a view to promoting their participation in society while also eschewing the imbalance in the adult/child power relationship. Here, we see what is important to children in the lives they want to live, for themselves and for those around them. What is of particular interest is the manner in which the children appear to collude with the adult/child power divide in how they talk about the kind of society in which they’d like to live

Break detection of annual Swiss temperature series

[1] Instrumental temperature series are often affected by artificial breaks (“break points”) due to (e.g.,) changes in station location, land-use, or instrumentation. The Swiss climate observation network offers a high number and density of stations, many long and relatively complete daily to sub-daily temperature series, and well-documented station histories (i.e., metadata). However, for many climate observation networks outside of Switzerland, detailed station histories are missing, incomplete, or inaccessible. To correct these records, the use of reliable statistical break detection methods is necessary. Here, we apply three statistical break detection methods to high-quality Swiss temperature series and use the available metadata to assess the methods. Due to the complex terrain in Switzerland, we are able to assess these methods under specific local conditions such as the Foehn or crest situations. We find that the temperature series of all stations are affected by artificial breaks (average = 1 break point / 48 years) with discrepancies in the abilities of the methods to detect breaks. However, by combining the three statistical methods, almost all of the detected break points are confirmed by metadata. In most cases, these break points are ascribed to a combination of factors in the station history

A global historical ozone data set and prominent features of stratospheric variability prior to 1979

We present a vertically resolved zonal mean monthly mean global ozone data set spanning the period 1901 to 2007, called HISTOZ.1.0. It is based on a new approach that combines information from an ensemble of chemistry climate model (CCM) simulations with historical total column ozone information. The CCM simulations incorporate important external drivers of stratospheric chemistry and dynamics (in particular solar and volcanic effects, greenhouse gases and ozone depleting substances, sea surface temperatures, and the quasi-biennial oscillation). The historical total column ozone observations include ground-based measurements from the 1920s onward and satellite observations from 1970 to 1976. An off-line data assimilation approach is used to combine model simulations, observations, and information on the observation error. The period starting in 1979 was used for validation with existing ozone data sets and therefore only ground-based measurements were assimilated. Results demonstrate considerable skill from the CCM simulations alone. Assimilating observations provides additional skill for total column ozone. With respect to the vertical ozone distribution, assimilating observations increases on average the correlation with a reference data set, but does not decrease the mean squared error. Analyses of HISTOZ.1.0 with respect to the effects of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and of the 11 yr solar cycle on stratospheric ozone from 1934 to 1979 qualitatively confirm previous studies that focussed on the post-1979 period. The ENSO signature exhibits a much clearer imprint of a change in strength of the Brewer–Dobson circulation compared to the post-1979 period. The imprint of the 11 yr solar cycle is slightly weaker in the earlier period. Furthermore, the total column ozone increase from the 1950s to around 1970 at northern mid-latitudes is briefly discussed. Indications for contributions of a tropospheric ozone increase, greenhouse gases, and changes in atmospheric circulation are found. Finally, the paper points at several possible future improvements of HISTOZ.1.0

Untersuchungen des Verarbeitungsverhaltens von Packstoffen aus nachwachsenden Rohstoffen auf Verpackungsmaschinen Abschlussbericht

Available from TIB Hannover: F00B469 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEBundesministerium fuer Ernaehrung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten, Bonn (Germany); Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe e.V., Guelzow (Germany)DEGerman