Predicting Research that will be Cited in Policy Documents

Scientific publications and other genres of research output are increasingly being cited in policy documents. Citations in documents of this nature could be considered a critical indicator of the significance and societal impact of the research output. In this study, we built classification models that predict whether a particular research work is likely to be cited in a public policy document based on the attention it received online, primarily on social media platforms. We evaluated the classifiers based on their accuracy, precision, and recall values. We found that Random Forest and Multinomial Naive Bayes classifiers performed better overall.Comment: 2 page extended abstract submitted for ACM WebSci'17 conferenc

Evaluating Gradient Perception in Color-Coded Scalar Fields

Color mapping is a commonly used technique for visualizing scalar fields. While there exists advice for choosing effective colormaps, it is unclear if current guidelines apply equally across task types. We study the perception of gradients and evaluate the effectiveness of three colormaps at depicting gradient magnitudes. In a crowd-sourced experiment, we determine the just-noticeable differences (JNDs) at which participants can reliably compare and judge variations in gradient between two scalar fields. We find that participants exhibited lower JNDs with a diverging (cool-warm) or a spectral (rainbow) scheme, as compared with a monotonic-luminance colormap (viridis). The results support a hypothesis that apparent discontinuities in the color ramp may help viewers discern subtle structural differences in gradient. We discuss these findings and highlight future research directions for colormap evaluation

A visual Analytics System for Optimizing Communications in Massively Parallel Applications

Current and future supercomputers have tens of thousands of compute nodes interconnected with high-dimensional networks and complex network topologies for improved performance. Application developers are required to write scalable parallel programs in order to achieve high throughput on these machines. Application performance is largely determined by efficient inter-process communication. A common way to analyze and optimize performance is through profiling parallel codes to identify communication bottlenecks. However, understanding gigabytes of profile data is not a trivial task. In this paper, we present a visual analytics system for identifying the scalability bottlenecks and improving the communication efficiency of massively parallel applications. Visualization methods used in this system are designed to comprehend large-scale and varied communication patterns on thousands of nodes in complex networks such as the 5D torus and the dragonfly. We also present efficient rerouting and remapping algorithms that can be coupled with our interactive visual analytics design for performance optimization. We demonstrate the utility of our system with several case studies using three benchmark applications on two leading supercomputers. The mapping suggestion from our system led to 38% improvement in hop-bytes for MiniAMR application on 4,096 MPI processes.This research has been sponsored in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation through grant IIS-1320229, and the U.S. Department of Energy through grants DE-SC0012610 and DE-SC0014917. This research has been funded in part and used resources of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Lab- oratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This work was supported in part by the DOE Office of Science, ASCR, under award numbers 57L38, 57L32, 57L11, 57K50, and 508050

Improving Models of Document Cycling: Accounting for the Less Visible Writing Activities of an Annual Reporting Process at a supercomputing facility

Conventional models of document cycling for periodic report writing in large organizations limit what is represented to the final stages of document manufacturing, such as drafting and editing, usually within an annual timeframe. This paper proposes a model of document cycling that represents a more diverse range of work activities across a broader range of timeframes, from hourly to annual. These activities include the inscription of data and the generation of reportable information. A more inclusive model of the document cycling process ascribes value to the less visible aspects of document cycling and visualizes how report writing activities are submerged into the regular operations of the facility. The data in this study was drawn from a larger ethnographic study of technical documentation and reporting processes at a federally funded supercomputing facility for scientific research

Operational Metrics Reporting Processes at Scientific User Facilities: Comparing a High-Energy X-ray Synchrotron Facility to a Supercomputing Facility

This brief paper follows up on a question proposed at the end of a research paper by the authors published in the transactions of ProComm 2016 (Austin, TX) [1]. Last year\u27s paper reported on how an operational assessment review process at a federally-funded scientific supercomputing center transforms raw data about machine operations into reportable knowledge for audiences external to the facility, in particular the funder. This process was codified in a document-cycling model that accounted for writing activities beyond the conventionally modeled practices of composing and editing

Real-Time Omnidirectional Stereo Rendering: Generating 360° Surround-View Panoramic Images for Comfortable Immersive Viewing

Surround-view panoramic images and videos have become a popular form of media for interactive viewing on mobile devices and virtual reality headsets. Viewing such media provides a sense of immersion by allowing users to control their view direction and experience an entire environment. When using a virtual reality headset, the level of immersion can be improved by leveraging stereoscopic capabilities. Stereoscopic images are generated in pairs, one for the left eye and one for the right eye, and result in providing an important depth cue for the human visual system. For computer generated imagery, rendering proper stereo pairs is well known for a fixed view. However, it is much more difficult to create omnidirectional stereo pairs for a surround-view projection that work well when looking in any direction. One major drawback of traditional omnidirectional stereo images is that they suffer from binocular misalignment in the peripheral vision as a user\u27s view direction approaches the zenith / nadir (north / south pole) of the projection sphere. This paper presents a real-time geometry-based approach for omnidirectional stereo rendering that fits into the standard rendering pipeline. Our approach includes tunable parameters that enable pole merging - a reduction in the stereo effect near the poles that can minimize binocular misalignment. Results from a user study indicate that pole merging reduces visual fatigue and discomfort associated with binocular misalignment without inhibiting depth perception

UbiWorld: An EnvironmentIntegrating Virtual Reality, Supercomputing, and Design

UbiWorld is a concept being developedbytheFutures Laboratory group at Argonne National Laboratory that ties together the notion of ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) with that of using virtual reality for rapid prototyping. The goal is to develop an environment where one can exploreUbicomp-typeconcepts without having to build real Ubicomp hardware. The basic notion is to extend object models in a virtual world by using distributed wide area heterogeneous computing technology to provide complex networking and processing capabilities to virtual reality objects