Augmenting Sports Videos with VisCommentator

Visualizing data in sports videos is gaining traction in sports analytics, given its ability to communicate insights and explicate player strategies engagingly. However, augmenting sports videos with such data visualizations is challenging, especially for sports analysts, as it requires considerable expertise in video editing. To ease the creation process, we present a design space that characterizes augmented sports videos at an element-level (what the constituents are) and clip-level (how those constituents are organized). We do so by systematically reviewing 233 examples of augmented sports videos collected from TV channels, teams, and leagues. The design space guides selection of data insights and visualizations for various purposes. Informed by the design space and close collaboration with domain experts, we design VisCommentator, a fast prototyping tool, to eases the creation of augmented table tennis videos by leveraging machine learning-based data extractors and design space-based visualization recommendations. With VisCommentator, sports analysts can create an augmented video by selecting the data to visualize instead of manually drawing the graphical marks. Our system can be generalized to other racket sports (e.g., tennis, badminton) once the underlying datasets and models are available. A user study with seven domain experts shows high satisfaction with our system, confirms that the participants can reproduce augmented sports videos in a short period, and provides insightful implications into future improvements and opportunities

Revisiting the Design Patterns of Composite Visualizations

Composite visualization is a popular design strategy that represents complex datasets by integrating multiple visualizations in a meaningful and aesthetic layout, such as juxtaposition, overlay, and nesting. With this strategy, numerous novel designs have been proposed in visualization publications to accomplish various visual analytic tasks. These well-crafted composite visualizations have formed a valuable collection for designers and researchers to address real-world problems and inspire new research topics and designs. However, there is a lack of understanding of design patterns of composite visualization, thus failing to provide holistic design space and concrete examples for practical use. In this paper, we opted to revisit the composite visualizations in VIS publications and answered what and how visualizations of different types are composed together. To achieve this, we first constructed a corpus of composite visualizations from IEEE VIS publications and decomposed them into a series of basic visualization types (e.g., bar chart, map, and matrix). With this corpus, we studied the spatial (e.g., separated or overlaying) and semantic relationships (e.g., with same types or shared axis) between visualizations and proposed a taxonomy consisting of eight different design patterns (e.g., repeated, stacked, accompanied, and nested). Furthermore, we analyzed and discussed common practices of composite visualizations, such as the distribution of different patterns and correlations between visualization types. From the analysis and examples, we obtained insights into different design patterns on the utilities, advantages, and disadvantages. Finally, we developed an interactive system to help visualization developers and researchers conveniently explore collected examples and design patterns

NeighViz: Towards Better Understanding of Neighborhood Effects on Social Groups with Spatial Data

Understanding how local environments influence individual behaviors, such as voting patterns or suicidal tendencies, is crucial in social science to reveal and reduce spatial disparities and promote social well-being. With the increasing availability of large-scale individual-level census data, new analytical opportunities arise for social scientists to explore human behaviors (e.g., political engagement) among social groups at a fine-grained level. However, traditional statistical methods mostly focus on global, aggregated spatial correlations, which are limited to understanding and comparing the impact of local environments (e.g., neighborhoods) on human behaviors among social groups. In this study, we introduce a new analytical framework for analyzing multi-variate neighborhood effects between social groups. We then propose NeighVi, an interactive visual analytics system that helps social scientists explore, understand, and verify the influence of neighborhood effects on human behaviors. Finally, we use a case study to illustrate the effectiveness and usability of our system.Comment: Symposium on Visualization in Data Science (VDS) at IEEE VIS 202

Reviving Static Charts into Live Charts

Data charts are prevalent across various fields due to their efficacy in conveying complex data relationships. However, static charts may sometimes struggle to engage readers and efficiently present intricate information, potentially resulting in limited understanding. We introduce "Live Charts," a new format of presentation that decomposes complex information within a chart and explains the information pieces sequentially through rich animations and accompanying audio narration. We propose an automated approach to revive static charts into Live Charts. Our method integrates GNN-based techniques to analyze the chart components and extract data from charts. Then we adopt large natural language models to generate appropriate animated visuals along with a voice-over to produce Live Charts from static ones. We conducted a thorough evaluation of our approach, which involved the model performance, use cases, a crowd-sourced user study, and expert interviews. The results demonstrate Live Charts offer a multi-sensory experience where readers can follow the information and understand the data insights better. We analyze the benefits and drawbacks of Live Charts over static charts as a new information consumption experience

Study on vibration response characteristics of kilometre deep shaft induced by frozen soil blasting in ultra deep alluvium

With the increasing demand for underground resources in China, the construction of ultra-deep shafts is becoming more and more popular. In order to stabilize the shaft wall and reduce the collapse of the shaft wall during the shaft excavation, the freezing method is generally used in the construction. However, the vibration generated during blasting will still have a certain impact on the stability of the shaft wall. In severe cases, even collapse will occur, causing certain casualties, delaying the construction progress and increasing the project cost. In order to solve such problems, based on the research background of 704.6 m deep alluvium frozen soil blasting excavation project in the west wind shaft of Zhaogu No. 2 Coal Mine, the vibration monitoring of deep shaft frozen soil blasting shaft wall was carried out, and combined with the ANSYS/LS-DYNA analysis software, the three-dimensional numerical model of shaft multi-stage blasting was established to deeply explore the vibration response law of shaft wall under frozen soil blasting excavation in the frozen topsoil section. The monitoring results show that the waveform of each section of the time-history curve of shaft wall vibration caused by frozen soil blasting is obviously distinguished. The blasting of segment 3 auxiliary holes with large charge and dense blasthole distribution has the greatest impact on shaft lining vibration, but they are all within the safety range which is 8.39 cm/s. For the cutting blasting segment, the shaft wall is mainly affected by longitudinal wave to produce vibration, and the vertical vibration velocity is greater than the radial and tangential vibration velocity. During auxiliary blasting, with the increase of free surface, the force generated by blasting gradually extends to the horizontal direction, the radial vibration velocity of the shaft wall gradually dominates, and the vertical vibration velocity decreases relatively. Based on one-dimensional elastic wave theory, the relationship between the vibration velocity of the shaft wall caused by blasting and the concrete stress is analyzed. The calculation results are less than the tensile strength of concrete. The reliability and accuracy of the model are verified by comparing the numerical simulation results with the measured vibration velocity waveform, and the vibration velocity in the vertical direction of the particle closest to the wellbore is 23 cm/s, which is within the safe range. The research ideas and methods can provide certain reference for the construction and vibration control of the same type of shaft blasting in frozen soil

Chemotherapy combined with radiotherapy can benefit more unresectable HCC patients with portal and/or hepatic vein invasion: a retrospective analysis of the SEER database

BackgroundThe purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy on the prognosis of unresectable HCC patients with portal and/or hepatic vein invasion.MethodsA retrospective analysis of unresectable HCC patients with portal and/or hepatic vein invasion registered in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, End Results (SEER) database was performed. The propensity score-matching (PSM) method was used to balance differences between groups. Overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) were the interesting endpoints. OS was calculated from the date of diagnosis to the date of death caused by any cause or the last follow-up. CSS was defined as the interval between the date of diagnosis and date of death due only to HCC or last follow-up. OS and CSS were analyzed by using Kaplan-Meier analysis, Cox proportional hazards model, and Fine-Gray competing-risk model.ResultsA total of 2,614 patients were included. 50.2% patients received chemotherapy or radiotherapy and 7.5% patients received both chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Compared to the untreated group, chemotherapy or radiotherapy (COR) (HR = 0.538, 95% CI 0.495-0.585, p < 0.001) and chemotherapy and radiotherapy (CAR) (HR = 0.371, 95% CI 0.316-0.436, p < 0.001) showed better OS. In the COR group, Cox analysis results showed AFP, tumor size, N stage and M stage were independent risk factor of OS. Competing-risk analysis results showed AFP, tumor size and M stage were independent risk factor of CSS. In the CAR group, AFP and M stage were independent risk factors of OS. Competing-risk analysis results showed M stage were independent risk factor of CSS. Kaplan Meier analysis showed chemotherapy combined with radiotherapy significantly improves OS (10.0 vs. 5.0 months, p < 0.001) and CSS (10.0 vs. 6.0 months, p = 0.006) than monotherapy.ConclusionAFP positive and distant metastasis are the main risk factors affecting OS and CSS of unresectable HCC patients with portal and/or hepatic vein invasion. Chemotherapy combined with radiotherapy significantly improves OS and CSS of unresectable HCC patients with portal and/or hepatic vein invasion