Do you see what I mean?

Visualizers, like logicians, have long been concerned with meaning. Generalizing from MacEachren's overview of cartography, visualizers have to think about how people extract meaning from pictures (psychophysics), what people understand from a picture (cognition), how pictures are imbued with meaning (semiotics), and how in some cases that meaning arises within a social and/or cultural context. If we think of the communication acts carried out in the visualization process further levels of meaning are suggested. Visualization begins when someone has data that they wish to explore and interpret; the data are encoded as input to a visualization system, which may in its turn interact with other systems to produce a representation. This is communicated back to the user(s), who have to assess this against their goals and knowledge, possibly leading to further cycles of activity. Each phase of this process involves communication between two parties. For this to succeed, those parties must share a common language with an agreed meaning. We offer the following three steps, in increasing order of formality: terminology (jargon), taxonomy (vocabulary), and ontology. Our argument in this article is that it's time to begin synthesizing the fragments and views into a level 3 model, an ontology of visualization. We also address why this should happen, what is already in place, how such an ontology might be constructed, and why now

Relating the primitive hierarchy of the PREMO standard to the standard reference model for intelligent multimedia presentation systems

The need for a suitable classification of media types arises for several reasons when building or comparing multimedia systems. Within an Intelligent Multimedia Presentation Systems (IMMPS) it is necessary to formulate and encode design knowledge for decision making on the appropriate medium in which to present information and for the generation of the presentation. It is also required in order to specify interfaces to and between system components which will be employed to run a generated presentation before the user's eyes. This task is reflected in the SRM (Standard Reference Model, see this volume) for IMMPS by the Presentation Display Layer. However, the SRM does not instantiate this layer in detail, but instead refers to the PREMO ISO/IEC standard which provides a reference model for a presentation runtime environment for multimedia. PREMO already contains a set of basic structures, the so-called PREMO Primitive Hierarchy, to describe different media types. Thus the question arises, as to how far the PREMO Primitive Hierarchy could serve as a media classification for the SRM in general. In particular, this would support consistency between the design and presentation layers of the SRM if PREMO were used to instantiate the Presentation Layer. In the report, we first point to a number of typical problems with generating classifications of media types. We then provide a brief introduction to PREMO and its Primitive Hierarchy. Finally, the benefits and costs of using the PREMO primitive hierarchy for the SRM are discussed

Relating the primitive hierarchy of the PREMO standard to the standard reference model for intelligent multimedia presentation systems

The need for a suitable classification of media types arises for several reasons when building or comparing multimedia systems. Within an Intelligent Multimedia Presentation Systems (IMMPS) it is necessary to formulate and encode design knowledge for decision making on the appropriate medium in which to present information and for the generation of the presentation. It is also required in order to specify interfaces to and between system components which will be employed to run a generated presentation before the user's eyes. This task is reflected in the SRM (Standard Reference Model, see this volume) for IMMPS by the Presentation Display Layer. However, the SRM does not instantiate this layer in detail, but instead refers to the PREMO ISO/IEC standard which provides a reference model for a presentation runtime environment for multimedia. PREMO already contains a set of basic structures, the so-called PREMO Primitive Hierarchy, to describe different media types. Thus the question arises, as to how far the PREMO Primitive Hierarchy could serve as a media classification for the SRM in general. In particular, this would support consistency between the design and presentation layers of the SRM if PREMO were used to instantiate the Presentation Layer. In the report, we first point to a number of typical problems with generating classifications of media types. We then provide a brief introduction to PREMO and its Primitive Hierarchy. Finally, the benefits and costs of using the PREMO primitive hierarchy for the SRM are discussed

The use of a novel tobacco-substitute sheet and smoke dilution to reduce toxicant yields in cigarette smoke

Abstract The Institute of Medicine encouraged the pursuit and development of potential reduced-exposure products, tobacco products that substantially reduce exposure to one or more tobacco toxicants and can reasonably be expected to reduce the risk of one or more specific diseases or other adverse health effects. One approach to reducing smoke toxicant yields is to dilute the smoke with glycerol. We report chemical, biological and human exposure data related to experimental cigarettes containing up to 60% of a novel glycerol containing "tobacco-substitute" sheet. Analysis of mainstream smoke from experimental cigarettes showed reductions in yields of most measured constituents, other than some volatile species. In vitro toxicological tests showed reductions in the activity of smoke particulates in proportion to their glycerol content. Human exposure to nicotine was reduced by a mean of 18% as determined by filter studies and by 14% using 24 h urinary biomarker analysis. Smoke particulate exposures were reduced by a mean of 29% in filter studies and NNK exposure by similar amounts based on urinary 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanol concentrations. These results show that reducing exposure to some smoke toxicants is possible using a tobacco-substitute sheet, although some smoke toxicants, and the sensory attributes of the smoke, remain as technical challenges

A coordination model for interactive components

Although presented with a variety of ‘flavours’, the notion of an interactor, as an abstract characterisation of an interactive com- ponent, is well-known in the area of formal modelling techniques for interactive systems. This paper replaces traditional, hierarchical, ‘tree-like’ composition of interactors in the specification of complex interactive sys- tems, by their exogenous coordination through general-purpose software connectors which assure the flow of data and the meet of synchronisation constraints. The paper’s technical contribution is twofold. First a modal logic is defined to express behavioural properties of both interactors and connectors. The logic is new in the sense that its modalities are indexed by fragments of sets of actions to cater for action co-occurrence. Then, this logic is used in the specification of both interactors and coordination layers which orchestrate their interconnection

VERITAS: the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System

The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) represents an important step forward in the study of extreme astrophysical processes in the universe. It combines the power of the atmospheric Cherenkov imaging technique using a large optical reflector with the power of stereoscopic observatories using arrays of separated telescopes looking at the same shower. The seven identical telescopes in VERITAS, each of aperture 10 m, will be deployed in a filled hexagonal pattern of side 80 m; each telescope will have a camera consisting of 499 pixels with a field of view of 3.5 deg VERITAS will substantially increase the catalog of very high energy (E > 100GeV) gamma-ray sources and greatly improve measurements of established sources.Comment: 44 pages, 16 figure

Superlattice Growth via MBE and Green’s Function Techniques

A model has been developed to simulate the growth of arrays consisting of a substrate on which alternating layers of quantum dots (QDs) and spacer layers are epitaxially grown. The substrate and spacer layers are modeled as an anisotropic elastic half-space, and the QDs are modeled as point inclusions buried within the half-space. In this model, the strain at the free surface of this half-space due to the buried point QDs is calculated, and a scalar measure of the strain at the surface is subsequently determined. New point QDs are placed on the surface where the previously calculated scalar strain measure is a minimum. Following available DFT results, this scalar strain measure is a weighted average of the in-plane strains. This model is constructed under the assumption that diffusional anisotropy can be neglected, and thus, the results are more in agreement with results from experiments of growth of SiGe QDs than experiments involving QDs of (In,Ga)As

Are biological systems poised at criticality?

Many of life's most fascinating phenomena emerge from interactions among many elements--many amino acids determine the structure of a single protein, many genes determine the fate of a cell, many neurons are involved in shaping our thoughts and memories. Physicists have long hoped that these collective behaviors could be described using the ideas and methods of statistical mechanics. In the past few years, new, larger scale experiments have made it possible to construct statistical mechanics models of biological systems directly from real data. We review the surprising successes of this "inverse" approach, using examples form families of proteins, networks of neurons, and flocks of birds. Remarkably, in all these cases the models that emerge from the data are poised at a very special point in their parameter space--a critical point. This suggests there may be some deeper theoretical principle behind the behavior of these diverse systems.Comment: 21 page