Interactive, real-time exploration and correlation of multi-terabyte and petabyte datasets from multiple sources are critical to advancing scientific discovery in many disciplines, including climate modeling and prediction, biomedical imaging, geosciences, high-energy physics and homeland security. These data-intensive applications are now being enabled by the OptIPuter, a new paradigm that relies on multi-gigabit photonic networks to interconnect distributed storage, computing and visualization resources, thereby creating a planetary-scale supercomputer. Critical performance bottlenecks have been the access latencies associated with reading and/or writing data from/to storage systems and clusters, whether connected via local or wide-area networks. In the case of climate modeling and analysis, the NASA climate Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction (MAP) project noted that these latencies result in &ldquo;&hellip;the supercomputers remaining idle for 25-50% of the execution time during the analysis phase.&rdquo; Reducing I/O latency would allow researchers to run more complex models during the same timeframe, resulting in faster and more accurate weather prediction. 

LambdaRAM is a high-performance, multi-dimensional, distributed cache that harnesses the memory of cluster nodes in one or more clusters that are interconnected by ultra-high-speed networks, providing data-intensive applications with rapid access to both local and remote data. LambdaRAM&rsquo;s memory and data management enables applications to rapidly stride over multi-dimensional multi-terabyte scientific datasets. 

It employs novel proactive latency mitigation heuristics, including presending and prefetching, based on the access patterns of an application, and data transfer protocols designed for high-bandwidth networks to mitigate data access latencies. Using LambdaRAM, climate analysis applications to compute wind shear, surface temperature and ozone thickness are able to rapidly stride through multi-terabyte datasets over both local and wide-area networks and achieve up to 20-fold improvement in performance.

LambdaRAM encompassing the memory of nodes of a single cluster

LambdaRAM: A High-Performance, Multi-Dimensional, Distributed Cache Over Ultra-High Speed Networks

We present a novel rails approach so that future E-Science applications can effectively exploit future system architectures, including multi-core and many-core architectures, multiple network cards, multiple graphical processing units and hybrid hierarchical memory architectures. We define &ldquo;rail&rdquo; as the co-scheduling of two or more of these resources. This approach enables creation of parallel multi-rails through every aspect of an end system: from processing on the multi- and many cores, to generation of multiple data flows, and streaming over multi-lane NICs connected via a parallel interconnect. We describe a novel open-source multi-rail toolkit and the evaluation of end-system parameters that impact the efficiency of such multi-rail systems, including Interrupt, Memory, Thread, and Core Affinities - key properties for achieving scalable performance.

Rails approach depicting a network rail wherein co-allocation of memory elements, processor elements &amp; networks resources help improve performance

The Rails Toolkit (RTK) - Enabling End-System Topology-Aware High End Computing

The development of avatars has significant potential to enhance realism, automation capability, and effectiveness across a variety of training environments. Project Lifelike is a three-year National Science Foundation effort whose objective is to develop and evaluate realistic avatar interfaces as portals to intelligent programs capable of relaying knowledge and training skills. This interface aims towards support of spoken dialog within a limited domain and capabilities for learning to maintain its knowledge current and accurate. Research objectives focus on the integration of speaker-independent continuous speech recognition technology with a context-based dialog system and real-time graphics rendering capability derived from live subject motion capture traces. The motion capture traces are used by the avatar to provide spoken interaction with gestural expressions. This paper describes the first phase of the Lifelike project which developed an interactive avatar prototype of a National Science Foundation (NSF) program manager, Dr. Alex Schwarzkopf, for whom a contextual graph representation of domain knowledge was created. A Graphical Asset Production Pipeline was developed to allow digitization of the facial characteristics and physical movements of Dr. Schwarzkopf. Next, an example subset of his knowledge of NSF protocols was encoded in a grammar-based speech interpretation system and context-based reasoning system. These systems were integrated with the Lifelike Responsive Avatar Framework to enable the avatar to receive spoken input and generate appropriate verbal and non-verbal responses. The system demonstrates conveyance of knowledge within a limited domain such as NSF project reporting requirements. Work toward improving the realism of the avatar, long-term efforts toward creating a toolbox for generalization to other training applications, and results of evaluation of how users respond to different characteristics that contribute to realism in an avatar are discussed.

LifeLike System

Towards Interactive Training with an Avatar-based Human-Computer Interface

This paper describes the motivation and capabilities of SAGE - the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment - a middleware and software client for supporting ultra resolution collaboration and visualization.

Scalable Adaptive Graphics middleware for visualization streaming and collaboration in ultra resolution display environments

Many inter-related planetary height map and surface image map data sets exist, and more data are collected each day. Broad communities of scientists require tools to compose these data interactively and explore them via real-time visualization. While related, these data sets are often unregistered with one another, having different projection, resolution, format, and type. I present a GPU-centric approach to the real-time composition and display of unregistered-but related planetary-scale data. This approach employs a GPGPU process to tessellate spherical height fields. It uses a render-to-vertex-buffer technique to operate upon polygonal surface meshes in image space, allowing geometry processes to be expressed in terms of image processing. With height and surface map data processing unified in this fashion, a number of powerful composition operations may be universally applied to both. Examples include adaptation to non-uniform sampling due to projection, seamless blending of data of disparate resolution or transformation regardless of boundary, and the smooth interpolation of levels of detail in both geometry and imagery. Issues of scalability and precision are addressed, giving out-of-core access to giga-pixel data sources, and correct rendering at sub-meter scales.

CPU-generated patches, GPU-displaced tessellation, deferred texture buffer, normal accumulation buffer, diffuse accumulation buffer, final image

Planetary-scale Terrain Composition

The OptIPortal is a tiled display that is the visual interface to the OptIPuter, a global-scale computing system tied together by tens of gigabits of networking. The main point of the OptIPuter project is to examine a &ldquo;future&rdquo; in which networking is not a bottleneck to local, regional, national and international computing. OptIPortals are designed to allow collaborative sharing over 1-10 gigabit/second networks of extremely high-resolution graphic output, as well as video streams. OptIPortals typically consist of an array of 4 to 70 LCD display panels (either 2-megapixel or 4-megapixel each), driven by an appropriately sized cluster of PCs, with optimized graphics processors and network interface cards. Rather than exist as one-of-a-kind laboratory prototypes, OptIPortals are designed to be openly and widely replicated, balancing the state of the art of PCs, graphic processing, networks, servers, software, middleware, and user interfaces, and installed in the context of a laboratory or office conference room. Discussed in detail are the design decisions made to achieve a replicable tiled display that can be built by computational science researchers in various disciplines. 

&copy; 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The LambdaTable combines the OptIPortal resolution and SAGE software with gesture recognition using overhead cameras

The OptIPortal, a scalable visualization, storage, and computing interface device for the OptiPuter

Data-intensive scientific applications require rapid access to local and geographically distributed data, however, there are significant I/O latency bottlenecks associated with storage systems and widearea networking. LambdaRAM is a high-performance, multi-dimensional, distributed cache, that takes advantage of memory from multiple clusters interconnected by ultra-high-speed networking, to provide applications with rapid access to both local and remote data. It mitigates latency bottlenecks by employing proactive latency-mitigation heuristics based on an application&rsquo;s access patterns. We present results using LambdaRAM to rapidly stride through remote multi-dimensional NASA Modeling, Analysis and Prediction (MAP) 2006 project datasets, based on time and geographical coordinates, to compute wind shear for cyclone and hurricane and tropical cyclone analysis. Our current experiments have demonstrated up to a 20-fold speedup in the computation of wind shear with LambdaRAM. 

Keywords: Data-intensive computing, Multi-dimensional remote data striding, Climate modeling and analysis, Distributed data caches, LambdaGrids, Tropical cyclone analysis, Hurricane analysis 

&copy; 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Accelerating tropical cyclone analysis using LambdaRAM, a distributed data cache over wide-area ultra-fast networks

WallCology is a population ecology simulation built on the Embedded Phenomena framework (Moher, 2006). The primary motivation for the creation of WallCology is to bring an engaging and authentic means of studying ecology in the classroom with technologies that are readily available in most classrooms. WallCology, currently in its third iteration, has been tested in three different classrooms. Student and teacher feedback from these studies have helped to continuously modify and expand the simulation. 

Population ecology, because of its largely observational nature, can be difficult to teach in a typical classroom setting. Ecology study in the classroom usually involves textbooks, worksheets, maybe a classroom pet, and perhaps a trip to the zoo. These usual methods may be augmented with the use of modeling applications such as NetLogo to highlight mathematical principles in population ecology. While each of these are informative and can be engaging, they lack the experience of how ecologists conduct science in the field. WallCology aims to help bring this experience into the classroom by creating an environment within which students can take on the role of ecologists and learn while engaging in activities that, at least at the basic level, approximate those used by ecologists in the field. Students are given a partial view of a larger virtual ecosystem using computers as portals. These portals, called WallScopes, allow students to view the environment, as well as the inhabitants of the ecosystem. The inhabitants of the virtual ecosystem are imagined &ldquo;creatures&rdquo; with observable characteristics such as morphology and behavior. The second implementation also simulated creature life cycles and predator / prey relationships between creatures. WallScopes also act as points of interaction between the real world and the virtual ecosystem. In the first version of WallCology, the portals were in fixed locations, but could be moved around in the second version, thus giving students the ability to choose where to place the WallScopes.

WallScope View

WallCology: Design of a Simulation Engine for Learners&rsquo; Embodied Inquiry in Population Ecology

Chiasmus is a responsive and dynamically reflective, two-sided volumetric projection surface that embodies phenomenological issues such as the formation and reception of images, observer and machine perception and the dynamics of the screen as a space of image reception. It consists of a square grid of 64 individually motorized cube elements engineered to move linearly. Each cube is controlled by custom software that analyzes video imagery for luminance values and sends these values to the motor control mechanisms to coordinate the individual movements. The resolution of the sculptural screen from the individual movements allows its volume to dynamically alter, providing novel and unique perspectives of its mobile form to an observer. 

Keywords: Responsive Architecture, Kinetic Sculpture, Video Installation, Perception

Chiasmus Exhibition, 2008

Chiasmus

Replication of System is AnnMarie Cernoch&rsquo;s Master of Fina Art thesis project - an interactive kinetic sculpture. The project plays with the idea of creating an interactive spatial circuit. A replication system, in the field of technology systems, is the flow of information. This &ldquo;flow of data&rdquo; is echoed in my project by way of electrical impulses. The center of the project takes on the server or brain of the system being presented. An Arduino board acts as the nucleus and releases impulses through programmed code. The code waits for input from contact sensors. These sensors are stretched outward and attached to different surfaces around the room. The vine-like appendages take on the function of sound sensitive ears. The project uses the entire room to interactively communicate with its audience. Audience participants create sound, for example by hitting a wall or stomping their feet, which in-turn is picked up by the object. That human-computer interaction is then transmitted to the nucleus of the project. The project then displays instant feedback though super bright LEDs and/or small speakers. How aggressively a participant interacts with the artwork determines the project&rsquo;s reaction or mood. An example scenario is when a sensor close to the nucleus is triggered; the piece illuminates red LEDs and emits a loud screeching sound. This kind of display is a negative or angry reaction from the sculpture. The default interaction consists of trailing blue and white LEDs. These LEDs cycle up and down the outstretched arms of the project. The blue and white LEDs are a visual representation of information being communicated to the nucleus. This kinetic sculpture is a physical replication of a system. 

Replication of System creates a feeling of ever expansive growth and informational movement. The project consists of a chaotic wire-filled nucleus that is attached to two sets of consecutive rings. Stretching out from the center of the project are vine-like arms. These arms have small but powerful sound sensors. The appendages attach themselves to walls and flat surfaces around a gallery space. A diffused spotlight above the sculpture creates a sparkling coagulation of copper wire. As one moves around the piece, the illusion of growing wires emerges adding movement/life to the sculpture. 

In its exhibition form, Replication of System is a physically hanging sculpture which consists of multiple metal rings, thousands of yards of copper wire and a variety of electronic elements; both Arduino and Wiring programming boards are utilized as the &ldquo;brain&rdquo; of the project. These boards receive sensor information, and then send out reaction impulses. Blue, white or red LEDs are the visual response identifiers. Piezo speakers and transducers are incorporated as the reactive sound output. Sound reinforces the visually reactive impulses being displayed to create a semi-intelligent kinetic sculpture.

Replication of System, 2008

Replication of System: explorations in kinetic sculpture

Virtual reality, telepresence, haptic devices, advanced networks and surround sound offer greater means to visualize the complexity of the world and create new conceptions of reality and identity. These new conceptions expand traditional aesthetic principles of art making into other dimensions in depth and time requiring new aesthetic principles. 

This text describes the relationship between traditional and digital aesthetics in the virtual reality art project Rutopia 2 built for the CAVE&trade; and C-Wall virtual environments. The project explores the aesthetics of virtual art in relation to traditional Russian folk arts and crafts such as wood sculpture, toys and the decorative painting styles of Palekh, Khokhloma, and Dymkovo. Their crisp easily recognizable style of expression is characterised by generalized outlines, crisp emphasized details, bright colours, subjects, materials, and forms. Rutopia 2 generalizes those aesthetic principles and transmits their culture into virtual reality. The project studies how the aesthetics can affect the intuitive navigation, perception, and emotional experience of the user inside the virtual environment. Computer graphics techniques used for the real-time development of virtual artwork study how colors and shapes can influence and lead the navigation and interaction of the user in the virtual environment. The research of user&rsquo;s perception and emotional experience gained from immersion and interaction with aesthetics of the virtual environment teaches that aesthetics can induce and control emotional responses. The aesthetics of the virtual environment can be orchestrated to control the communicative power of the project, maximize a sense of immersion and ultimately &ldquo;presence&rdquo; in the virtual world.

Still frame from Rutopia 2

Aesthetics as a Medium

We predict that high-resolution displays will penetrate scientific laboratories first, and will become pervasive at the office, in the cubicle, and meeting room, and ultimately at home. In this paper, we present a novel approach to distribute high-resolution images to multiple tiled displays in real-time using a high-performance PC cluster. This approach allows users to share their visualization applications and videos on multiple tiled displays, repositioning and resizing each application window independently. These operations require high-resolution image multicasting from a rendering cluster to multiple display clusters. A high-performance bridging system called SAGE Bridge performs the image multicasting on a high-performance PC cluster. We show in several experiments that this system enables sharing of high-resolution scientific animations and high-definition videos (with audio) between multiples international sites, hence creating virtual research laboratories (i.e. virtual organizations). 

Keywords: Collaborative computing, Visual, Network communication

High-resolution scientific visualization being shared by various groups around the world (US, Czech Republic, the Netherlands) at the same instant

Enabling High Resolution Collaborative Visualization in Display Rich Virtual Organizations

Several simulation environments exist that create a place in which students can explore scientific phenomena. In this paper, we propose design guidelines for creating a classroom environment that puts scientific concepts directly into that physical space. We examine the results of two implementations of WallCology, which we characterize as an embedded phenomenon, in elementary and middle school classrooms. Several instances of innovative student inquiry emerged as a result of the design features. Along with the results of learning, we look at the relationship between an embodied approach to design and the imaginative role of the student. 

Keywords: Information interfaces and presentations (e.g., HCI), Group and Organization Interfaces, Computers and Education

Students investigate WallCology and tally their results

Embodying Scientific Concepts in the Physical Space of the Classroom

In this paper, we present our experiences with using verification techniques in Data Intensive High Performance Computing. We discuss the requirements from verification tools to be effectively used in high performance computing (HPC).

Verification of Data Intensive High Performance Computing Middleware

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and several of its collaborators are already putting in place a Global Cyber-Commons, a networked set of instructional spaces with access to the same cyberinfrastructure (CI) based resources as research laboratories, as well as additional synchronous and asynchronous tools, called Cyber-Mashups, to enable and encourage computer-science and computational-science graduate and undergraduate student use. Participating faculty use Cyber-Commons to teach CI-based classes, and students use CI to implement class projects.

Cyber-Commons at UIC&rsquo;s Instructional Computing Lab, Computer Science Department, College of Engineering

Global Cyber-Commons: Collaborative, Instructional Environments for the Virtual School of Computational Science and Engineering

Multi-projector digital dome systems are becoming commonplace, but real-time software to drive them is not. The majority of digital dome content is pre-rendered, and existing real-time software is largely proprietary and expensive. Real-time visualization is a valued goal as it enables a live planetarium show, an adaptive and interactive visitor experience, and rapid content creation. Additionally, real-time systems reduce the cost and complexity of back-end storage and distribution of pre-rendered video. Driving planetarium domes in real-time is feasible today. The video game industry has driven commodity graphics hardware capability to incredible heights at affordable prices, and this trend will certainly continue for the foreseeable future. Complex visualizations once possible only with off-line rendering can today be rendered at interactive rates. A complete system to do so costs only a few thousand dollars using off-the-shelf hardware. 

But the freely available software, knowledge, and experience to support this hardware capacity has yet to catch up. In a continuing effort to exploit opportunities enabled by powerful, new hardware, the staff of the Space Visualization Laboratory at the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum has installed an inexpensive cluster of off-the-shelf PCs in Adler&rsquo;s full-dome theater. With this installation, we are working to implement solutions to the general problems of real-time multi-projector digital dome display, and to make them freely available, as Open Source software. We hope we can encourage and assist others in the creation of new dome software and in the adaptation of existing visualizations to dome display. 

Toward this end, we discuss techniques for real-time dome rendering. We enumerate a number of solutions to its two major challenges: spherical correction and edge blending. Noting the broad range of hardware in use today, we review the evolution of technology that made each technique possible.

The surface of a dome embedded within a cube map

Real-time Digital Dome Rendering Techniques and Technologies

Learning And Participation In A Persistent Whole-Classroom Seismology Simulation

Embodying scientific concepts in the physical space of the classroom

We present the design and development of Corelyzer, an initial visual core description tool with collaboration and annotation features. Corelyzer belongs to the larger CoreWall suite of tools used to process, visualize and manage high-resolution core images gathered during core drilling expeditions. We have been observing scientists using Corelyzer over several drilling expeditions to better understand how to integrate it into core drilling workflows. 

CoreWall is designed to aid real-time stratigraphic correlation, initial core description and data visualization for various core-drilling communities. 

Corelyzer is CoreWall&rsquo;s initial visual core description tool that allows scientists to interact with and scale huge data visualizations on a desktop workstation connected to one or more monitors in order to collaborate more effectively. The user interface and data source connections were developed using Java, and the efficient rendering component was developed using OpenGL.

A Typical CoreWall Workstation

Enhancing Core Drilling Workflows through Advanced Visualization Technology

LambdaRAM is a high-performance, multi-dimensional, wide-area, distributed cache that takes advantage of massively available memory from multiple clusters interconnected by ultra high-speed networking to provide data-intensive scientific applications with rapid access to both local and remote data without suffering the latency bottlenecks often associated with large storage systems and wide-area data access. 

LambdaRAM has been demonstrated to yield significant performance speed-ups for Geophysical and Bioscience applications accessing extremely large datasets. Currently, LambdaRAM is being integrated by NASA for the Modeling, Analysis and Prediction (MAP) Program applications to study tropical cyclones. Formal verification of LambdaRAM is important to NASA to ensure that LambdaRAM operates reliably in real-time mission critical deployments. 

We present our preliminary steps towards full formal verification of LambdaRAM. We first give an abstract description of the system and then verify several of its properties. Most of the proofs are accomplished by automatic techniques, while some require deductive steps.

Client-Server Pair Abstraction

Specification and Verification of LambdaRAM - A Wide-Area Distributed Cache for High Performance Computing

For current 2008 Electronic Visualization, Master of Fine Art (MFA) Thesis Documentation Requirements, see Papers: PDF link at right. 

The EVL MFA experience culminates in an MFA thesis exhibition - a public display of a significant body of visual work. MFA candidates freely determine the content and venue of their thesis show with the guidance of an advisory committee of their selection. The final product is the result of student and committee consultation and negotiation.

EV MFA Thesis Documentation Requirements

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology which allows a user to interact with a computer-simulated virtual environment (VE). Since its inception it has created an impact in many fields, but has not yet gained wide acceptance to be used in a personal context. At the same time, personal mobile devices (MDs) have evolved tremendously during recent years. The deployment of MDs is becoming pervasive; the hardware configurations are enhanced to be comparable to low-end desktop systems; and there are drastic improvements in the infrastructures supporting wireless inter-device connectivity and collaboration. These trends make novel applications and business models of VEs by the individual users promising and desirable. However, to make the key elements of a VE, i.e. visualization and interaction, work as smoothly for MD-based systems as for desktop-based systems, three research challenges need to be addressed, for which the technical solution portfolio is far from complete: 1) which visual factors of a VE make the user&rsquo;s performance similar to that in the real world? 2) How to effectively allow a user to collect his / her own biometrical data to build personalized profiles? 3) How to efficiently make use of the processing resources in the infrastructure for the compute-heavy tasks for a individual user, such as intelligent human computer interaction? 

This work, referred to as Personal Augmented Computing Environment (PACE), sets its goal for personalized visualization and scalable human-computer interaction. It attacks the three challenging research problems with corresponding solutions. First, to understand the visual factors that make VE more like the real world, a set of controlled experiments are designed and conducted in a CAVE system. In the experiments three visual factors, namely scene complexity, stereovision and motion parallax are examined. The results suggest that scene complexity and stereovision significantly affect users&rsquo; size perception, while motion parallax does not exhibit a significant effect. Being conducted by no other researchers before, this study helps us to better understand the role of size constancy in VE performance. 

Next, an effective process to collect a user&rsquo;s hand reference images for posture profile building is proposed and implemented. The novelty of the proposed process is that it takes advantage of the synergies between mobile device and computing infrastructure, and uses proactive measure instead of post-processing techniques to improve sample image quality. While most hand posture recognizers&rsquo; performance are very sensitive to hand sample image quality and require them to be taken under strictly controlled laboratory setting, by employing the process proposed and implemented by this work, the mobile device user can collect hand sample images by themselves with relative ease, and still be able to obtain satisfying posture profiles. 

The third contribution of this work is a set of scalable computing techniques to speed up the tasks of a vision-based hand detection and recognition using computer clusters. These techniques include a novel data structure, called a scanning node tree which is used to manage cluster nodes; a unique load balancing algorithm to evenly distribute workload across nodes; and a node-to-node messaging protocol for parallel processing. The set of scalable computing techniques has been proved to be efficient by various evaluation metrics. Enabled by these techniques, a sample application, a hand tracker/controller named Hand Wand is implemented and integrated with a large scale tiled display instrument as a human
computer interaction device. 

This work also introduces one preliminary and early work for personal VE: a reach-and-grasp training environment for in-home rehabilitation of stroke survivors. This pilot study achieved certain results and were successful to some extent.

Profile of PACE System

PACE: A Framework for Personalized Visualization and Scalable Human Computer Interaction

A solid-state dynamic parallax barrier autostereoscopic display mitigates some of the restrictions present in static barrier systems, such as fixed view-distance range, slow response to head movements, and fixed stereo operating mode. By dynamically varying barrier parameters in real time, viewers may move closer to the display and move faster laterally than with a static barrier system, and the display can switch between 3D and 2D modes by disabling the barrier on a per-pixel basis. Moreover, Dynallax can output four independent eye channels when two viewers are present, and both head-tracked viewers receive an independent pair of left-eye and right-eye perspective views based on their position in 3D space. The display device is constructed by using a dual-stacked LCD monitor where a dynamic barrier is rendered on the front display and a modulated virtual environment composed of two or four channels is rendered on the rear display. Dynallax was recently demonstrated in a small-scale head-tracked prototype system. This paper summarizes the concepts presented earlier, extends the discussion of various topics, and presents recent improvements to the system. 

Keywords: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism, Three-dimensional displays

Dynallax in Monoscopic Mode (Dynallax permits monoscopic, autostereo and mixed modes of display)

Advances in the Dynallax Solid-State Dynamic Parallax Barrier Autostereoscopic Visualization Display System

Rain Table is an application for large-scale interactive 2D particle-based simulation and visualization on scalable high-resolution tiled displays for group-oriented interaction with geoscience content. The goal of this research project is to apply high resolution visualization technology to geoscience education in museums or classrooms to provide educators with new means of visualizing and simplifying the understanding of complex scientific phenomena. The work in this project is aimed at informal education in science museums, however it may potentially be of use to real scientists. This project implements software that allows users to interact with visualizations by taking advantage of novel scalable tracking technology for tiled displays, developed at EVL. Rain Table implements an out-of-core image rendering framework that uses tiling, on-demand texture paging, multi-level caching, compression, and threading techniques to minimize latencies and maintain system interactivity. The core of Rain Table is a decentralized particle-based simulation and visualization model that runs alongside the rendering nodes of tiled displays. The first goal of this project is to design and implement the architecture to run and display simulations of rainfall runoff and the context for these simulations, such as aerial photography in high detail. The second goal is to prepare this architecture for other types of simulations and assess its scalability in terms of data size, output resolution, communication, computation, and interaction space. 

On the application side, the original idea and foundation for this work revolve around watershed education and various outreach projects conducted by the National Center for Earth-Surface Dynamics (NCED) at the University of Minnesota. One method used to visualize water paths through watersheds and how it connects different sub-regions is to sprinkle 
water on top of a physical model of a region. This is a great way to visualize the paths water takes; however, it is a poor substitute for the complexities of water flow in the real world. It is also very hard for students to think about the phenomena on a more global scale, because physical models are usually meant to represent very small regions. Physical models are not flexible enough because a separate model has to be built for different types of terrains. This process is time consuming and the resulting models take up a lot of space. A solution that is more modular and versatile can help in solving these problems. 

The ideal solution is a large table surface that resembles a physical water table, but also enables students to: 
<ol>
<li>Quickly experiment over any terrain map and switch between them.</li>
<li>Take advantage of very high resolution observatory data such as satellite topography and aerial photography.</li>
</ol> 

The rainfall runoff simulation in Rain Table allows users to interactively explore the flow of water across maps and discover the concepts of watersheds, floods, and the interconnectivity of river systems. Multiple users can generate water flow independently of one another, so small groups work together interactively, eliminating passive viewing and equalizing user&rsquo;s control of the visualization model.

Pyroclastic Flow (Mars Data)

Rain Table: Scalable Architecture for Group-Oriented Visualization of Real-Time Geoscience Phenomena

OptiStore is an on-demand data processing middleware for extremely large scale interactive visualization applications. It aims to develop a data processing service system that bridges the gap between the size of the very large datasets and the performance of interactive high-speed parallel visualization applications in the context of OptIPuter. Compared with the predominant strategy by preprocessing data on data repository before visualization, OptiStore processes the data on-demand and interactively so as to minimize the need to manage extraneous pre-processed copies of the data that will become a major problem as scientists continue to amass vast amounts of data. 

In the architecture of OptIPuter, the distributed components, such as rendering clusters, data storage clusters and computation clusters are inter-connected by wide area optical networks. Hence the data that the visualization cluster demands at one site may be stored at other sites on different remote data storage clusters. The goals of OptiStore are to help the visualization users to access large amount of data (from terabytes to petabytes) on remote locations, query them on the distributed servers, transfer them among OptIPuter components, and filter and transform them from one data model to another in near real-time. Furthermore, OptiStore is an extensible middleware framework, into which more new data structures and filters can be integrated. 

In order to address the issues of scalability of data size, interactivity in data exploration and flexibility of data filter deployment, I proposed the following techniques in this dissertation: load-balancing data partition and organization, multi-resolution analysis, view-dependent data selection, runtime data preprocessing and dedicated parallel data filtering. 

To achieve high overall utilization and reduce latency cost, we developed a load-balancing data partition and organization mechanism. To ensure the scalability with the size of the datasets, the multi-resolution analysis and view-dependent culling were applied for processing the necessary data in the view of the visualization application. To take advantage of the increasing network bandwidth, we decoupled the data filter from visualization applications and data repository servers by transferring the bulk of data through the high-speed network infrastructure. By separating the data filter services from other processes in the distributed visualization pipeline, the data providers can maintain and share the data repository with less effort, and users can explore more large datasets available on the LambdaGrid and deploy their own filters flexibly. We developed a novel caching algorithm and a prediction model for prefetching and preprocessing to minimize the data access latency to meet the requirement of interactive visualization.

Space-filling Curves (A) Morton Curve; (B) Hilbert Curve

OptiStore: An On-Demand Data Processing Middleware for Very Large Scale Interactive Visualization

The broadening array of technologies available to support the design of classroom activity has the potential to reshape science learning in schools. This paper presents a ubiquitous computing application, WallCology, which situates a virtual ecosystem within the unseen space of classroom walls, presenting affordances for science learners to engage in investigations of ecological phenomena. Motivated by a desire to foster authenticity in classroom science inquiry, WallCology extends the &ldquo;embedded phenomena&rdquo; framework in three ways: by enabling collaborative investigations among distributed work teams, by increasing the physicality of investigation activities, and by expanding the loci of activity sites. Pilot studies in two urban classrooms provide qualified support for the effectiveness of WallCology in promoting more authentic inquiry practices, content learning, and attitudes regarding scientific investigations. 

Author Keywords: Embedded phenomena, ubiquitous computing, science inquiry learning

Mobile WallScope. iButtons affixed to walls identify user&rsquo;s point of observation

WallCology: Designing Interaction Affordances for Learner Engagement in Authentic Science Inquiry

How to &lsquo;Catch&rsquo; a Virus: Representational Affordances in a Middle-School Introduction to Nanoscale Self-Assembly

This paper introduces a system for studying ecology that places a virtual ecosystem within the walls of a classroom. WallCology is designed to give students and teachers easy access to affordances which allow them to study ecological phenomena as ecologists would in the field. Using a set of computers as portals into the virtual ecosystem, students study creatures with different morphologies and behaviors moving about on pipes and walls. These portals, called WallScopes, are linked together using a remote server which allows the creatures to move within the larger virtual space based on their own environmental preferences. A two month pilot study of WallCology in an urban middle school classroom comprised of species differentiation and population estimation units demonstrated the feasibility of this approach.

Tagged creatures in WallCology habitats

WallCology: Studying Ecology using a Distributed, Persistent Virtual Ecosystem in the Classroom

Instructional Framing for Nanoscale Self-Assembly Design in Middle School: A Pilot Study

Cyber-mashups of very large data sets let users explore, analyze, and comprehend the science behind the information being streamed. 

As longtime Communications subscribers, as well as authors of articles and contributors to special sections, notably &ldquo;Blueprint for the Future of High-Performance Computing&rdquo; (November 1997) and &ldquo;Blueprint for the Future of High-Performance Networking&rdquo; (November 2003), we appreciate the opportunity to learn from and share with the ACM community. Over the next 50 years, as computing and networking technologies advance, we&rsquo;ll have to be able to harness the power of technology to address challenges involving biodiversity, the environment, medicine, energy, and more. That&rsquo;s why we&rsquo;re creating visualization and collaboration user interfaces to enable global virtual organizations to work together. Happy Birthday, CACM, and many more. 

As educators, researchers, and specialists in networked visualization, virtual reality, and collaboration technologies, we are fortunate to work at an institution - the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago - with access to some of the most advanced &ldquo;cyberinfrastructure&rdquo; in the world. That term, coined by the National Science Foundation, refers to high-performance computing and communications environments that integrate data, computers, and people on a global scale in order to stimulate scientific exploration, theories, and knowledge. 

<a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1327452.1327488&amp;coll=portal&amp;dl=ACM&amp;CFID=485352495&amp;CFTOKEN=485352495">For the full text article please follow this link to article on the AMC website</a>