Creating realistic map-like visualisations: Results from user studies

Maps have traditionally been used for displaying geographical information. However, apart from this obvious purpose, the metaphor of maps has been applied to other uses, such as information visualisation and novel user interfaces, since the map metaphor is easy-to-understand and allows users to explore data intuitively. There are several methods for creating these map-like visualisations and user interfaces, but there is little understanding on how people perceive these non-geographical maps, and how to make the visualisation output more realistic. As such, we aim to find preliminary answers on these issues by conducting user studies with a series of map-like visualisations. In this paper, we report on the results of the studies and reveal the factors that have an impact on the human perception of visualisations that are designed to resemble geographic maps. Based on these results, we propose design suggestions for building realistic map-like visualisations.     

基于搜索引擎的信息查询技术研究

随着网络的快速发展,搜索引擎日益成为处理信息的主流工具.Internet是世界上资料最多、规模最大的信息资料库.在WWW上进行信息查找有3种方法,即基于超文本的信息查询、基于目录的信息查询、基于搜索引擎的信息查询,网络信息检索核心工具是搜索引擎.从搜索引擎概述、查询技术方法及展望等进行阐述.     

基于搜索引擎的信息查询技术研究

随着网络的快速发展,搜索引擎日益成为处理信息的主流工具。Internet是世界上资料最多、规模最大的信息资料库。在WWW上进行信息查找有三种方法,即基于超文本的信息查询、基于目录的信息查询、基于搜索引擎的信息查询,网络信息检索核心工具是搜索引擎。本文从搜索引擎概述、查询技术方法及展望三方面进行阐述。     

Sense-making strategies in explorative intelligence analysis of network evolutions

Visualising how social networks evolve is important in intelligence analysis in order to detect and monitor issues, such as emerging crime patterns or rapidly growing groups of offenders. It remains an open research question how this type of information should be presented for visual exploration. To get a sense of how users work with different types of visualisations, we evaluate a matrix and a node-link diagram in a controlled thinking aloud study. We describe the sense-making strategies that users adopted during explorative and realistic tasks. Thereby, we focus on the user behaviour in switching between the two visualisations and propose a set of nine strategies. Based on a qualitative and quantitative content analysis we show which visualisation supports which strategy better. We find that the two visualisations clearly support intelligence tasks and that for some tasks the combined use is more advantageous than the use of an individual visualisation.     

Towards insight-driven sampling for big data visualisation

ABSTRACT

Creating an interactive, accurate, and low-latency big data visualisation is challenging due to the volume, variety, and velocity of the data. Visualisation options range from visualising the entire big dataset, which could take a long time and be taxing to the system, to visualising a small subset of the dataset, which could be fast and less taxing to the system but could also lead to a less-beneficial visualisation as a result of information loss. The main research questions investigated by this work are what effect sampling has on visualisation insight and how to provide guidance to users in navigating this trade-off. To investigate these issues, we study an initial case of simple estimation tasks on histogram visualisations of sampled big data, in hopes that these results may generalise. Leveraging sampling, we generate subsets of large datasets and create visualisations for a crowd-sourced study involving a simple cognitive visualisation task. Using the results of this study, we quantify insight, sampling, visualisation, and perception error in comparison to the full dataset. We use these results to model the relationship between sample size and insight error, and we propose the use of our model to guide big data visualisation sampling.     

Delphi网络语音通信

讨论了网络中语音通信的原理,归纳了设计的方法,给出了基于Delphi的程序设计过程。     

Web站点的超链结构挖掘

ＷＷＷ是一个由成千上万个分布在世界各地的Ｗｅｂ站点组成的全球信息系统,每个Ｗｅｂ站点又是一个由许多Ｗｅｂ页构成的信息（子）系统。由于一个文档作者可以通过超链把自己的文档与任意一个已知的Ｗｅｂ页链接起来,而一个 Ｗｅｂ站点上的信息资源又通常是由许多人共同提供的, 因此 Ｗｅｂ站点内的超链链接通常是五花八门、各种各样的,它们可以有各种含义和用途。文章分析了ＷＷＷ系统中超链的使用特征和规律,提出了一个划分超链类型、挖掘站点结构的方法,初步探讨了它在信息收集和查询等方面的应用。     

Automatically Determining Semantics for World Wide Web Multimedia Information Retrieval

Search engines are useful because they allow the user to find information of interest from the World Wide Web (WWW). However, most of the popular search engines today are textual; they do not allow the user to find images from the web. For effective retrieval, determining the semantics of the images is essential. In this paper, we describe the problems in determining the semantics of images on the WWW and the approach of AMORE, a WWW search engine that we have developed. AMORE's techniques can be extended to other media like audio and video. We explain how we assign keywords to the images based on HTML pages and the method to determine similar images based on the assigned text. We also discuss some statistics showing the effectiveness of our technique. Finally, we present the visual interface of AMORE with the help of several retrieval scenarios.     

Environmental data visualisation for non-scientific contexts: Literature review and design framework

Environmental science is an applied discipline, which therefore requires interacting with actors outside of the scientific community. Visualisations are increasingly seen as powerful tools to engage users with unfamiliar and complex subject matter. Despite recent research advances, scientists are yet to fully harness the potential of visualisation when interacting with non-scientists. To address this issue, we review the main principles of visualisation, discuss specific graphical challenges for environmental science and highlight some best practice from non-professional contexts. We provide a design framework to enhance the communication and application of scientific information within professional contexts. These guidelines can help scientists incorporate effective visualisations within improved dissemination and knowledge exchange platforms. We conclude that the uptake of science within environmental decision-making requires a highly iterative and collaborative design approach towards the development of tailored visualisations. This enables users to not only generate actionable understanding but also explore information on their own terms.     

Rama: An architecture for Internet information filtering

This paper describes Rama, a first generation experimental information retrieval and filtering system that attempts to recover useful information from various Internet sources including USENIX news and anonymous FTP servers. The focus of the Rama system to date has been on building a distributed query and information retrieval system, which provides an interface to heterogeneous information services. A user of Rama sends one or more asynchronous queries to a Rama server using existing SMTP e-mail clients. The server periodically searches local and remote Internet services. Searches are prefiltered with the use of timestamps. Data objects which are newer than the timestamp are then searched via a query mechanism which relies on a combination of vector-distance, pattern matching operands, and boolean operators. Results are weighted according to how closely they match queries and are posted via e-mail to the user. Input to the e-mail client can be further filtered — one can use the MH mail system and sort input by weight. Results indicate that the current system is useful and extensible. So far we have assumed that existing e-mail systems will be used for input and output and have not attempted to construct special client interfaces. Efforts are underway to extend the system with WWW searching capabilities and construct a special WWW oriented user-interface.     

虚拟企业中的信息集成技术

研究了利用Ｉｎｔｅｒｎｅｔ和分布对象等相关技术实现在虚拟企业中集成制造信息,这种集成涉及网络通信、产品建模和软件互操作方面的国际标准：Ｉｎｔｅｒｎｅｔ和ＷＷＷ、ＳＴＥＰ、ＣＯＲＢＡ,三种技术的综合应用为面向Ｉｎｔｅｒｎｅｔ的制造信息集成和制造软件互操作提供了基础,成为成立虚拟企业的基本技术条件。     

智能门户搜索引擎技术

随着Web息量迅猛增长．传统搜索引擎所查询到的结果由于检索的内容过多，从而造成用户检索到的信息准确度不高，基于智能门户搜索引擎技术的研究已成为搜索引擎发展的新主题。该文详细介绍了智能门户搜索引擎技术，并在此基础上设计了一个智能门户搜索引擎的系统模型(Domain-based Seal-ch Engine，DBSE)，该模型采用了多Agent技术以帮助用户快速有效地挖掘有用信息。     

虚拟现实建模语言应用与研究

随着Internet的发展,以虚拟现实建模语言(Virtual Reality Modeling Language,简称VRML)为代表的基于WWW的虚拟现实建模技术正在日益受到广泛的重视。本文归纳了VRML的编译、运行原理,给出了VRML的程序设计方法,总结了深入研究VRML的要点。     

Can the Web turn into a digital library?

There is no doubt that the enormous amounts of information on the WWW are influencing how we work, live, learn and think. However, information on the WWW is in general too chaotic, not reliable enough and specific material often too difficult to locate that it cannot be considered a serious digital library. In this paper we concentrate on the question how we can retrieve reliable information from the Web, a task that is fraught with problems, but essential if the WWW is supposed to be used as serious digital library. It turns out that the use of search engines has many dangers. We will point out some of the possible ways how those dangers can be reduced and how dangerous traps can be avoided. Another approach to find useful information on the Web is to use “classical” resources of information like specialized dictionaries, lexica or encyclopaedias in electronic form, such as the Britannica. Although it seemed for a while that such resources might more or less disappear from the Web due to attempts such as Wikipedia, some to the classical encyclopaedias and specialized offerings have picked up steam again and should not be ignored. They do sometimes suffer from what we will call the “wishy-washy” syndrome explained in this paper. It is interesting to note that Wikipedia which is also larger than all other encyclopaedias (at least the English version) is less afflicted by this syndrome, yet has some other serious drawbacks. We discuss how those could be avoided and present a system that is halfway between prototype and production system that does take care of many of the aforementioned problems and hence may be a model for further undertakings in turning (part of) the Web into a useable digital library.     

WWW缓冲挖掘中基于粗糙集的用户模糊兴趣建模

如何有效充分地利用WWW缓冲中的信息,其关键是建立一个合适的用户兴趣模型和构造合适的兴趣挖掘算法。用户的兴趣是一个相对模糊的概念,简单兴趣模型通过（词条,权重）来刻画兴趣,但是它的表示粒度太小,不能贴切地描述用户的兴趣。文中在充分分析WWW缓冲模型的基础上提出了基于粗糙集的用户模糊兴趣概念。利用该方法可以对WWW缓冲中的网页文档和文档集合进行统一建模,这为利用用户历史兴趣信息和进行兴趣匹配提供了便利。     

基于VRML三维仿真建模研究

随着Internet的发展,以虚拟现实建模语言(Virtual Reality Modeling Language,简称VRML)为代表的基于WWW的虚拟现实建模技术正在日益受到广泛的重视。本文根据VRML的繁杂性,讨论了基于VRML进行三维仿真环境建模的主要实现方法,从而提高创建三维仿真空间和实体的效率。     

Rural landscape visualisation from GIS databases: a comparison of approaches,options and problems

As public participation in environmental decision-making becomes more prevalent, there is a growing need to communicate effectively with a non-expert audience. Visual presentation has been identified as an effective means of communicating landscape-related information, particularly due to the increasing ease with which computer visualisation techniques can utilise GIS data. Such data are already widely used when assessing environmental and landscape issues, and there are several different ways in which visualisations may be produced; this paper sets out a typology encompassing the most popular techniques, and, using a common GIS database, proceeds to assesses a number of different visualisation software packages. Three primary issues are considered: data needs; ease of use; and quality of output. Examples of visualisations produced in each software package are provided for comparison.     

基于Web的数学公式检索系统设计与实现

数学公式在Web环境下使用得越来越广泛,人们迫切需要通过对数学公式检索来获取相关的信息,但是目前主流的搜索引擎都不能检索数学公式。在分析公式自身特点的基础上提出构造公式索引的一些策略,并结合当前信息检索系统研究的成果,设计并实现了Web环境下的检索数学公式系统。     

Building interactive virtual environments for simulated training in medicine using VRML and Java/JavaScript

Medicine is a difficult thing to learn. Experimenting with real patients should not be the only option; simulation deserves a special attention here. Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) as a tool for building virtual objects and scenes has a good record of educational applications in medicine, especially for static and animated visualisations of body parts and organs. However, to create computer simulations resembling situations in real environments the required level of interactivity and dynamics is difficult to achieve. In the present paper we describe some approaches and techniques which we used to push the limits of the current VRML technology further toward dynamic 3D representation of virtual environments (VEs). Our demonstration is based on the implementation of a virtual baby model, whose vital signs can be controlled from an external Java application. The main contributions of this work are: (a) outline and evaluation of the three-level VRML/Java implementation of the dynamic virtual environment, (b) proposal for a modified VRML Timesensor node, which greatly improves the overall control of system performance, and (c) architecture of the prototype distributed virtual environment for training in neonatal resuscitation comprising the interactive virtual newborn, active bedside monitor for vital signs and full 3D representation of the surgery room.     

MAS对信息不足环境的搜索策略的比较研究

现在MAS中的许多具体应用问题也可以发结为未知环境的搜索。比如WWW上的信息检索，数据发掘等，当存在信息缺失的情况下，如何设计MAS系统使之更为有效地搜索是目前MAS研究的一个重要课题，本文在不同的实验环境下针对3种不同的搜索策略进行了对比实验，得出了一些对MAS设计有普遍参考意义的结论。