14467396
Image-based streamline generation and rendering
Seeding streamlines in 3D flow fields without considering their projections in screen space can produce visually cluttered rendering results. Streamlines will overlap or intersect with each other in the output image, which makes it difficult for the user to perceive the underlying flow structure. This paper presents a method to control the seeding and generation of streamlines in image space to avoid visual cluttering and allow a more flexible exploration of flow fields. In our algorithm, 2D images with depth maps generated by a variety of visualization techniques can be used as input from which seeds are placed and streamlines are generated. The density and rendering styles of streamlines can be flexibly controlled based on various criteria to improve visual clarity. With our image space approach, it is straightforward to implement the level of detail rendering, depth peeling, and stylized rendering of streamlines to allow for more effective visualization of 3D flow fields.
6768077
A parallel multiresolution volume rendering algorithm for large data visualization
We present a new parallel multiresolution volume rendering algorithm for visualizing large data sets. Using the wavelet transform, the raw data is first converted to a multiresolution wavelet tree. To eliminate the data dependency between processors at run-time, and achieve load-balanced rendering, we design a novel algorithm to partition the tree and distribute the data along a hierarchical space-filling curve with error-guided bucketization. Further optimization is achieved by storing reconstructed data at pre-selected tree nodes for each processor based on the available storage resources to reduce the overall wavelet reconstruction cost. At run time, the wavelet tree is first traversed according to the user-specified error tolerance. Data blocks of different resolutions that satisfy the error tolerance are then decompressed and rendered to compose the final image in parallel. Experimental results showed that our algorithm can reduce the run-time communication cost to a minimum and ensure a well-balanced workload among processors when visualizing gigabytes of data with arbitrary error tolerances.
623541
A multiresolution volume rendering framework for large-scale time-varying data visualization
We present a new parallel multiresolution volume rendering framework for large-scale time-varying data visualization using the wavelet-based time-space partitioning (WTSP) tree. Utilizing the wavelet transform, a large-scale time-varying data set is converted into a space-time multiresolution data hierarchy, and is stored in a time-space partitioning (TSP) tree. To eliminate the parent-child data dependency for reconstruction and achieve load-balanced rendering, we design an algorithm to partition the WTSP tree and distribute the wavelet-compressed data along hierarchical space-filling curves with error-guided bucketization. At run time, the WTSP tree is traversed according to the user-specified time step and tolerances of both spatial and temporal errors. Data blocks of different spatio-temporal resolutions are reconstructed and rendered to compose the final image in parallel. We demonstrate that our algorithm can reduce the run-time communication cost to a minimum and ensure a well-balanced workload among processors when visualizing gigabytes of time-varying data on a PC cluster.
9117483
Understanding Internet topology: principles, models, and validation
Building on a recent effort that combines a first-principles approach to modeling router-level connectivity with a more pragmatic use of statistics and graph theory, we show in this paper that for the Internet, an improved understanding of its physical infrastructure is possible by viewing the physical connectivity as an annotated graph that delivers raw connectivity and bandwidth to the upper layers in the TCP/IP protocol stack, subject to practical constraints (e.g., router technology) and economic considerations (e.g., link costs). More importantly, by relying on data from Abilene, a Tier-1 ISP, and the Rocketfuel project, we provide empirical evidence in support of the proposed approach and its consistency with networking reality. To illustrate its utility, we: 1) show that our approach provides insight into the origin of high variability in measured or inferred router-level maps; 2) demonstrate that it easily accommodates the incorporation of additional objectives of network design (e.g., robustness to router failure); and 3) discuss how it complements ongoing community efforts to reverse-engineer the Internet.
9254987
Methodological frameworks for large-scale network analysis and design
This paper emphasizes the need for methodological frameworks for analysis and design of large scale networks which are independent of specific design innovations and their advocacy, with the aim of making networking a more systematic engineering discipline. Networking problems have largely confounded existing theory, and innovation based on intuition has dominated design. This paper will illustrate potential pitfalls of this practice. The general aim is to illustrate universal aspects of theoretical and methodological research that can be applied to network design and verification. The issues focused on will include the choice of models, including the relationship between flow and packet level descriptions, the need to account for uncertainty generated by modelling abstractions, and the challenges of dealing with network scale. The rigorous comparison of proposed schemes will be illustrated using various abstractions. While standard tools from robust control theory have been applied in this area, we will also illustrate how network-specific challenges can drive the development of new mathematics that expand their range of applicability, and how many enormous challenges remain.
8735726
Explore Biological Pathways from Noisy Array Data by Directed Acyclic Boolean Networks
We consider the structure of directed acyclic Boolean (DAB) networks as a tool for exploring biological pathways. In a DAB network, the basic objects are binary elements and their Boolean duals. A DAB is characterized by two kinds of pairwise relations: similarity and prerequisite. The latter is a partial order relation, namely, the on-status of one element is necessary for the on-status of another element. A DAB network is uniquely determined by the state space of its elements. We arrange samples from the state space of a DAB network in a binary array and introduce a random mechanism of measurement error. Our inference strategy consists of two stages. First, we consider each pair of elements and try to identify their most likely relation. In the meantime, we assign a score, s-p-score, to this relation. Second, we rank the s-p-scores obtained from the first stage. We expect that relations with smaller s-p-scores are more likely to be true, and those with larger s-p-scores are more likely to be false. The key idea is the definition of s-scores (referring to similarity), p-scores (referring to prerequisite), and s-p-scores. As with classical statistical tests, control of false negatives and false positives are our primary concerns. We illustrate the method by a simulated example, the classical arginine biosynthetic pathway, and show some exploratory results on a published microarray expression dataset of yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae obtained from experiments with activation and genetic perturbation of the pheromone response MAPK pathway.
37524397
Cluster-based estimation for sufficient dimension reduction
Sufficient dimension reduction (SDR) approaches such as ordinary least squares (OLS), sliced inverse regression, sliced average variance estimation and principal Hessian directions all require a linearity condition on the marginal distribution of the predictors X. This can be a significant limitation in practice. In this article we propose the use of clustering on the predictor space with the goal of breaking the nonlinearity among the predictors. We then estimate the dimension reduction subspace by combining estimates from individual clusters. OLS is used as a demonstration of the cluster-based estimation approach. Simulations have shown that the proposed method effectively mitigates the effects of nonlinearity; it thus has the potential to widen the applicative scope of existing SDR techniques.
2365659
A Trajectory-Preserving Synchronization Method for Collaborative Visualization
In the past decade, a lot of research work has been conducted to support collaborative visualization among remote users over the networks, allowing them to visualize and manipulate shared data for problem solving. There are many applications of collaborative visualization, such as oceanography, meteorology and medical science. To facilitate user interaction, a critical system requirement for collaborative visualization is to ensure that remote users would perceive a synchronized view of the shared data. Failing this requirement, the user's ability in performing the desirable collaborative tasks would be affected. In this paper, we propose a synchronization method to support collaborative visualization. It considers how interaction with dynamic objects is perceived by application participants under the existence of network latency, and remedies the motion trajectory of the dynamic objects. It also handles the false positive and false negative collision detection problems. The new method is particularly well designed for handling content changes due to unpredictable user interventions or object collisions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through a number of experiments