14518854
Detecting and mapping thematic changes in transient networks
Research fronts are the forefront of a scientific field timely identifying emerging trends and abrupt changes in scientific literature is not only beneficial for users of digital libraries, but also instrumental for users to trace the movement of a research front. A research front can be seen as a dynamic and transient mapping from the state of the art to its immediate prior art - the intellectual base. Citation and co-citation analysis primarily focuses on the structure and dynamics of the intellectual base, information retrieval and related research mainly focuses on intrinsic properties of text documents. In this article, we describe a novel approach that enables us to detect and visualize the transient relationship over time. Temporal associations between content words connected to a surge of interest in scientific papers and high-impact articles in the intellectual base are identified and visualized as a time-variant network. We apply the approach to the detection of thematic changes over time in information visualization and research in terrorism.
46129433
Behavioural Patterns of Collaborative Writing with Hypertext - A State Transition Approach
This study investigates behavioural patterns of collaborative writing with a hypertext system by using a state-transition approach. State-transition models are empirically developed for capturing the dynamic nature of collaborative writing. Users were frequently engaged in tasks such as exploration, organization, and editing, whereas the use of collaborative support functions was transient in nature. The study shows that state-transition analysis is an important approach to task analysis, requirements engineering, and human-computer interaction studies. This study has produced some valuable experiences and lessons for researchers and practitioners in collaborative writing.
45097070
Spatial ability and visual navigation: an Empirical Study
Abstract In this paper, we describe an empirical study of individuals' spatial navigation strategies and a number of performance and preference measures with regard to the design of a novel 3D visualisation. The underlying semantic space of the user interface consists of a collection of papers from the three most recent ACM SIGCHI conference proceedings, visualised as a virtual reality network. This network was automatically constructed based on semantic similarities derived from latent semantic analysis. We studied die search strategies and general preferences of eleven subjects who used this system to find papers on various topics. The study has led to a number of interesting findings, which should be valuable for designers and evaluators of 3D user interfaces. The results highlight the importance of structural elements in the design of a semantically based user interface, because search strategies of users relied heavily on these mechanisms in the design. The results of this study also demonstrate that...
206109439
How did university departments interweave the Web: A study of connectivity and underlying factors
This paper presents two studies of the use of the WWW in Scottish universities and American land-grant universities. First, we investigated the relationship between the organisational profile of a university department in Scotland and its structural connectivity on the WWW. A Spearman rank order correlation analysis revealed a number of strong correlation relationships between structural connectivity measures and the organisational profile based on research assessment exercise ratings, teaching quality assessments, student‐staff ratios and funding levels. Linkage patterns from 13 Scottish academic sites to commercial sites in Britain and America highlighted the impact of culture and the appropriateness of information technologies on the acceptance of the WWW. The second study is a content survey of WWW-based education activities in American land-grant universities to investigate successful applications of these enabling techniques in education. The two studies together highlighted cultural, political and technological interactions in the use of the WWW. q 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
2965625
Visualizing the evolution of a subject domain: a case study
We explore the potential of information visualization techniques in enhancing existing methodologies for domain analysis and modeling. In this case study, we particularly focus on visualizing the evolution of the hypertext field based on author co-citation patterns, including the use of a sliding-window scheme to generate a series of annual snapshots of the domain structure, and a factor-referenced color-coding scheme to highlight predominant specialties in the field.
468820
Tracing knowledge diffusion
Knowledge diffusion is the adaptation of knowledge in a broad range of scientific and engineering research and development. Tracing knowledge diffusion between science and technology is a challenging issue due to the complexity of identifying emerging patterns in a diverse range of possible processes. In this article, we describe an approach that combines complex network theory, network visualization, and patent citation analysis in order to improve the means for the study of knowledge diffusion. In particular, we analyze patent citations in the field of tissue engineering. We emphasize that this is the beginning of a longer-term endeavor that aims to develop and deploy effective, progressive, and explanatory visualization techniques for us to capture the dynamics of the evolution of patent citation networks. The work has practical implications on resource allocation, strategic planning, and science policy.
5472476
Image Stitching - Comparisons and New Techniques
This work describes the steps involved in the generation of a panoramic image, i.e., image acquisition, image registration and image merging. Different approaches for each of these steps are discussed and compared. The resultant images from image registration and image merging are quantitatively evaluated to provide an indication to the performance of the different methods. The methods provided in this work can be used to generate panoramic images for the use of interactive panoramic viewing of images, architectural walk-through, and other applications associated with the modelling of 3D environments.
16803440
A Compilation Model for Aspect-Oriented Polymorphically Typed Functional Languages
Introducing aspect orientation to a polymorphically typed functional language strengthens the importance of type-scoped advices; i.e., advices with their effects harnessed by type constraints. As types are typically treated as compile time entities, it is highly desirable to be able to perform static weaving to determine at compile time the chaining of type-scoped advices to their associated join points. In this paper, we describe a compilation model, as well as its implementation, that supports static type inference and static weaving of programs in an aspect-oriented polymorphically typed lazy functional language, AspectFun. We present a type-directed weaving scheme that coherently weaves type-scoped advices into the base program at compile time. We state the correctness of the static weaving with respect to the operational semantics of AspectFun. We also demonstrate how control-flow based pointcuts (such as cflowbelow) are compiled away, and highlight several type-directed optimization strategies that can improve the efficiency of woven code.
596165
Combining models and guided empirical search to optimize for multiple levels of the memory hierarchy
This paper describes an algorithm for simultaneously optimizing across multiple levels of the memory hierarchy for dense-matrix computations. Our approach combines compiler models and heuristics with guided empirical search to take advantage of their complementary strengths. The models and heuristics limit the search to a small number of candidate implementations, and the empirical results provide the most accurate information to the compiler to select among candidates and tune optimization parameter values. We have developed an initial implementation and applied this approach to two case studies, matrix multiply and Jacobi relaxation. For matrix multiply, our results on two architectures, SGI R10000 and Sun UltraSparc IIe, outperform the native compiler, and either outperform or achieve comparable performance as the ATLAS self-tuning library and the hand-tuned vendor BLAS library. Jacobi results also substantially outperform the native compilers.
45241367
Meta-programming through typeful code representation
By allowing the programmer to write code that can generate code at run-time, meta-programming offers a powerful approach to program construction. For instance, meta-programming can often be employed to enhance program efficiency and facilitate the construction of generic programs. However, meta-programming, especially in an untyped setting, is notoriously error-prone. In this paper, we aim at making meta-programming less error-prone by providing a type system to facilitate the construction of correct meta-programs. We first introduce some code constructors for constructing typeful code representation in which program variables are represented in terms of deBruijn indexes, and then formally demonstrate how such typeful code representation can be used to support meta-programming. With our approach, a particular interesting feature is that code becomes first-class values, which can be inspected as well as executed at run-time. The main contribution of the paper lies in the recognition and then the formalization of a novel approach to typed meta-programming that is practical, general and flexible.
6983146
On Digital Mammogram Segmentation and Microcalcification Detection Using Multiresolution Wavelet Analysis
In this paper a multiresolution wavelet analysis (MWA) and nonstationary Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF) technique is introduced for the detection of microcalcifications with high accuracy. The hierarchical multiresolution wavelet information in conjunction with the contextual information of the images extracted from GMRF provides an efficient technique for microcalcification detection. A Bayesian learning paradigm realized via the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm was also introduced for edge detection or segmentation of mass regions recorded on the mammograms. The strength of the technique is in the effective utilization of the rich contextural information in the images considered. The effectiveness of the approach has been tested with a number of mammographic images for which the microcalcification detection algorithm achieved a sensitivity (true positive rate) of 94% and specificity (true negative rate) of 88%. Considerably good results were also obtained for the segmentation algorithm. In addition, the results for both the detected microcalcifications and the segmented mass regions were superimposed for an interesting case under the methods introduced.