The Information Visualization and Exploration Environment (IVEE) is a system for automatic creation of dynamic queries applications. IVEE imports database relations and automatically creates environments holding visualizations and query devices. IVEE offers multiple visualizations such as maps and starfields, and multiple query devices, such as sliders, alphasliders, and toggles. Arbitrary graphical objects can be attached to database objects in visualizations. Multiple visualizations may be active simultaneously. Users can interactively lay out and change between types of query devices. Users may retrieve details-on-demand by clicking on visualization objects. An HTML file may be provided along with the database, specifying how details-ondemand information should be presented, allowing for presentation of multimedia information in database objects. Finally, multiple IVEE clients running on separate workstations on a network can communicate by letting one users actions affect the visua...

This paper deals with the problem of variable binding in connectionist networks. Specifically, a more thorough solution to the variable binding problem based on the Discrete Neuron formalism is proposed and a number of issues arising in the solution are examined in relation to logic: consistency checking, binding generation, unification, and functions. We analyze what is needed in order to resolve these issues, and based on this analysis, a procedure is developed for systematically setting up connectionist networks for variable binding based on logic rules. This solution compares favorably to similar solutions in simplicity and completeness. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I wish to thank Dave Waltz, James Pustejovsky, and Tim Hickey for many discussions that helped me to elucidate ideas contained in this paper. I am also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful criticisms and useful suggestions. 2 1 Introduction When discussing connectionist models in relation to reasoning...

This paper will examine the dangers of attempting to measure the `presence' of a VR system as a one-dimensional parameter. The question of whether presence is a valid measure of a VR system will also be addressed

Current methods for gure animation involve a tradeo between the level of realism captured in the movements and the ease of generating the animations. We introduce a motion control paradigm that circumvents this tradeo |it provides the ability to generate a wide range of natural-looking movements with minimal user labor. E ort, which is one part of Rudolf Laban's system for observing and analyzing movement, describes the qualitative aspects of movement. Our motion control paradigm simpli es the generation of expressive movements by proceduralizing these qualitative aspects to hide the non-intuitive, quantitative aspects of movement. We build a model of E ort using a set of kinematic movement parameters that de nes how a gure moves between goal keypoints. Our motion control scheme provides control through E ort's fourdimensional system of textual descriptors, providing a level of control thus far missing from behavioral animation systems and o ering novel speci cation and editing capabilities on top of traditional keyframing and inverse kinematics methods. Since our E ort model is inexpensive computationally, E ort-based motion control systems can work in real-time. We demonstrate our motion control scheme by implementing EMOTE (Expressive

When directly manipulating 3D objects in an immersive environment we cannot normally achieve the accuracy and control that we have in the real world. This reduced accuracy stems from hand instability. We present PRISM, which dynamically adjusts the C/D ratio between the hand and the controlled object to provide increased control when moving slowly and direct, unconstrained interaction when moving rapidly. We describe PRISM object translation and rotation and present user studies demonstrating their effectiveness. In addition, we describe a PRISMenhanced version of ray casting which is shown to increase the speed and accuracy of object selection.

Brain imaging methods used in experimental brain research such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Functional Magnetic Resonance (fMRI) require the analysis of large amounts of data. Exploratory statistical methods can be used to generate new hypotheses and to provide a reliable measure of a given effect. Typically, researchers report their findings by listing those regions which show significant statistical activity in a group of subjects under some experimental condition or task. A number of methods create statistical parametric maps (SPMs) of the brain on a voxelbasis. In our approach statistics are computed not on individual voxels but on predefined anatomical regions-of-interest (ROIs). A correlation coefficient is used to quantify similarity in response for various regions during an experimental setting. Since the functional inter-relationships can become rather complex and spatially widespread, they are best understood in the context of the underlying 3-D brain anatomy. However, despite the power of the 3-D model, the relative location of ROIs in 3-D can be obscured due the inherent problem of presenting 3-D spatial information on a 2-D screen. In order to address this problem, we have explored a number of visualization techniques to aid the brain researcher in exploring the spatial relationships of brain activity. In this paper, we present a novel 3-D interface that allows the interactive exploration of correlation datasets.

Abstract. Local and global sensitivity and uncertainty methods are applied to a box model of the dimethylsulfide (DMS) oxidation cycle in the remote marine boundary layer in order to determine the key physical and chemical parameters and sources of uncertainty. The model considers 58 uncertain parameters, and simulates the diurnal gas-phase cycles of DMS, SO2, methanesulfonic acid (MSA), and H2SO4 for clear-sky summertime conditions observed over the Southern Ocean. The results of this study depend on many underlying assumptions, including the DMS mechanism, simulation conditions, and probability distribution functions of the uncertain parameters. A local direct integration method is used to calculate first-order local sensitivity coefficients for infinitesimal perturbations about the parameter means. Key parameters identified by this analysis are related to DMS emissions, vertical

Current reconfigurable systems suffer from a significant overhead due to the time it takes to reconfigure their hardware. In order to deal with this overhead, and increase the compute power of reconfigurable systems, it is important to develop hardware and software systems to reduce or eliminate this delay. In this paper we propose one technique for significantly reducing the reconfiguration latency: the prefetching of configurations. By loading a configuration into the reconfigurable logic in advance of when it is needed, we can overlap the reconfiguration with useful computation. We demonstrate the power of this technique, and propose an algorithm for automatically adding prefetch operations into reconfigurable applications. This results in a significant decrease in the reconfiguration overhead for these systems. 1. Introduction When FPGAs were first introduced in the mid 1980s they were viewed as a technology for replacing standard gate arrays for some applications. In the...

This report is full of recommendations and guidelines for users of virtual design environments and it would not be practical to list all these in the Executive Summary. However, there are a number of recommendations that are considered to be extremely important for potential adopters of the technology. These are listed in highlight form in the following tables and the corresponding section in the report is listed accordingly.

Visualization is a key technology for analyzing and presenting climate simulations and observations as well as related social and ecological data. Furthermore, mediating research results to decision makers and to the general public in an easily-understandable way is of growing importance. This paper provides the results of a questionnaire with climate impact researchers using visualization and a overview of the state-of-the-art in climate visualization, incorporating standard visualization techniques, tools and systems as well as alternative approaches from visualization literature. Furthermore, specific aspects such as the simplified usage of complex visualization systems, climate model and data quality and the integration of statistics and visualization will be briefly discussed. 1