From dust till drawn

We present a system for drawing pastel media in real-time as an effective alternative to most existing digital solutions that basically allow for drawing arbitrary strokes in a particular style. Our approach is focused on the simulation of the natural material itself and on its interaction with the drawing surface and the drawing tool. Upon free-form drawing, a bidirectional transfer of pigment takes place. In one direction, the paper surface is dusted with new pigment particles broken off the tip (i.e., the end of the drawing tool). A large part of these particles will be deposited or blended together with previously deposited ones whereas the remainder does not contribute to the drawing and is blown off. On the other hand, a certain amount of previously deposited pigment is scraped off and picked up again soiling the tip. This is noticeable in the next strokes to be drawn. Furthermore, both the tip and the paper surface are subject to weathering depending on the exerted pressure and friction of the drawing tool, and the bumpiness of the paper. As a result, the paper surface becomes slightly damaged, limiting the deposition of new pigment. The tip, on the other hand, becomes blunt making new strokes wider. From a stylistic point of view, similarly to traditional drawings our results convey the artists’ characteristics (e.g., the way of wielding the brush, skillfulness, feeling for the medium). Therefore, we believe that our system allows an artist to create realistically looking pastel images without losing his/her personal touch.     

Zur semantischen Interoperabilität in der Energiebranche: CIM IEC 61970

This contribution provides an introduction to the Common Information Model CIM which is an international standard maintained by the International Electrotechnical Commission IEC. Today’s market requirements towards the model are discussed, furthermore, we give an introduction to the history of the CIM, its serializations and scope of application. The contribution concludes with an overview of future use of the CIM for both science and commerce. Briefly, we focus on:

Message-based loose coupling of information systems

Exchange of power grid topologies with minimal communication and data overhead

Data quality assurance using ontology-based meta annotations and

Integration of heterogeneous standards in the utility domain. The contribution presents solutions to the use cases providing a better information management for the utility utilizing the Common Information Model.

     

Topology optimization of a cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester using stress norm constraints

Vibrational piezoelectric energy harvesters are devices which convert ambient vibrational energy into electric energy. Here we focus on the common cantilever type in which an elastic beam is sandwiched between two piezoelectric plates. In order to maximize the electric power for a given sinusoidal vibrational excitation, we perform topology optimization of the elastic beam and tip mass by means of the SIMP approach, leaving the piezoelectric plates solid. We are interested in the first and especially second resonance mode. Homogenizing the piezoelectric strain distribution is a common indirect approach increasing the electric performance. The large design space of the topology optimization approach and the linear physical model also allows the maximization of electric performance by maximizing peak bending, resulting in practically infeasible designs. To avoid such problems, we formulate dynamic piezoelectric stress constraints. The obtained result is based on a mechanism which differs significantly from the common designs reported in literature.     

Visually Abstracting Event Sequences as Double Trees Enriched with Category-Based Comparison

Event sequence visualization aids analysts in many domains to better understand and infer new insights from event data. Analysing behaviour before or after a certain event of interest is a common task in many scenarios. In this paper, we introduce, formally define, and position double trees as a domain-agnostic tree visualization approach for this task. The visualization shows the sequences that led to the event of interest as a tree on the left, and those that followed on the right. Moreover, our approach enables users to create selections based on event attributes to interactively compare the events and sequences along colour-coded categories. We integrate the double tree and category-based comparison into a user interface for event sequence analysis. In three application examples, we show a diverse set of scenarios, covering short and long time spans, non-spatial and spatial events, human and artificial actors, to demonstrate the general applicability of the approach.     

Modular visions: Referents, context and strategies for database open media works

The processes of constructing meaning in digital database environments entail a paradigm shift from previous models of audio-visual communication. Media emerging from the Electro-mechanical era (film/TV/video) present fixed spatio-temporal linearity and material conditions which objectify and render passive viewer and process. The problematic aspects of cinematic communication were addressed by Latin American filmmakers of the Third Cinema movement. Their concerns and approach presaged and assisted an understanding of the radical redefinition of audio-visual communication possible with digital databases. The conceptual and aesthetic aspirations of Third Cinema artists such as Julio Garcia Espinosa and Fernando Solanas were ultimately contradictory to linear media and find their fitting medium in digital modular construction. The materiality of database expression lacks an intrinsic temporal or spatial state and permits a more dynamic and multidirectional set of power relationships between author/s, piece, viewer/s. Other important referents for contextualising database art are modern art practitioners that rejected linear representational space and fractured the centrality of authorship. The author's own work, ...two, three, many Guevaras, an exploratory database environment, embraces the redefinition of process as artistic expression, the empowerment of interacting generative forces, and serves to illustrate the revolutionary potential of the new media.     

MoDMaCAO: a model-driven framework for the design,validation and configuration management of cloud applications based on OCCI

Software and Systems Modeling - To tackle the cloud-provider lock-in, the open grid forum is developing the open cloud computing interface (OCCI), a standardized interface for managing any kind of...     

The upside of data privacy – delighting customers by implementing data privacy measures

The targeted analysis of customer data becomes increasingly important for data-driven business models. At the same time, the customers’ concerns regarding data privacy have to be addressed properly. Existing research mostly describes data privacy as a necessary evil for compliance and risk management and does not propose specific data privacy measures which address the customers’ concerns. We therefore aim to shed light on the upside of data privacy. In this paper, we derive specific measures to deal with customers’ data privacy concerns based on academic literature, legislative texts, corporate privacy statements, and expert interviews. Next, we leverage the Kano model and data from two internet-based surveys to analyze the measures’ evaluation by customers. From a customer perspective, the implementation of the majority of measures is obligatory as those measures are considered as basic needs of must-be quality. However, delighting measures of attractive quality do exist and have the potential to create a competitive advantage. In this, we find some variation across different industries suggesting that corporations aiming to improve customer satisfaction by superior privacy protection should elicit the demands of their specific target customers.     

Generation of high-performance code based on a domain-specific language for algorithmic skeletons

The Journal of Supercomputing - Parallel programming can be difficult and error prone, in particular if low-level optimizations are required in order to reach high performance in complex...     

Visualizing Group Structures in Graphs: A Survey

Graph visualizations encode relationships between objects. Abstracting the objects into group structures provides an overview of the data. Groups can be disjoint or overlapping, and might be organized hierarchically. However, the underlying graph still needs to be represented for analyzing the data in more depth. This work surveys research in visualizing group structures as part of graph diagrams. A particular focus is the explicit visual encoding of groups, rather than only using graph layout to indicate groups implicitly. We introduce a taxonomy of visualization techniques structuring the field into four main categories: visual node attributes vary properties of the node representation to encode the grouping, juxtaposed approaches use two separate visualizations, superimposed techniques work with two aligned visual layers, and embedded visualizations tightly integrate group and graph representation. The derived taxonomies for group structure and visualization types are also applied to group visualizations of edges. We survey group‐only, group–node, group–edge and group–network tasks that are described in the literature as use cases of group visualizations. We discuss results from evaluations of existing visualization techniques as well as main areas of application. Finally, we report future challenges based on interviews we conducted with leading researchers of the field.