University of Konstanz

About: University of Konstanz is a education organization based out in Konstanz, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Membrane. The organization has 12115 authors who have published 27401 publications receiving 951162 citations. The organization is also known as: University of Constance & Universität Konstanz.

Empirical Studies in Information Visualization: Seven Scenarios

Abstract: We take a new, scenario-based look at evaluation in information visualization. Our seven scenarios, evaluating visual data analysis and reasoning, evaluating user performance, evaluating user experience, evaluating environments and work practices, evaluating communication through visualization, evaluating visualization algorithms, and evaluating collaborative data analysis were derived through an extensive literature review of over 800 visualization publications. These scenarios distinguish different study goals and types of research questions and are illustrated through example studies. Through this broad survey and the distillation of these scenarios, we make two contributions. One, we encapsulate the current practices in the information visualization research community and, two, we provide a different approach to reaching decisions about what might be the most effective evaluation of a given information visualization. Scenarios can be used to choose appropriate research questions and goals and the provided examples can be consulted for guidance on how to design one's own study.

Fleeting images: a new look at early emotion discrimination.

Abstract: The visual brain quickly sorted stimuli for emotional impact despite high-speed presentation ~ 3o r 5p er s !in a sustained, serial torrent of 700 complex pictures. Event-related potentials, recorded with a dense electrode array, showed selective discrimination of emotionally arousing stimuli from less affective content. Primary sources of this activation were over the occipital cortices, extending to right parietal cortex, suggesting a processing focus in the posterior visual system. Emotion discrimination was independent of formal pictorial properties ~color, brightness, spatial frequency, and complexity!. The data support the hypothesis of a very short-term conceptual memory store ~M. C. Potter, 1999!—shown here to include a fleeting but reliable assessment of affective meaning.

Structure formation via polymer demixing in spin-cast films

Abstract: The domain structure in thin films of an immiscible polystyrene/poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS/PMMA) blend was studied after spin-casting from a common solvent. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) combined with selective dissolution was used to obtain three-dimensional information on the domain morphology in thin films. Three different common solvents and three different substrate surfaces were studied. Distinct differences in the thin film domain structure and surface topography are observed depending on the substrate surface energy and the solubility of the two polymers in the three solvents. The topographic modulation can be explained by a different rate of solvent evaporation during spin-coating for the two phases. The normal and lateral organization of the phase-separated domains is governed by a complex interplay between preferential aggregation of one phase at the substrate and phase segregation in the film. Additionally, some of the results suggest that a dewetting process may be involved in the domain f...

Phylogenetic timing of the fish-specific genome duplication correlates with the diversification of teleost fish.

Abstract: For many genes, ray-finned fish (Actin- opterygii) have two paralogous copies, where only one ortholog is present in tetrapods. The discovery of an additional, almost-complete set of Hox clusters in teleosts (zebrafish, pufferfish, medaka, and cichlid) but not in basal actinopterygian lineages (Polypterus) led to the formulation of the fish-specific genome duplication hypothesis. The phylogenetic timing of this genome duplication during the evolution of ray- finned fish is unknown, since only a few species of basal fish lineages have been investigated so far. In this study, three nuclear genes (fzd8, sox11, tyrosin- ase) were sequenced from sturgeons (Acipenseri- formes), gars (Semionotiformes), bony tongues (Osteoglossomorpha), and a tenpounder (Elopo- morpha). For these three genes, two copies have been described previously teleosts (e.g., zebrafish, puffer- fish), but only one orthologous copy is found in tetrapods. Individual gene trees for these three genes and a concatenated dataset support the hypothesis that the fish-specific genome duplication event took place after the split of the Acipenseriformes and the Semionotiformes from the lineage leading to teleost fish but before the divergence of Osteoglossiformes. If these three genes were duplicated during the pro- posed fish-specific genome duplication event, then this event separates the species-poor early-branching lineages from the species-rich teleost lineage. The additional number of genes resulting from this event might have facilitated the evolutionary radiation and the phenotypic diversification of the teleost fish.