Domes are an exciting way of surrounding the viewer in a digital environment, filling their entire visual field of view. This introduction to dome displays will provide a comprehensive overview of the advantages and challenges of creating content for this particular style of immersive environment. Unlike flat single surface displays or multiple wall displays there are some fundamental differences when it comes creating content for smooth hemispherical surfaces. The seminar will draw upon the presenters extensive experience of using a range of hemispherical dome configurations, these include large scale planetarium orientated domes to the small personal front facing iDomes. Content will include photography, fisheye and 360 degree video, realtime applications and simulators using game engines.
Application examples will cover science visualisation across a number of fields, education and public outreach through exhibitions in museums or art galleries. At the end of this seminar the audience should understand the opportunities and requirements for creating content for a dome environment.
Click here to view the presentation slides. Presentation by Associate Professor Paul Bourke, Curtin HIVE (Hub for Immersive Visualisation and eResearch), June 2014
Presented by Paul Bourke at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, 2 June 2014, this examined how the panorama is being used in various visualisation processes including, but not limited to, volumentric data visualisation and virtual/cultural heritage. Key to all applications is the sense of presence, of “being there”, the original motivation from the cyclorama first developed in the late 1700s and it is still the theme today with the current digital devices for presenting the panorama.
Presented at The University of Western Australia as part of Digital Humanities Australasia 2014 on 18 March by iVEC@UWA Facility Leader and Head of Visualisation Team Paul Bourke.
Photogrammetry is the traditional name given to the derivation of some 3D quantity derived solely on the basis of a collection of photographs. In recent years this has been an intensive area of research and the quality of algorithms is reflected in this effort. The state of the art is currently that one can create reasonable quality 3D models from a collection of photographs without a significant amount of domain knowledge, specialist hardware and software, or with the need to place markers in the scene or follow rigorous calibration procedures.
This workshop discusses the current software solutions/pipelines, makes reference to camera and techniques that result in optimal chance of successful reconstructions, and presents some of the post processing requirements and tools. In short, the workshop provides a complete introduction to the subject. The emphasis is towards 3D capture of heritage objects and is the topic of most of the examples.
Presented at iVEC@UWA on February 11 2014 by iVEC@UWA Facility Leader and Head of Visualisation Team Paul Bourke.
3D printing is an exciting technology whereby a digital representation of data is converted into a physical object that can be held and explored in the same way as we normally study physical objects in everyday life. The technology has been around for some time in the engineering disciplines where it is generally referred to as Rapid Prototyping.
Developments in more recent time have removed some of the previous limitations, which in turn have created a range of new application areas.
This seminar presents how 3D printing may be employed as part of the visualisation process, both as a way of studying datasets as well as conveying a sense of that data in teaching and public outreach. It examines of the current state of the technology, it’s strengths, and it’s limitations. The seminar also discusses when 3D printing may be an appropriate means of visualising data, and how to go about creating optimal digital models. Examples of the use of 3D printing from researchers in various diverse fields such as medicine, geology, mathematics and archaeology are analysed.
Thursday 20 February saw the iVEC Annual Symposium take place in the ARRC Auditorium in Kensington. The Symposium is iVEC’s first major event of each year and provides a way for us to showcase the work of the students who participated in our Interns Program, as well as deliver updates to our stakeholders about our activities for the coming year. In addition, we are joined by keynote speakers from our User community who are able to share how advanced computing is helping them tackle their research.
Please find below the keynote speaker presentations.
Dr George Beckett, iVEC Deputy Director – Research Computing at Petascale: What iVEC can offer
Laura Boykin, ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, The University of Western Australia – A practical guide to HPC Bayesian phylogenetic analyses: More chains or more replicates? GPU vs. CPU?
Professor Lister Staveley-Smith, Deputy Director, Science/CAASTRO, Deputy Director International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research – Supernova and Supercomputing
Professor Jenni Harrison, iVEC Head of Data Team – Data Team presentation
Professor Tom Lyons, Centre of Excellence for Climate Change
Woodland and Forest Health, Murdoch University – Past and Future Temperature Extremes and Vegetation in Western Australia
Associate Professor Paul Bourke, iVEC Head of Visualisation Team/Director iVEC@UWA – Introduction to Visualisation at iVEC and a selection of current projects
Dr Rebecca Hartman-Baker, iVEC Supercomputing Development and Applications Specialist – Team Quokka: Australia’s First Foray into the Student Cluster Challenge/p>
Steven Christian – Curtin University
Supervisors
Dr. Andrew King (Curtin University) Dr. Ramesh Narayanaswamy (Curtin University)
There are various sizes of data centers nowadays, from the small one with only several computer racks to the big one with more than one hundred racks. As most of the computer’s electrical power consumption is dissipated into heat, good data center cooling performance is important to prevent computers from being overheated. In response to the large amount of heat produced, the cooling load of the Computer Room Air Conditioning units (CRAC) increases in order to maintain the system’s temperature within the desired range. Data center cooling effectiveness needs to be set as high as possible in order to minimize the overall energy consumption, to minimize the operational cost, to help minimizing the greenhouse gases emission and hence gives some contribution to reduce the effect of global warming.
For the purpose of investigating data center cooling effectiveness using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) OpenFOAM software, a simple model of basic data center and a standard data center layout located in Espoo, Finland, are used. For both data centers, the cold air is supplied through raised floor plenum mechanism, while the hot air is sucked through ceiling return mechanism. The Espoo data center is much more complicated since it has more computer racks and also various supply and return air temperatures and flowrates. Several assumptions were made when constructing the model in order to simplify the case without much affecting the results accuracy. In general, both the basic and final model data center are properly designed in terms of temperature distribution since the racks inlet temperature is still within ASHRAE’s recommended magnitude between 20-25° C (293-298° K) although some hot air recirculation occurs.
Yu Jie Kan – Curtin University
Supervisors
Prof Ricardo L. Mancera, Curtin University of Technology; A/Prof Pilar Blancafort, University of Western Australia
DNA-binding domains (DBDs) are highly specific proteins capable of recognizing specific gene sequences.
The SOX2 protein is a transcription factor, which is also a DBD, is found to be involved in tumourgenesis and is highly expressed in basal-like breast cancers. Therefore the SOX2 protein can potentially be used to design and engineer DBDs that are able to recognize important gene sequences in cancer cells and aid the reconfiguration of the cancer genomes through the conjugative attachment of the engineered DBDs to existing cancer drugs.
This project uses the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation methods to simulate a SOX2-OCT4-DNA complex, in order to predict the binding affinity of SOX2 to DNA in the presence of OCT4, which can then be used for SOX2 based DBD design and engineering and to conduct virtual molecular experiments on SOX2 based DBDs to improve their DNA recognition and binding capacity.
Click here for presentation
William Foskett – Curtin University
Supervisor
Dr Chi Phan – Curtin University
This project investigates the different behaviour of two isomeric alcohols, 1-butanol and isobutanol at an air/water interface.
Alcohols can absorb and modify interfacial properties due to amphiphilic nature. The interfacial arrangement of these compounds is fundamentally different from the bulk. Consequently, surfactants have been utilized and applied in many processes including mineral processing. Recently, it has been found the methyl isobutyl carbinol (MIBC) and 1-hexanol have opposite behaviors at the interface: adsorbed MIBC enhance the presence of cations, whereas adsorbed 1-hexanol enhance the presence of anions. The contrast might be the underlying reason of superior performance of MIBC in mineral flotation. (Nguyen 2013).
This project investigates the interfacial behaviour of two other isomeric alcohols, 1-butanol and isobutanol. Such influences can only be quantified by molecular simulations with powerful supercomputer. This project employs GROMACS to quantify the molecular factors. The simulations will be run on 1-butanol and isobutanol. Initially a pure air/water system will be used to investigate surface tension, surface potential. An air/water/NaCl system will then be used at varying ion concentrations to investigate the relative positions between anions and cations.
