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BP is trying several different approaches to resolving the Gulf Oil Spill, and in a recent presentation by Senior VP Kent Wells, he showed the chart above to demonstrate how their efforts to collect the oil are improving every day.  Relying on the public’s perception of upward trendlines being “good”, Stephen Few wasn’t falling for it.  He took the raw data, and compiled his own graph showing not the Cumulative Oil Collected, but the Oil Collected Daily.

While the amount of collection increased in the beginning, it has decreased or held steady for the last four days and is now well below the average amount of daily collection for this period as a whole. Things are definitely not getting better. How do you spin bad news like this? One way is to create a misleading graph, but cover your ass by doing it in a way that isn’t an outright lie.

This may be the single best example of using visualization to tell the story you want, rather than the real story.

via Visual Business Intelligence – BP Oil Collection – Is the Effort Really Improving?.

Science bad, oil, visualization

Next time you’re up in Portland, OR, just take out your iPhone and power up the junaio 2.0 app to view the transit routes and stops in augmented reality right there.

“Augmented reality intuitively lays out transit information for our riders” says Bibiana McHugh, IT Manager, GIS and Location Based Services for TriMet. “We are thrilled to have the augmented reality channel as another means of helping our riders get to their destinations.”

Currently available for iPhone, they plan to bring it to Android soon.

via junaio · PORTLAND AREA’S TRIMET PARTNERS WITH JUNAIO TO BRING NEAREST TRANSIT INFORMATION AND SCHEDULES TO RIDERS VIA AUGMENTED REALITY.

Science augmented reality, iphone, junaio

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing eleven men. The oil rig then sank on April 22, 2010. Since then, oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. Attempts to stop the oil spill have been met with only limited success.

Currently, BP is trying what is called a “top kill” method to plug the leak. The top kill method involves pumping a heavy mud into the broken well. The idea is that this heavy mud will stop the oil and gas that is rising to the surface. If that is successful, the well can then be capped with concrete.

However, the question remains: What caused the well to fail in the first place? Halliburton’s representative at the congressional hearings, Tim Probert, may have just given everyone the answer. Probert presented a schematic of BP’s cementing plan to Congress. The drawing shows a key design flaw that may be the cause of, or a contributor to, the catastrophe. The graphic shows that a liner hanger was not inserted between casings 8 and 9. That missing liner hanger could have allowed gas into the well, which led to the catastrophe.

Click on the image to the right to see it in full-resolution.

The graphic shows the wellhead 5,067 feet below the water’s surface and the bottom of the well more than 13,000 feet below that. It diagrams how the drill pipes telescoped down in sections — some about 2,000 feet long, some shorter and others longer.

With each section, one metal tube fits inside another, leaving a space called an “annulus” where heavy drilling mud can circulate and carry the drilled-out material back up to the surface. According to the diagram, one of the spaces between different-sized pipes was not closed off — a no-no, according to some experts.

via Costly, time-consuming test of cement linings in Deepwater Horizon rig was omitted, spokesman says | NOLA.com.

Graphics infographic, oil

Ridley Scott has been talking about a pair of Alien Prequels to be shot in 3D “back to back” for rapid release, and now we know why.  He has formed a new production company called “Scott Free Productions” that is with a partnership with Symphony 3D, parent company of MasterImage3D.   You might be asking why Symphony3D and not RealD?  Easy: Money.

As more and more screens go digital and 3D, Scott is clearly hoping MasterImage 3D will be an appealing alternative to more dominant players, like RealD. Unlike some of its competitors, MasterImage 3D equipment is purchased outright by movie theaters, and does not demand royalties for each ticket sold, as is the case with RealD. Plus, with studios cutting back on the amount of gross they’re willing to share with even all-star directors like Scott, this must be an appealing growth industry for him.

It’s unclear how much Scott has invested into this venture, but with so many other ventures underway he’s no stranger to “Risky” ventures.

via Vulture Exclusive: Ridley Scott to Acquire His Own 3D Company — Vulture.

Graphics 3d, stereoscopic

One of my favorite sites to visit is the Astronomy Picture of the Day. You never do know what new and amazing picture they will post, and better yet, explain.

What’s happening above the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador? Quite a bit, from the looks of the above one-night, time-lapse movie, taken earlier this month. The majestic volcano is first seen through breaks in fast moving clouds as the movie begins. Soon the clouds have dissipated and a sky filled with stars seems to rotate about the snow-peaked volcano’s peak. The band of our Milky Way Galaxy, the dark Coal Sack nebula, and the Southern Cross can all be seen overhead. Satellites streak by from several directions. Soon thin clouds roll by and seem to make the brightest stars sparkle. On the volcano (starting at about 1:13 of the movie), the lights of climbers flash. Near the end of the movie, a bright airplane passes over the peak with a residual trail seen drifting away.

via Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Science astronomy

LG will be showing an 84-inch 3-D LCD TV at the Society for Information Display 2010 conference in Seattle, WA this week. The 84-inch 3-D LCD TV does not come in at a standard resolution of 1920×1080. Instead the 3-D TV has a resolution that is 3840 x 2160, which is ultra high definition (UHD).

However, there are three problems that I can see with this screen already. The first problem is that it is likely to be expensive. The second problem is that while it is nice to have such a large 3-D screen, you still need something to drive the screen. There are no 3-D Blu-Ray players that can output at that resolution. Finally, you need content to put on the screen. There is only one 3-D Blu-Ray title that is out right now, and it is not in 3840 x 2160 format.

LG will show several more interesting displays at the SID 2010. LG Display will present its advanced technologies including the 10.1-inch curved LCD with slim glass; the world’s thinnest TV panel which measures just 2.6mm in thickness; a 15.6-inch notebook LCD product that realizes the world’s lowest power consumption levels; a 9.7-inch color e-paper display scheduled to begin mass production within the year; and a 19-inch flexible e-paper.

via LG shows World’s Largest 3D Display at SID 2010.

Hardware 3dtv, lg

This week’s recommended resources goes out to programmers and game developers: ShaderX7 – Advanced Rendering Techniques.  Written by Rockstar’s own Lead Graphics Programmer Wolfgang Engel, it’s the latest in a series of books dedicated to giving you every little tip and trick of graphics shader programming.

Welcome to ShaderX7:Advanced Rendering Techniques, the latest volume in the cuttingedge, indispensable series for game and graphics programmers.This all-new volume is packed with a collection of insightful techniques, innovative solutions to common problems, and practical tools and tricks that provide you with a complete shader programming toolbox. Every article was developed from the research and experiences of industry pros and edited by shader experts, resulting in unbiased coverage of all hardware and developer tools. ShaderX7 provides coverage of the vertex and pixel shader methods used in high-end graphics and game development.These state-of-the-art, ready-to-use solutions will help you meet your daily programming challenges and bring your graphics to a new level of realism.This collection offers time-saving solutions to help you become more efficient and productive, and is a must-have reference for all shader programmers.

This book and many others is available in the VizWorld Store.

Science resource of the week

Etnews.co.kr is reporting that Samsung is demonstrating a 19″ transparent AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) panel. The new panel comes in at 30% transparency. At CES in January, Samsaung showed off a 14 inch version of this screen. Why would anyone want a transparent display? Well, it could be used for heads-up displays for vehicles, or more likely, for eye-catching advertisement displays.

via : Etnews.co.kr

Hardware samsung, tv

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was launched February 11, 2010 which produced a spectacular Sonic Boom Meets Sun Dog. One of the instruments on the SDO is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA). The AIA is a collection of four telescopes which will photograph the Sun’s surface and atmosphere. The AIA uses a 4096×4096 CCD to capture the images of the Sun. The AIA will take these images across 8 different wavelengths (out of the 10 available wavelengths) every 10 seconds. In other words, that is eight 16.78 million pixels images every 10 seconds.

A false-color image sequence of the solar corona taken by SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA). The images combine data from three AIA channels sensitive to light emitted by gas at different temperatures: red, green and blue at 2, 1.5 and 1 million degrees, respectively. The images span one day on the Sun, and follow a region against the Sun’s slow rotation. Each image spans 1.2 million kilometers — or 90 Earth diameters — horizontally.

credit: NASA, SDO/AIA

via YouTube – SDO: A Day In The Solar Corona (2010.05.05) [720p].

Science astronomy, nasa, SDO

Scientific visualization tools are unnecessarily complicated to use. This complexity increases the time required to gain insight into a given data set, and thus inhibits casual use. The difficulty arises from the need to support data from a large variety of sources and the need to support a wide variety of visualization algorithms. Though the number of data file formats is unbounded, the format of any given data set can be described using a small set of parameters. Further, the set of visualization algorithms applicable to a given type (e.g. dimensionality) of data is small and the number of these algorithms commonly used in a specific scientific domain is even smaller. These two insights have led the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to the development of a new tool for scientific visualization. This tool dramatically simplifies data importation and visualization algorithm selection through user-directed semi-automation. The strategy is consistent with a larger trend in data analysis and visualization towards ease of use.

This tool, called EnVision, aims to achieve an interface similar to Google Maps, making the visualization process easy and helping to make scientific visualization a more common activity for researchers.

EnVision is a tool to remotely visualize dataset through a web browser. It allows you to transparently user remote visualization resources through a thin web based client from anywhere in the world.

via YouTube – EnVIsion Scientific Visualization Through Web Browser.

Science scientific visualization, tacc