Research on Kinematics Simulation of Parameterized Mechanism Based on Visualization in Scientific Computing

Initial impetus for scientific visualization was provided in 1987 by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Panel Report of a Workshop on ‘Visualization in Scientific Computing’ (McCormick et al. 1987).

Isosurface extraction from volumetric data plays an important role in the field of visualization in scientific computing. To solve the ambiguity that the classical marching cube algorithm often suffers from and improve the extraction precision, first, accurate isosurface in the interior of cube is constructed by using the trilinear interpolant method. The face shoulder points, body shoulder points and inflection point are computed as the critical points located on the isosurface. The geometrical characteristics of those critical points are analyzed. Based on these preliminary results, a robust and high resolution triangulation algorithm for constructing a triangular mesh approximation to isosurface for data given on a 3D rectilinear grid is presented. Unlike the past work on marching cube algorithm, the new solution presented produces a robust representation of the surface in the interior of each grid cell without using look-up-table and complementary and rotation operations. For arbitrary cube configuration, once the corresponding inflection points have been computed, the new approach is intelligent to triangulate the isosurface. Finally, some examples are given to show the performance of the new algorithm.

Visualization in scientific computing has been a developing computer technology in recent years. It has been used in many fields because of its strong ability in large data management and display, while its applications in power systems are still in the study stage. The method introduced in this paper combines geographic images and power system information, and gives a more accessible and realistic visual expression of static security assessment. This method applied ArcViewGIS software (a product of ESRI) to the traditional static security assessment algorithm. Using the function of image overlapping, automatic image making and large-scale data processing, the method turns the results of security assessment into outstanding pictures and tables on a geographic map. In this way, one can obtain a more efficient power system security assessment method.

Computer Graphics ForumVolume 9, Issue 5 p. 371-372 Report on the First Eurographics Workshop on Visualization in Scientific Computing Yvon Le Lous, Yvon Le Lous EDF-DER-Service IMA 1 Av. du Gal De Gaulle 92141 Clmart Cedex, France Phone: +33 1 47 65 36 34 Fax: +33 137 65 30 01 Email: lelous@edfderl.edf.frSearch for more papers by this author Yvon Le Lous, Yvon Le Lous EDF-DER-Service IMA 1 Av. du Gal De Gaulle 92141 Clmart Cedex, France Phone: +33 1 47 65 36 34 Fax: +33 137 65 30 01 Email: lelous@edfderl.edf.frSearch for more papers by this author First published: December 1990 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8659.1990.tb00430.xCitations: 2AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article.Citing Literature Volume9, Issue5December 1990Pages 371-372 RelatedInformation

We are very glad to host VRCAI2009 in Japan and welcome you to Tokyo Institute of Technology which is a very active university in VR, CG and Image processing fields. Virtual Reality Continuum (VRC), which spans across next-generation info information communication environments, like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Virtuality (AV), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR), is a key in the way we define and interact with, and within, our virtual worlds. To advance research in the VRC field, the VRCAI conference seeks to provide a forum for scientists, researchers, developers, users and industry players in the international VRC community to come together to share experiences, exchange ideas and spur one another in the knowledge of this fast-growing field. This year, VRCAI 2009 focuses on the following themes: Fundamentals, Systems, Computer Graphics, Image Processing, Interactions , and Industry and Applications. A new focus area on Computer Graphics and Image Processing related to Virtual Reality has been introduced. We see the importance of CG and image processing for developing VR systems and applications growing more and more. Especially, VRCAI2009 is held just 2 days before SIGGRAPH ASIA 2009. VRCAI and SIGGRAPH ASIA should be more strongly connected each other. So, we hope VRCAI welcomes the papers in the fields of CG and Image Processing. Since its beginning as the 1st International Workshop on Virtual Reality and Visualization in Scientific Computing held in Hangzhou, China in 1995, VRCAI has grown and matured into a reputable biennial conference. Selected papers from past VRCAI conferences have been published in special issues of Computers & Graphics journal, International Journal of Virtual Reality, International Journal of Image and Graphics, and Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds. Since 2004, the conference has been indexed by EI. It has been also co-sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH, and its papers included in the ACM Digital Library. The 8th VRCAI 2009 conference attracted 98 submissions from 17 countries in Europe, North and South America and Asia. The submissions were reviewed by about 70 reviewers, with each full paper receiving at least three reviews. The papers were of high quality and very competitive. 40 submissions have been accepted as full papers and 29 as poster papers.

At the University of Tennessee at Martin (UTM), freshman computer science majors were being successful in their first quarter in computer science, but many majors were not completing the year sequence (Programming Concepts and Problem Solving I, II, and III). This study describes a freshman studies program that helps increase student retention in the first computer science course.Two populations were used in this study. The first population (Group A) consisted of 25 freshman computer science majors (16 men and 9 women) enrolled Fall Quarter 85 in freshman orientation General Studies GS1000 for one quarter hour credit. The second population (Group B) consisted of 17 freshman computer science majors (12 men and 5 women) enrolled the Fall Quarter 86 in freshman orientation General Studies GS1001 for two quarter hours credit. Both groups were placed in the first course in computer science using the cutting scores ACT English > 17 or 0.78 (ACT English) + 0.49 (UTM Math Placement) > 33. Both Groups A and B had an average ACT English score of 20 and an average UTM Math Placement score of 55. Each quarter during the freshman year, the computer science major enrolls in calculus (4 hrs.), Programming Concepts and Problem Solving (3 hrs.), a laboratory science (4 hrs.), English (3 hrs.), and a humanities course (3 hrs.).Group A was offered a freshman orientation program that involved a pass/fail one quarter hour credit GS1000 which met one hour each day during freshman studies week. Each section consisted of twenty-five heterogeneously grouped students. The course content was review of study skills. Group B was offered a freshman orientation program that involved a pass/fail two quarter hour credit GS1001 which met one hour each day during freshman studies week, plus one hour each week during the first quarter. Each section consisted of only students of a particular major (computer science) and was taught by a faculty member of that department. The topics of this course consisted of a review of study skills, discussions of student problems, special academic speakers, field trips to professional sites, cultural events, meetings with deans and department heads, and a follow-up on study skills. In the meeting before the final exam week, the faculty member dealt specifically with suggestions on preparing for finals.Groups A and B were enrolled in the same first computer science sequence (Programming Concepts and Problem Solving I, II, and III) their freshman year. Both groups had the same instructors, text (Introduction to Computing and Computer Science with Pascal by H. Walker), and course syllabus for this sequence. Both groups carried the same academic course load their freshman year. However, in Group A only 20% (5 out of 25) of the students completed the first computer science sequence with a grade of C or better, while in Group B 41% (7 out of 17) completed the same sequence with a grade of C or better. Student retention is achieved through the students' integration into the academic and social systems of the college by two factors: (1) faculty-student interaction and (2) peer-group interaction. Although the population of this study was small, I believe GS1001 provides one way of increasing student retention in computer science.

the University of Amsterdam, May 20-31, 1974.This Tract collects the lecture notes of five of the courses given.The sixth course, given by Dr. R. Kowalski on Predicate Logic as a Programming Language in Artificial Intelligence, is scheduled to appear elsewhere.We are very grateful to the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (Z.W.O.)

For decades, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has been engaged in significant research, development, and support for software to enable scientific computing and, particularly, the use of high performance computing (HPC) in the NNSA mission space. In particular, the move in the mid-1990’s to simulation as a leading component of stockpile stewardship through the ASCI and the successor ASC programs, as well as the need for reliable data acquisition and control software for the National Ignition Facility, have been important drivers in building expertise in production-quality software development at LLNL. LLNL has also been a leader in the DOE SciDAC FASTMath Institute and the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP), both of which have striven to make scientific computing software – in particular, the enabling technologies underpinning simulation capabilities – more widely adopted and sustainable. As such, we believe that our experience can inform the broader goal of software stewardship for scientific and high-performance computing. LLNL strongly supports the formation of a new DOE ASCR program element in software stewardship and sustainment. Historically, DOE ASCR has funded applied mathematics and computer science research that has led to the development of important new capabilities and algorithms that are expressed as artifacts in research software. Such frameworks, libraries, and tools have seldom been directly funded to address the important issues of code maintenance, documentation, robustness, and community building. Software engineering and support have typically been done on the side in support of the ASCR-driven research products. DOE funding priorities have been slow to recognize that good software engineering, the kind that ensures research investments have more adoption and longevity, requires significant resources. Based upon our experiences, we have prepared this response to highlight the concerns and issues we believe to be important as DOE ASCR considers its role in scientific software stewardship. We believe that role is important and will require a significant investment of new funding to legitimately support the technologies past and future DOE ASCR investments have and will produce to facilitate their uptake and adoption in the broader scientific computing community. Following a summary of our involvement in scientific software development, the remainder our response is organized around the nine topics specifically identified in the RFI.

Introduction The computing sciences are complex fields that combine both theoretical and practical components. Students successfully completing an undergraduate computer science program should have instruction in both the mathematical and theoretical foundations of computing as well as the more practical aspects of how to effectively use computers to solve problems. Software engineering, as its name implies, is more directed toward the practical aspects of how to successfully develop complex systems that meet user requirements and are reliable, usable, and maintainable. Computing Curricula 2005 recognizes the need for more extensive education to produce professional engineers than what can be reasonably provided in a typical computer science program (ACM, 2005). As such, they propose engineering be treated as a totally separate discipline within computer science education. However, while there has been some debate about the exact role engineering should have in a computer science program (Curran, 2003), the ACM Curricula has maintained the importance of engineering to all computer science students and has kept it as a core element in computer science education (ACM, 2008). For purposes of this paper, we will focus on the teaching of engineering within the computer science discipline. Unlike other topics in the computer science major, the techniques and principles taught in engineering are often first developed and refined in industry before arriving in the classroom. As commercial development techniques and tools evolve, so pedagogical methodologies change. Computer science educators have taken different approaches to teaching engineering over the years, both as a result of changing methodologies as well as individual beliefs about what teaching methods work best in a particular academic environment. This paper is a case study in applying current productivity tools (specifically Redmine) in a engineering course at our institution. The objectives of the study are to investigate how to integrate the tools into the existing structure and evaluate their impact. We describe our experience in recently changing our approach to teaching engineering to be more aligned with current tools and how to effectively use them in an academic environment. The paper begins with an overview of engineering teaching methods, then describes our traditional approach and motivation for changing, how the new approach was integrated into the course, our experience with the change, and, finally, our plans for the future Software Engineering Education Background Software Engineering is defined as the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation and maintenance of software (Petkovic, Thompson, & Todtenhoefer, 2006, p. 294). The need to teach engineering in colleges has been identified for decades. Stiller & LeBlanc (2002) point out as far back as the early 1990's, ACM Computing Curricula suggested that the at least one engineering course should be required in accredited computer science programs. They point out that the number of large projects in industry demand this and suggest that the proof of the success of these accredited computer science programs should be seen in the reduction of failure in the design and operation of large computer programs. Software engineering programs can be thought of as a replacement for the old apprenticeship programs which taught the trades to workman (Stroulia, Bauer, Craig, Reid, & Wilson, 2011). The issue, however, is how to bring this effect into the classroom. Many educators feel that current practices of teaching engineering are not adequately preparing students for the real world of development. Nurkkala & Brandle (2011) summarize the problems with current teaching approaches: * No product--students are creating projects, not commercial grade products * Short duration--single semester, or two-semester, courses impose an artificial time constraint * High turnover--new students each semester means the talent pool remains shallow and student skills are not developing based on previous experience * Low complexity--by necessity given time constraints and skill sets * No maintenance--as a result of short duration, students do not experience a key aspect of development, the maintenance phase * No customer--most engineering projects do not interface with a real customer To address these shortcomings, different approaches to teaching engineering have emerged and been proposed in the literature. …

Contributors

Incorporating Necessary Skills for Research and Career Success. Programming and computational science is an essential part of chemistry, yet some curricula still do not prioritize its inclusion. This work contains a collection of strategies, activities, and resources available to incorporate programming into all levels of the chemistry curriculum, with a focus on how the programming learning objectives are integrated with chemistry learning objectives. Chapters highlight best practices in software development, emphasize their importance to the future of computational molecular sciences, and describe challenges instructors might face in implementing programming in their own curriculum.

This study investigated the quality of undergraduate computing curricula at Kenyan universities, how they compare locally and regionally with equivalent programs and how closely they meet the ICT sector needs. It was guided by four objectives i.e. to undertake an ontological mapping of computing curricula, to identify appropriate benchmarking criteria, to develop and test a benchmarking tool, and to investigate the alignment of these curricula to computing skills requirement. The study was deemed important by the plethora of academic computing programs of varying degrees of utility and credibility, which are a product of the escalating demand for computing education in Kenya given the development of Vision 2030 and the rapid growth of the ICT industry. To achieve its objectives, the study adopted a quantitative and qualitative cross-sectional descriptive survey of computing curricula offered locally (in Kenya) and regionally (from best practicing countries, USA and India). A sample of 70.3% was drawn from the target population for ontological mapping. Two research instruments, i.e. a questionnaire and a document analysis framework that were administered to a cross-section of 11 public/private universities. The study established that there are 24 undergraduate computing programs under 6 titles, viz. BSc., BCom., BTech., BB., BEd. and BEng. The two most populous programs are BSc. Computer Science (CS) and BSc. Information Technology (IT), which were selected to help identify two benchmarking criteria: Percent weight allocation of core hours within ACM knowledge areas and Relative performance capabilities of computing graduates. Using these criteria a benchmarking tool was developed and tested, which depicted disparities among the respondents in the percent weight allocation of core hours in CS programs. Similarly, it portrayed overlaps in the relative performance capabilities of CS and IT graduates, an outcome that queried the uniqueness of these programs. As such, its results indicate that the quality of the two computing programs is relatively insufficient. However, it further establishes that the computing curricula are aligned to meet the top 3 highly demanded computing skills i.e. Networking, Software development and Internet skills albeit insufficient percent weight allocation of core hours in Software development. It therefore recommends further testing and refining of the established benchmarking tool, the need to re-focus the computing programs and supports the call to institute a regulatory body and qualifications framework for computing education and skills.Â

An approach to the teaching and learning of high school computer science (CS) to and by educationally disadvantaged students (EDS) is described, as well as the implementation of six pedagogical principles in two learning environments developed for Israeli schools. Following a brief description of the main characteristics of EDS classes and a review of the proposed guiding principles for the curricular development for such classes, implementation of two of these principles is discussed. First, the implementation of ‘decomposition’ is presented with regard to the TEVEL (Hebrew version of the Logo programming language) version of the CS module for EDS. Then, the implementation of ‘a pattern‐oriented curriculum’ is presented with regard to the Pascal version of the CS module for EDS. Our data show that in both versions, students taking the national final exam achieved above‐average grades. We also found that at the end of the module, the students master basic programming tools and recognize basic algorithmic patterns. These findings indicate the potential contribution of our approach for EDS in particular, but also for CS students in general.

A novel parallel mechanism with bifurcated motion is introduced by integrating a discontinuously movable mechanism in the limb design. The mechanism has instantaneously six degrees of freedom at a singularity point. With the discontinuously movable mechanism moving to different motion branches, the parallel mechanism has the ability to evolve into four configurations with different motion characteristics, including 3T motion configuration, 3R motion configuration, 2T1R motion configuration and 2R1T motion configuration. By rigidizing the input joints, the rationality of input scheme for this mechanism is identified based on screw theory. Six motors nearly mounted to the base can sufficiently drive the parallel mechanism to switch between different motion configurations and perform different motions. The forward and inverse kinematics of the mechanism in different configurations are given. The translational motions are independent with each other and decoupled with the rotational motions. Kinematics simulation is performed for the parallel mechanism and the results show that theoretical analyses are correct. The workspace of the parallel mechanism in a general configuration is given. Key words}Discontinuously movable mechanism Parallel mechanism Bifurcated motion Kinematics

Preface: Volume 44, Issue 3